Heart Start to Your Week calls

August 4th, 2008

It's Not What You Do, It's How You Do It

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July 14th, 2008

Creating Through Being

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July 7th, 2008

The Heart of Independance Day!

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June 30th, 2008

Sheva Interviews her Mom on the Heart of Freedom through Discipline

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June 23rd, 2008

Lifting the Veils

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June 16th, 2008

Being the Source of Value

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June 9th, 2008

The Heart Gets to, the Mind Has to

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June 2nd, 2008

The Heart of New-tral

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May 26th, 2008

The Ripple Effect

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May 19th, 2008

Care Counts

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May 12th, 2008

Laugh Your Way into Your Week with Tonight's HeartStart Call (not to be missed!): Sheva Carr Interviews Stand-up Comic Vanda Mikoloski on Vanda-lisms to end your Stress.

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May 5th, 2008

Laugh Your Way into Your Week with Tonight's HeartStart Call (not to be missed!): Sheva Carr Interviews Stand-up Comic Vanda Mikoloski on Vanda-lisms to end your Stress.

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April 28th, 2008

The Heart Makes Life Transitions Easier

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April 21st, 2008

Back by popular demand, and for those who missed it! An interview with Regina on getting to the heart through the stomach with heart filled food!

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April 14th, 2008

Memories and the Power of the Heart

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April 7th, 2008

Pennies for Heaven (on Earth): The Inifinite Capacity for the Heart To Give

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March 31st, 2008

The Music of Your Heart

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March 24th, 2008

Meeting Paralysis and Weakness with the Heart: An Interview with Brett Askenas from the Freedom of His Wheelchair

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March 17th, 2008

Spring Clean Your Emotional Mess with the Heart: A Hidden Antidote to Stress

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March 10th, 2008

The Heart Helps the Sandwich Generation:
Dealing with the Stress of Being Caught Between Your Aging Parents and Your Children

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February 18th, 2008

Dealing with Emergencies from the Heart

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February 11th, 2008

Living in Love all the Time
Finding Your One True Love through the Heart

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February 4th, 2008

What Does the Heart Have to Do With Allergies?

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January 28th, 2008

The Power of the Heart to Overcome Addictions

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January 21st, 2008

Freedom from the Tyranny of Hormones through the Heart

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January 14th, 2008

The Power of the Heart to Harness the Power of Anger

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January 7th, 2008

An Interview with Bonnie St. John on the Power of the Heart to Live a Full and Phenomenal Life Beyond the Shadow of Sexual Abuse and Other Childhood Trauma

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December 31st, 2007

Never Give Up: The Power of the Heart To Hope and to Heal
HeartStart to Your YEAR!

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December 24th, 2007

The Gift of Receiving
Join Sheva on her Birthday for A Special Christmas Eve HeartStart Call!

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December 17th, 2007

Have you ever worried about money? Then this HeartStart call is for you!

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December 10th, 2007

A HeartStart Call on Your Power to Make a Difference in the World.

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December 3rd, 2007

A HeartStart Call for Animal Lovers and their Pets

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One of the things that I love about living from the heart is the deeper connection it has given me with animals. Our words can lie. Our energy never lies. Like animals, the heart is authentic. Animals respond authentically to the energy of things, because rarely do they speak our words. Without the distraction of verbal communication and mental chatter, they can be free to see things more as they actually are. From this presence and direct relationship, we receive their bottomless unconditional love and forgiveness!

Unless, that is, they feel threatened. In which case animals can balk at the slightest motion, even if it is not an attack. And in this, they are beautiful mirrors from our own hearts, showing us where the antiquated survival strategies in our own animal nervous systems and lower brains have taken us over. Like my cat, who will forgive me in an instant if I accidentally step on his tail or land on him when doing yoga by mistake, but has an absolute war of terror going on with the sound of any innocent plastic bag rustling as groceries are taken from it. There is no question that animals are mirrors of our own consciousness. Like other events in life but perhaps more immediately obvious, animals reflect back to us whether we are at peace, insecure, predatory, agressive. In some ways, animals are a feedback device like the emWave biofeedback technology, which reflects our heart rhythms in real time, showing us whether we are truly in a state of internal order and happiness or just deluding ourselves in our denial and chronic stress.

My cat Gingee has been a great teacher of the heart for me. He first came to me through a client who called one day and said, "My neighbor's cat has a litter of kittens and I think one of them is yours. A beautiful orange tabby." "NO WAY!"was my reply. I did not like cats, and, having been tortured as a carrot-topped redhead my whole life, I had a personal vendetta against the color orange. I was not committed to staying where I was living either, and the last thing I wanted was the responsibility of a cat. Gingee (which means "redhead" in Hebrew) was more tenactious than I was.My client called again a week later. "NO." Again a week later. And yet gain a week later, this time offering to make it only for a week and providing food, toys, a cat walk, everything he needed. "Ok, I'll try it for a week, and then you have to take him back."

It was NOT love at first sight. At all. Gingee immediately hid under the radiator where I could not reach him, and I had to get someone else to pry him out just to make him eat because I was afraid to hurt him. We were skiddish around each other like that for a few days, and then he became a ball of fire. I nicknamed him acro-cat for his acrobatic nature, and agro-cat for his predatory obsession upon innocent birds, baby opossums and squirrels (yes, unfortunately sometimes my living room had turned into Loren Greene's Wild Wild Wilderness). I could not move my hands at the sink or the computer or a pen on a notebook without feeling Gingee's claws pounce miraculously onto them from twenty feet away. I woke up every morning at 6:30am with my nose scratched to illicit blood by his sandpaper tongue. When I would go to pet him, he would lash out and scatch me or run away. Finally, he broke every single one of my drinking glasses by knocking them off the table to play with the water that spilled out. "This is NOT working," I called my client. "Come take him back!"

"Just try him for one more day," she said. ARGH! This was definitely time for some stress management tools. I pulled HeartMath out of my tool kit. And I started sending Gingee heart, eyeing him with disdain for taking over my oasis territory. As I looked for one solitary thing to appreciate about this monster, my heart signalled to me how cool it was that Gingee liked to play with water when most cats are afraid of water. I could love the fact that he loved something. It was a start. A heart start. Then the GPS in my heart, that internal intelligence and guidance system which we teach people to access and follow in our HeartMath Workshops, suggested that I go out and buy Gingee a water toy to play with. I went, grudgingly, to a toy store where they had a bathtub toy for toddlers that was essentially a plastic canal with a lot of little sail boats in it. I also bought a set of drinking glasses with heavy bases so he could not knock them over anymore!

The minute I walked in the door with the toy, Gingee's demeanor had changed. He came running up to me, but did not claw or scratch. He started sniffing the cardboard box the toy came in as if he knew what was in it was for him. Normally afraid of plastic, he enthusiastically helped me rip the plastic off the toy and joyfully played with every boat and splashed in the water. His behavior was completely different after that. He cuddled with me, purred with me, played with me without ever letting his claws scratch me. An instant shift! I realized that I had never really welcomed Gingee into his new home, and all of his agression was a reflexion of my own. He never touched that toy after the first day- but he touched me with the lesson he gave me. We have been dearest friends now for over 7 years, and I am amazed to find how much intimacy and genuine communication is possible with an animal when you come from the heart. He cares for me when I am sick, he speaks to me in his own way, he helps with every session I do and every class that I teach, offering boundless patience, affection, insight. Shortly after Gingee gave me this lesson, I started to make friends easier and keep them longer. He taught me to love from the heart and admire people's qualities rather than protect myself from them or defend my space.

I remember as a little girl my favorite book was about another little girl who had no friends (I think I could relate!). She was very lonely. So she went into the woods of her back yard to try to make friends with the birds, squirrels, butterflies, and deer. The more she would try to chase them, the more they would run away. This story resonated with me because I felt that way with people, not just animals. I wanted friendship and connection so desperately as a child I would chase it away in attempt to find it. So this little girl in the story heard a voice in her heart that said, "Just sit and be still." This was hard for a little girl to do, but she did it. She sat in stillness for several hours, and one by one, the butterfly and the ladybug landed on her palm. And the squirrel came and sat next to her thigh, as did the deer. It brings tears to my eyes now as I recall that story- I did not know how to find stillness until I found tools to access my heart. Now, I feel surrounded by the most amazing friends, and have had the most surprising connections with animals through the heart's power.

When I was a teenager, a similar story moved me deeply, of an enlightened sage named Krishnamurthi who was meditating in a tree in India when an orangutan or particular species of monkey known for its huge size and violent nature towards humans, came and sat next to him and actually reached out, put his palm in Krishnamurthi's, and held his hand for several hours. This too, moves me to tears. In my workshops, I see that most of us are still living like animals in the jungle, attending with most of our moments to our survival, our bodies, our protection, our fear. And yet even animals themselves, when touched in the heart, awaken from this daze of self preservation and open in love and in peace with true power rather than agression.

The very first HeartMath workshop I taught was in an apartment in Greenwich Village, New York. One of the participants lived in a two story townhouse on Madison Avenue in New York, and had two 20 year old Siamese cats who were brother and sister. These cats were so elderly and infirm that they required daily dialysis and had not left her bed in over two years. It had been longer since they had made the trip down the marble winding staircase to greet her when she came home from her worldly adventures. In the HeartMath class in the Village, this client decided that her cats would be the objects of her practice with the new heart tools she was learning. She was worried that they were going to die soon, and this created a lot of stress and despair for her. So she practiced sending them care with the power of her heart. I got a surprising voicemail from my client that night! For the first time in years, her cats found the strength to come down the stairs and were waiting to greet her when she got home from class! Through the heart and our care we are so much more powerful than we know. The impact our consciously applied heart intelligence can have on animals and on our interactions with them is so profound, that Cavalia (a Crique-du-Soleil-like equestrian show) brought me in to train their performers to communicate more effectively with their horses! I also take people on dolphin retreats where we are continually amazed at how the dolphins respond to us when we come from the heart rather than our fear or agendas. Always, if I am out in the Bay chasing the dolphins, they avoid me. But if I go sit in the Bay and send them heart, without fail the whole pod of 40-50 dolphins will come and rest right below me, basking in the beauty and benefit an ordered, peaceful and loving heart radiates.

