
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.


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.

- 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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