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

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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...

Lessons from heartbreak

"Only love can break a heart, only love can mend it again." 

Gene Pitney - lyrics to the song Only Love Can Break A Heart

Avec Tout Mon Coeur

(With all my heart)

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We've all heard the phrase broken heart, I'm sure...and most of us, at one time or another believe we've experienced one. Broken or breaking hearts are the subject of countless novels, movies and most of all, popular songs. The young lead character, Sadie, in Abby McDonald's, "Getting Over Garrett Delaney" poignantly and dramatically proclaims, “You can die of a broken heart — it's scientific fact — and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we're together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.”  Love affairs that don't turn out well, involvement in relationships that are toxic or constantly hurtful can certainly make us feel this way. I've felt it myself several times in my life. Therapists might suggest that such heartbreak comes from an excessive neediness or a feeling of inadequacy or thinking oneself not good enough to merit being loved. Even more likely though, is heartbreak after a loss. Grief is one of the chief causes of heartache. 

But Sadie is right...there is such a thing as a broken heart. Doctors have identified a very real medical condition called "broken heart syndrome" that in most cases is serious but short-lived and from which a person can fully recover in a very short period of time. But broken heart syndrome can actually be fatal. According to the American Heart Association, "Broken heart syndrome may be misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms and test results are similar. In fact, tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances that are typical of a heart attack. But unlike a heart attack, there’s no evidence of blocked heart arteries in broken heart syndrome. In broken heart syndrome, a part of your heart temporarily enlarges and doesn’t pump well, while the rest of your heart functions normally or with even more forceful contractions."

The syndrome is more common in post-menopausal women than anyone else but it can happen to anyone. Also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy, broken heart syndrome is experienced as "sudden, intense chest pain — the reaction to a surge of stress hormones — that can be caused by an emotionally stressful event. It could be the death of a loved one or even a divorce, breakup or physical separation, betrayal or romantic rejection." It could happen after a sudden surge of intense anger too, or other losses that are closely associated with self-image like the sudden loss of one's career, the loss of a child, sometimes even the loss of a beloved pet can trigger actual heart break. And as the American Heart Association reminds us, "It could even happen after a good shock (like winning the lottery.)" The syndrome is also associated with depression and severe anxiety which can be triggers and the New York Times (February 2010) reports many other emotional but also physical triggers of broken heart syndrome. Non-emotional triggers like a sudden drop in blood pressure, a surgical procedure, an adrenalin surge due to fear or adverse drug reactions are just as common triggers. 

And yet, if you can weather the immediate storm of the initial heartbreak, which may definitely require medical treatment, or as in the case of ongoing depression or what I call "slow heartbreak," therapy or counseling, there are countless lessons and precious treasures that can come out of that experience. Friendships are deepened by shared burdens or grief and you learn who will walk with you during the darkest of times. Most of all, you learn more about who you are, what you're made of, what matters to you and you learn to acknowledge your own feelings and needs as "okay." Getting to the bottom of depression - or a broken heart - takes work and commitment but it's worth every second. Ultimately, you'll learn that heartbreak is actually part of the human experience - not just a silly drama. 

In the midst of a heartbreak of my own, I wrote this poem to express my new understanding:

 Hearts Were Meant to Break

Hearts were meant to break.

Love…requited…bursts them wide open

expanding them ever outward with the

awesome power of the big bang,

photon upon photon of love light -

an endless grace, that energy moving toward

the sacred consummation of intimate union.

And when stars cavort and gaily pour

the glittering dust of diamonds

into the space that love has opened

to receive it, a heart so fills with light

that it must split asunder to make room

for the more of love, the overflowing

river of it, the numinous, luminous constellations

of love light dancing through the cosmos.

Love…unrequited…breaks it open wider still…

transforming brokenness into beatitudes,

slivers of past sorrows that now sparkle

like shards of glass catching moonlight.

But the shattered heart remembers,

with deepening gratitude, its shattering,

having tried with such determination

to share its rounded fullness with another

and found it breaking on the hard, square edges

of someone’s heart not open yet.

There is no way to put it back together.

Now broken, it moves ever outward

like the universe,  which is itself

Love’s energy radiant with grace.

Avec Tout Mon Coeur at my website

Letting the heart rest...wholeheartedness continued

"Most of the things we need to be most fully alive, never come in busyness. They grow in rest."

Mark Buchanan, author of The Holy Wild...