Using the HeartMath tools to access my heart has created many experiences like this for me. One of my favorites was a day when I was in my apartment here is Santa Monica doing a Heart Lock-In (a tool for creating order in the heart and radiating that peace and care out into the world, taught in Fyera!'s  Beginner HeartMath Workshop). Gingee loves it when I do Heart Lock-Ins. Wherever he is in the neighborhood, he seems to feel it right away when I go into a Heart Lock-In, and comes bounding through his window to lay across my heart and get his "contact high" from it. On one of those occasions,Gingee was not the only one to come through his window. A squirrel, previously his terrified foe, also joined him, and sat on the other side of me while Gingee quietly purred. I WAS BLOWN AWAY! And reminded of the time when, during World War I on Christmas Eve, the troops called a cease fire and opposing forces sang "Silent Night" together across the battlefield, joining in coherent song and coherent heart rhythms, sharing photos of the families, soccer games, schnapps, and cognac before the fighting began again the next day.

What if we could all give up our animalistic territory, and live in the conflict resolution and harmony of the heart? What would the world's jungles and shpping malls and school halls look like then?

November 26th, 2007

Gift Giving from the Heart

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Tis the Season...to go shopping?
Welcome to the seasonal celebrations that have become buy-and-sell-abrasions! Jingle Bells is playing on the radio right on cue, as hundreds of thousands of shoppers are stepping into the check-out cue. There's a clue: check-out. What would it be like to check in rather than check out, by bringing the power of the heart to this holiday season?

Many things can turn festivities into festering stresses. On tonight's HeartStart call we will talk about ways to open one treasure chest after another during the holidays- by accessing the treasure in your own chest. I will give you specific tools to empower you from the heart to give and receive gifts that are guaranteed to bring true joy to you and those you love this holiday season- without creating an ounce of credit card debt or "What do I give so and so this year?" fret.

I LOVE this time of year. I was born on Christmas Eve which happened also to be Hannuka; usually when I tell people that (or the bouncer in a bar reads it on my driver's license) the response is, "Wow, that must be tough, having a birthday so close to Christmas." "Oh no!" I always say back. "I love it! It means that when people are giving me gifts, I always have something to give back!" The fact that these holidays, whether you celebrate Hannuka or Christmas or Kwanza or nada, are all about giving, is a well celebrated fact. That's a good thing. We know that giving is good for all concerned. Studies have shown that even just watching acts of generosity benefit the observer's heart rhythms, nervous system, and immune system, as much as the participants directly involved in the giving and receiving! Giving from true caring creates a uniquely ordered pattern in the heart which benefits not just our own health, vitality, and creativity, but that of those around us. How cool is that?

However, those goods only come from giving if the giving comes genuinely from the heart. There is the grand ol' saying when it comes to giving that "It's the thought that counts." Knowing how my own thoughts work, I would say that when I give from thought there is a lot of counting going on- counting what I bought, counting whose given what to who, counting what I have left on my "things to do," counting on so and so to follow through...It may be the thought that counts, but its the heart that cares, and giving from the heart can spare us a lot of holiday snares. It's the heart, with a sheer electrical power 60-80 x greater than thought, that has the umpf to create the holiday magic we all long for every day of the year. The first day I volunteered at the Institute of HeartMath 12 years ago, someone said something that I have held onto ever since- "When you find the heart, its like Christmas every day." Living from the heart is living with the joy of waking up knowing you will experience love, and great food, and gifts, and numerous things to be thankful for, and an overflowing delight in sharing and caring and giving to others. That could be Christmas day. Or it could be every day, with the power of the heart.

Caught up in what we've bought up and keeping up, giving can lose its heart. It can twist itself into an expression of obligation because Aunt so and so gave us something last year so we better make sure to give her something this year. It can confound itself into the competetive give-Olympics: giving to out-do someone else. My parents were the most amazing gift givers- every year, they surprised us with innovations beyond our wildest expectations. However, I know this was at a price for them. It was as if they felt they had to outdo themselves each year, and feared that we would not feel loved if they didn't. So they would often stay up all night long working on extravagant displays, and exahust themselves for days. In their gift giving fervour they would tire themselves out to the point of not being able to enjoy what the giving was all about. When we catch ourselves giving to get anything at all, like attention, love, approval- "look at the triple pirouette of giving I just performed!" then we can know that our giving has gone awry. When giving becomes for the getting, it is for-getting the original intent and powerful refuel it can be to give! Ironically, giving for getting doesn't get us much as it drains our vital reserves physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. Who wants to participate in those hall-o-daze?

A major source of holiday gift giving stress is "giving" of ours-elves to match picture perfect ideal images of what our holidays should look like, images that none of us can truly fit into (YOU try cramming five step sisters, two half brothers, six parents from multiple marriages, and the dog that spends half his time with one family and the other half with the ex, into one Norman Rockwell portrait!). We are innundated with media images of how buying the right things will somehow bring us and those we love the joy in the heart that the models in the catalogues are (pretending to be) feeling. This programs our subconscious minds with lots of stories about how we should be and who we should be with and what we should feel during the holiday season, and above all what we should buy to feel the way we want to feel and make others feel that way too. Then we twist ourselves into emotional and financial knots, racing through aisles and turnstiles to get to the grand finish line of feeling good. But what if you could go straight for the feel-good without all that hullabaloo, and end up with some pretty great gifts to give, too?

Here is some interesting word history. The word "sell" comes from the Olde English word sellan which meant "to give up (someone) to an enemy, to betray." The word "celebrate" on the other hand, comes from the same word as "celebrity", which has its root in the word "famous, or familiar." "Familiar", of course, shares roots with "family." Real celebration, real "family," whether you are blood related or not, is all about a familiarity in the heart- getting along "famously" with one another, if you will. The heart has the capacity to empower us to do that, and to allow our gift giving to be an expression of that love rather than a selling out to the belief that we need the right "stuff" to celebrate one another.

I have watched people really stress over how to find the "right" gift. This was a big issue for my little brother when he was a kid. Being slightly overweight he felt like he did not belong, and convinced himself that if he gave his classmates the right gifts they would like him. So he asked my parents, the expert gift givers, for guidance. They told him to buy his friends something he would like and enjoy. So when it came time for my Mom's birthday, he followed their advice he went out and bought her a race car set. Hmmm. The formula did not work so well that time!

 Is there a reliable formula to giving gifts that will thrill and delight without leaving us in a desperate financial and exhausted plight? YOU BET! The access code is in the heart! One of the things that made my Dad such an amazing gift giver was that he gave to give to us, not to who he wanted us to be. He gave me gifts that were in areas he knew little or nothing about, and in some cases had strong distaste for (like books on meditation and prayer which offended his scientist's sensibilities). He could intuit things that we wanted that we could not even articulate! I know that his ability to do all that came from his depth of care for me. Given how care effects the brain, opening up higher perceptual centers through messages from the heart, I now understand how my father's depth of care gave him such a keen secret sense for giving gifts. I am so excited to give you the gift of this power! I have been having so much fun in my own life watching it flower!

I began my holiday gift shopping a month ago- all within my heart, with no credit card bills or online shopping callouses. Here's how:

EXERCISE:

1) Make a list of all the people that you would like to gift this holiday season. Don't edit it. Let everyone show up, even if the motivation is obligation or if someone shows up on the list (like the janitor at your kids' school cafeteria) that you would not have thought you wanted to buy a gift for.

2) Each day, between now and the holiday, take a moment to mentally note or physically write down the things you appreciate about that person, your favorite memories with that person, the qualities in them that you most love. If there is anything that you become aware of that you need to forgive them for, or that you need their forgiveness for, sincerely ask your heart for to bring forgiveness. Forgiveness is called for-giveness because it is a gift (to you and to them!).

(When you take the time to access your genuine care, appreciation, love, favorite memories of a person, before you start thinking of gifts to give them, you actually activate the "familiarity" between you- the heart connection. This affords the brain in your heart (yep! science has found a brain in there!) to make a connection with theirs. We know that intuitive knowing initiates in the heart and is activated by positive emotions. What better way to intuitively find just the right gift than to activate your love, care and appreciation for the person first? Based on the power of appreciation and forgiveness to impact heart rhythms in both the giver and the receiver, you can know that just in doing that much you have already "celebrated" this person and given them, as well as yourself, a wonderful gift!)

3) After doing #2, sincerely ask your heart to show you the gifts that this person brings into your life. Appreciate what you discover.

4) After doing #3, sincerely ask your heart to show you the gifts that you already bring into this person's life, just by virtue of who and how you are.

5) Ask your heart what to give them that would be an expression of and honor 2 & 3.

* Note: Don't be surprised if your heart's answer is NOT an object, but instead a frequency of energy, or an act of kindess! In associating "giving" automatically to material things, we have sinned in the original root meaning of that word which is "to miss the mark." We've gone off course. Because what we really want to give people when we give them things, is the great feeling we think those things will give them. Your heart will know what to do that will pass that feeling on to them and amplify it for you, too! Having a dollar budget for gift giving is great, but what about paying attention to the most important budget of all- your own energy? Real gifts from the heart don't cost you a thing- they actually build your own energy reserves! That is one way to know whether your gift comes from real care or not- if it fuels your vitality, you're on the right track!

6) Send me some great stories of the results of your gifts of the heart.

EXERCISE SUMMARY :

1) List the people you want to gift
2) Appreciate, forgive, and remember your favorite times with this person
3) Ask your heart to show you the gifts this person's presence gives you
4) Ask your heart to show you the gift you inherently are to this person
5) Ask your heart to show you what gift to give them that would honor that!

