Tending to our tenderest parts | Heart Meditation

More than a little frequently, our miseducation from well-meaning but ill-informed caregivers leaves us ill-equipped to navigate our internal terrain. When it comes to feeling our feelings, we are often fairly clueless. Instead of zealously unpacking the gifts of our emotional rainbow, we see only rainclouds and run for cover.

Here is a little key for tending to our tenderest parts, our heart disturbances.

It doesn’t need to be a relentless pursuit of self-improvement; we don’t need to excavate our past or mine the unmineable.

So see if you can sink into the truth that you are whole, regardless of your conditioning and inherited confusion. Dropping inwards and backwards, behind the stories and the mind myths of being fundamentally flawed or broken, can you sense your soul? Your awareness, your heart beat, your breath. You do not breathe. Your breath breathes you.

Allow whatever arises with the warmest of welcomes, without trying to block it or suppress it. The more we bristle with antagonism, the more we wrestle with reality, the more we suffer. What we resist, persists.

For our own peace, it is essential to dissolve the thought ‘it shouldn’t be here’, to suspend judgement and self-criticism. To let go of the yearning for a turbulent free sea.

Be gentle. Make a friend of the sacred pause and the nurturance of breath.

Then invite in the compassionate quiver of curiosity. Open to the possibility of becoming curious not furious. No agenda, no expectation.

Be inquisitive. Uncover the feeling, untangle the mess (fear, shame, guilt, doubt, rage). Is there just one, or a tangled tapestry of multiple sensations?

Name the feeling and breathe it out. Release and let it go. Discerning the unsteady tightrope between allowing and wallowing.

Sense into this sequence of questions (posed by John Prendergast) and see what changes, what shifts…

Experience the feeling as a sensation.
Where do you feel it in your body? Colour, shape, density?
What is at the centre of it?
Is there a belief that goes with this feeling and sensation?
What is your deepest knowing about this belief?

Notice if there’s a dissolving of any kind, a quieting of the dispiriting dialogue that clatters through our conscience mind like a derailing freight train. A silent softening. A satisfying ease.

By allowing and sensing our feelings instead of squashing and suppressing them, they tend to cease silently puppeteering our lives and decisions.

We learn to approach whatever arises in us with curiosity and compassion, instead of judgement, and as a result, big overwhelming feelings tend to lessen in frequency and intensity.

We also start to receive the gifts of becoming unclogged –

life energy is unblocked – it flows and we flow more easily
our nervous systems calm & bodies relax
clarity grows
we feel a sense of freedom and empowerment
we experience more love, kindness, empathy, joy, delight, awe and gratitude

To work with Olivia 1:1, learn more or book a session here.

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