Heart Healthy

Audio Version

Yoga is designed to work all of your muscles rather than a particular group or type of muscle. And this includes your heart. Of course, movement works your heart as it pumps blood through your circulatory system. But that’s not all yoga does for the heart.

Yogis, people who practice yoga, are known for standing on their heads, and for headstands and shoulder stands, and other less exotic versions like legs up the wall – a personal favorite – and the simple forward bend. All of these postures are known as inversions. Every yoga pose has multiple purposes and benefits, but there is one common element of inversions – they bring the head below the heart.

As one of my yoga teachers explained it, the heart’s most important job is to pump blood to the brain. A constant flow of blood to the brain keeps that critical organ healthy and functioning. Most of the time for most of us, to do this important job, the heart is working against gravity. Inversions reverse this and give the heart a bit of a break. 

Focus on the Heart

In other positions, yoga teachers will encourage students to move from their heart center or to focus on the way different positions make them feel. It’s not unusual for people to be surprised by an upwelling of emotion, even tears, during a yoga class. Because our focus is turned inwards during a yoga class we have the ability to pay attention to the movements of our body and how they change from day to day or throughout the class. In the same way, we can learn to focus on the feelings we bring into the class and as they shift as we move through the various postures. Letting ourselves be aware of, and using our practice of self-awareness to understand, what we are feeling is one of the benefits of a consistent yoga practice. This is yet another way, what we learn from the practice of yoga can benefit us off the mat in our daily life and in our leadership work as well. 

Consistently being aware of and understanding our own emotions is one step toward choosing to be more effective as a leader. If we understand what the emotion is, grief rather than anger, fear rather than apathy, a need for calm rather than an unwillingness to try something new, we are more likely to choose effective ways to respond to situations. Understanding our own emotions is one step toward understanding and responding with compassion to others. It also gives us more confidence in making difficult decisions and in trusting the decisions we have made. In times of stress and crisis, being heart healthy can help us manage our own emotions while we support the emotions of others and I suspect most of us could use a little help in that area now. 

Meditation – Heart Breathing

Heart Breathing from: Schiffmann, E. (1996). Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness. Pocket Books: New York.