November 19th, 2007

Is Giving Thanks Giving Back? The heart of Thanksgiving…

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It is that time of year when we get ready to eat too much. And then feel guilty for it.

Do holiday guilt and obligation ever eat at you for their Thanksgiving feasts?

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the Thanksgiving feasts I’ve sat at where gratitude is replaced with guilt- for eating too much, and for feeling irritated by the abundance of food in front of me when I know there are “starving children in the world.” How do we reconcile and appreciate our abundance in a world so desperately out of balance?

This year I started pondering the season’s attitude- gratitude- from a new perspective. Did it ever occur to you that calling the holiday “Thanksgiving” implies that gratitude itself might be a gift? Maybe even to those starving children in Africa and Nicaragua?

“Yes,” says new research, on the power of gratitude and appreciation, from the Institute of HeartMath®. Yes, gratitude is good for us, and our gratitude itself is good for the world around us.

It turns out that when we are in a state of appreciation, something unique happens to our heartbeats. They begin to drum in an orderly, harmonious rhythm. And because the heart is holding the baseline beat for the body’s entire orchestra, 1400 other things happen in our physiology when our heart rhythms change. Prolonged states of gratitude, with the ordered heart rhythms they produce, have been proven to:

• Boost immunity
• Increase the production of the feel good fountain of youth hormone DHEA
• Increase longevity
• Reduce mortality
• Improve brain function
• Improve memory
• Enhance decision making and reaction times
• Increase creativity and innovative problem solving
• Improve job performance and achievement
• Lower the risk of major diseases including heart disease, diabetes, alzheimers, cancer, osteoporosis, and more
• Reduce fat around waist and thighs

Yes! It’s true! Concerned about holiday weight gain?

You’ll love this- ordered heart rhythms and the DHEA that ensues from states of gratitude actually cause weight loss around the hips and thighs!

So being grateful for that extra piece of pumpkin pie is a better weight management strategy than depriving yourself out of guilt and self judgment! When we feel guilt, or other forms of emotional stress, it actually triggers a disordered rhythm in the heart, leading to another set of over 1400 physiological changes in the body including the release of the stress hormone cortisol. Excess levels of cortisol are present in:

• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Obesity
• Hypertension
• Accelerated aging
• Reduced skin elasticity
• Brain cell death
• Compromised immunity
• Excess fat around waist and thighs
• And more

Clearly, when we are in a state of thanksgiving, we are really getting- a lot. We are getting health, and youth, and vitality, improved performance and clear thinking. I have a whole business based around teaching people how to get the health and performance benefits of giving thanks through the heart. We even created a word for that special state of being in appreciation, and all the benefits we get from it- “Fyera!” But the holiday is not called “Thanksgetting.” So where does the giving come in?

Research on the heart shows that an average person’s heart rhythm (one who is not even in an ordered state of gratitude!) can be detected more than eight feet beyond their body.  We all know this intuitively, because we’ve all experienced someone with a “contagious” mood. One person may walk into a room, and light everyone up with enthusiasm and inspiration. While another person may enter that same room and bring everyone down. Did you ever notice that people who light up a room tend to leave a trail of gratitude behind them? It’s their appreciation that has such a potent impact on us. Their gratitude produces an ordered heart frequency that literally impacts other hearts they come near.  This means that when you are in a state of gratitude, you are literally a source of more order in the world.

All of the benefits of gratitude, from increased immunity to enhanced brain function, can be paid forward to those around us when we radiate our state of appreciation and ordered heart rhythms. One Nicaraguan street child appreciated me so much, that it inspired me to start a non-profit organization for other street children now serving hundreds of kids. Don’t underestimate the powerful potential of your appreciation to change the world!

Giving thanks has ripple effects that cannot help but give back and give beyond. If you catch yourself slipping into self judgment, obligation, resentment, and other holiday treasons with justified reason this season, make that extra effort to shift your attention to something to appreciate- even if it’s just for your own health! Celebrate Thanksgiving guilt free this year, knowing that giving thanks is giving back.

The nice thing about the physical benefit of gratitude is that it doesn’t matter WHAT you are grateful for. It can be super small stuff. Your body does not know the difference between gratitude for winning the Nobel Prize, or gratitude for a great pedicure. As long as you are grateful from the heart, the benefits come. This is good news, because gratitude is not always easy (at least for me) to access. But I know it is worth it, because even the little things I appreciate have big pay-offs for my health, well being, and ability to contribute. You can always find something to be grateful for- like your favorite piece of fruit, or the fact that you can walk and wiggle your toes when others have lost that luxury.

Take a moment right now to connect with someone you appreciate. It might be a mentor, or a best friend, or pet (my own cat, sitting on my lap while I tap at the keyboard, started licking my fingers as I typed that last bit…Appreciation works!). What qualities do you appreciate about that person or furry friend? How does your body feel when you appreciate them? What happens to your ability to think? See what happens to them if you radiate your gratitude their way. It’s a fun experiment that can reveal that giving thanks truly is a gift.

In 15 years of psychological research, Martin Seligman (head of the American Psychology Association) found only one thing that actually increased people’s happiness. It was not Prozac. It was not the right career, or finding Mr. Right. It was the simple act of writing a gratitude list at the end of every day.

Try writing a “gratitude list” at the end of every day, between now and the holiday. Then watch the magic that gratitude creates in your life! Feeling good is not only good for you- it’s good for the world. That’s why our tag line at Fyera!, where we teach people to generate that feel good anywhere anytime is “Making a difference…in heartbeat!”

November 12th, 2007

Healing the Stress of Anxiety, Mania, Depression, and the stigma of mental illness, with the power of the heart

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The excerpts in italics were taken from Where the Sky Meets the Earth, on healing bi-polar disorder with alternative methods, by Dani Katz in collaboration with Sheva Carr, L.Ac. For more information, or to order the book contact info@fyera.com

By Dani:
“I had been crying for three days straight. For a few years, I had suspected that something was wrong with me, and yet I was too frightened to stand still long enough to look into it. I spent Monday morning calling psychiatrists in the Yellow Pages. It wasn’t until I got to the U’s that I could find someone who could see me that day. I made an appointment with Dr. B. at the UCLA Neuropsych and headed out to my appointment a couple hours early, taking comfort in the drab and dowdy waiting room where other miserable-looking humans thumbed through dog eared magazines more worn out than my psyche. My exchange with the doctor was brief. He quickly concluded that I was manic depressive, prescribed Depakote for the mania and Paxil for the depression and sent me on my way.
The words slipped off his tongue casually, “manic depression,” as though he was describing an art movement or a brand of microwave popcorn. They hit my solar plexus like a Mac truck. OOF. The gavel crashed onto its counterpart as the judge laid down a life sentence of insanity. Two small words for the psychiatrist, one insurmountable rusty shackle clamped onto my ankle for the rest of my crazy life. Manic depression. Bi-polar disorder. A neat little box to file my chaotic and confused psyche into. A pathology. A stigma. An excuse. A trap.

Dani is not alone. One in three women in Canada has been on a mood altering drug. 13.5 billion dollars was spent last year on antidepressant medications in the United States.

Receiving a medical diagnosis and prescription can be very empowering for some, and completely victimizing for others. For some, a diagnosis is an oasis of confirmation of their experience, and hope of viable treatment. It means that their suffering is no longer a monster hidden in a closet somewhere, but has tangible signs, symptoms, and treatment protocols that can be researched and acted upon. This can be very liberating. For people like Dani, however, receiving a diagnosis and a prescription feels like getting a bad grade at school, or worse, a death sentence to the spirit. They feel boxed into an identity that demoralizes them and limits their hopes of who and what they can be and experience in life. For those for whom a diagnosis is a trap and a burden, I am hear to say that it needn’t be taken on as a fixed identity- when you learn to know who you are from the heart. Ancient Chinese medicine saw the mind in the heart, and treated all diseases which are now classified as psychiatric diseases, through the heart. We will talk about that specifically on tonight’s HeartStart call, and the power of the heart to release ALL of us from our own versions and stigmas of abnormality and insanity.

Many of us know what it is like to have mood swings. I can be on cloud nine from a fabulous seminar where I was inspired by cutting edge speakers and meditations, and then walk into my apartment to find ants eating the cat food and an e-mail in my inbox that just plain pisses me off. Suddenly I have yo yo’ed in my nervous system from parasympathetic peace to sympathetic nervous system fight or flight spite. My heart has gone from ordered rhythms to chaos, in a split second. What makes me different from someone who is diagnosed with mania, or depression, or bi-polar, is that I do not get my metaphorical foot stuck on the accelerator (sympathetic nervous system charge, or manic high stimulation episodes) nor do I get my foot stuck on the brakes (parasympathetic nervous system activity, or depressive apathy and lethargy). I can experience rapid accelerations and braking, but then balance myself out and quickly resynchronize my accelerator and brakes so they are working together, through the power of the heart.

People with bi-polar or wild mood swings tend to get stuck with their nervous system in either gas mode or braking, or they end up trying to drive their bodies with both the gas and the brakes at the same time creating a herky jerky ride. For most of us, these nervous system disorders are at play in our bodies in small ways all the time, creating low grade stress and long term wear and tear. For people with a diagnosis of bi-polar, the experience is so extreme that it becomes debilitating and even life threatening.

Tonight’s HeartStart call will examine both the day to day stress of our mood swings and how to balance that through the heart, as well as the more extreme diagnosis of bi-polar and how the heart can help to cope with stresses related to that. We will examine these things in the context of the roller coaster ride I call our modern lifestyle, that may well predispose all of us to stressful highs and lows with its various crash and burn stimulants like caffeine, refined sugar, short acting love affairs, and stock market highs and crashes. While bi-polar is treated through modern psychiatry, at times very effectively, with pharmaceuticals that alter and balance brain chemistry, ancient medicines from India and China view and treat bi-polar and its milder version mood swings, as issues of the heart. Modern science can now help us understand why ancient medicines viewed and treated bi-polar and mood swings through the heart, with the discovery of a brain in the heart and the intrinsic role the heart plays in the healthy oscillations of the autonomic nervous system (which is our gas and brakes, and is held responsible for up to 95% of our body’s functions).

