HEART CENTRED LIVING FOR SUCCESS

by Nicholas de Castella

Your heart is the key.

The answer to our human problems lies in our heart. No matter what it is you are
wanting to change, it involves your heart. The source of true happiness, peace
and fulfillment is found within our hearts. It is our source of guidance and
inspiration. It has been shown that people function at their best when they are in
touch with their heart. An open heart is a prerequisite for a loving relationship.
Many physical diseases follow emotional dis-ease which is resolvable only in our
hearts.

It takes us way beyond our problems.
Many participants in our seminars learn to access the power of the heart to solve
issues that have been troubling them, often for years. Then as they practice the
skills they soon realise that they can apply what they learnt to many areas of life.
Before long what started out as trying to fix a problem, turns into a way of living
that makes their lives more successful and happy than they would have imagined
they would be.

Wanting our lives to be better can make us feel worse.
We all want to be kinder, more patient, more effective, more loving. But often this
wanting can make us feel worse about how things are and about ourselves.

We are not well equipped to deal with the pressures of today.
At school we learn geography, history, mathematics, but not much about stress
management, relationships, conflict resolution or peak performance.

Stress and anxiety are almost the norm for today.
But stress and anxiety are symptoms, not causes. Stress and anxiety lead to
excessive mental activity and thoughts that go round and round inside our heads.
We may have a feeling that something is missing or we may be aware of
something gnawing at us in the background or notice we are holding our breath
or clenching our fists or grinding our teeth or maybe we can feel ourselves slowly
losing heart.

How did we get here?
We live in a consumer culture that depends on us buying new items - or we will
experience a recession! We are sold the idea that we can buy happiness. We are
constantly sold the idea if we just get more of this or less of that, then we would
be happy. We then go looking for happiness and the answers to our problems
outside of us. When we stop and look at this it is obviously a never ending search
that continues to elude us.

In a Heart centred approach to life we focus on resolving the feelings
underlying the issues that are causing problems in our lives. When we turn
our attention within for answers we make rapid shifts forward in our level of inner
peace, happiness, aliveness and well-being.

We have all shut down our hearts after being hurt.
We have grown up in a culture that teaches us 'It strong not to feel our feelings'.
We then learn to repress what we feel. This leads us to being shut down and
becoming disconnected from our hearts. We lose passion, direction, intimacy,
have health issues and feel blank or number or unhappy.

Sometimes life events can cause us to open our hearts
Like at the birth of a child, when we fall in love, when we see a beautiful sunset
or when someone performs an act of kindness to us. These experiences are
valuable but depend on external factors to open us up and most are only
temporary.

We can also develop ways to open our heart from within.
I have spent the last 17 years exploring the idea: "What if what I feel is more
important than what I think?"

Heart Opening is an initiation event.
According to the dictionary to initiate means: "Introduce someone to a particular
activity or skill, esp. a difficult or obscure one".
Passionately Alive is an intiation event. It is designed to be a powerful heart
opening experience where you also learn the skills to live a more heart centred
life.

I have developed KEYS that we can use to unlock our hearts from within. I use
mindfulness, presencing, breathing, body awareness, movement, sound, self
expression, emotional mastery and music as powerful catalysists for heart
opening. These are the main elements taught in the Passionately Alive Seminar.

How can you start to open your heart?
Return to what you feel
The first distinction in Heart Cented Living is to recognise the difference between
thinking and feeling, between knowledge (information) and experience (being).
This is the distinction between the symbolic abstraction of life and direct
experience of life - connecting with the energy which animates all things.
Thoughts are no more than electrical impulses going through our brain. We tend
to live in the thinking world and believe the thoughts to be true.

A Heart Centred approach questions the validity of these thoughts, seeing them
as stories we make up, most of them we inherited. Stories like: "I'm no good",
"I'm unlovable", "I'm unworthy", "I can't do it", "I'm a failure" etc...
When we see the stories for what they are - fantasy, and drop them, we can then
turn our awareness back into the experience of being, connecting to the flow of

life force animating us right now! Fresh, alive and free flowing.
When we breathe consciously into the energy it expands even more. In this
moment we are journeying into connecting with truth. We may initially experience
uncomfortable emotions when we first do this, but if we stay present with the
feelings they will change to peaceful, calm and pleasant.
If you focus your attention on your heart and breathe as if you could breathe into
it then you begin to develop heart presence and your heart will begin to open.

Try this for yourself...
Right now stop, drop any stories you may be running and turn your attention
back to the experience that is actually present in this moment. Breathe down into
your belly and up into your heart. Cultivate positive feelings by focusing on
someone you love or something you are grateful for. On the inhalation you may
feel a sense of expansion or radiance. Cultivate this feeling, being gentle, patient
and kind to yourself as you practice.

Remember: The key is to feel your heart
The answer to our human problems lies in our heart. No matter what it is you are
wanting to change, it involves your heart. The source of true happiness, peace
and fulfillment is found within our hearts. It is our source of guidance and
inspiration. It has been shown that people function at the best when they are in
touch with their heart. An open heart is a prerequisite for a loving relationship.
Many physical diseases follow emotional dis-ease which is resolvable only in our
hearts.