heart opening yoga

One of the things I love about Kripalu yoga is the focus on opening my heart through intention, movement and breath. For me, it's easy to be open-hearted when I am in a situation where everything is going well, where I am getting what I want, where my experience is pleasing, orderly and fair. It's a whole lot more of a challenge to be open-hearted when things aren't going my way, or when I am being treated unfairly or misunderstood. During those times, my breath is tighter, my diaphragm constricts, and my heart feels like being open isn't safe or welcome.

Practicing opening my heart in daily sadhana prepares me for just those difficult times, by allowing me to remember, in a deep body memory, that returning to intention, to breath and to stretching and opening my thoracic spine will support and sustain me through anxiety, disappoint and anger. Learning to be open-hearted means being emotionally generous--even when it feels like it may make me vulnerable and open to criticism or judgement, or that it won't be accepted or appreciated.

Some may wonder, why is it even important? I can't answer for anyone else, but since I started to intentionally connect the loosening of my thoracic spine, the release of the muscles around my chest, shoulders and middle back, and the subtle opening of my own heart space, I have deepened my experience of the utter happiness found in the simplest of things--a steaming cup of sweetened black tea, the deep red of sliced beets as they drop into the steamer basket, the smell of the fall leaves, wet and glossy in the backyard, the enormous cawing of birds as they settle into the trees of Eberwhite Woods, the sensation of ease and well being after a yoga practice, and the comfort of love from family and friends.