Open Heart A while ago when I started to go on a quest for deepening my practice were a lot of teachers coming my way or friends and saying you need to open your heart open your heart to the leader they were saying and you know I was sitting there and kind of like really trying because I was trying to open it on a physical way I imagined that there was a window and my heart was really open I was trying to remember things where you know like I would really prove to myself that I'm really open hearted to others I was reminding myself of the way how I'm loving others and the more I was doing it the more exhausted I was it really wasn't working there was one thing that they really didn't tell me and that is in order to open a heart I really need to land into my heart I can't open my heart with my mind and being one of those thinking a lot and having a tendency to intellectualize of course I was using my strength to open my heart so then I was trying some other practices like holotropic breathing and hypnosis and to be honest it worked to some extent but still I didn't really land into my heart so eventually one of my coaches said well why don't you try just gently tapping on your heart center in the middle of your chest and see what that brings to you and I think I was doing that three months before I had a sense of opening my heart and I will tell you the rest of the story in the back draft part but at that moment I just had all my senses open I was on this class where we were dancing and there was a song that just reminded me of Verlinde Derbyshies and I was just full of life I had a smile on my face and everything I had felt larger than life and at that moment I didn't need for people to tell me that my heart was open I felt it and sometimes these sensations can be really strong like what I had during that dance and sometimes our heart will open in a really gentle way during the meditation and we just have these senses in our body like joy or tenderness some memories may appear that will maybe tear your eyes up and you will know that ah my heart opening so this sense of warmth and release they're all signs of open heart and you'll know if you're in the state of open heart if you're connected with one state that belong to eight C's states as you may call them so eight C's would be state of calm,
Curiosity,
Compassion,
Confidence,
Courage,
Clarity,
Connectedness and creativity so you don't need to open or be in all of these eight C's in order for you to know that you're connected with your heart these are all also traits of a compassionate self with capital S so just being in the one space of connected with one of these states is a good guidance on how you're relating to yourself and others so as we begin with curiosity and beginner's mind you already understand that ah ok we are going towards being connected with compassionate self and open heart and also a lot of people who are wanting to work with their emotions they're actually looking for the state of calm only calm can bring us to a bit of disconnect with our body and this false sense of open heart so unless you're feeling joy that calm is actually numbness or apathy and just be mindful on how you navigate this discourse and not to confuse calm with apathy and numbness so again coming from this space of eight C's also there will be certain times when different emotions will happen and you will know that at that time you're connected with one of your parts and that is not compassionate self so a little bit more about that in the part about back draft so for now if you can identify which of these eight states are a little bit closer to you could it be that you're a naturally compassionate person then begin your practice with that or if curiosity is something that you're really comfortable with then go there,
Start your practice with that state if you're confident then from there and so on the sense of creativity can be brought not only with your eyes closed but you can connect with these states as you're writing,
As you're being creative in your movement,
Through cooking so be open,
Take an adventure remember these are experiments in mindfulness and enjoy
