Welcome! Did you know that our target time to have this newsletter delivered is 8 AM Sunday morning? Probably not, since we haven’t hit that target as much as we would have liked to since we started. David has his part all written and my plan was to get the rest of everything together on Friday. Well, late Thursday night driving home from a date, David had some had some feelings and thoughts come up that led to a challenging conversation in the car, which lead to a conversation Friday morning, which required more conversation Friday afternoon, at which time we saw that the best thing to do was to take a break from each other and schedule a time to come together the next day, bringing hopefully open & loving hearts so we could create a safe container to work through what had come up. Which we did on Saturday afternoon. Saturday night we already had plans to go see Dune 2, and then instead of coming home to work on the newsletter, we decided last minute to go dancing with some friends, hoping that positive energy would be nice & connecting after a couple of days that contained a lot of tough conversations. We’ve been married nearly 23 years, but there’s still so much that we are working to figure out. And it turns out when each member of a partner grows and changes, it pressures the relationship to shift and evolve as well. Here we grow! 🌱

Anyway, at Book Club this week we had a beautiful discussion about the Heart Chakra, and David shares the highlights below.  In Something to Try David shares his experience with an approach to journaling that is working well for him right now. Thanks for spending a bit of your time with us. Oh, and happy Mario Day (March 10 = Mar10 = Mario). That little nugget is courtesy of our son Max, an avid Mario fan.

—Mindy

This week we discussed Chakra Four (Chapter 5) in Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith.

Anahata–-Sound that is made without any two things striking.

Our heart beat starts well before we are born and continues until our last breath. That lub-dub of the drum that no one strikes creates a current bringing life-giving oxygen to every inch of our body. It is fitting that the seat of love, the fourth chakra, represents a nexus of the lower chakras and the upper chakras and is considered an access point to love’s current.

“In entering the fourth chakra, we transcend ego in order to loosen our self-defined boundaries and merge into the ecstasy of love. There is no greater way to invite love than to offer it first. Since it is something we all want and need, we gravitate towards those with whom we feel safe and appreciated. To offer that safety and acceptance to another invites the field of love to flourish. To offer loving energy, whether as verbal compliments, empathic acknowledgments, or physical nurturing, invites similar energy to be returned.” p199

Mindy asked the group to reflect at this just-past-midpoint in our discussion series of Wheels of Life on anything learned or any changes in perspective or behavior since starting this study.

“It has fueled my fascination. It has given me a bigger container to hold these ideas, space for the really extreme woo aspects as well as practical advice for how to check-in with myself.”

“The big aha was breath and heart in one. I definitely knew this when I started doing yoga. It was so obvious to me that breath and heart and love were all connected. When I do yoga my whole day goes better.”

“It has been so beautiful to learn and notice how connected my energy is to how I think about the sources and places of that energy. The more I learn and understand the more I feel able to care for myself and my body.”

“Seeing love as the state of things is so beautiful. Instead of an emotion or a feeling inside of us it’s an inner personal reality. We can be in the flow of love or we can be blocked. Our energy dammed and stopped in us. When I’m in that flow I feel like anything is possible.”

I loved the connection between heart and hands (and arms). Listening to this on a walk I stopped and beamed. Through this framing every keystroke is an act of love. The code I write, the words I type, the food I cook, all of it coming from my energetic nexus point through my hands.

Several mentioned how helpful it was to have a framing of reality that was so body-focused in such a positive way. For my part, this continues to be the stand-out perspective I’m nurturing as I learn about chakras.

“Learning to love takes energy on many levels. We need all of our chakras functioning in order to create and maintain it. We must be able to feel, we must be able to communicate, we must be able to have our own autonomy and power, and we need to be able to see and understand. Most important, we need to relax and let it happen. The heart chakra is yin, and sometimes the most profound love is that which can simply let things be the way they are.” p201

In this book love is not an emotion. It is energy. The heart is not the seat of emotion or romantic love but rather an integrator of the energies of the lower and upper chakras. 

Many loved the connection of heart and breath. A beautiful reminder of how our body is in constant contact with the outside world and drawing life from the world around us. 

“I like looking at my heart as connecting my brain and my gut.”

One of the conversation threads explored how we get out of the current of love. 

“In order to love there must be a certain transcendence of ego and loss of separateness that allows us to experience a greater unity. We give up some of our individuality for this union.” p205

We talked about how we treat our bodies. Many in the group had rituals and practices they turned to to help them stay connected with and feeling compassionately towards their bodies. I recently had the experience of recognizing how much I want my body to function like a machine but needing to treat it more like a pet. Treating ourselves without compassion closes us off from the flow of loving current. 

We talked about rejection and feelings of inadequacy.

Many talked about how much they have relied on intellect, reason, ambition, and hope. All good things but aspects of ourselves that, in the chakra framing, emanate from the upper chakras. Without the grounding and centeredness that comes from rooting ourselves in our emotions and essential life-force these things can pull us into a way of being that feels unmoored; “separating the flame from the fuel.”

We concluded the discussion reflecting on coherence and loving oneself.

“Self-acceptance is our first chance to practice unconditional love. It doesn't mean that we have to give up striving to be better, but that our self-love is not conditional on some future or imagined change. When this occurs within our heart, it then becomes easier to accept others, faults and all, with the unconditional love of the heart chakra. With acceptance and compassion for ourselves, it then becomes easier to make personal changes.” p209

I continue to be struck by how empowering and supportive it is to have a framing of life that is broken up into discrete chunks and mapped to our inner and outer experiences. We all know what it’s like to have energy and to feel depleted. Learning about or deepening an understanding of Chakras is helping me and the others in the book club find new perspectives on what’s working to bring more energy into their lives and to examine ourselves more gently but also more accurately.

—David

NEAT!

Cool stuff that David⚡️ and Mindy✨ hope you’ll like!

• This song by Bronze Radio Return has been my go-to energizing song the past couple of weeks. ✨

• Why we can’t stop overthinking. ✨

• If you’re an adult fan of Wild Kratts, you will absolutely love An Immense World by Ed Yong. You’ll also love it if you’re a curious person who finds the natural world and its animal inhabitants fascinating, or if you enjoy thinking of all the cool ways there are to experience reality. ✨

• As the sun comes out, I wish I had a warehouse to store all the clothes I wished I owned. Oh, and a trust-fund to buy them. For now my Pinterest board (a fun collaboration with a couple friends) will have to do. ⚡️

SOMETHING TO TRY

Mindy is a life-long journaller. I’m not a journaller. I kept a meticulous diary for years–filled with work logs, exercise logs, biohacking experiments, and I did 750-word-a-day entries that became a record of my thinking on some daily interest but no consistent practice of recorded self-reflection. I wanted to be more of a journaller because I wanted the space to know my own mind and to support the vagaries that will become my next evolution but struggle with writing. Long-hand feels too slow and typing is too much like work.

In the last three weeks I started journaling during walks with my voice memo app on my phone. It was initially challenging because I felt resistant to saying what I was thinking out loud. Maybe you can relate to developing a high level of filtering on the thought-say pipeline? So, it has taken some practice but I feel that in that container of journaling I get to know my own mind and practice non-violent communication in my own inner dialogue. As a result I’m finding greater access to very clear articulations of what I desire.

—David

PARTING

WORDS

PIC

That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.