My spontaneous proposal

Lessons learned from talking to my heart

When I was 19 years old, my girlfriend and I had been dating for six months. One very late night when we were sitting on the couch, madly in love, my heart decided to blurt out: will you marry me?

The words came directly from the heart, went through the head completely unfiltered, and out of my mouth.

The funny thing is that I had done very little mental processing of the idea and was completely taken by surprise myself. It was a spontaneous proposal. I had no wedding rings, no plans, was not on my knees. The question just arose within my heart, and I allowed it to come out.

Fortunately, she said yes! 16 years later we are still married and very much in love. It’s been one of the bedrock decisions of my life, and I’m glad we made it so early.

Through that decision and many like it, I’ve learned that:

• the heart is a key part of us with it’s own opinions, feelings, frustrations, etc

• most of us ignore the heart unless it is shouting

• we can learn to talk to the heart in a direct, casual manner

• the heart and the mind should work together, to create balance

“Listen to your heart” is often thought of as a cute metaphor, which it was to me until I realized how to do it. It feels a bit like switching the input source on the car stereo: sound either comes from one source, say the radio, or from another, like Bluetooth. And most of us are stuck on radio (aka the mind) most of the time. But they’re saying completely different things!

How to talk to your heart

We all can do it but let me be clear: I’m not speaking metaphorically here! This is a very real behavioral shift that for most people is distinct from their regular way of living. I’ll do my best to guide you through it.

Let’s begin with something easy. We all know how to determine if we’re hungry. It’s pretty obvious. We just feel it.

In the few cases when our level of hunger is not top of mind, we easily “query” our belly. If I ask you how hungry you are, you’ll simply send a request to your belly area and you’ll get the approximate hunger status as a response. (Sorry, software engineer here!)

Same with pain, it’s pretty obvious. Look for it, and you’ll know.

When it comes to tiredness though, it’s kind of easy but sometimes I’ll misdiagnose it. My body might say “I’m not tired!!” and then 30 minutes later be exhausted. You know? So there’s some noise there.

And then when it comes to speaking to the heart, if you haven’t done it before, you might feel that you’re getting no signal whatsoever, so we can put that on the hardest side of the spectrum.

This doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Let’s go back to the question of how tired you are. Usually, for me, it’s a matter of being still for a little bit and actually listening to the body. Going beyond the thoughts, taking a breath and saying…. okay, actually this is what the body says… here’s what I’m feeling in my muslces… or in my head, the head is a little fuzzy… and so on, continuing to scan the body until I get a clearer picture of how tired I am.

The same approach works for talking to the heart. Some silence, patience and concentration gets you far.

Here are the rough steps. No worries if they don’t work yet, you’ll get there.

1. Close your eyes

2. Move your awareness to your body, start to feel the sensations of the body (tension, joy, frustration, whatever you feel, just observe it)

3. Deepen your breath a little bit

4. Move your awareness to the center of your chest

5. Feel for emotions in this area (use the same approach as “how hungry am I?” — just ask “what am I feeling in this region?”)

6. Say your results out loud (or write them down)

7. Ask “what else?” a few times as you remain mentally still and silent, and really focus your awareness on the center/front of your chest (really picturing you are in that area, as if you’re a microscopic being hanging out in your heart region)

8. If you don’t feel anything, continue breathing and just relax, just sit with it, keeping your attention in this region

9. Keep writing whatever you feel

Now, you may be feeling nothing, just an emotion or pressure, or you may be easy to label for you like:

• I feel stress because <something about tomorrow>

• I am glad because I managed to do <thing>

• I really miss <person>

Whatever you’re feeling or not feeling, don’t worry, all of it is normal. Don’t analyze it, just write it down if you can.

Now, step two of talking to the heart is asking a question and sending it to the heart region. It’s not a new technique to you, you’re doing all the time when you’re asking your belly “how hungry am I?” or “do I want to eat sushi?” You’re just sending it to a different place than you’re used to.

After you’ve sent a question to your heart, repeat the listening steps above and write down your answer.

And that, my friends, is speaking to the heart.

You might say…

• “I can’t feel anything” — that’s fine, keep practicing. You didn’t learn to ride a bike, swim (or even walk!) in a day either. But discovering new capabilities in your body is something you’ve done your entire life, so you’ll get there. The key is to stay with it, sit with it, and keep your awareness in the heart region, without thinking too much while you’re there. Breathe slowly and observe your “surroundings” (when you picture yourself in there).

• “I feel something but I can’t put words on it” — this is very common and perhaps you may be focusing too much on the physical part of your body. The physical sensations like touch, temperature and pain etc are all relevant, but try to look for feeling. Try some starters:

  • “How does a cozy winter day with hot chocolate make me feel?”

  • “How did I feel during a recent, happy memory, and why?”

  
  You can probably answer these pretty easily. Talking to the heart is just like this, just more focused in on an area (because it’s the heart and not your entire emotional system you’re querying).
  
  So stay with it!

• “That’s easy” — Great! It’s not easy for everyone, so you’ve come a long way. Are you doing this often, or only every now and then? I find it that my heart wants to speak to me daily, but it’s on me to tap in.

Over the years I’ve learned to talk to my heart daily and balance it’s wisdom with that of my mind. It hasn’t always been easy and I’ve made many mistakes, but listening to the heart has taken me to so many beautiful outcomes, and I hope it does for you too! ✨

Blessings,
Jon

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PS: To those of you who are new subscribers to Heartdrive, thank you! If this is your first post, you may want to check out this important primer: Why meditation is hard and how to fix it. 🙏