Heart Based Practice

Moving from a head/ego based practice to a heart based practice.

I've had a lot of learning from happenings in life for the recent times that has lead to the real beginning of a heart-based practice. To not think with the brain, but to lead with the heart, for the mind to yield.

Ajahn Chah in Training of the Heart said "Listening to your own heart is really very interesting. This untrained heart races around following its own untrained habits. It jumps about excitedly, randomly, because it has never been trained. Therefore train your heart! Meditation is about the heart; to develop the heart or mind, to develop your own heart. This is very, very important. This training of the heart is the main emphasis. Only this!

In the beginning you have to train your heart like this. You may not understand what is happening or what the point of it is, but when told to do something, then you must do it. You will develop the virtues of patience and endurance. you indulge in following your own views and try to practice accordingly, then you will start thinking and doubting a lot. The Buddha taught like this: ''Ananda, practice a lot! Develop your practice constantly! Then all your doubts, all your uncertainties, will vanish''. These doubts will never vanish through thinking, nor through theorizing, nor through speculation, nor through discussion. Nor will doubts disappear by not doing anything. All defilements will vanish through developing the heart, through right practice only.

The nature of our heart is such that whenever it clings and grasps there is agitation and confusion. First it might wander over there, then it might wander over here. When we come to observe this agitation, we might think that it's impossible to train the heart and so we suffer accordingly. We don't understand that this is the way the heart is. There will be thought and feelings moving about like this even though we are practicing, trying to attain peace. That's the way it is.When we have contemplated many times the nature of the heart, then we will come to understand that this heart is just as it is and can't be otherwise. We will know that the heart's ways are just as they are. That's its nature."

How can we apply this to our yoga practice on the mat and in life? In yoga, to yield the mind and direct the practice to the heart. To lead from the heart. It changes the practice and the sensation of energy flow, the breath changes. In short, we step out of the way for Nature and the natural breath and energy flow of the Universe and Consciousness.

But for many, it's so challenging cos the mind has been so conditioned to lead. To think. To critique. To question. Not to follow blindly. In many ways, it is the un-conditioning and yielding of the mind to let the heart speak.

Yoga has many paths, jnana yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga. The devotion and surrender through japas, kirtan and mantras allow the natural flow of the way so that the heart has space to speak (as the mind steps aways) and as my teacher Ramanandji says, with the chakra lessons, in the end, there is only LOVE.

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” ~ Rumi

“Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” ~ Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi

“Love is not an emotion, it’s your very existence.” ~ Rumi