View From the Hill

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/view-from-the-hill-lianne-schneider.html

With all the talk of living from the heart, we sometimes forget that occasionally we need to "rest" our hearts in order to live more wholeheartedly over the long run. Just as the body needs physical rest, so, too, the heart needs emotional and spiritual rest and renewal. Certain meditation practices can help us to do this - breathing "into" the heart, visualizing the heart as resting in a special room in our "interior mansion," using bio-feed back to slow the heart rate, listening to a guided meditation on heart awakening or opening the heart chakra. For those inclined to prayer, repetitive prayers and mantras can bring the heart ease and still the mind that keeps the heart from its rest. St. Augustine apparently knew this practice as he once said, speaking of God, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you." 

Being a country gal, often my analogies are taken from the cycles of planting and harvesting that I witness repeating year after year and it occurred to me that our hearts are much like the fields we rely on to provide our sustenance. Hearts, too, should lie fallow occasionally. 

Fallow Heart

The heart, like an overworked farmer’s field,

sometimes must lie fallow for a while,

needing some seasons of replenishment

lest we deplete its rich topsoil of love.

Plow under the compost of last year’s crop,

let the toxin of losses leach away so that

it can do no more harm to body or soul.

The heart is not a thing to be forced

to keep producing what it does not have;

no phony artificial additives result

in a harvest rich with nutrients of giving.

No pretenses can cover the destructive truth

of the constant erosion of our spirits

caused by the greedy agribusiness of takers

who reap the heart’s profits without due care.

In the season when our heart-fields lay fallow

we learn what nourishing renewal requires -

let the birds of hope return like welcome guests

to drop the clover seeds of restful waiting,

let the boundaries of respect and self-care

contain the precious topsoil of our loving self.

Let our wildflowers of self-creative growth

attract the butterflies to play upon our petals

with nothing further asked of us than just to be.

And let the majestic oaks that line our borders

shade us from the fiery heat of thoughtless passion,

be receptors for the rainfall of personal reflection

that will renew, restore and replenish our hearts

so they might bounteously give from love again. 

© Lianne Schneider March 2010

Next post on Friday - what to learn from heartbreak...

View from the Hill

Prints from $22

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Wholeheartedness - a journey into living from the heart

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

Thomas Carlyle

Farm Country Autumn

There is a lot of talk these days about living from the heart, speaking from the heart and following one's heart. Self-help gurus have written volumes on the subject and the internet is chock full of blogs on similar subjects. Oprah has had whole series on opening the heart so as to live a happier life. I just couldn't resist jumping into the topic with both feet for a lot of reasons. (So I'm going to be spending the next few posts on the subject in one way or another). For me, the idea of living from the heart is like coming home to these rolling hills and autumn colors.

In the first place, something I learned in grad school that is closely related to this idea has stayed with me a long time...in fact, I can still quotes sections of my thesis having to do with just how the heart plays into the concept of living well and living right and I'll share that first today. But beyond that, I'm a big fan of social researcher Brené Brown and have heard her speak a number of times about the importance of wholeheartedness in having a happy life regardless of circumstances. And then I belong to a group of women who get together at least once a month to talk about alternative spirituality - living our lives not so much in accordance with traditional religious practices but guided by what seems to us to be something bigger, broader and more inclusive than that. Such conversations have led inevitably to talk about the role our heart plays versus the role of the mind. 

I don't think my group is unique - I think that millions of people around the world are seeking what in Eastern thought is called "enlightenment" - awakening to the idea that we are all so much more than just brains and minds sitting on top of a physical body designed to just carry it around. People are studying about energy centers, chakras, learning to "breathe into the heart," to get their minds out of the way or to silence it in order to hear what the heart has to say and feel the difference between heart energy and mind energy. 

As I said, this whole subject has been of great interest to me for most of my adult life and remains an active focus of my own spiritual practice. I find that the more I learn of this, the more I truly understand what my traditional religious upbringing should have taught me, what authentic religious practice ought to look like and feel like. It started with a simple statement in a theology book that I was using as a reference for a section of my thesis in grad school. The section was called "knowledge of God" and referred to a passage in Hosea 4:6 that reads, "My people perish (or are destroyed) for lack of knowledge..." Reading further, I discovered that in the Hebrew faith, one can only know something, but especially can only know God, from the heart. The heart is the center of knowing. That's it...one "knows" only from the heart - not from the mind. If you only comprehend something with your mind, you actually don't know it at all. 

Remembering this lesson many years later, when I took up the pen to write poetry again, and embarking on a relationship that many people cautioned me against, I wrote this poem, entitled "Heart Knowing."

Heart Knowing

          The heart has a language of its own.

Though I must silence my mind to hear it,

it thinks better than my head and remembers too;

this perfect center of my self-knowing,

is an ever faithful guardian of my truth.