In an era of many different forms of medicines and many medical theories, it takes heart intelligence to know how to respond, who to trust, what to listen to, and what to do in the face of a diagnosis. How do you make decisions relative to your health care choices among the many voices in the medical field? Which doctor? Witch doctor? Which combination of approaches? How do you choose what treatments are right for you? How do you honor your limitations without becoming boxed in by an identity of being “sick”? How can you find the will and the presence of mind to be compliant with the treatments you do choose, without losing your mind in prescriptions and supplements and regimens and dietary and exercise boot camp perfectionism that robs you of your quality of life and is almost worse than the disease itself? How can your friends and family best support you in the process of healing or dealing with your disease?

The power of the heart, and its inner guidance system which can lead to greater peace and balance, is an opening which can answer these and other questions related to both mental and physical illness. There is no one right answer. Being able to listen to your own guidance system, and filter the advice of experts, friends, and family members through that inner guidance system, is essential in meeting any diagnosis with a sense of internal power, authority, well being and esteem. You are also more apt to make the choices that are best suited to you and your ultimate healing.

This HeartStart call topic- the power of the heart to deal with the stress of mania, depression, mood swings, and bi-polar disorder- was chosen in response to a special request from the mother of a son suffering with the diagnosis of bi-polar. In my 12 years working with HeartMath and nearly 20 years working as a health care provider, many people have come to me with a bi-polar diagnosis. Bi-polar is traumatic not just for those who suffer from it directly, but it takes a particular toll on family members who do not know who their loved ones are going to be from one moment to the next. Perhaps the greatest suffering any human being can face is to watch someone they love in a place of suffering, and feel powerless to help. The heart can be a welcome salve to the stress of both the person who is ill, and their loved ones who long to express their love as tangible support in the face of what can feel like insurmountable pain. When applied heart intelligence is brought to impossible situations, those very challenges can become our greatest gifts and leverage for our greatest love. I cannot imagine, however, facing those situations without the power and presence of the heart.
Our greatest suffering can become a portal to our greatest power, purpose, love and joy.  Those whom I have had the privilege of “helping” in their time of distress have without fail become my greatest teachers and reminders of the power of my own heart. When we turn to those who are suffering for the wisdom they bring rather than trying to make them wrong or “fix” them, our very appreciation of their brilliance opens the gift they were designed to be for the world.
Dani’s words, as she learned to look at life through the heart in the face of her bi-polar diagnosis, capture this gift better than anything else I could say:

Manic depression is a mad dash retreat to the mind, when the heart is on overwhelm.  It is a state of emotional overload, wherein the emotional pain is far too much to bear, by way of limited tools and/or heaping mounds of tragedy and strife.  The heart can’t bear the burden, so all that crap retreats to the head, ducks for cover in the swirling, twisting, turning, burning labyrinth of a mind where madness sets in amidst all of that undealt with angst and despair and torment. 

When I first learned to go back to the heart, the wonder of sensation swept over my entire body.  I could feel things so palpably. Everything felt new.  Food tasted better, my clothes were softer, my yoga practice lighter, my psyche – cleaner. I rediscovered the little things that shape the big ones. Now I see the truth – I see the miracle in the blade of grass breaking through the concrete.  LIFE WINS.  There is no competition.  Just life, just love.

 If only we could make the heart the priority – remember that love is what it’s all about.  Its fear that keeps us polarized – fear that keeps us in competition with each other. 

 LOVE YOURSELF and then, go ahead and LOVE EVERYONE ELSE and be happy and joyful and dance and find ways to express yourself and create.  Give life.  Give love.  Don’t eat too much.  Don’t acquire too much.  Stay lean and keep it simple.  The universe wants you to be happy.  If you have something, share it.  If you have love, share it.  Give love.  Be love.  LOVE IS HERE.  You already have what you are searching for.  It is everywhere.  Love is everywhere.  Take care of precious things and be kind.  Let people in front of you when you drive.  Tip twenty percent.  Smile.  Say please and thank you.  Hold the door for others.  Let people out of the elevator before you get on.  Take a walk.  Thank your food before you eat it.  Ask for help.  Be honest.  Be vulnerable.  Be strong.  Don’t get caught up in the glamour.  Don’t distract yourself.  Be the bigger person.  Say Yes as much as you can. Practice joy in your heart.  Take a compliment.  Give a compliment.  Wake-up early.  Greet the day with a brave heart and a positive attitude.  Be grateful.  Don’t scoff.  Assume the best.  Don’t judge.  Accept everything.  Just be.  Laugh.  A lot.  LAUGH.   Let go of the past.  Let go of the pain.  Be where you are.  Feel your feelings.  Celebrate.  Listen to music.  Listen to wisdom.  LISTEN.  LOVE.  LEARN.  LOVE. This is to heal from the heart.

November 5th, 2007

Insomnia: The Power of the Heart to Help Us Sleep Better, and Rest Well Even When We Cannot Sleep

click here to download the call

Is it the middle of the night and you wish you could fall asleep? Or is it the middle of a tired day in which you are wondering why your body refuses to get the rest that it needs? Either way, this HeartStart call is for you. And so is a lot of compassion. It’s hard to keep going when our basic needs are not met, and sleep is definitely one of them. Or more accurately, rest is one of them. So I want to start this session by letting you know that even if you cannot fall asleep, or your sleep is unsatisfactory, you can still get the deep rest that you need with the power of the heart. By the end of this HeartStart call you will know how.

In this session I will fill you in on:

• What happens to the nervous system when you sleep, and how the nervous system plays a role in keeping you awake.
• How to work with your nervous system through the power of the heart to access deep states of rest that will power you into peak performance.
• Next steps you can take to optimize every facet of your health and well being through the power of the heart.

When you were a kid, did you ever have trouble falling asleep the night before a holiday or a birthday party? It was the excitement of your sympathetic nervous system that was keeping you awake. The sympathetic nervous system prepares us to focus on and respond to life events. It’s the nervous system that helps us shoot a winning goal or laugh when we get tickled. In modern times, we have a lot more to respond to than our bodies were originally designed for.

Take the word “stress”, for example. Stress was not in our cave dwelling ancestors vocabulary. “Stress” was a term coined by Hans Selye in the mid 20th Century and was originally defined by the number of times a person had to change focus within an hour. Do you know what a high stress environment was back then? 10 focus changes in an hour! With cell phones, e-mail, television, radio, internet- most of us are changing focus more than 60 times in one minute! That is a lot of focus changes, each one requiring a response from our sympathetic nervous system.

Have you ever run so many programs on your computer that it jams? When that happens, you cannot even turn it off! You have to unplug it completely! That’s what can happen to your sympathetic nervous system- it gets jammed in “on” mode, which prevents you from falling asleep.

This session will give you the upgrade you need to balance your sympathetic nervous system, or your “accelerator,” with its counterpart, or “brakes”. When you learned how to drive a car, someone showed you where the accelerator was and which pedal to use for the brakes, right? You would not have dreamed of starting the engine and putting the car in drive without knowing how to brake. But did anyone teach you where the brakes were in your body before you started to drive through life? Welcome to your parasympathetic nervous system, your very own brakes! This is the nervous system we associate with deep states of relaxation, and sleep. It is this nervous system that is in gear after you have had a long massage, or are curled up watching a movie or reading a book with your favorite cup of something warm following a delicious meal. This is the relaxation response, which can help you rest and rejuvenate.

Some of you reading this may not be able to relate, because you are stuck in "off" mode not "on" mode- which looks like depression or apathy. You may be thinking, “I have no idea what she is talking about. I have nothing to respond to in my day. I do nothing. And I still cannot sleep.” That’s because your body will only recognize relaxation by contrast. So if you spend your day in a depressed or bored funk, your body will not recognize down time at night. It’s already so slow it has no slower to go. That causes sleeplessness, as much as being stuck at the high end of the line, jammed in excitement.

So what you really want from your nervous system is synchronization. To get the highest performance out of your car when you are driving you want synchronization between your gas and brakes: a little acceleration, and then a little brake, even acceleration, even brake. You definitely don’t want to drive with your foot on both the brakes and the accelerator at the same time- that hurky jerky ride creates what we call stress! You also don’t want to be all brakes all the time- because then you don’t get anywhere! Nor do you want to be petal to the metal with no brakes at all, which is a sure fire way to hit a wall. All of these imbalances can cause numerous problems, including insomnia.

If you are like some of my clients, who have not been able to sleep restfully in weeks or months or even years, you may indeed feel like you have already hit a wall. The good news is that there are practical things that you can do to give your body the rest and rejuvenation that it needs to feel energized and refreshed, whether you fall asleep or not. You can learn ways to synchronize your own gas and brakes so you become fuel efficient on the go, recharge your batteries in motion, and plug the holes in your tank so when you do stop to refuel you're not dumping your gas onto the pavement!

October 29th, 2007

Manifesting Your Goals and Dreams with the Power of the Heart

click here to download the call

Highlights from the Heart Start call:

There is a lot of buzz these days, after movies like "The Secret" and "What the Bleep Do We Know?" about our power to manifest and create our own reality. And yet, if you talk with most people (even those who produced those films!) rarely is anyone 100% content with either their own personal reality or the collective global reality as it is right now. So where is the gap?

Manifesting dreams and visions is an art and a science, a mastery full of paradoxical pairings that require the power of the heart at every step.  You have to be very specific about what you want to manifest, but not attached to specific outcomes. You have to be 100% committed, and 100% in surrender at the same time. How can you do both? Just as the heart contracts and expands, it has within it the intelligence of the masculine and feminine principles that must come together in union to give birth to our most passionate heart's desires.

