“You change your life by changing your heart”. —Max Lucado
If you’ve been to yoga and you put yourself into any chest opening, heart opening pose, you’ve tapped into the energy of your Heart Meridian, the Yin half of this Yin/Yang pairing. Perhaps on a more subtle level you were able to detect a settling of your digestive tract as well.
The Heart Meridian starts in the heart and has three branches. One dips down into the diaphragm and small intestine, another goes into the neck and throat and eventually the eye and the third branch goes across the chest and lungs, into each armpit and down the length of the inside of each arm to the wrist and finally pinky. This meridian pairing is perhaps one that is a bit more understandable in its paths as we review classic signs of a heart attack, which can include a wide variety of symptoms, from digestive and respiratory issues, tightness in the chest, to acute pain in the neck and arm.
The Small Intestine Meridian, the Yang and hence more active half of this pairing, starts in the pinky finger, near where branches of the heart end, goes up the arm and shoulder where, like the heart, also branches into three paths, one to the heart, diaphragm, stomach and small intestine, another into the neck, head and outer eye and ear, and one tiny branch goes into the head and ends in the inner eye.
The heart itself lies just to the left in the chest between the lungs and supplies the body with oxygenated blood. And for such a small little guy, generally fist-sized, it’s often called the body’s manager. That’s a big job! It is constantly at work and knows no rest. The heart is traditionally felt to be the emotional center, tied to love, compassion, and empathy. Early yoga practitioners realized this idea as they opened their heart space physically, emotional space followed suit. Have you heard the phrase “holding space” for someone? This means stepping back and setting your own needs aside, giving someone who needs attention and care a little more than you. Showing them kindness. This empathy comes easily to some, to others, not so. Yoga might be the answer. Yoga can change your heart, physically and emotionally. Or, as Max put it, “You change your life by changing your heart”.
The small intestine is extensively involved in digestion and receives what the stomach has not completely broken down. It continues the process of separation and absorption and performs about 90% of the body’s digestive duties, working in tandem with the liver, gallbladder and pancreas, processing food into waste material to send to the colon. Digestion may seem all stomach-related, but it is closely related to matters of the heart, as evidenced by heartburn, often mistaken for heart attack. Digestion discomfort may be a sign that something more serious is going on higher up in the body.
That seems logical if you consider that these two meridians often traverse the body in proximity of one another and when this pair is in balance, we are energetic, vibrant and alive, and when out of whack, we experience poor circulation, hardening of the arteries, cold hands and feet, as well as digestive and heart problems. Emotionally we feel sad and we tend to close down. Additionally, this pair’s element is fire and its season is summer, fitting, as most folks thrive on warmer, sunnier days. In the dead of winter, on a not so sunny day, if you are feeling blue and closed off to the world, try a heart-opening practice, tapping into your own healing abilities to stoke better heart health and tapping into the body’s ability to manifest the physical into the emotional, the more subtle layers of our energetic being. Close off your heart, you close yourself off from the world. These are tough times all around the globe and it can be really easy to turn away from it. Instead, try opening yourself up to it. Tap into your emotional heart and perhaps that will be your approach to stoking better heart health. It has to start somewhere! It really is no surprise when you create more space in the chest, you expand the ribs, lung and heart space, you just feel better. If you do it consistently, the benefits build up.