Inner Body Listening
Tend To Your Hearts Frequency
Hello wise friend,
How is your heart today?
Really, how is your heart feeling today?
When was the last time you checked in?
Turned inwards, stilled yourself and softly felt into the landscape, terrain and frequency of your heart.
When did you last offer up a healing ritual or nourishing energy practice or the kind touch of your hand to soothe or remedy any energy disturbances in your deserving heart?
Checking in daily with my heart has fortified and nourished me in so many subtle ways.
It has quickly become my daily not negotiable ritual.
Naturally I had to share it with you. It may well be the healing ritual you are needing most today.
Let’s check in (now) together and see what the landscape of our heart is experiencing today.
With one hand on your chest
Let the touch and warmth of your hand settle there
Turn your awareness inwards
Rest your inner gaze and inner vision at your heart
Feel and listen into the beat of your heart
Feel and listen into the aliveness of your heart.
Be with the miracle of that for a few breaths.
When you feel ready, in your own time quietly ask yourself
How is my heart today?
Hold the space with your inner gaze. Let the answer come.
Trust your first impressions, the distant whispers - in whatever language or imagery your heart chooses.
I don’t know what your heart felt, sensed or intuit today, but for me, I noticed a little clenching and some tightness in my heart and chest area. It made sense. I’ve been breathing worrying thoughts through my body. Overthinking (nothing new there). They’ve taken hold and planted themselves in my heart, which in turn has tightened my lung breathing, collapsed my chest and posture (think rounded/slumped shoulders), dulled my frequency and contracted my hearts energy field.
Life can be harsh, uncertain and very changeable. My heart feels it. In response she clenches and braces herself. My heart is no longer emitting harmonious waves of energy. My whole body and the space around me is affected.
Today I prescribed myself the ritual for a clenched heart (see below) with a little therapeutic humming.
Each day is different. There’s no right nor wrong.
For me it’s all about showing up for the heart each day and connecting in some small way with a kind ritual.
Some days all the heart needs is the kind touch of your hand, and the encouragement of breath.
Here’s a few rituals for the heart that may resonate.
Enjoy exploring.
: Ritual for a clenched heart :
With hand on heart begin weaving the vibrational qualities of the words softness and spaciousness through the layers of your heart.
Inhaling the essence of softness and spaciousness into the heart.
Exhaling the essence softness and spaciousness from the heart.
Inhaling softness and spaciousness into the heart.
Exhaling softness and spaciousness from the heart.
Inhaling softness and spaciousness into the heart.
Exhaling softness and spaciousness from the heart.
Your heart and chest area begins - very slowly - breath by breath - to respond by releasing and opening a little with each practice.
This is what I privately noticed inside my body today after practising the above ritual ( if you’re curious).
My chest, lungs and ribs became a little more open. My lungs breathed more evenly (no jerky rushed breaths). My rounded shoulders gradually corrected themselves. Shoulders dropped as they surrendered their tight grip. Spine naturally felt like lengthening. Heart organically lifted herself up inside my chest cavity. I sat taller. Front of the body more open. Back of the spine stronger. Heart felt more confident. Inner trust restored. Hooray!
My heart now has the energetic space to move life a little more effortlessly through her.
My heart has the energetic space to hold more compassion, more kindness, more understanding, more appreciation and more love into her atmosphere and beyond. Amen to that!
: Ritual for a hurting heart :
We are not fixing anything here.
The strokes of healing ritual is purely to comfort the hurting heart. Help settle the intensity of any hurt, shock or upset.
Place one hand on top of the other on your chest.
Comfort and soothe your deserving heart space with slow, circular strokes of healing.
Use as much or as little pressure as you like. Sometimes the weight of firm yet gentle pressure is needed.
Keep moving your hands in either small or slightly larger circles over the chest area.
Try clockwise then anti-clockwise. See which one your heart prefers today.
Apothecary support:
Massage a little warmed olive oil into the chest area. Warmed oil on the skin is deeply comforting to the nervous system. Think abhyanga, the warm oil ritual of Ayurveda.
Geranium essential oil holds the energy of being hugged by Mother Nature. Rub one drop of geranium essential oil into the chest area. It energetically gives me the feeling that I am safe - I am held.
: Ritual for an anxious heart :
Sound and breath combined is deeply healing. My teacher Mother Maya believes it helps remove fear, anxiety and exhaustion.
Humming into the heart uses currents of sound to shift, clear and transmute energy.
Place one hand on the heart and the other hand on top of your head. This helps you feel into the vibrational currents of the hum as it moves inside you.
As you hum on the exhale - the sound vibration of the hum flows downwards from the mouth, through the throat and into the hand resting on your heart. At the same time the vibration of the hum travels upwards from the mouth, through your head and into the hand resting on your crown.
One minute humming into the heart is comforting.
Five minutes humming into the heart is deeply healing.
Thank you for reading all the way down to here. I do hope you find one or more of the above rituals helpful or at the very least a timely reminder of a ritual you’ve practiced in the past. I know many of you reading this are already skilled at being your own healer.
To finish - without a doubt, we can all do with more kindness, trust, love and appreciation pulsing through our hearts energy field. It is becoming more and more a frequency priority for me.
I am here for you if you are feeling the intuitive pull to reach out.
May you be your own medicine, one pause, one breath and one healing ritual at a time.
Much love
xox Carole
Oxygenate Your Fragile Places (audio)
Image is by the brilliant Charlie Mackesy from his book ‘The boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’. It’s one of my favourites. You only have to hold the book to your heart to feel the love bursting from its pages.
If you happen to be new here and my words resonate you are welcome to subscribe to my monthly musings.
This is wonderful.
Thanks 🙏