The heart, electrically speaking, is 60-80x more powerful than the brain. So when we try to manifest our dreams through visualization and planning alone, we either fail completely because the brain by itself does not have enough power, or we end up with two dimensional half hearted creations that are like cardboard facades. True manifestation, embodying all the depth and dimension that will really satisfy and fulfill us, requires the power of the heart.

Imagine that your life is a home that is being built. The home has a blueprint, a template for the construction. Similarly, your life has a blueprint, which Paul Pearsall refers to as the "heart's code" and which Fyera! teaches you to access in our advanced courses called, "The Heart's Blueprint." Just as an acorn contains within it all the information to become an oak tree, your heart was the first organ to form in the womb and contains within it all the infomation you need to unfold your highest potential and fulfillment. The blueprint speaks to you in a number of ways, one of them being through your visions, dreams, and true heart's desires.

But here is the catch. The desires that you chase are not always your true heart's desires. The brain, being conditioned by what your parents want for you, what marketing and advertising convinces you that you need (out of corporate greed), the lessons you learned from religion and school- all of these influences lead you to want things that I call "mind candy", things that may look good to you on the outside based on your conditioning, but do not fulfill your deeper heart. So the first step towards manifesting your goals and dreams, is to make sure that you involve the heart and its desires in the process.

A simple excercise I take my students through in our workshops to access the real heart's desire behind the mind's ambitions is called The Trap Door Game. First, ask yourself what you want. Be honest about your answer, with no editing. Maybe its a certain type of car, or a house, or a mate, or a better body. Our conditioning usually tells us we want prestige, money, and sex, and not necessarily in that order! So if that is where you are, that is where you start. Your desire, whatever it is, can be a gateway to the heart. Now, ask yourself repeatedly, "If I get that, what will that give me? And if I get that, what will that give me?" When you have arrived at an answer that keeps repeating, like "More happiness," or "Freedom," or "Peace of Mind," then you can know that you have come upon the true heart's desire underneath the hunger for mind candy.

The Trap Door Game to True Heart's Desires
What do you want?
And if you get that, what will that give you?
And if you get that, what will that give you?

Once you align with the true heart's desire, you can begin to construct your current reality around that.The heart's desires, like peace, fulfillment, love, connection- heart qualities and values- are always accessible right here right now, and allow us to experience and embody the fruition of our desires along the way rather than only at the destination.  It is very different to pursue financing for your dream FROM peace of mind, than to pursue financing for your dream in order to have peace of mind. People who think more money will bring them more peace often experience a rude awakening when they have more money, and more people around them who want it, and more decisions to make, and more taxes to deal with, and more stress! It does not have to be that way, you can certainly have more money AND more peace. To get there requires you to create peace and money, not to make them dependant upon one another. Do not mislead yourself into thinking that it is the money that will bring you peace and that you need money in order to have peace.

What are your "in order to's"? "In order to have peace of mind, I need $100,000 in my savings account." "In order to be happy, I need to have a husband or a wife." "In order to feel good about myself, I need to lose 20 lb". "In order to's" always create a time/space gap between you and your heart's desire, and delay your manifestation process. Soberly assess your "in order to's" to see if they are just arbitrary untruths getting in the way of experiencing the freedom and joy and other qualities of your heart right here right now. Often, I find once people manifest their "in order to's," like getting the husband or the car or the raise they want, only then do they come to discover it did not give them the underlying peace of mind or love or freedom they wanted. Going straight for the feeling desired is a way to be specific with the universe about what you want, without being attached to the outcome. This is where your creation can become a co-creation with your heart, and surprise you in magnificent ways. This is a way to be in both commitment and surrender, specific about how you want to feel in the home you're building without dictating every detail along the way it makes the journey more spontaneous and fun!

One simple example of this happened to me when I was remodeling my treatment room. When I became an acupuncturist, I wanted the room where I treated my patients to provide them with a healing environment, a place where they could rejuvenate and access their highest states of being. I had it stuck in my head from esoteric teachings that purple is the color of the highest states, and that the room needed to be painted purple. So, I went to Home Depot, and ordered purple paint, the same way that many of us set our goals in life and place our "in order to's" at Dream Depot. I hired a painter to do the job, and when I began moving the furniture in it just didn't feel right at all. I had a headache by the end of my first day working there, and so did my patients! YUCK!

I went back to the drawing board. This time, instead of fixating on the specific color I wanted, I went to Home Depot with an intention to find a color that was healing, soothing, uplifting and rejuvenating. Purple had been my agenda, but healing had been my intention. When I aligned with my heart's intent rather than my mind's agenda, the right color was obvious: a pale lime green. This color was just right. Even my cat stays in that room as long as possible now, because it produces such a healing and regerative feeling. Imagine going to the Dream Depot of your desires. What colors do you want? What is the palette of your goals? Let your desire captivate your imagination and play a little. Let yourself have agendas, and even want things that you think are impossible. Then play the trap door game to get to the deeper heart intentions behind these goals and agendas. What does your heart want you to experience from the fruition of your dreams?

Some people wait to set goals until New Years. But the heart is not on our Gregorian calendar. As a fun prep for the holiday season, make a list of your top ten heart's desires for the remainder of 2007. As you write your list, sincerely feel the satisfaction that fulfilling those desires will bring to you, in the here and now. Then sign and date it, and seal your list in an envelope marked, "To be opened on January 1, 2008." When you open it, setting your 2008 goals may well be inspired and empowered by the surprising fruition of your heart's desires over the next two months!

Write a list of your top ten heart's desires for the remainder of 2007. Then sign and seal them in an envelope to be opened on January 1, 2008!

"The emotional virus lives and thrives in the gap between expectations and perceived reality."
— Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence

October 22nd, 2007

Hearing Your Heart, Expressing Your Voice

click here to download the call

Highlights from the Heart Start call:

A friend of mine has a GPS in his car that speaks to him in the sound of a lulling woman's voice. "Turn right at the next stop sign. Make a U-Turn here." He calls his GPS Frances. Sometimes, when he decides to take a detour to buy something at a drug store, or to go the scenic route instead of the most efficient one, he gets fed up with the drone of Frances saying "Please turn around. You have gone the wrong way. Please turn around. You have gone the wrong way. Please turn around, you have gone the wrong way." In those moments, he turns Frances off.

Imagine that your fulfillment and full potential is the destination already plugged into the GPS in the center of your chest. You have your own Frances in your heart. She is right there, ready to tell you the most efficient choices, turns, u-turns, and on-ramps to take to experience fulfillment and reach the destination of your full potential. She would be willing to help you with every decision you face and give you clarity on where you really want to go. But a lot of the time, if you are like most people, you are tuning Frances out or turning her off. Or you never figured out how to use the GPS technology you have in the first place. Well Fyera! has an instruction manual for you!

"Listen to your heart," and, "speak your heart," and "follow your heart," are not just metaphors. New science from the Insititute of HeartMath and heart/brain researchers around the world tell us that these seemingly poetic phrases actually have scientific, medical merit. There is literally a brain in the heart. It turns out that this heart-brain is doing most of the talking in the two-way conversation it has with the brain in our heads. As a matter of fact, 80% of the communication is going from heart to head, not the other way around! When they do heart transplants, the major pathway along which the brain communicates with the heart cannot be reconnected (the vagus nerve). In other words, the heart operates independantly of the brain but is still able to send its signals and messages to the brain via pulse and pressure waves, hormones, and electromagnetic fields. Not only that, the latest research indicates that this heart-brain knows things before the brain in your head does, and you can access powerful intuitive guidance when you learn to focus your attention on its signals.

At the heart of you is an intelligence that knows what you really want -your true heart's desires- and how to get there. The same way that an acorn carries the information to become an oak tree, the blueprint for your optimal fulfillment and the fruition of your full potential lies within the first organ that formed in you before you were born: your heart.

What do you want?

Have you ever been asked that question and drawn a total blank? Or felt a quiet answer surface, but been too timid to speak up about it?

When I was 8 years old, my babysitter had just gone off to college. I felt very big and important because I got to go stay in her dorm room for a night and attend all of her classes with her. It was really exciting for a 8 year old! And REALLY scary. When we went to get breakfast in the dorm cafeteria, she turned to me and asked me what I wanted to eat. At home I usually just had a bowl of Cheerios. Here, I was overwhelmed by choices."I don't know," I shrugged my shoulders, looking to her sheepishly for guidance. "Ugh!" she snapped. "I hate it when people don't know what they want," and she slopped a bowl of oatmeal onto my tray in a temporary huff (normally she was the most loving person I knew!). I felt a pit well up in my throat and shame turned my face beet red. One of the biggest lessons I learned my first day of college, as an 8 year old, was that I needed to find a place inside me that knew what I wanted because no one else could do that for me or would want to.

Then there was the task of not only knowing what I wanted, but actually expressing it. The truth was that I had never tried oatmeal before, and was curious what it was like. I saw hot cereal steaming in a pot and eyed it, but was too embarassed to speak up. Mind chatter overpowered the GPS from my heart saying "oatmeal! oatmeal!" What if I was wrong? Would everyone laugh at me? How stupid was I that I did not even know what oatmeal looked like?! I was totally intimidated to speak up in that grown-up world and was terrified that I would look dumb in front of all of her friends. Donna begrdugingly intuited what I wanted without me having to say it- but life will not always do that for you. The good news is there is a reliable, step by step way that you can take the power, listen to your heart's desire, and step up and claim it for yourself. The other piece of that good news is that when you do, because we are all connected, the fulfillment of your heart is linked to other people's fulfillment; your greatest joy becomes automatically a contribution to those you love and to your world. When you are on track, the world also is a little more on course because of you.

So how do you hear your heart, and find the courage to speak up and to act on the guidance it gives you? To answer that question requires knowing what it is that gets in the way. And that can be summed up in a singal word: stress. Any type of stress will create static on the line to your heart signals, and disperse your power to act on them when you do hear them. When I was 8, the rock concert of vanities going on inside my head was the largest source of static to really hearing and expressing the guidance system in my heart.

