staying open

The pericardium is a fluid filled sack that encloses and protects the organ of the heart from external friction. Energetically, it guards our centre from emotional sickness as we experience the given trials and tribulations of life. The pericardium meridian governs the heart and from an ethereal standpoint, it manages the desires of Spirit or our Higher Self. It guards our intuition, our truth and our purpose. When life happens time after time, and hardship is difficult to let go of, this sheath can become physically inflamed, tight and unwell affecting physical strength in the shoulders, elbows and hands as well. By hiding from ourselves due to undesirable emotions and a distrust that our hearts will not make it through, sensory amnesia sets in. It’s as though we hit the off switch. Bam-lights out. During this process we turn away from our truth, we forget what it means to stand up for ourselves, and we inhibit our body’s ability to experience love and true intimacy. It eventually becomes unconsciously comfortable to live with the inability to process deep emotion. The saddest part is that this numbness is often equated to an equanimous and detached persona when really, we can’t recognize up from down, our heart from our head, love from fear. As we are unable to feel into ourselves, we most definitely cannot feel into another so, all connection becomes essentially meaningless.

The practice: Opening
Sit comfortably and become quiet. Begin to breath into the organ of heart as if it had nostrils, accepting and releasing the breath. Experience what it means to be closed and then to open; to be in the past and then in the present, in full acceptance of both. After a few minutes, bring in images and thoughts of forgiveness, generosity and gratitude; let them arise and plug into their feeling tone. Stay and feel as though you are widening into yourself, like a reunion of illusion and truth. Let the duality of both sides of emotion surface and embrace them with deep reverence for their lessons and teachings. Sit and stay with this sense of fullness for as long as you can as you reconnect to life, wide open. 

~

amen.