Why we should listen to our hearts...

"...the only way to know yourself, is to be yourself. And the only way to be yourself is to listen to your heart."

Mike Dooley

Entrer Dans Mon Coeur

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/entrer-dans-mon-coeur-lianne-schneider.html

One of the most important aspects of wholehearted living...living from the heart...is learning to listen to what your heart is actually telling you. Certainly, we've all heard that advice before - follow your heart, your heart always tells you the truth. But how does one actually do that? And is there any reason to believe that the heart really can communicate something different than what we "think" in our heads? Yes, actually there are a number of scientific reasons to believe that "listening" to the heart is important and how to begin to do that. 

Believe it or not, there is a significant amount of research that suggests that the heart controls the mind rather than the other way around. This is tremendously difficult for many of us to accept, living as we do in a mind-dominated society where logic and analytical thinking seem to be the driving force behind our decision-making. But according to Dr. Joel Kahn, in an article entitled, "7 Scientific Reasons to Listen to Your Heart (Not Your Brain), the heart is actually the "little brain" with 40,000 neurons communicating with the brain and the whole field of research into this communication is called neurocardiology. So the heart speaks to the brain and the body in four particular ways - through the nervous system, by hormones produced in the heart itself, biomechanically through blood pressure waves and with "energy" information from the electrical and electromagnetic fields of the body. 

The findings are rather surprising - the heart communicates with the brain far more often than the other way around and the heart emits far more electrical energy than the brain as well. Probably one of the most startling facts to come out of the research is the fact that the electromagnetic field of the heart can be measured by EKG anywhere on the body but also from several feet away! 

Here's the kicker though -  "Activity in one person's heart can be measured in the brain waves of another person." The electromagnetic field of two individuals (human or pet and human), touching or within a few feet of each other, can interact so that energy activity in the heart of one individual is measured in the brain waves of the other. The act of touch for healing therapies can be postulated to be due to this method of communication." The electrical activity of the heart and the brain can be guided into a synchronous electrical rhythm easily measured and displayed by simply focusing on positive and loving emotions emanating from the heart. This state of organ “coherence” is associated with improved higher level functioning, lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, and improved immune system function." (Dr. Joel Kahn). There is apparently a lot to be said for the "laying on of hands" for healing another person and there have been some incredible proofs offered in the past few years including one shared by Dr. Gregg Braden where the healers didn't even touch the sick person - they just "sent" healing energy to the sick person and in that way completely shrunk a malignant tumor. The entire process was captured on time lapse sonograms. 

All well and good but that still sounds as if it's all about science and the mind - there must be an emotional component to the idea of listening to the heart and it's that component that is the foundation for learning to be aware of what the heart is trying to tell us. Clearly, one of the first steps in this wholehearted living process is learning to respect but at the same time quiet the mind.

More on that on Friday - and some of the rest of the steps to following your heart...

STOP...how to make room for happy

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy.

By being happy we sow anonymous benefits on the world.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I don't usually do this - and to tell the truth - Blogger doesn't let you easily reblog someone else's post like WordPress does. But I thought this post was so important that I should pass it along with only a very little commentary (and not to bore you, but I do have another prose/poem to go with this topic!)

I've made the point before and will again in the poem below, that we choose who and how we'll "be" in the world. We can choose love or indifference, hope versus despair, optimism versus pessimism and happiness versus discontent or sadness. We can alter our stance toward life and others by our conscious desire and thoughts to do so. But...while I absolutely agree that we can change ourselves when we cannot necessarily change others or change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, there are, nonetheless, certain things we absolutely have to stop letting other people do to us if we are to even have a chance to choose happiness. In these cases, "choosing" happiness involves modifying our external circumstances at least in terms of how we allow others to create negative situations for us. Marc Chernoff in the blog "Marc and Angel Hack Life" has this list of 20 things to stop letting people do to you.  

And even though it's not up to other people to "make" us happy, it is entirely possible that we are allowing others to make it impossible for us to choose happiness. Check Chernoff's list to see if you're permitting anyone to get in the way of that choice for yourself. No one can be a victim who refuses to be one and Marc's advice is to absolutely refuse to let anyone treat you as if you are one. I think you'll find it a worthwhile read - if not for yourself, then perhaps for someone you care about who doesn't seem to be able to choose happiness. 

What is happiness you ask me? 

It may seem odd to approach 

such a seemingly easy subject from the negative, 

but it is easier to begin with what it is not. 

It’s not love – though it can lead to it or come from it. 

It’s not joy – which is a breathtaking kind of elation 

born of full awareness, 

an enlightened sense of the rare 

and unique beauty of the present moment. 

Happiness is not found “out there,” 

in the grasping after or ownership of things or persons. 

