Or the Anahata Chakra if you want to test my newly learned Yoga knowledge. Often regarded as nothing more than a necessary pump as if our bodies were just fishponds full of weeds, algae & mosquitos to be cleared. Our hearts are extaordinary, just take a look at any Heart Bypass machine and you will see what I mean.
The truth is no matter what we seemingly do to capsize these extraordinary organs treating them as unsinkable ‘boats against the current’ believing with a childlike innocence that ‘tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther’ one day you realise you are not waking from a Fitzgerald illusion comprising of Beautiful gowns, bespoke tailoring and careless people you are waking up in a Hospital bed at Harefield Hospital texting your Pilates teacher.
There is a strange reaasurance and dread when you know someone you care about is at a world renowned Hospital, relief that they are somewhere known for its success and dread that the person you were teaching just a few hours before is in need of extraordinary skill & knowledge.
That moment you knew your instinct was right but that time would only tell after you had asked all the right questions and hoped you were wrong.
As a teacher this moment was an unexpected pivot point in my career, I’ve been teaching for over 22 years and at that moment I could easily have never taught again, perhaps it was fortuitous that I was starting my Yoga training the very next day. There was only one direction of travel and it wasn’t backwards but that’s another blog post.
As long training weekends, my usual classes and clients brought me back to my teaching rhythm not unlike the systolic and diastolic pressures we are usually blissfully unaware of I was reminded that to teach you only have to know stuff, to be an inspired teacher you have to want to share the stuff you know & be excited & challenged when your learning something new.
It takes the brain and the heart, the whole beautiful system to be an extaordinary teacher because you literally put your heart, your mind and frequently your back into it, you have to let things come and go, as the teacher you have to breathe experience in and out.
As for my client he’s doing well, got signed of yesterday by his cardiac rehab team for doing so well and even sent me some flowers in gratitude, and yes he has continued with Pilates and yes with me, these things happen, he said, don’t sweat it (even though he does, I’ve seen the evidence)
So give your hearts a thought, these amazing organs deserve our care, they are evolutionary marvels needing us only to pay a little attention, by the way did I mention my client was my first husband? It is possible to heal all matters of the heart if you just take a little care of yourself and others, it’s really not so hard, you just have to bring your heart and mind together and realise that we really are all boats bobbing along with pasts and stories but we don’t have to become shipwrecks of memories long past, that outcome is our choice and ours alone to make, one heartbeat at a time.
Namaste
Suzy
