Reflections with Neycha:
Un-clutter Your Heart

Every 34 seconds, someone has a heart attack in the United States.1  When you consider that heart disease is the leading cause of death for people of most racial/ethnic groups in America, it’s surprising that we’re not doing more to take care of our hearts.  Sure there are the scores of public awareness campaigns highlighting the role that diabetes, obesity, poor diet, excessive alcohol use and physical inactivity plays.  But what about stress?  Not limited to the “staying-at-work too long, too-many-things-to-do in a day” stress.  I’m referring to the stress of a broken heart - burdened by the clutter of gut-wrenching losses, stale resentments, knee-bending disappointments, over-extended care-taking, the refusal to forgive.  How heavy our hearts must be.

 

Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a highly respected, sought-after cardiologist and author of Heartbreak and Heart Disease: A Mind/Body Prescription for Healing writes “that our hearts are dynamically influenced by our feelings, fantasies, passion and connections to other people. The passion of love or the pain of loneliness may be physically felt in our hearts, and may affect our blood pressure as well as heart rate and pumping actions.”2

 

He further explains that psycho-emotional risk factors can also affect our breathing patterns and how we retain muscular tension. Denial of unpleasant emotions may eventually result in energy blocks in the adult body which manifest as muscular rigidities or "character armoring."  Energy blocks in the chest, diaphragm and throat can lead to chaotic, shallow breathing patterns which deprive the body of enough vital oxygen necessary for healthy functioning. An "armored" person can become more susceptible to degenerative disease, especially heart disease.

 

With so many aching-hearted, “armored” people among us, it’s no wonder that by the time you read the next paragraph, someone will have died from a heart disease - related event.  Every single minute, a death.  

 

This stat jumped off paper and became a nauseating reality in my life five years ago while I sat in church service one Sunday morning wondering why in the world my iPhone was lighting up every 30 seconds.  It was my cousin calling, then my mom, then my cousin again who’s voice on the phone, barely above a whisper when I finally answered said, “we’re at the hospital, momma went into cardiac arrest.”  What?!, I screamed inside my head, in disbelief - my aunt could not be dying.

 

My own heart racing, I literally ran the 30 or so blocks back home to be somewhere I felt safe to make the round of calls to my own mom and other relatives at the hospital standing outside ICU who could share with me what was going on.  “She coded blue twice already, they’re working on her,” my mother said calmly.  Dizzy, I literally found my way to the floor as if to ground myself, searching for some corner of calmness as I waited for a call back.  

 

I have become very good friends with my vintage pine wood floor over the years.  That floor caught my fall just two years ago when the sister of my  “first love” answered her phone an entire hour later than I’d been expecting to hear from her about my ex-beau’s heart surgery, with a spazzy rhythm to her breathing.  I knew immediately something was wrong and shouted to her, tell me.  “He crashed,” she said.  “He crashed and they’ve been working on him for 30 minutes now.”  

 

Both times as I lay stretched across that solid pine wood floor waiting for call backs wondering what the hell “code-blue”, “crashed” and “working on” meant, I cried uncontrollably.  First, for myself, when I thought about losing them.  Then I cried for them.  I cried for all the life experiences that I knew probably weighed heavy on both their beautiful, weakened hearts - life experiences that I imagine touch all of our lived-on hearts.  Hearts that have been pierced by sorrow, hardened by guilt, paralyzed by love that went missing, scorched by loneliness, literally worn lifeless by unreciprocated care-taking.  It’s heart-breaking to consider, yet uncomfortably true for too many of us.

 

After 45 minutes of “working on him”, my ex Barry made it back to life.  Three code-blues later, my aunt Alberta did not.  She died that morning in the hospital as I paced back and forth waiting on a call in my home 500 miles away and five floors above an ordinary day still in progress for all the folks downstairs on my block. Looking out my window, I remember watching as joggers ran by, hipsters dropped in and out of sight to pick up laundry, couples jetted inside cafes for coffee or brunch.  I wondered about the energy of their hearts?  How many were angry?  How many were mentally recycling past failures? How many were refusing vital, heartfelt connections to others for fear of being hurt again?  I wondered how many of those people moving about that Sunday morning were living half-hearted lives, working jobs they hated, in relationships they despised, pursuing nothing of real value to them and squelching the life right out of their banged-up hearts in the process.  

 

When my prayers were answered and Barry survived, I re-committed with fever to an agreement that I’d made with myself years before after my partner Ed’s murder.   The agreement, committed to paper back then read: 

 

I will conduct my life as if this very moment is the only one I have; I will quit banking on tomorrow to live my heart’s desires.  I will be, give, feel, pursue all that I desire to experience right now inside this moment, for it’s the only moment that I can fully engage.  I will love out loud all those that mean anything to me - for love unexpressed is meaningless.

 

Today, I remind myself and any who read this that the human heart beats 100,000 times a day.  That’s a 100,000 opportunities to sync to bliss and disconnect from stress.  In every moment, we can choose to un-clutter the heart and open more wholly to a life unburdened by the heartache of the past. For when our individual hearts eventually beat for the last time, it seems to me there will be no greater accomplishment than to ease on out of the world knowing we spoke often and deeply the priceless language of the heart, love.  Sweet, sweet love!

 

 

Sources:  

Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Dr. Stephen Sinatra, www.drsinatra.com/broken-hearts-and-heart-disease