It’s not something earned or won like fame or fortune. 

It’s not some romanticized quality of life 

represented by trilling bluebirds or colorful rainbows. 

It’s not something you get; 

it’s something you are 

and something you choose.

Happiness, like love and joy, 

is a state of being one chooses for oneself 

regardless of circumstance or luck. 

It’s a softening and an opening 

of one’s heart and soul 

that empties them of dissatisfaction, 

sadness and regrets and makes room 

for love and joy to fill them up. 

It’s a kind of calmness rather than giddiness, 

peace of mind and spirit rather than elation. 

It’s a contented sigh rather than bawdy laughter. 

Happiness is a general cheerfulness about life 

and a gentle sense of satisfaction with who you are. 

It’s a stance, a posture we assume 

in the face of difficulty or hardship, 

a view of life as more good than bad, 

more hopeful than despairing.

Choose happiness...and then 

allow it to just be.

Are you mended with gold???

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful - Billie Mobayed

 We Are Glass

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/we-are-glass-lianne-schneider.html

I've read in countless spiritual guides, self-help books, motivational guides that we are all "broken" in some way. Throughout the course of life, events conspire to break us - we suffer losses, disappointments, heartbreak, failure and sometimes what feels like endless struggle. Someone I love dearly is having a "breakdown" - that's what they call the loss of touch with reality that comes from a steady diet of psychological pain. Even if the situation is not so dire for us, we've all experienced moments, perhaps days or weeks when we felt just shattered by circumstances. But the question for me has always been whether being broken means broken down or broken open. There's a huge difference and I've written numerous poems about that thought over the past few years. It seems to me that if we are all broken in some way, what counts is how we put ourselves back together! 

What if we could see ourselves and others as perfectly imperfect...patched with the gold of the lessons we've learned and the vulnerability we've accepted without the shame that usually haunts us because we're "not good enough" or we're "weak" or "afraid?" What if we could see ourselves as more beautiful because we're damaged and imperfect and because we've been broken open by our suffering, exposing the deeper heart and soul of who we are and finding that lovelier than we ever knew was possible? What if we could accept our wounds as important and even possibly necessary aspects of our own "soul" development? (You don't have to believe in the religious definition of soul to understand what I mean but if you prefer, use spirit or heart or just plain human). What if we could accept that as Leonard Cohen wrote in the lyrics to Anthem, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in"?

"Pain is the great teacher," said writer May Sarton, so what if we could study the lessons and find the gold or the light that makes us more beautiful than ever. This is how I expressed it in the poem I wrote at the same time as I created this image:

IN THE SHATTERING

Shattered -
the fragile glass of me is shattered,
crushed and broken into tiny shards
now reflecting, diamond-like,
a thousand points of light -
magnifying what had once been
but a solitary beam, diffuse, opaque -
as if in the final breaking,
the small, soft, subtle glow,
so long and well contained within
the shape that was the whole of me
is now free to sparkle all the more -
brilliantly, blindingly more -
each crystal sliver multiplying
radiance only dimly shown before.

How could I have known
when I was whole and empty
that it would be in breaking
that I would shine so brightly,
be more luminously transparent,
with a glory all out of proportion
to the pain of the shattering itself?
How could I know that I held
a million different joys inside
just waiting for release?
How could I know that I
was never meant to confine
the light of the Divine inside
but was always and eternally
envisioned in the mind of God,
as each of us is truly meant,
to be at last its sacred shine?

                     Copyright Lianne Schneider 2014

All art and poetry unless otherwise noted is the intellectual and artistic property of Lianne Schneider and may not be copied, reprinted, reblogged in its entirey without the express permission of the author.  

Are you "first rate?"

“You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.”

Anna Quindlen 

Mockingbird Have You Heard

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mockingbird-have-you-heard-lianne-schneider.html

In case you haven't noticed, I've spent a good deal of time in this blog advising - myself more than anyone else - how to live our artistic lives with integrity and purpose. And not just our lives as artists either...but more importantly life in general. I've given a great deal of thought in the past few years to meaning and purpose...to what the point of it all is. At the beginning of the year, I began my commitment to this blog with intention and along the way, I've explored with you the heroic virtues required for our sacred quest for a good life, a worthwhile life. I've spoken about success and motivation and goals. I've even spoken about happiness as if I had some answers different from those the rest of you have arrived at on your own! In the last post, we had some great exchanges about burnout - whether it's possible to successfully market ourselves without losing our creative edge and purpose. Whatever your answer to the question was, one thing is certain - we cannot be "first rate" artists/writers if that is all we are. Even the most successful of us cannot eat, sleep, breathe and market our art all the time or I would venture to say, it soon stops being "art" and becomes "work." 