The heart is sending signals to the brain all the time. Your own mind chatter, especially your vanities and fears of "looking bad," create static to that signal in two ways. One, they actually create a visible chaos in the heart rhythm which scrambles it's messages to the brain. Two, having all that go on in the head is like blaring your radio so loud that poor Frances' directional signals are drowned out. HeartMath has developed tools and technology to help fine tune the signals coming from the heart and focus the brain on those signals by quieting mental noise. This allows you to hear your heart's guidance and harness the power to speak your truth and act on it. The ability to do this has completely changed my life, and the lives of hundreds of my clients. Click here to learn more about the technology that helps tune your heart signals, and click here if you would like to register for our next beginner webinar (first class free!).

When I feel overwhelmed and like there is too much to do, I am very grateful to be able to silence my stress with tools from HeartMath, so that I can access the voice of my heart. My mind is usually saying something like, "Stop the world, I want to get off!" and looking for an exit strategy from whatever is stressing me out. I cannot count the number of relationships I would have ended or creative work opportunities I would have run away from had I reacted from this fear. But, I was able to turn fear's heavy metal radio station off in my head with HeartMath tools and hear good ol' Frances in my heart saying "Ignore the next five exits and then get off and turn right. Stay straight ahead with your eye on the road in front of you." What a relief! I make better business decisions, better decisions for my health, my relationships, and on top of that I enjoy the ride so much more along the way!

While you program your GPS with certain street addresses or destinations, part of the fun is not always knowing what it will look like once you get there, or what will be waiting for you when you arrive. The same is true of our fulfillment and full potential. Jennifer Cook is a friend and client who came to me to access the heart's power to improve her immune system. As a school teacher, she was getting constant cold's and allergies, and losing her voice. As we worked together to balance her stress through the heart and improve her resistance to disease, her heart's voice started to speak. And when it spoke, it started to sing. It turns out that a long time dream that Jennifer had was to be a singer. But she was so overcome by shyness and vanity, that when she took a vocals class at a community college she almost failed because she could not bring herself to sing in front of the class! As she learned how to silence her vanities and fears of failure by going to her heart, Jennifer blasted past her own glass ceiling. After only a few weeks of practicing HeartMath, she formed a band that debuted at a local bar.

Last week, less than a year after Jen started her band and began performing, she excitedly called to tell me how she used the power of the heart to land and ace her biggest gig yet, as a featured singer at Staples Center Stadium in Los Angeles where she performed at a hockey game of the Los Angeles Kings! Needless to say, she is no longer losing her voice.

You can reduce stress and overwhelm RIGHT NOW, by remembering that inside your heart is a program for fulfillment. Pause, focus your attention on the heart, and just be receptive to whatever guidance is there. You never know what is waiting for you around the next bend!

We began the HeartStart calls as a way to weekly tune you in to the voice of the heart. Tune in tonight to hear Jennifer share her own story, and to learn how you can better hear your heart's voice and express yourself in the world!

To find out more about Jennifer and her band UNA, visit their MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/unamusic


"If you've tried everything, Fyera! is not one more thing. It is THE thing that will make everything else you've tried work."
- Gina Golie Filmmaker and Writer, Los Angeles

"I myself have witnessed the magic of Sheva's teaching... Millions of people from all walks of life are sure to benefit from the power of their hearts thanks to Sheva and Fyera! I am honored to be one of them."
- Anne Marie Howard, Actress

October 15th, 2007

Boo!

As Halloween approaches, I thought it would be a fun time for the HeartStart to Your Week call to address the power of the heart to help us with our fears.

click here to download the call

Highlights from the Heart Start call:

Human beings have a fascinating, love-hate relationship with fear. We (some of us, anyway) are exhilirated by roller coasters, haunted houses, and horror films, enough to spend millions of dollars every year to be scared silly. Halloween is a holiday that celebrates our fear. But when it comes to our personal fears—the fear of rejection, the fear of loss, the fear of not being able to pay our bills, the fear of death—most of us are not so fond of those. The fear of success which can cause us to self sabotage right on the brink of a breakthrough is another one that's just a big pain in the you know what! Then there is the fear that doesn't seem to be a fear "of" anything, but is just a generalized state of apprehension which so many of us live with so much of the time. It is this more nebulous fear that led Thoreau to say "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." What to do with THAT? Our reaction to this desperation can be anywhere on a wide continuum from paralyzing phobia to barely noticeable butterflies in the belly. So what is fear?

If you go with the evolutionary theory, emotions first showed up on the scene as a survival adaptation. Big lizards (dinosaurs) had large brain stems which served to help them approach pleasure and avoid pain: "I will eat you (approach)—You will eat me (avoid)—I will reproduce our species with you (approach)." Mammals came along, and with them the addition of the mid brain which could "feel" emotion and store emotional pattern recognition or memory for extra survival protection. IE: "You ate my cousin Earl yesterday, I will run away from you today. You scare me." This emotional pattern recognition operates in the opposite way as well, which is to say, "This situation does not look like what I am used to or familiar with, therefore it must be life threatening and scary and I should run away." The survival function of emotional memory in the mid brain is part of what creates fear within us when we might least expect or least want to be afraid- like when our dreams come true or we fall in love. "Wait! The status quo is changing! UNSAFE! QUICK! Run away!" Most modern monsters are psychological, not physical threats, which means our fear response, for the most part, is antiquated and not helping us. It is also these old surrvival reactions, firing on a daily basis when a car horn beeps and catches us off gaurd, which can leave us with the generalized feeling of fear that we simply cannot explain.

There are lots of approaches to fear. "Feel the fear and do it anyway." "Love is stronger than fear." RUN! Because fear has such a profound impact on the brain, "feel the fear and do it anyway" can be a disaster. Imagine being afraid to dive into a swimming pool and failing to see the pool's absence of water, because you are so afraid that your brain and higher perceptions are shut down! Then you do it anyway. OUCH!

To respond intelligently to fear, it is helpful to know that emotional states like gratitude and appreciation, literally replace fear. You cannot feel gratitude and fear at the exact same time, because they operate differently in your physiology and brain. Fear creates a certain chaos in the heart rhythm that signals to the brain to close down higher thinking centers (to run fast!). Gratitude produces order in the heart rhythm which sends an opposite signal to the brain, opening up what we call the 3rd brain of higher intelligence, which can move beyond the pattern recognition and mere survival instinct of the mid brain. The higher brain allows us to come into direct relationship with what is right here right now, while paradoxically allowing us to better set goals, visions and dreams. It is from the higher brain that our physiology is open to accepting new, out of the box solutions to old problems, and we have the power to innovate. The mid brain is attached to repeating patterns and rituals for its sense of safety, and triggers what we call "fear" in our hormones and nervous system if something shows up outside of our "ordinary." Living in a time of human potential, where our lives our open to virtually unlimited personal and professional growth, we need to learn how to assess and respond to situations from our higher or 3rd brain, rather than from the mid brain that just wants safety and familiarity. This is where the power of the heart comes in.

At Fyera, we would say, feel the fear. Be aware that it is there. Then use the power of your heart to transform that fear and its survival imperative into love, passion, enthusiasm, appreciation- and from those heart feelings and the higher intelligence they illicit- then do what gratitude tells you to do. It will change your life! Behind every fear is actually love. If you look at the roots of fear, born as a survival protection, fear in its origin is actually an expression of the love for life and desire to stay alive. And every fear that layers in on top of the original fear for our own survival, has a similar love or care behind it, which, when accessed, can empower us to live more fully. Fear is a compost heap with the promise of a garden of life full of more vitality and joy, lived more in alignment with our values and what really matters to us. The heart has the power to plant the proper seeds in that soil to see our fulfillment realized out of fear.

For example, I have to go to the dentist today. I developed a terror of the dentist after four or five visits in which I was getting a "bad" dental report card and my hygeinist was threatening that if I did not clean up my act, I would lose my teeth. This triggered all my fear of powerlessness and even lack of control and death! "Lose my teeth! Its not fair! Because I really am brushing and flossing twice after every meal!" (I REALLY was!) I felt totally out of control. Finally, I started to apply my HeartMath tools to this fear. And I realized, that while I brushed my teeth all the time, I also took them totally for granted. I never sent love or appreciation to my teeth. Which are supposed to last my whole lifetime! Working every day, all day, for never so much as a thank you! So, I started taking all my fear of going back to the dentist, and transformed that raw fuel in my body into love and appreciation for my teeth. An amazing thing happened- I have had a clean dental report card ever since!

Heart intelligence has the ability to show us to the love behind all fear, and to empower us to take the raw energy that fear is in our systems and translate it into fuel for our own fulfillment and our contribution to the world.

We can let our fears of death rob us of our aliveness in life, or we can meet death square in the face every day, like Patrick, and use that as inspiration to bring more of who we are to life—for as long as we are here. That choice is available to all of us, whether death is close or decades away. And the HeartMath system helps each one of us, no matter our circumstances, choose life while we have it. This is really the greatest benefit that HeartMath has offered me personally—the ability to truly appreciate my life, forgive myself and everyone else, and let go of what does not matter—before I have died and it is too late to live.

October 8th, 2007

How Can the Heart Help When You Have a Terminal Illness?

The power of the heart to deal with the stress of death and dying, and to bring true aliveness to life

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

In these HeartStart pages I often speak about the heart's ability to help us heal our bodies. However, no matter how "heartsy" we are, the prognosis for all of us is the same: we are going to die someday. So this begs the question—when we are no longer in a position to prolong our lives, and physical well being is a foreign concept to our diseased and decaying bodies, can the heart help?

In the Americas, we define health as "the absence of disease" or "homeostasis"—some kind of static, idealized state that we might briefly pass through before we pass away. In east Africa, the word for "health" is defined differently: "fully participating in life." This African definition provides a very different paradigm for what health is, one that allows us to experience health at any age and in any life circumstance, including in the face of physical disease. The heart has a secret access to our full participation in life, whatever our obstacles and challenges are, including terminal illness.