The heart listens, hears a voice in the silence,

attending its ear to a word no other hears.

Attending its sight to a vision no other sees,

at the farthest edge of my hermetic solitude,

the darkest shadows of the moonless nights,

my trusting heart is lighted from within

with the incandescent flame of love.

My heart knows what my logical mind

cannot begin to even contemplate,

recognizes the sublime where my eyes

see too often a world both stark and cold

or the desolate dry expanse of the desert.

Only the graceful heart can truly know

another shining soul with loving intimacy.

It was my heart that knew you first,

a love my head could not have known,

and my heart that felt your inner beauty

pass through my very being like sunrise

through stained glass windows facing dawn.

My heart it was that named you Beloved,

Anam Cara, soul companion of my life,

my heart that takes its comfort, its very purpose

from the hopeful dreams of exquisite longing

for your heart, your body opening to mine.

This heart I offer you, my love, this mystical portal

through which we might together enter heaven’s gate;

is my simple gift of joyful, true “heart knowing”

after a graced and lifelong apprenticeship of love.

According to Jennifer Hoffman, author of the blog "Enlightening Life," The potential of your life exists within the knowing of your heart and soul. Yet you use your mind to determine what is possible and its limitations prevent the highest potential from being available to you." 

I cannot help but agree that the mind can be an obstacle to the kind of knowing we need if we are to live "wholeheartedly." I won't say that listening to my heart, knowing something in my heart, led immediately to happily ever after or that such knowing can't and won't ultimately "break" your heart (but that is a subject for another post). But I will say, quoting diplomat and poet Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, "A good heart is better than all the heads in the world."

Farm Country Autumn

Gifts from the Sea

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its nets of wonder forever.

Jacques Cousteau

Between Sea and Shore 

(I know I've posted this image before but it fits the post best!)

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/between-sea-and-shore-lianne-schneider.html

Some days, my longing for the sea is palpable. Today is one of them...a gray, rainy day, the first of several this week...and I can think of nothing I'd rather be doing than walking along the beach at Cape Cod or Cape May, or Rehobeth, La Jolla, even Galveston before the summer crowds descend. The ocean in all its many moods and guises has always been a metaphor for my life's journey and there are times only those hours alone on a quiet beach can help me to decipher the lessons along the way. Some years ago I picked up a stone on the shore at Race Point, one of those diamond days - so perfect you could never forget it, shared as it was with my dearest friend. I've kept the stone for all these years and carry it with me to remind me of all the sea has to tell me.

  

THE WORRY STONE

I carry it in my pocket,

roll it around there letting

it shift from palm to fingers,

trace its contours with my thumb

and remember the day I

picked it up at the beach,

that brilliantly sunny

afternoon at Race Point…

how it caught my eye

amidst all the other pebbles

because it was not yet

perfectly smooth, though

quite well-polished, different

in hue and composition

from an ordinary stone,

a worn conglomerate

of sparkling quartz and

dull gray limestone,

one  black clast of obsidian

distorting the smoothness.

My thumb catches the fragment,

worries it, like one worries

a broken tooth with the tongue,

feeling the irregularity there,

probing it with questions -

what long journey has this stone

made to find itself on this shore?

How was it shaped by that voyage,

battered, abraded and pounded,

its rough edges worn down,

by long ages of pressure,

the travel across distant seas

cementing together all

the disparate metals and minerals,

compressed now into one

remarkable and unique stone.

I carry it with me in my pocket

and worry it with my thumb

to remind me of my own

uniqueness, melded from all

the separate pieces of self,

light and dark, rough edges

scoured by the unrelenting rhythm

of life’s ocean into a new whole

that is finally becoming me. 

Perhaps I'll get back to the sea this summer - but even if I don't, it's always in my heart, always reminding me that some things are eternal, that there is an ebb and flow to life that one must learn to accept. But like the tide...what seems gone will return...and find me waiting. 

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

Digital Painting and the question of value - continued

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

Mum's Mum

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The question of value - the price that digital art commands in the art marketplace - is a complicated one. Few would argue the point that a traditional painting is a one of a kind possession while digital art is purposely made for duplication. Yet most traditional artists today have their work professionally photographed in order to produce at least limited edition prints of their "masterpiece." Museums sell prints, posters and art cards of famous works. Yet none of this activity reduces the value of the original work. I contend that the digital artist's original work was often as time consuming and difficult to produce as the painter's. [As I said in my short rant the other day, in some cases I suspect that it is MORE time consuming and difficult. How many "Oneness" paintings do you think Newman could have created in a day if they are similar to that one? Several I'm sure - yet it takes me two weeks full time to do most of my digital paintings.] And it is certainly possible that a digital artist could, if he/she wished to, limit the number of prints, or restrict the reproductions to giclee on canvas in order to increase the value of those reproductions. A Certificate of Authenticity might also reassure buyers that there is intrinsic value in a print or canvas of a digital work. But even employing those methods, could a digital artist expect to command the kind of price for even a large limited edition print than prints of an original oil or acrylic would get? 

