Heart-Opening is an important, albeit often over-used concept, to take into account in this day in age when we are so often encouraged to think, rationalize and understand conceptually.

In honor of February and its many correlations to our beloved organ, the heart, enjoy these Yoga and Ayurveda anecdotes ponder this month!

Heart-Opening Yoga Poses: Are you hunched over your computer screen right now? Yoga poses can help to both physically and emotionally open the heart-space. Gentle back-bending poses such as cobra and upward dog or simply raising the arms, then taking the shoulders and elbows back behind you, can encourage more breath into heart and release tension or stored emotions in this space.

Open-Heart Surgery: Ayurvedically speaking, did you know that heart disease can be described by Vata, Pitta or Kapha symptoms? Heart conditions that are more nervous in nature tend to be Vata, and include symptoms like heart palpitations, numbness in chest area, dry cough, discoloration around the eyes, and fear and anxiety. Pitta-symptomatic heart disease includes burning in the chest, hypertension, heat throughout the body and is associated with angry outbursts and denial of one’s true heart. Kapha-type heart disease is more congestive in nature, due to overeating, excess mucus or fat, heaviness in the heart-space and an unwillingness to let things go.

Emotions of the Heart: Ayurveda’s holistic approach to health honors both the requirement to nourish the heart physically and emotionally. Stored emotions create blockages in the body. Deepening into the heart-space means cultivating awareness of any pain, heaviness, constriction, lightness or expansiveness we might feel around our physical heart when we interact with different situations or people. Think of someone you love deeply or something beautiful that brings you immense joy, and feel how this simple thought expands and lifts the heart.

Living from the Heart: What does is really mean to live from the Heart, and not from the MIND? Take a moment to imagine if your day’s work involved only FEELING, and no THINKING.  What would it change?