From the time I was seven years old, until I was 25, I travelled the globe looking for the universal complaint box in which I could drop a note to the creator about my opinions on death and impermanence: "THIS SUCKS!" When I was seven, my best friend was murdered, my grandfather died of leukemia, my grandmother was dying of Alzheimers, and my father's business partner died of a heart attack. Suddenly, I was thrust into a vast black hole of fear—"You mean we do not last forever?" I was incensed, and terrified. I was afraid to go to amusement parks in case the roller coaster would jump off the tracks and kill me. I was afraid to go to summer camp because Sky Lab might come crashing down out of its orbit onto my tent. I was afraid to light a match, because my hair might catch fire. I was totally afraid to participate in life, and so I withdrew completely.

What turned my terror around after almost 20 years of seeing psychiatrists, taking antidepressants, meditating, yoga-ing, om-ing, praying, and eating pristine diets to protect my life (how alive can you be without icecream and candy corn?) was discovering HeartMath. Through HeartMath, I learned to appreciate the moment rather than fear the future. And I learned how, with the emWave biofeedback-like technology, to appreciate the moment actually, physically, wholehearthedly, not just conceptually. Yes, its true that appreciating the moment has all kinds of health benefits, like ordered heart rhythms, synchronized nervous systems, balanced hormones, optimal performance, shiny skin and less fat on our waist and hips. But what is the point of all of that? The point of all of that, is that it gives us more to appreciate! Appreciation itself is the destination of the heart, not some "Stepford Wife" life or some perfect state of "homeostasis". It is in a state of appreciation that life becomes alive.

While I fought impermanence in my younger years, the heart taught me to appreciate impermanence for the gift it brings of taking nothing for granted and appreciating everything that comes my way. Like everything in life, you can either wish things were different, or find the gift in them. The heart has a knack for making a gift out of everything, even death.

We take so much for granted. Taking things for granted is a source of stress. The truth of the matter is, whether you think you are dying or not, this may be the last HeartStart reminder you read and that I write, this may be the last time you see the sun or feel its warmth kiss your skin, this may be the last time you feel your thirst quenched with a glass of clean water, the last time you see the person you love. Everywhere around us are things to appreciate—and we notice those things more when we are faced directly with our mortality. It also happens that we notice those things more, because of the way the heart interacts with and opens up the brain, when the heart is beating the ordered rhythm that HeartMath teaches us to access. Today is Canadian Thanksgiving—a perfect time to make a list of things that you usually take for granted that you are grateful for!

This is where people who are dying can become our teachers in the heart. Often, on their death bed, people naturally experience the deep state of gratitude that I call "Fyera!" or "being in the heart." Knowing that this might be the last time you ever taste applesauce, it tastes so much more juicy and tart! Knowing that this is the last time you might see your mother, your father, your daughter, son sister or brother, you appreciate every ounce of time you have with them and are willing to put little things aside for the greater love that is there. Deep appreciation, and letting go of stuff that does not matter, and taking nothing for granted, is the nature of the heart. We can resist and resent impermanence and mortality. Or we can appreciate the gift impermanence brings, the gift of appreciating what we have which is made all the more vibrant and sweet because those things will not always be here and neither will we. Give yourself the "rocking chair test" on the things that are upsetting you now. Ask yourself, "Will this matter 20 years from now? 50 years from now? 500 years from now? Is this how I would have wanted to spend this moment had I known I only had a few moments left?" Buddhist monks have a special practice, a mantra they repeat, "Remember your death," not as a form of torture, but as a reminder to be here now and appreciate everything.

When I first started Fyera! a young man named Patrick came to my HeartMath classes to learn how to deal with the stress of living with AIDS. And I mean LIVING with AIDS. Patrick lived full out, more than most of us. He was up at the crack of dawn looking for ways to help people, he started a romance with his soul mate in the last two years of his life, he painted and drew and played and knew and constantly grew. Never once did I hear Patrick complain about his illness or hold himself back from appreciating the moment because of it. He appreciated everyone around him SO much. People felt their own value more because of Patrick's presence. No one believed he was sick, because he had such a vitality of being and such a bright light in his eyes. When he became too weak to work, he would get excited if he had the energy to walk down to the beach and see the ocean. When he became too weak to leave his bed, or to talk, he still managed a wide smile at the sight of a goofy stuffed duckling someone delivered to brighten his day. Until his last breath, Patrick fully lived by appreciating every moment for what it had to bring and what he had to give. He taught me more about the heart than I ever could have offered him.

We can let our fears of death rob us of our aliveness in life, or we can meet death square in the face every day, like Patrick, and use that as inspiration to bring more of who we are to life—for as long as we are here. That choice is available to all of us, whether death is close or decades away. And the HeartMath system helps each one of us, no matter our circumstances, choose life while we have it. This is really the greatest benefit that HeartMath has offered me personally—the ability to truly appreciate my life, forgive myself and everyone else, and let go of what does not matter—before I have died and it is too late to live.

October 1st, 2007

Bringing the Power of the Heart to the Stress of the Evening News

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

We live in a time of unprecedented global connectivity and information exchange. The advent of television, fax machines, and finally the world wide web, allows us to tap into a truth that has been here all along- we are instantly connected to whatever is happening in our world, near or far. Whether that instant connectivity is a blessing or a curse depends, at least in part, on whether we are able to respond from the heart.

Psychologically, the instant and global information age has created a whole new form of stress. Turn on the evening news or pick up the daily newspaper and what do you see? Genocide of peaceful monks in Burma. Child sexual abuse. Spousal manslaughter. Organs in China being pirated for expensive fee-for-surgery transplants. War. Political scandal. Environmental disaster. One in three amphibians, one in four mammals, one in eight birds and 70% of plants are believed to be at risk of extinction, with human alteration of their habitat the single biggest cause. Wild Gorillas and orangutans are about to be totally gone in just a few years, and the river dolphin is now extinct.

How do we remain in the heart in the face of all of this? Do we just avoid watching the news completely to avoid the stress of overcaring about these things and our feelings of powerlessness they engender? Or is there a way that the news can put us more in touch with our care for the world and empower us to make a true difference?

When I was 20 years old, I made the choice to stop reading all newspapers and watching all news, in part because I learned first hand that the news itself is not neutral. It is totally biased, sometimes on purpose. Living in Nicaragua during the contra war, I met US news correspondants who bragged about delivering their news reports without ever having to leave their hotel rooms. A quick phone call from the CIA or the State Department told them everything they needed to report. On the ground during the Nicaraguan elections, I watched US news channels report the exact opposite of what was happening in front of my own eyes, delivering political propoganda rather than truth. So I swore off the news completely, inadvertantly cutting myself off from an important opportunity to deepen in my own heart.

One of the qualities of heart intelligence, and a tool that we teach in the Beginner HeartMath course (click one of the registration links at the bottom of this email to experience this tool in our next webinar—first class FREE!) is the power of neutrality. News by its very nature in our modern world is made "entertaining", to attract a bigger audience. By going to neutral within ourselves in the face of the news that we see, we empower our own discernment to recognize truth from sensationalism. We also save ourselves the drain of going into a fight flight reaction to an inanimate box that is flashing lights and sounds at us, or a piece of paper with newsprint on it. Taken by themselves, these things are not an immediate threat. Given the impact that stress hormones have on our physiology, and our hearts and blood in particular, it is likely that my father's sudden heart attack was directly related to the television program he cursed and sobbed over right before he died. We need not let the evening news control our physiology—we can take charge first with the power of neutral.

From neutral, it is possible to appreciate the global information machine in its ability to empower us to respond to our world with compassion and care. Recently, I began diligently checking the news every night online, a total switch from my anti-news vigilance of years ago. I find that, as I am able to watch the news with neutrality, my heart is grateful to know the suffering others are struggling with around the world, because now that it is trained with the Heart Lock-In tool and Attitude Breathing (also taught in the Beginner HeartMath webinar) as well as the Compassion Soak (in the advanced course) my heart has a tangible way to respond to things I see. This is so much more empowering than plopping my head in the sand like an ostrich! Not only does responding to the news with compassion and care feel great and energize me—it has also had profound impact and results in the world that inspire me to keep going. Click here to read the story of how my use of the Heart Lock-In tool and Compassion Soak for women in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban translated into a several year relationship with women there, many of whom wrote to me to tell me that our connection alone saved their lives.

September 17th, 2007

The Heart of Healthy Blood Pressure

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

JoAnne's Story:
"In February of this year I ordered the book "The HeartMath Approach to Managing Hypertension" "The Proven, Natural Way to Lower Your Blood Pressure".

For 13 years prior to this I had been put on a couple of blood pressure medications (my doctor told me I would have to be on these drugs for the rest of my life).

My blood pressure seemed fairly stable on the drugs, but I gained about 20 pounds and could not seem to lose them. Then I began to read and study some opinions of alternative doctors and discovered that these drugs were actually harming me rather than helping me. I learned that taking these drugs was actually weakening the left side of my heart, thus damaging it, and at best would only lengthen my life by a couple of weeks if I continued to take them. I also learned that these drugs put weight on which actually made my BP higher. This information gave me the burning desire to get off of the meds and heal my heart and my body by using alternative methods.

I had a blood sugar test right around the same time that this new information on the side effects of the medication came to me, which revealed a pre-diabetic condition. This really scared me—diabetes is one disease I do not want to have. With pre-diabetes hanging over my head as well as trying to keep my BP under control, I was very excited when I read the HeartMath book and discovered that if I followed the HeartMath program, all of these things could fall into the normal state without the taking of drugs for the rest of my life.

As I mentioned earlier, I began learning and using the HeartMath program in February of this year. I experienced less stress, I began to lose weight slowly by switching to a Low Carbohydrate Diet and my blood pressure came down slowly also. I began to feel so much better! At age 78, my energy level went up as my BP and weight went down.

I give thanks every time I use the HeartMath program."