I don't think so. In an article back in 2008, the TUTS website posted on its Design and Illustration division "54 Mind-Blowing Digital Paintings." Virtually ALL of them were Manga comics, fantasy figures, game figures, or illustrations - all brilliant yes - but none that looked like traditional paintings and all designed for digital viewing, gaming or animation. None commanded a $44 million price tag either. That has changed very little in the past six years - traditional digital painting seldom makes it into these lists and fractal art virtually never. Fantasy art and 3D continue to command the most attention and the highest prices for digital art because these forms are essential to video gaming, animation and interactive web designs. 

There IS some hope, however, whether you are a traditional digital painter or a digital abstract artist. The "hope" comes in the form of an article in Vulture by Jerry Saltz that is something of a "swan song" for the traditional gallery show. Decrying the fact that art shows go up but "without much consequence except for sales or no sales," Saltz says that internet sites now offer "high end sales" and online art auctions and that such sites are proliferating at an amazing pace. This means "art is about nothing but commerce" which is not what the gallery venue was; it was a place to engage with other artists, critics and students of art, a place for conversation and thought. He complains, "When so much art is sold online and at art fairs, it's great for the lucky artists who make money but it leaves out everyone who isn't already a brand." Art dealer, Kenny Schachter goes a step further, noting that "the higher and higher prices are for fewer and fewer artists." 

Dealing an additional blow to the gallery show, auction houses like Christie's are now providing a venue for emerging artists "unrepresented by galleries," and in this way making that art available only to collectors, not the general public. This again, is a great thing for the few lucky artists selected by such auction houses (physical auctions or online auction houses like ArtSpace) but such art remains the possession of the wealthy, and the very process, says Saltz, "makes being around art less special. Too many buyers keep their purchases in storage, in crates, awaiting resale. Mediocre Chinese photorealism has become a tradeable packaged good." 

So the narrow thread of "hope" offered by the death of the physical gallery show still offers little enough in the way of value and acceptance to the digital artist. I see "high end art" on a site I belong to and I've no idea how it was selected to be on that "high end" page. Most of the items offer a high priced original oil or acrylic, however, so I personally do not consider that traditional digital painting. These pieces were created as traditional art works initially and THEN digitized for much lower priced prints. Digital art, BY DEFINITION, is art created originally with digital tools and digital techniques. My own painting above is certainly no Georgia O'Keefe, nor does it pretend to be but it was hand-painted digitally stroke by stroke (in this case pointillist dot by pointillist dot) just as O'Keefe did her flowers. 

I am represented by a small gallery in upstate New York but sales in this gallery tend to be original photography or original oil/acrylic works, sculpture and jewelry and that is primarily who is represented by this gallery - photographers and traditional artists. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I have friends whose photographic art (photographs altered by applying textures or recomposing several photographic images) is licensed by high volume publishers and while I consider their work to be art in the truest sense of the word, and I'm incredibly happy for each of them that their artwork is popular enough to make a living from it, that is not the case for most of us who are digital artists and digital painters. Saltz ponders the question of the future of medium sized and small galleries by asking, "I wonder if a much bigger shakeout is about to happen, one that makes art resemble any mainstream business." And if it's just business, is it art? 

The question of value then is multifaceted. Does a piece have value because it's in a traditional medium, because the critics like it, because a gallery is willing to show it, an auction house willing to auction it...or is its value based solely on market forces. Can a digital work even begin to compete and if so, how will the value of such easily reproducible art be maintained or even increased? If I were to license and sell 20,000 copies of the digital painting above would that make it more or less valuable as a work of art? If I master the business tools of social media, online art sites, self-promotion, looking at trends, checking out decor magazines for hot colors, do I do that at the cost of the actual artistic merits of my work? Or am I just smart enough to realize that digital art and digital painting are not meant to be measured by the same standards as an original oil and that its very accessibility and availability to the average person who loves what they see and can actually afford to own it makes it more valuable? I think the day is coming when a person will look at a digital painting and say, "I love that painting...Oh good, it's digital - and that means I can own it!"  Value is really not so much in the medium as in the eye of the beholder as well as in the heart of the artist who created it.