131 Marbles
God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Yesterday, a co-worker complained about having chest pain while we were at work. He is a young man in good physical condition, so despite it being a warning sign of a heart attack, it is unlikely. I recalled how after my breakup with Ex-man, it felt like I had a leg-hold trap on the center of my chest and I suggested that the young man could be suffering from a broken heart. He looked at me oddly (but now I don’t care if people think that I’m crazy - see Marble 133) but he replied that, indeed, he was suffering from lost love but he argued that his pain was at the center of his chest not at his heart.
I’m going to go rogue here and stray from Western thought concerning health. In Eastern tradition, the body has several energy centers, one of which corresponds to the heart and is found in the center of the chest. Is it such a stretch to consider that if a person is grieving a loss that the anahata chakra (heart chakra) would be tight?
If you google tightness in chest, many hits list it as a precursor of a heart attack. In addition, there are many chat groups with people looking for answers why their doctors and cardiologists can find no answers for their chest pain. Some have undergone EKGs and other tests only to be told that there was no physical cause of the chest pain.
Stay with me here as a relate a story of how I met a friend for dinner after he had just completed a medical school exam. When I asked how his exam went, he complained that his whole class failed on one of the patients. He and his cohorts were asked to go around a room filled with patients suffering from various ailments. The future doctors were then asked to diagnose each patient. The patient who trumped them all was an older woman who complained of lack of sleep, loss of appetite, and other nebulous symptoms. What eluded my friend and his cohorts was the detail that the woman’s husband had recently died (they didn’t ask the right questions). Whereas her diagnosis would never medically be “a broken heart,” this was the cause of her physical suffering.
The chakras can’t be X-rayed or EKG’d yet who hasn’t experienced the warm glowing feeling emitted from the center of the chest when around a loved one? Who hasn’t experienced the feeling of being punched in the gut (or manipura chakra) when experiencing a browbeating? Who could say if those people who suffer from heart attacks are not also suffering from broken hearts? (There are a many people who walk around for years with arterial plaque who never suffer from a heart attack.) How do our experiences affect our energetic body and our physical body? How does our energetic body affect our experiences?
What I know for sure is that after Ex-man moved out, my heart felt as dry as cracker juice and as tight as a fiddle string (I’m studying Southernisms, can you tell?). 235 Marbles later, my heart is happy as a clam at high tide.
How is your heart feeling? If it is feeling better than after the initial breakup, take a moment to appreciate grace. If your heart is still feeling Grinchy (two sizes too small), reach out to people who make you feel safe and loved and do some heart-swelling activities*…
God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Yesterday, a co-worker complained about having chest pain while we were at work. He is a young man in good physical condition, so despite it being a warning sign of a heart attack, it is unlikely. I recalled how after my breakup with Ex-man, it felt like I had a leg-hold trap on the center of my chest and I suggested that the young man could be suffering from a broken heart. He looked at me oddly (but now I don’t care if people think that I’m crazy - see Marble 133) but he replied that, indeed, he was suffering from lost love but he argued that his pain was at the center of his chest not at his heart.
I’m going to go rogue here and stray from Western thought concerning health. In Eastern tradition, the body has several energy centers, one of which corresponds to the heart and is found in the center of the chest. Is it such a stretch to consider that if a person is grieving a loss that the anahata chakra (heart chakra) would be tight?
If you google tightness in chest, many hits list it as a precursor of a heart attack. In addition, there are many chat groups with people looking for answers why their doctors and cardiologists can find no answers for their chest pain. Some have undergone EKGs and other tests only to be told that there was no physical cause of the chest pain.
Stay with me here as a relate a story of how I met a friend for dinner after he had just completed a medical school exam. When I asked how his exam went, he complained that his whole class failed on one of the patients. He and his cohorts were asked to go around a room filled with patients suffering from various ailments. The future doctors were then asked to diagnose each patient. The patient who trumped them all was an older woman who complained of lack of sleep, loss of appetite, and other nebulous symptoms. What eluded my friend and his cohorts was the detail that the woman’s husband had recently died (they didn’t ask the right questions). Whereas her diagnosis would never medically be “a broken heart,” this was the cause of her physical suffering.
The chakras can’t be X-rayed or EKG’d yet who hasn’t experienced the warm glowing feeling emitted from the center of the chest when around a loved one? Who hasn’t experienced the feeling of being punched in the gut (or manipura chakra) when experiencing a browbeating? Who could say if those people who suffer from heart attacks are not also suffering from broken hearts? (There are a many people who walk around for years with arterial plaque who never suffer from a heart attack.) How do our experiences affect our energetic body and our physical body? How does our energetic body affect our experiences?
What I know for sure is that after Ex-man moved out, my heart felt as dry as cracker juice and as tight as a fiddle string (I’m studying Southernisms, can you tell?). 235 Marbles later, my heart is happy as a clam at high tide.
How is your heart feeling? If it is feeling better than after the initial breakup, take a moment to appreciate grace. If your heart is still feeling Grinchy (two sizes too small), reach out to people who make you feel safe and loved and do some heart-swelling activities*…
*My personal (celibate) heart-swelling activities are doing yoga and watching my kids sleep.
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