LOVE YOUR HEART THIS FEBRUARY AND BEYOND
While love is in the air, let there also be love in your heart!
Love for self, love for others, love for new experiences – these are all beautiful things! This month, let’s also explore a few ways we can love our heart from the inside out.
You may or may not be aware that there’s a powerful connection between your heart and your brain. According to the HeartMath Institute, a nonprofit organization whose mission is centered on the heart-mind connection:
“Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions).
The heart has been considered the source of emotion, courage and wisdom for centuries. For more than 30 years, the HeartMath Institute Research Center has explored the physiological mechanisms by which the heart and brain communicate and how the activity of the heart influences our perceptions, emotions, intuition and health.”
With the intention to love your heart this February and beyond, here are three ways to nurture your heart, health and happiness at work, at home and the spaces in between:
1. Strengthen your heart muscle each day. In chatting with a coaching client last week and she asked, “do I have to sweat for it to count?”. To be honest, people sweat for a variety of reasons, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the intensity of the workout. We invite you to look for ways to increase your heart rate and rate of respiration (breathing) each day. It could be a structured cardio workout (like interval training) or something like scrubbing the floors of your house by hand or doing yard work. An object in motion stays in motion. We’d love nothing more than to see you staying active with a strong, healthy heart and lungs!
2. Notice what happens in your body – around the area of the heart. Are there moments in your day when you sense it physically tightening from the stress of something? Are there moments when you feel the thrill of excitement and therefore notice your body feeling free and energized? The mind-body connection is a powerful one, and emotions will often manifest within the body. When worry, anxiety, stress, overwhelm or distress set in, there’s often a visceral reaction. Use this as a reminder to step into a self-care activity to restore balance in the body. This practice leads to the final recommendation ...
3. Practice loving-kindness meditation often. This is a type of meditation centered on sending loving and kind thoughts to yourself or someone else. You might even choose to focus on a person you are having an especially hard time loving. When you experience unrest with someone, it’s likely that YOU are feeling the effects of that conflict. By focusing on your breath, by finding something to love in everyone and by sending loving thoughts to someone else, your mind and body will benefit. Learn more here!
We hope that this blog post gets the wheels of awareness turning around mind-body connection and how you can support your heart from the inside out for your personal benefit and the world’s benefit too! Sit with these ideas, then look for ways to bring these healthy practices related to physical fitness, mindfulness and meditation into your workday and workplace. Need a hand in thinking that through? The Wellness Collective team would LOVE nothing more than to support you through the process of launching or improving a workplace wellness initiative that your employees will LOVE too.
Author: Katy Tombaugh