Introducing the Heart

So, if you've inevitably gone to a yoga class, at some point you've probably heard your teacher say something like, bring your hands together in front of your heart center, or bring the energy to the center of your chest, the hood center, heart center. And if you have studied any anatomy before, you might be a little bit thrown, knowing that the heart doesn't sit directly in the midline, but kind of leans a bit to the left and snuggled in a little depression in the left lung. And so, we might get a little bit confused when our teacher says heart center. I even had this thoracic surgeon as a student once, and I know to be very careful with my language with him, because he's quite literal, but I forgot one day, and I said, bring your hands together in front of your heart, and I peeked open, and I peeked my eyes open, and his hands were leaning over to the side. So instead of being thrown, there's some particular magic with this very center point of your chest, deep back behind your breastbone, right at the apex of the heart itself, are these little clusters of special cells, and they're called the SA node.

And these are the cells that set the charge, the electrical charge of the heart. And so, we could poetically state that this is the very first place that we feel, whether it's the rush of love, whether it's angst, whether it's fear. This is the first place that we feel this emotion, and through the commander of the heart, that information is spread globally throughout the body. This little cluster of nerves is part of this giant network of neurons that communicate with the brain, and there's actually more signals that move from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart. And these special network of neurons become highly organized and function very sweetly when we experience something that might be termed a more positive emotion like love and joy, and they become highly disorganized when we experience emotions that we might term more negative, and the movement of the heart becomes erratic and jerky.

The body craves balance, it craves order, and it will do anything within its power to move back into a state, an organization called homeostasis, a place of balance. And so, it could be stated that the body is doing what it can to bring us back into its inherent state of love and joy. I hope through these next few practices that we can have a little bit more connection to this very powerful center, both in our own physical body and in the poetic body of your own heart. Thank you.