Big Heart Healing

       When I’m in distress – feeling anxious, ashamed, angry, etc. – the automatic tendency is to move into my head to process what I’m experiencing.  Truth be told, this is an attempt to defeat the distress, and it doesn’t work so well.  Usually, it just fuels the stories and interior dramas that create even more suffering. 

       Lately, I’ve experimented with acknowledging the distress, accepting its presence, and holding it gently in my heart – no analysis, no figuring, no words, no warfare.  I lean back, relax the body, breathe into my heart and witness heart’s natural expansion.  Small heart softens into Big Heart, the heart of compassion we all share.

       In this compassionate space, distress is invited to stay as long as it wants.  And yet, it dissolves – sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  Even when the discomfort is powerful and stubborn, I do my best to keep focused on the simple act of breathing into, and breathing out of, Big Heart. 

       The mind is a powerful instrument for processing many things.  Heart, however, is the better instrument for healing.