The Somatic Experience of Love
Every year, Valentine’s Day can trigger emotions that feel far from love. Some people may feel the obligation to celebrate and exchange gifts or book romantic dinners just to fulfill societal and personal expectations. Others can be forced to confront feelings that are closer to the range of pain. The idea of celebrating Love is meaningful and worthy when it doesn’t feel forced and subdued to the commercial value of this festivity.
If you are someone who does not anticipate Valentine’s Day or even has an aversion to it, bringing the focus on the felt-sense, the somatic feeling of Love itself might help. Love can have many names and shades, all valid: it ranges from gratitude to self-compassion. Whatever our perception, love can be found in anyone’s life in one form or another. Even if you don’t feel like you have anything to celebrate, your own Heart deserves to be celebrated at least once a year. For starters, science proves what we already intuitively know: love is good for the heart. The evidence leads again to the autonomic nervous system and the way it affects our cardiovascular health through the stress response. What if our love life is less than gratifying? The good news is that self-love counts.
I’m not suggesting that we should express our self-love by splurging on expensive retreats or spa days. While it can be nice to treat yourself on occasion, the daily practice of self-love is what really makes a difference in our well-being.
You’ve probably heard it said many times that the most important relationship is the relationship with yourself. Whether you are feeling lonely or have a number of satisfying relationships in your life, improving self-love can be a good investment. A great place to begin is assessing your self-love quotient: do you fully and open-heartedly accept yourself despite any shortcomings, feelings of guilt, or regrets? If the honest answer is “no”, then some simple self-inquiry practices such as journaling might help.
Deeper work might be needed at times. iRest Yoga Nidra is a wonderful guided meditative practice that can be used to process both everyday emotional material as well as rooted, long-standing self-beliefs and energetic blockages. Emotional processing is key to avoiding somatization - the physical manifestation of psychological symptoms in the body.
Emotions such as grief, anxiety and depression can have a toll on the heart’s health, but despite life’s ups and downs and the inevitable events that can cloud even the most emotionally balanced person’s mental well-being, we are not powerless and helpless amid life’s storms. There are many heart-centered practices that can help us stay afloat and find a connection to our own heart, which is within our reach and independent from life circumstances.
Connection fosters heart coherence and is strictly associated with vagal tone, whether it is a connection to ourselves or an interpersonal and social connection. Vagal tone equals resilience, the ability to bounce back from stress in daily life. A high vagal tone index is associated with cardiovascular health, emotional and mental weelbeing. When we feel connected, vagal tone increases and the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of our nervous system become perfectely modulated. This is the less talked about mode of our autonomic nervous system and it is more typically female: the “tend and befriend”.
The neurotransmitter associated with this type of response is oxytocin, which just happens to be “the love hormone”. Oxytocin is triggered by breastfeeding to facilitate bonding between mother and baby. Lovemaking and loving interactions in general also stimulate the release of this neurotransmitter. Oxytocin counteracts the effects of cortisol on the system, therefore reducing stress and promoting feelings of relaxation and connection, a sort of feedback loop of love. Oxytocin production is stimulated by touch, so simple practices such as placing your hands over your heart while you focus on your breath can help awaken a somatic, felt-sense of love that is unconditional and unrelated to any thing or person in particular, yet once present can be easily directed to yourself, others and life in general.
According to research by the HearthMath Institute, the electromagnetic field around the heart has an intensity that is higher than the brain’s. This provides measurable evidence of the range of emotions that we commonly associate with love – or the absence of it - and that we somatically experience around the physical heart. This EM field might correspond to the yogic subtle anatomy center of the Heart Chakra.
So, love is a frequency and we can attune to this frequency through the therapeutic use of heart-centered practices. If you are looking for ways to practice self-care and self-love, the following are a few simple but powerful practices that can help awaken your connection to the heart.
Try these out for yourself to experience your energy field shift and match the frequency of love…
1. Coherent Breath: Research shows that when the heart and breath rhythms are synchronized, we reach heart coherence, a physiological state that is conducive to optimal heart health and overall systemic balance. Breath is the simplest, most effective tool to affect our physiology, leading to physical, mental, and emotional balance, and it is always readily available. This technique consists of regulating the breath so that we have an equal ratio in length between inhale and exhale.
To practice: try sitting for a few moments and listen to your breath, when the heart rate is normalized, begin counting the length of each inhale and exhale and slowly work on balancing the two by progressively lengthening one or the other by one count at a time. Continue for a few minutes. Never force your breath and stop if you feel dizzy or nauseous. Breathwork is a powerful tool and should be learned with the help of a qualified teacher.
2. Garuda Mudra (Eagle Mudra): Mudras are hand gestures that create an intended energetic alignment in our system. This one in particular is excellent for opening into the soft energies of the heart, bringing comfort and joy, and is thought to promote several health benefits.
To practice: bring your hands in front of the heart, palms facing you, arms crossed at the wrists so that the left palm is in front of the right side of the chest and vice versa. Hook the thumbs together and stay here for several minutes, focusing your attention on the heart as if you were breathing directly in and out of it. Let your breathing be relaxed and feel into any sensations and images that arise. Hold the mudra for about 10 minutes.
3. Heart Chakra mantras or seed sounds: we all know that singing is good for the heart. Our energy centers vibrate at different frequencies, expressed by specific colors and primordial sounds. The heart’s seed sound is YAM.
To practice: try vocalizing the sound “y” and notice where it vibrates in your body. Then take a breath in and slowly let it out as you vocalize the sound Yam, emphasizing the initial Y. Let your whole body and being resonate. Repeat several times. You can place your hands on the heart to enhance the feeling of connection and the release of oxytocin. A faster, rhythmic repetition of the seed sound Yam brings more activation to the heart chakra and might help with feelings of loneliness, sadness, or depression. The slower chanting may help calm feelings of anxiety and fear.
4. Go Green: the color green is associated with the heart chakra. Although simple visualization can be very effective if you are a visual person, the healing properties of this color can be absorbed through different sensory pathways when you are outdoors, basking in green sights and smells. It seems like no coincidence that the phytoncides, essential oils released by trees, have been shown to support immune function, and nature in general is known to reduce stress and benefit the health of the heart.
These practices can be wonderful to experience alone or with a loved one, so feel free to share them with someone you love!
Please note that these are generalized suggestions. For more personalized therapeutic guidance based on your individual needs and ayurvedic constitution, please schedule a consultation.
