Open Your Heart with an Exercise for Your Mind

Earlier this month, we focused on the invisible armor that surrounds areas of our body. Today I’d like to focus on another kind of armor: The kind surrounding the heart.

If you have ever been hurt, abandoned or wounded by a loved one, chances are  you have become very skilled at protecting your heart. It could look like testing people to see if they are really who they say they are. Or it could be walking around so completely closed that your energy is a barrier to love presenting itself to you. I have noticed that the people who are most protected are the ones that declare so loudly that they desperately want a loving relationship.

Protecting the heart is an illusion

How can someone can fall in love seemingly against all common sense? Because the heart cannot be controlled. It is connected to a universal oneness and the essence of that oneness is love. We can try to run from love, hide, pretend we do not care. But the truth is that we have all come here to love, and closing down or withdrawing from that call can only bring misery and complete discomfort.

I know it can be challenging to remain open. We all walk the path of trusting that there is some profound reason we are called to stay open. It is easy to find reasons to shield and protect ourselves if we rely on the information that bombards us daily. There is news of dysfunction, war, hunger and dishonoring of the human spirit. But what if we choose to see the world through the lens of love and openness? What if we began to look through different filters that begin with an open heart?

Try this exercise to help you open your heart

Sit down and center yourself for contemplation. Have a journal or a piece of paper next to you. Gently breathe. Allow your body to relax. Ask the following questions slowly and methodically:

1. When do I shut down and withhold my loving? What initiates this action?
2. How long has the past defined how I respond to life?
3. How will love enter if I am closed?
4. How do I feel when unconditional love is present?
5. What would my life reveal if love was my first response?

Contemplate these questions daily for a month. Simply journal the answers and be totally honest. From them, create an affirmation that opens your heart when you say it aloud. Speak it daily and as often as you like. Then, once a day, act from love in some area that challenges you. Every time you choose differently, you will chip away at the armor that has imprisoned the beauty of your heart.

Try this affirmation to help you remain open

Today, I release the armor of the past that surrounds my heart. I open to love!