Today My Heart Opened Again

Each time I venture out of the everyday in the world of travel, there is a shift, a healing, sometimes a subtle realisation, or even a life-changing transformation. I always relish this time, a blessing to reflect from a wider perspective what has evolved over the past year.

More cycles end, more new beginnings emerge and a greater source of wisdom rises from somewhere deep within. It feels so obvious that you think it must have been there all along (of course it was) - but I wasn’t ready to see it yet.

Everything for me was pointing towards change and letting go of old stories that were still (even now) keeping me trapped in some way. I thought I had systematically worked through much of the heartache and pain, self-devaluing thoughts and programs – but just because I say that is so, it doesn’t always mean I have caught up with myself energetically or physically.

We often like to believe that healing is a single event, a major decision, maybe even a date on a calendar – it feels good to be able to point towards that milestone and say that's when I released that or healed that.

But the thing is - healing rarely works like that. It will come in layers, in stages, often long after we have convinced ourselves that the story is finished. We, of course, move on with our lives; we function; we even feel fine, but the body keeps holding the chapter that the mind has tried to close the book on. One of my favourite books is The Body Keeps the Score by trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk. He writes extensively about the impact of our experiences and how that gets stored not just in memory, but in the tissues, the posture and the breath itself.

We think healing happens once

I had done all the reflecting, the questioning, the journalling. I had done the talking, the processing, the making sense of all the heartbreak. I had healed myself countless times – but it turns out that my body was still holding me in contraction – how did I know, because my body had been communicating that with me for the past 5 years. A tightness across the chest, a guardedness through the upper back. None of it dramatic. But over time I had shied away from including any major backbends in my morning practice. My body was protecting me, keeping me safe, locked in a shield of armour across my chest, so the same fate couldn’t be given space to happen again.

I could love, I could give, but I couldn’t receive. The inhale has always been more challenging for me than the exhale – the body is always communicating in plain sight, if we care to pay attention.

Who knew that my next practice would reveal yet another unexpected level of healing. I moved as mindfully as ever through my morning practice, and at the point I would normally opt for a Setu Bandhasana (bridge pose) or Dhanurasana (bow) – I effortlessly and willingly guided myself into Urdhva Dhanurasana (upward bow/wheel pose) - and surprisingly, my body simply let me.

I have not felt called to do that pose for years. So, I just stayed there, upside down, chest open to the sky, and I felt something shift that had nothing to do with flexibility.

I knew, in that instant, that my heart had shed another layer, an energetic release . It was not the first time, and I am certain it will not be the last. But another layer of healing had occurred and I was elated - in that moment I felt open and all the blessings that had hit the wall of armour seemed to come rushing in.

The body keeps its own timeline

A backbend asks something very specific of you. It asks you to open the front line of the body, the throat, the chest, the heart space, and then trust. Physiologically, it takes a nervous system that feels safe enough to soften. It is not something you force your way into (I know I have tried) – this is a special kind of openness. The body has to believe it is safe first.

So, when I lifted into that pose, and my chest opened without resistance, without the pained flinch, without my breath catching halfway through, that was not me advancing my practice of returning to a previous level of flexibility. That was my nervous system telling me that it is safe now, it is time to receive from a seat of love, openness and expansion.

This is the intelligence of the body. It doesn't heal on the schedule we would wish for, and its method of communication can sometimes not be explicit enough – but it is always communicating truth - the body is a crystallised map of all we have been through in this life.

And that is why this practice that we do is a practice – it is never complete, never finished. This life is a constant evolution: we live, we learn, we experience, we learn again. Much of our practice is unravelling all that has gone before and using greater depths of knowledge and self-study (swadhyaya) to keep us moving along the path with more wisdom, more compassion and a deeper resonance of love for self and all beings.

There are always parts of us that are still closed off, still restricted. Places where our body and energy hold us in a protective embrace, not because we are broken, but because the intelligence of the body is to protect us. The beauty of breathwork, yoga and a consistent practice is that we can trust that the process of unfolding is happening all on its own – we just need to commit and trust in it

What I want you to take from this

If there is a part of you still holding something you thought you had already healed from, that isn't failure. That's simply how healing moves, in stages, in its own time, often revealing itself through the body long before the mind finds the words. The same lesson and revelation may resurface multiple times before it is finally ready to shift.

Be patient with the layers. Keep breathing and feeling into the spaces that feel tight, uncomfortable and restricted (no force). When your own moment of opening comes, and it will - in whatever way it comes, give yourself permission to notice it – with love, and with deep gratitude.

Mine came upside down, on a mat, chest lifted to the sky, but it was all that went before that led to this point. I trust deeply, I practice patience and now I give myself full permission to receive. We can reveal in a moment the long-hidden stories, beliefs of unworthiness, ‘not good enough’, the lifelong judgment, the people pleasing, the perfectionism – all of it that was trapped right across the heart, always guiding my thoughts, words and actions away from self, and giving everything I had to others.

Moment of trauma, heartbreak, sudden shock – all of these often live on far beyond the time we feel they should of left. They prevent you from moving forward, to fully living with freedom and liberation.

It all seems so obvious now – now that I am ready to see it and of course, ready to release it.

This journey of life continues to fascinate, to spark intrigue, curiosity, but to experience it fully I needed to actively allow myself to receive it – and now with an open heart I shall practice doing just that.