September 10th, 2007

The Struggle With Obesity, the Heart's Lightness of Being

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

Is it possible that our collective struggle with excess weight is related to emotional weight as much as physical weight? With fanaticism of fad diets, maybe it is really lightness of being that we are striving for as much as less weight on the scale. A lightness of being that can be found first by lightening up on ourselves emotionally. The irony is, the heavy handed judgment we inflict upon ourselves and others for our body weight adds to it, not just emotionally but physically. High levels of the stress hormone cortisol, activated by our body image struggles, yo yo dieting, excess excercise, and so on, actually causes us to pack weight on our hips and thighs as part of an old survival mechanism. What would it be like to see ourselves through the heart? In some cultures, particularly those where starvation is a problem, obesity is considered beautiful. We can end the obesity struggle with ourselves through the heart, and in so doing experience both a lightness of being and maybe even lighten our load physically! Tune in to tonight's heart start call to find out more.

September 3rd, 2007

Special Labor Day HeartStart to Your Week Call featuring the Heart at Work

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

How can we create work and livelihoods that allow us to do what we love and love what we do? What would it be like to be the heart at work rather than hard at work?

For many of us, "work" is a four letter word with negative, backbreaking connotations. Fall is approaching. Summer vacations are ending. Some are headed back to school or into long stretches of work where the next break will come with Hanukah songs and Christmas carols, leading to a foreboding sense of dread at the fast paced months ahead. This is a form of stress, that tugs on the potential joy and fulfillment our work can hold.

It used to be that "work" was for our survival—constructing shelters, hunting or gathering for food... Now, most of us are engaged in work that is not directly related to survival—typing HeartStart reminders into the computer, answering phones, providing services or working behind cash registers. Even though there is no immediate life or death consequence to a sale made or lost, in our subconscious minds our work is very closely related to our survival. To the emotional mind, work is that which gives most of us paper passes (money) to our shelter and food. And so we add, without realizing it, life or death significance and intensity to our work that robs us of the joy we can experience there in an era where human beings can thrive rather than just survive.

Some, exhausted by the work-survival-rat-race, choose to follow the adage "Do what you love and the money will follow," only to realize that crocheted door knob covers are not popular in the marketplace and neither are tours to Northern Albania. Those who dump their survival needs for their passions can then stress themselves out in leaps of faith that the true heart would never ask them to make.

The heart of work addresses this essential question: how do we choose to create a relationship to work that empowers who we can be, helps us to meet our needs, and does not create stress or burn-out?

I have always had BIG visions of the contributions I wanted to make in the world. After 5 years of undergraduate studies, and 4 years of graduate education and internships, I was devastated to realize that I was not at the top of my mountain climb, but had merely reached base camp at the foot of the true Everest: building a business! My first year out of acupuncture school, I was making about $400 per month. Not enough to keep my car clean in LA let alone survive. Demoralized, I accepted a minimum wage position doing secretarial services for the Prostate 90 Foundation, which helped men with prostate cancer. I thought I had reached the bottom of the bottom, was a total failure, and stressed myself with self judgment and humiliation.

Research from the Institute of HeartMath has shown us that when we feel stressful emotions such as fear (whether it is about unpaid bills, or a tiger about to eat us), dread, boredom, resentment, judgment, humiliation—emotions that many of us feel when we "Have to go into work"—survival hormones are released and chaotic heart rhythms are created which distort our perceptions of what is happening and have a high cost to our health and well being. Conversely, attitudes like appreciation and care expand our awareness and allow us to perceive more accurately, respond more effectively, and simply feel better more often at work and everywhere else.

While my time with the Prostate 90 Foundation was not what I had envisioned for myself, it became the thing that moved me most quickly into my vision. Applying the HeartMath® tools in that stressful situation, I soon began to find great pleasure in talking with the men in need on the phone, an appreciation for the routine having "a job" offered, and ways to make the humdrum details fun. I began to enjoy and in appreciate the simple things in the moment more than my identity or job title. Simultaneously, clients in my private practice sensed the shift in me. Because I had a stable job that paid my rent and grocery bills, I was no longer preying upon their business like a hungry eagle panicked in its attack on a field mouse. I was more comfortable in my own skin, so my clients were more comfortable around me and benefited more from what I had to offer, leading to more referrals. Soon I had to leave the Prostate 90 Foundation because my private practice was booming! All thanks to the power of the heart and bringing true care into my work rather than prestige related vanity and survival calamity.

August 27th, 2007

Heart Start to Your Week Call: Reversing our Negative Associations with Aging

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

How would it be to stop the progression of, or in some cases even reverse, the negative symptoms of aging? Wine, cars, and antiques all go up in value as they age. Cheese cannot even be sold until it has been sufficiently “aged.” And yet, when it comes to human beings, many of us have the opposite association. Aging is something we dread, we deny, hide with surgery and dye. Why?

In ancient Chinese culture this was certainly not the case. Getting older was associated with wisdom, not decay. Elders were respected, and in fact children were only required to respect their parents after a certain age if they had wrinkles in the right places! In our culture, the only collective respect we show our elders is in the form of senior discounts. But rather than true respect, discounts for seniors seem more like an affirmation of our diminishing abundance as we age: yet another expression of the perception of aging as loss, as less than the rest.

It does not have to be that getting older equals getting lesser: less abundant, less valuable, less flexible, or less powerful. Old Model T cars that are in good condition are valued far beyond brand new ones, and worth much more than a four or five year old car that has been neglected and abused and misused. I believe that we fear aging in our modern culture because we misunderstand how to live and how to take care of ourselves, and so we associate getting older with falling apart. Getting older can actually offer us a continual new start. It is possible, just like a fine wine or a priceless antique, to increase our value, our fulfillment, our capacity to expand the dimensions of our life the longer we live. How?

August 20th, 2007

The battle of body image, the heart of beauty

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and felt great about what you saw?

Have you ever been in love with someone and just wished you could feel a physical attraction for them?

Have you ever been in love with someone and just wished that they felt a physical attraction towards you?

9 out of 10 women surveyed by a national magazine hated or strongly disliked their own physical appearance and would change something about it if they could. A large proportion of men felt the same about their own body image.

Spouses secretly revealed that their partners were not their ideal "type," causing strain at times in their relationships. Many people, feeling guilty and "shallow" for judging the appearance of their partners, stuff this stress underground where it steals away at the very energy that would stoke the fire of true aliveness in their relationships in the first place. Or, it can also lead us into relationships based on appearance alone, where after a while we discover that appearance is only skin deep. Not sharing similar values, these relationships die or parts of us do inside, leaving us empty and unfulfilled.

The rejection of our own appearance and that of others keeps us as a culture fixated more on how we look than on how we feel, disconnecting us from our deeper experience of the heart where real beauty emanates and where truly fulfilling choices can be made.

Whether your stress is related to a mismatch between reality and the ideal image you hold in your own mind for yourself or someone else's appearance, or that which they hold for you, tonight's HeartStart call will help expose this hidden energy drain, explain why those feelings exist, and give some practical how-to's for overcoming them with the power of the heart.

We will look at how ideal images form in the brain, keying emotional memory centers to look for "types" and "patterns" associated with familiarity and safety. For many what is most familiar is what they associate with being the most safe and therefore beautiful. Like baby ducklings imprinting on a rubber boot as "mother" because it is the first thing they see, some of us imprint "beauty" as either a match for how our parents look (or the opposite of how they look depending upon our conditioning), a match for our first love, or the typical visuals our media inundates us with. When life brings love to us or our own bodies to us in a different package, we don't have to give up our real value and sense of appreciation for what's there because of mid-brain conditioned survival imprinting. The heart can set us free from the prison of our own amygdala's pattern recognition obsession, and we can come to see ourselves and each other for who we really are through the eyes of love and appreciation.

Trying to create beauty from the outside in we never win, always chasing a two dimensional image that is disconnected from the essence of who we are. The subsequent insecurity, narcissism and compulsive behaviors this creates, spell stress. A lot of stress. And, isolation and disease. What gets created is a self consciousness that pulls our attention in the wrong direction, insecurely doubting and doting on ourselves and missing full engagement with life. The antidote here is not to stop caring about our appearance, but rather to stop OVERCARING about our appearance and start appreciating the beauty all around us. Appreciation is a powerful energy that brings a uniquely ordered rhythm to our hearts, causing hormonal changes and symmetry in our system that ironically—as we appreciate the beauty in our world—make us more beautiful physically as well.

When we turn our attention to our hearts, rather than exhausting ourselves trying to be "beauty", we begin to see beauty everywhere. And the results can be absolutely magical, for ourselves and others. Tune in tonight to hear more!.

August 6th, 2007

The power of the heart as access to your own dignity and integrity.

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Highlights from the Heart Start call:

Have you ever had all the best of intentions, but still not been able to follow through?
Have you ever had trouble saying what you really mean, or meaning and feeling what you want to be able to say?
Have you ever wanted to feel forgiveness or peace, or wanted to let something go because somewhere in your mind you know that it would be healthier for you and for the situation, but you just don't feel that way yet?
How many New Year's resolutions have you failed to keep?
Ever broken your diet or slid back into an addiction or pattern of behavior that just doesn't feel like "you"?
Ever procrastinated on something that is important to you?

Being out of integrity with ourselves, our committments to ourselves and others, and our own intentions is an expression of as well as a source of stress. Unfortunately, religions and education have made this a moral issue- we're good if we follow through, we're bad if we don't. In that paradigm, the stressful burden of being right or wrong gets added to the stress of trying to line up with who we know we can be. Then we end up either pushing ourselves to be who we conceptually think we should be by sheer force of agressive will. Or, we just sneak around doing whatever it is that we secretly judge about ourselves, justifying it with the mind or hiding it from others and even sometimes ourselves, living in fractured disconnect and internal stress. This, long term, leads to anxiety, depression, resignation, and steals away from us of the quality of life that is right here and available to us in the heart.

When you look at dignity and integrity through the eyes