Solarsystem. Our heart.

TENDING THE HEART FIRE | ARTICLE BY SHIVA RAE 

"At the center of the magnificent and elegant universe of the body is our very own sun, the heart. Within this heart burns a fire. Fire is at the core of our existence. From the original primordial fire of the big bang to the generative energy of the sun, all life depends on light and heat for creation and survival. Our Heart Fire, the energetic center of our bodies, functions as a pulse of life, just as the sun functions as the life pulse for our solar system. As the sun radiates the animating heat that warms the planet and animates all life, our hearts pump blood and nutrients throughout the body, sending electromagnetic waves outward that connect to the world around us. There are thousands of examples of how our external environment and our bodies work in unison. As such, the vinyasa, or flow, of our bodies—what we eat, when we sleep, when we create, when we rest—seeks to be in harmony with the natural rhythms of the natural world and our source of energy, the sun. Just as the length of days increases in spring and summer, releasing a great generative energy that allows for new buds on the trees and a great expanse of green to blanket the earth, our bodies experience windows of potential for creation. And just as the world around us darkens in winter, our bodies seek to move inward, rest, and reflect in the season of winter and in the night. The cycles of time are mapped in the body—and when we attune to those internal and external forces, we are able to experience enormous peace, harmony, creativity, and longevity.

In the typical working world, in a life that becomes ever more mechanized and urban, we need to find a new way of being. Yet it isn’t entirely a new way of being, but a return to the ways of our ancestors, who placed the movements of the environment at the foreground of their lives. As such, much wisdom is actually a remembering of what our bodies already know to be true. When we sync our lives with fire in our hearts, we can access the wild joys of creation and manifestation, the spontaneous bursts of newness and discovery. Similarly, we can access the slowing and inward movements that allow us to fall back into the wide, spacious quiet of gestation and rejuvenation, which is critical for finding peace and wholeness in our bodies. Everything in nature, and everything in our being, goes through a process of expansion and contraction. It is the heartbeat, expanding and contracting, that keeps us alive. This living in deep attunement to the natural rhythms of the planet is what I call “living in flow with the pulse of life.”