Which brings me back to Ms. Quindlen...or rather to Maria Popova's blog about Ms. Quindlen's beautiful little book about life - "A Short Guide to a Happy Life." Quindlen, says Popova, "considers the question of the self and what makes us who we are, what makes us worthy of being...Even those trying to find their purpose, even those engaged in fulfilling work, and even those of us lucky enough to have no separation between “life” and “work,” can get consumed by our modern cult of productivity. Quindlen’s words come as a vital reminder of what matters, what counts, what the true aliveness of life is." 

You can read the rest of Popova's blog post here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/11/a-short-guide-to-a-happy-life-anna-quindlen/

And then you might want to go out an buy Quindlen's book so you can reread her beautifully intuitive advice again and again. "Get a life," she says, "Get a life in which you are not alone...get a life in which you are generous... All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough." We won't find our happiness in being or having nothing in our lives that is more important than our art or our writing. We cannot be happy if art is all we are and all we do. I think all of us know that already...but in the push to be commercially successful artists, we may find ourselves on that slippery slope at the bottom of which our art has become work and our lives are consumed with productivity and marketing, rather than an expression of our very human spirits and our desire to generously share the goodness we see all around. To be happy is to share our dreams and our passions and to inspire others to share theirs and most of all, to be truly, gratefully present to every moment we are blessed enough to have. 

An Apple a Day....

"Eat an apple on going to bed, you'll keep the doctor from his bread."

Pembrokeshire Proverb 1886

Still Life with Apples

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/still-life-with-apples-lianne-schneider.html

We've all heard the old saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," but where did it come from and is there any truth in it? You'd think the answer to both questions would be relatively simple but tracking the origins of a "proverb" isn't as easy as it seems. Some assume this to have originated as one of the proverbs in "Poor Richard's Almanac" by Benjamin Franklin but existing copies don't validate that claim. Others have suggested it came from a horror story of sorts in the American West in the early 1800s, or from an old wives' tale in Great Britain as far back as 1670. However, the general consensus from the most reputable sources I could find trace the origin to a Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK proverb. 

The February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine includes this:

"A Pembrokeshire proverb. Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." A number of variants of the rhyme were in circulation around the turn of the 20th century. In 1913, Elizabeth Wright recorded a Devonian dialect version and also the first known mention of the version we use now, in Rustic Speech and Folk-lore: "Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread; or as the more popular version runs: An apple a day Keeps the doctor away."

[from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-apple-a-day.html ]  

There's also a poem - or rather a nursery rhyme - that was popular in the UK years ago that includes this proverb:           

    Apple a day keeps the doctor away,

    Apple in the morning, doctor’s warning.

    Roast apple at night, starves the doctor outright.

    Eat an apple going to bed – knock the doctor on the head.

    Three each day, 7 a week – ruddy apple, ruddy cheek.

[from https://laboratorynews.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/an-apple-a-day/ ]

Origins aside, is there any truth to the saying? Apparently there is. According to the blog at www.fitday.com apples have lots of health benefits beginning with the fact that they have no cholesterol, are low in fat and sodium, low in calories (80 for a medium size apple), have 22 grams of carbs but most of those are complex carbs for sustained energy and a positive impact on balancing sugar/insulin levels. They are also very high in vitamins A, E and betacarotene which aid in suppressing free radicals and which have also been proven to help prevent serious conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma. Throw in the immune system boosting benefits of the vitamin C in apples, the pectin that adds fiber and aids in digestive health and boron - a nutrient that promotes both brain and bone health - and you have a nearly perfect food. Finally, apples contain another nutrient called Quercetin, a flavonoid which "has the potential to prevent many different types of cancer, ranging from breast cancer to lung cancer. It may also be effective in combating free radicals that can cause age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease."

[from http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/fact-or-fiction-an-apple-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away.html ]

 There's even a bit more good news for the health conscious - especially women. A study of post-menopausal women between the ages of 45 and 65 showed that those who ate an apple a day versus eating dried prunes, lowered bad cholesterol (LDL) by 23% more AND lost an average of 3.3 pounds. And for the arthritis sufferers out there - apples also lower the production of pro-inflammatory molecules in the body. I actually didn't put this all together until recently but I was stricken with an inflammatory arthritis - without the presence of the rheumatoid factor but equally painful - when I was very young and was taking cortisone injections before I was 30 in my knees. Then I heard an old wives' tale about taking a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of cool water each morning and after two weeks, I was pain free for the first time in years without aspirin or other anti-inflammatories. I wish I could still take it but the acid aggravates an ulcer just as aspirin does. But I understand now why it worked so well back then. Fortunately, I can still eat apples - and I try to eat one a day even though to be honest, the good ones have become terribly expensive!! Still, I have to endorse this old saying - "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." It certainly can help.