27/04/2021
How Meditation Affects Heart Health
Decades ago, when the mind-body connection was first being studied, the original findings on meditation centered on heart attacks, strokes, and hypertension. A healthy heart needs to be disease-free. But “heart health” in holistic terms also includes the subtle and emotional qualities of the heart—tenderness, love, acceptance, and compassion. Your whole system, including how you breathe, think, and feel, meet at this most sensitive spot—your heart. Statistics have repeatedly shown that a sudden emotional shock or life change (such as being fired or losing your spouse) makes people significantly more prone to disease, including heart disease and heart attacks.
To show you how central your heart is, let’s take five minutes to sit, following these simple steps:
Close your eyes
Place your attention on your heart, breathing easily
Let thoughts and sensations come and go as they will, like a quiet observer
After five minutes are up, open our eyes
What was happening in your heart for those five minutes? When people compare their experiences, they find that almost any thought could be passing through the heart, every emotion and memory, every sensation, positive or negative. Seeing how central the heart is, in terms of experience, the ancient Vedic seers made it one of the major energy centers (or Chakras) of the body, that gets balanced through meditation.