In Asian languages, the word for ‘mind’ and the word for ‘heart’ are the same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
This amazing quote above was shared in one of the first in person yoga classes I attended in 2021. Hallelujah...We come together again.
A few months ago, I felt more than ready to get back to in person yoga. My heart ached for that feeling of togetherness when community joins to move and breathe in sync. To my surprise, there was a yoga studio down the street from my house. It’s a 6 minute bike ride. What a gift!
Tuesday evenings there is a Yin class which I really enjoy, but also desperately need. The class helps me slow down, feel centered, and connect more deeply with my body & spirit.
Rewind back to 2010. I was working as an elementary school counselor and just beginning to understand the importance of adopting the discipline of a daily meditation practice. My father had taken me to learn TM – Transcendental Meditation at the ripe age of 10, but I had not picked up the practice with consistency until my early 30’s.
During this time in my life, I had a lot of unresolved and suppressed emotions, I was struggling with moderate depression that felt more like a plateau than waves. My mind was completely and utterly FULL.
One day I was sitting on my ex-boyfriend’s couch with my laptop in hand trying to figure out how to start a blog. I remember naming the blog MIND FULLNESS. After all, we write what we know about.
Back then, I had dabbled in learning about what mindfulness was, I even tried to practice it on and off my meditation cushion. I knew what it was, but I didn’t truly understand that it would become my path towards healing, reconnecting and knowing my authentic SELF.
Rewind back to 2000. I am working for Americorps as a Literacy Tutor in a low socio-economic school teaching the sweetest, most tender Hispanic children I’d ever met how to read. One day I found a sticker that read SELF, just like this in all caps. Something about this sticker intrigued me. I decided to take it home and stick it onto my tall lamp stand. I looked at that sticker everyday for at least a year. Even then, I had no idea what the SELF even meant. Yes, I knew the self was me, you, him, her. But the true meaning of SELF was still a mystery to me.
This quote above is one that I think could save us all from a lot of pain and struggle.
If someone important to us pulled us aside at the perfect, most innocent age of 5 or 6 to explain that our mind is essentially our heart, perhaps we would all understand ourselves more clearly. We would value our heart center and what it feels just as much as we value our brain and what it has to say/think.
Society tells us that Intelligence matters most because it’s what makes us Successful.
But why aren’t people talking about staying connected to the Heart so we can Experience Feelings, Sensations, Our Truest SELF?
If we knew as children that our mind was the same as our heart, we would give equal value to these parts of us. We would soon understand why it’s less important to pay such close attention to our Brain Weasels and why it is absolutely necessary for us to listen to our Heart Beet.
A Full Mind Hurts, a Full Heart Feels & Heals and So You Grow.