By Louise Livingstone, PhD

 

In August 1990, I succumbed to viral myocarditis; a severe inflammation of my heart muscle. I had just completed my A levels and was waiting for the results. In the early hours of results day, I experienced three cardiac arrests. I was admitted into hospital and confined to bed rest in the Coronary Care Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, which became my home for three months. With the loving care of my cardiologist and wonderful nurses, I made a slow and steady recovery. A decade later I developed heart rhythm problems, rendering me incapacitated and unable to breathe. In my personal and professional life, I was struggling. I was working in a stressful, high-pressure job that I did not like; I was scarcely making ends meet financially, I had just gone through a divorce, and my health was not good. Panic attacks and severe anxiety filled every waking moment. Conflict seemed to fill my life – both inside my body and everywhere I looked in my external world.

One night in the mid-2000s, following two laser ablations on the electrical pathways in my heart that were causing the arrhythmias, I was at my lowest ebb and could not see any way to proceed with my life. At this point, I heard a voice. And it came from my heart:

“Please, please stop this! You’re killing me! This conflict is your own creation, yet you also have the power to change it.”

In this moment, I saw my heart – as if for the first time. And, most importantly, I felt my heart – as if for the first time. When my heart spoke to me something deep inside fundamentally changed, and the way that I saw the world would never be the same again. However, now I was faced with a new problem in the sense that I was lost at sea in a different version of reality within which I had no point of reference. Specifically, I had no way of engaging with whatever this heart was that had just spoken to me. Witnessing my heart in this way was a new experience, and for the first time in my life my attention was drawn to the notion that the heart is not just a biological organ. I was slowly coming to understand that it is a place where thought arises, a place of loving intelligence. 

Of course, this idea is nothing new. For millennia, our ancient ancestors honoured the heart as the place of the soul. The ancient Egyptians revered the heart as the central organ of the body, the seat of conscience, the site of mind or intelligence, as well as the place associated with their spiritual destiny. In the Mayan culture, the heart was the source of life. Indeed, in Sufism, Orthodox Christianity and many other religious traditions, the heart is seen as the seat of compassion; a place where one can connect with the Divine. Ideas of the heart in Europe began to change significantly in 1628 when English physician William Harvey (1578-1657) published his findings on pulmonary circulation. With philosophers and scholars of the day increasingly conceptualising the world in dualistic and mechanistic terms as part of the Scientific Enlightenment, new ideas for the nature of reality were introduced into society and culture forming the basis of our modern worldview. This narrative has created the organic, pumping heart that we know today; moving from a cardio-centric (heart-centred) worldview, to a cranio-centric (brain/mind-centred) worldview at the level of medical theory (Bound Alberti, 2012, p. 7).

As a young girl, I came to know my heart as a biological organ. As I only knew the heart these terms, I consequently had no way of engaging meaningfully with the heart that spoke to me. While I could have remained with an explanation that would have reduced this deeply meaningful experience with my heart to a scientific/medical explanation – for example, a hallucination or a psychotic episode – I knew that what had happened was important, and that my heart was imploring me to listen. In a moment of deep knowing, I committed to listen to my heart’s wisdom, and my life from that point totally transformed.

I do not have room in this piece to describe in detail the incredible journey that I have undertaken with my heart since that time. However, over many years my heart has gently, yet assuredly, guided me onwards; helping me learn its language. This beautiful journey led me to undertake an MSc in Holistic Science at the Schumacher College, Devon, UK, and following this I gained a PhD scholarship at Canterbury Christ Church University. I completed my PhD in 2019, and my research gave me the opportunity to spend four years in conversation with my heart, learning to communicate with, and understand, its many different layers. My PhD title was: How can the thought of the heart offer effective ways of engaging with conflict – an imaginal and reflexive study.

Undertaking this deep enquiry into my heart, I was blessed, honoured, and privileged to meet many different hearts, and even today, I am still meeting many more that continue to teach me so much. Many years ago, my heart willed me to risk myself and venture into unfamiliar territory, into a way of knowing that begins in a turning where depth psychologist Robert Romanyshyn states, “you lose your mind for the sake of the heart” (2001, p. 146). This heart, I have discovered, is infinitely wise, unfathomably mysterious, and, the greatest teacher that I have ever had, transforming my entire outlook and approach to the world as a result. This heart offers each one of us an invitation to courageously break free from the rational ties that bind us, risk ourselves, imagine bravely, and step openly, lovingly and compassionately into the dance of life with all of its beauty and pain, love and hate, harmony and conflict. Our hearts are always speaking to us, and perhaps now more than ever, we are being called to re-learn how to listen. We have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

 

An article by Louise in the Summer 2022 Living Spirituality Connections  newsletter (out during July 2022) explores the importance of the heart in addressing conflict.

Sources:

Bound Alberti, F. (2012) Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine and Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Livingstone, L. (2019) How can the thought of the heart offer effective ways of engaging with conflict? An imaginal and reflexive study. PhD. Canterbury Christ Church University.

Romanyshyn, R. (2001) ‘The Backward Glance: Rilke and the Ways of the Heart’, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 20(1), pp. 143–150. doi: 10.24972/ ijts.2001.20.1.143

Bio: Louise Livingstone, PhD, is the Founder of the Heart Sense Research Institute – www.heartsenseresearch.co.uk. Her work aims to re-imagine the long-forgotten wise and intelligent heart for contemporary times; guiding individuals into the numerous layers of their own hearts, illuminating different hearts to help navigate daily life with heart awareness, openness, love and compassion. Louise has a flourishing private mentoring practice, and runs a three-month introduction to Heart Sense personal development course based on her research September 2022. She also runs a one-year apprenticeship, within which participants work deeply with six more hearts. For more information visit: https://www.heartsenseresearch.co.uk/training-events