The Heart

The chambers of the heart are porous and as such, we come to
realize that the heart is more of an amalgam of experiences and feelings. The
heart has an amazing ability to feel joy and sorrow in equal weights, often at
the same time.  Perhaps we need the
wisdom of sorrow to feel joy in its full capacity and to appreciate its
lightness.

When there’s ease in the body, we begin to appreciate that
suppleness needs constriction, like peanut butter needs jelly or hot cocoa
needs marshmallows.  I had a
teacher that often said that stress in the body was a good and necessary thing
– without it, we’d be a bag of bones and skin on the floor! We come to the mat
so often looking to stretch, to open, to expand. Over time, we sometimes feel
that we’ve overstretched a hamstring, a shoulder, the low back.  At that point, we look to strengthen,
to pull back into ourselves.  Balancing the inner scales – like where joy and sorrow live in the heart
– can help us better define the boundaries and spaciousness of the physical
body.  Ultimately, the practice can
guide us past the rigidity of black and white states – I am stiff, I am sad, I
am flexible, I am joyous – to those where our multiple feeling states can
co-exist.  Perhaps they aren’t
always in balance, but by sharpening our powers of observation through mindful
asana and breath, we can constantly tinker and recalibrate.