Self-Care – Heartfulness

Your Three Hearts!

I’m here in this gorgeous green world, surrounded by trees, to talk with you about Heartfullness. It’s wonderful timing because the colour most associated with the heart is…green! It’s the colour of freshness…new experiences. Yes, I’m a lucky guy – at a cottage in Ontario – and I can’t wait to talk with you about your three hearts! 

What? Three? 

It’s not as weird as it sounds, honestly.

You know we’ve been looking into the three sides of our fulfillment pyramid …you can download your own copy if you haven’t already. So far, we’ve explored the Relationship side and then we moved to the Self side. We talked about Self-Care in terms of Body and Mind and now we’re ready to dive into Self-Care of the Heart…or the three hearts. Stay with me.

Heartfullness is all about how we engage in our life…you know…how we project ourselves, how we feel and how we feel others see us.

1. The first Heart is concerned with Emotions – our feelings – how we express them, how they help us and how sometimes, they can make life a little challenging.

2. The second Heart is called Psyche – this is our soul – a deeper level. If our first heart is light – visible – how we are seen to engage, then our second heart is darker – sometimes more hidden, less conscious.

3. Our third Heart is all about Connection – how we combine the first and second hearts into a way of connecting with ourselves and others. We are constantly weaving back and forth between our emotions and Psyche. and that movement forms our third heart. Let me give you an example.

Remember we talked about the journey over our human development from the Old Brain – the one focussed on Fright, Flight, Freeze kind of reactions? We are gradually evolving to our New Brain – the prefrontal cortex where we can respond, as opposed to a hair-trigger reaction. 

The old brain is occupied with fear, guilt, shame and anger. The new brain allows us to feel joy, love, peace and compassion.

So, when our first Heart feels… let’s say, shame, then our Psyche wants us to resolve those old issues that are causing feelings of shame…the ones that may be so deeply buried, we may not even be conscious of the source. Psyche engages us in moving from the old way to a new way And, as you may have experienced, this back and forth continues to happen, until we finally get it. We see that our old feelings are causing us to react in a way that is not healthy for us. We are Reacting instead of Responding. Gradually and hopefully, we see the light and realize – “Ah! that shame is an old feeling. I don’t need to feel it any more. I can respond in the present moment and not react from traumatic issues in my childhood or even from a previous life!”

Sweet relief! We can now connect with ourselves and others from a fresh, unburdened perspective.

Next time, I want us to talk  more about Psyche and how she works. In the meantime, I encourage you to become more aware of the feelings that are coming up for you…do they appear and then dissolve ? or do they stick around too long…like an uninvited guest at a party…you know the one – too loud, too out of control, taking up way too much space! It’s good to become aware because if I haven’t told you this before, I’m now about to share some great wisdom. Ready?

Awareness leads to Mastery. There you go – simple but profound. 

See you next time!