Mind Over What?

On Saturday, we were talking about love and relationships and sex and celibacy and marriage and pending karma and someone said but Mother Teresa said you should love until it hurts. And then another person said that's why she died of the heart. Whoa.

The heart area is the part of the body that has to do with giving. If you give healthily you will feel a very nice sensation in this area. If your giving is unbalanced, you may feel a sort of pressure there, and eventually it will affect these organ's functions, whether you're conscious of it or not. Have you ever noticed that when you give openly and freely it becomes easier to breathe?

Two weeks ago I experienced something similar with another part of the body... it had to do with communicating, or not.

There was something going on in my mind, which I kept holding back. Obviously that didn't eliminate it because the resistance only produced more thoughts and it was getting noisy in my head. So the more thoughts I had, the more things I had to say, but I wasn't saying them, I'd just built a dam in there and they all just crashed against it.

Then something curiously interesting happened. My jaw started getting tense and the muscles were becoming rigid. At first I thought: What's wrong? And then I stepped back and observed- OMG, it's my jaw. Wait, wait, wait... so some things about psychology and yoga and mind-body relationships floated to the surface and it was very clear. What did this represent? What was I expressing with these muscles? The same thing I was repressing.

My communication center was responding to an imbalance in my expression. So, of course, it was time to do something about it. But not simply about exercises to relieve the tension, the focus was not the symptom- the focus was the cause.

So I decided to speak, and I did. I admitted, first to myself, what I wasn't saying, and then I expressed it externally. Wow! Tension? A million thoughts? Feeling limited? ALL GONE. There was an instant relaxation of these precious muscles, and my mind was as calm as a lake. No resistance, just pure flow. My throat and jaw felt freed. My body instantly reacted to what went on in my mind.

It was very interesting to witness. Everyday I like this blog's name more and more. Thoughts are things! :D