Cultivating Optimum “Heart”
Here’s another way to make the world safer.
Self-care = Society-care
In the previous blog of this 3-part series, Our Hearts Are Antennae?, I shared about how The HeartMath Institute’s science on nonverbal communication indicates we are heart-based humans, not brain-based. And, to me, that offers all kinds of potential for evolving our awareness of who and what we are into an emotionally-healthier society.
On that note, Health, there’s a great, simple exercise you can do to cultivate optimum heart rate, aka. calm and clarity. I picked this up from Lane Michael, a HeartMath Institute-trained clinician.
Here’s some Cliff notes:
- Take one minute to do this — Put your hand over your heart, feel it physically. Breathe through it and feel it breathing in your chest, a little slower than normal: 5 seconds in. 5 seconds out.
- Loop that — As you continue this breathing, a little slower and deeper than usual, 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, “allow your mind to give you a feeling of Appreciation, Care, Compassion for someone or something.” Whatever comes to mind, allow it in, and just hold that in your physical / emotional heart as you’re breathing.
- Do this every morning.
- See this demonstrated with real-time data on how it affects our heart rates, in this demo at Google.
We can build a better society based on our bio-physical truths.
Let’s learn and teach the principles, and others like them, from these last three blogs on our connections, to our kids. Namely: a rooted, positive, compassionate, and love-based emotional state is a physical state that “optimizes your performance” (and heart health) by connecting you to a deeper calm, a feeling of nonverbal connection to others, and overall mental clarity.
Again, in light of the shootings, and our still destructive, traumatizing and inhumane economy, and the fact that environmental collapse is currently imminent, and that we’re headed into a summer of stagflation — not to mention: gas prices are freaking people out, our politics are still self-defeating, and so many other things, with or without new gun safety laws, we all have to continue to ask:
- How do we protect our school children and ourselves today and tomorrow
- How do we make our hospitals and grocery stores and highways and workplaces and worship places and party places safer
- How do we make the world safer
I think it’s by recognizing true economic “advancement” today would be to resolve the existential problems threatening each of us, all of us — the whole kit and caboodle, ie.: climate, poverty, safety, justice, food security, biodiversity loss, biosphere collapse, mental illness, physical health, unresolved traumas, disconnected communities, inhumane economics...
I’m tired of being part of the “Fuck it” generation (Gen X) who just give up when the going gets tough. My Generation should aspire to build an emotionally-healthy global society, that can be our contribution, and we should prioritize actualization of that now. Faster cell phone speeds or satellites and other stuff that just kicks the can down the road on fixing today’s problems, can wait. People today need care today.
How about Gen F, the “Fix it” generation…
It is time to heal ourselves and each other from the things that are driving us into a ditch, however you depict that. We all have giant concerns. I share these ideas for your consideration:
- Hearts > Brains. That’s who we are.
- Care > Exceptionalism. That’s what we need, worldwide.
It is time to evolve social values, to advance into a safer future.
I say this as an environmental advocate.
###
Thanks for reading, more soon.
See the original email this piece is based on, Advancing Into a Healthy Society. See part 1 — Advancing into a Healthy Society, part 2 — Our Hearts are Atennae?
