Did you know that you had two hearts? Two hearts that beat as one. And both, the emotional and the physical are necessary for your life

TIPS FOR A HEALTHY LIFE

See with Your Heart
• To activate your heart energy center, press the middle of your chest and concentrate on it for a few seconds. Now recall the most pleasant feeling that you have ever experienced in your life. For example, a feeling of love, of kindness, peace and joy. You may have felt this when you have given yourself in service to others, or shared yourself with your friends, or when you felt closest to God, or may be when you fell in love. You are now going to share this feeling of kindness with the entire Planet Earth.

Visualize in front of your chest a small Earth, as small as a ball, one inch in diameter. Imagine the pinkish light from the heart center going to Earth and enveloping it with love and kindness. You can also say this prayer of St Francis of Assisi: "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace/Where there is hatred, let me sow love/Where there is injury, pardon/Where there is doubt, faith/Where there is despair, hope/Where there is darkness, light/Where there is sadness, joy." (from twin heart meditation as taught in pranic healing).

• Breathe in golden light into your heart, see it open I and expand. Breathe out all your pain, sorrow, grudges—see them leave your heart like a dark cloud. Now see the light expand into the rest of your body and then stream out of it.

• When you wake up in the morning, close your eyes and put your attention in the middle of your body—your heart, your solar plexus, and your abdomen. Ask yourself how you are feeling emotionally, right now. Try to distinguish the feelings from the thoughts you are having. Are you feeling peaceful? excited, anxious, sad, angry, joyful, frustrated, guilty, loving, lonely, fulfilled, serious, playful?

If there seems to be an unhappy or upset feeling, go into that feeling and give it a voice. Ask it to talk to you and tell you what it is feeling. Really try to hear it and listen to its point of view: Be sympathetic, loving, and supportive towards your feelings. Ask if there is anything you can do to take better care of yourself. (Shakti Gawain in Living in the Light).

• Meditate on a blue, clear lake in your heart. Put all your problems into this bottomless lake. Let go of them. Now imagine walking into this shiny, bright lake, take a dip in it and see all your problems leave you.

Be Big-Hearted
• When you look at people, pour love through your eyes. When you walk, walk throwing love all around. In the beginning, it will just be imagination and within a month you will see it has become a reality. And others will start feeling that you have now become a warmer personality. (Osho).

• An asana called flapping wings is helpful in releasing constrictions in the chest area: Stand with your arms outstretched. Now stretch them backwards without bending the elbows so that you feel a pressure in your shoulder blades. Inhale and raise your chest up. Exhale. Keeping your opposite arms outstretched, bring your palms together in front of you, curving the spine slightly forward. Take your hands back while inhaling. Bring them forward while exhaling.

• Look into the mirror, and send yourself love through your eyes and say: "I love you." Do it at least five times and often.

• Appreciate life in general, develop a poet's attitude. Marvel at even the mundane. Feel without thinking. Whether it is love or hatred, experience it directly without any mediator.

• Keep a pet. The unconditional love you feel for pets helps in opening your heart.

A Change of Heart
• Accept your limitations. Try to accept a situation which you cannot change. Some problems get worse if you can not exercise patience.

•Do not bottle up hostility, anger and other negative emotions in your mind. Admit them to a person you are close to, and speak about how you are trying to manage them.

• When angry, try to talk yourself out of it. Or just watch your anger arise. Try meditation whenever you become aware of cynical thoughts or angry feelings. Be forgiving when people do you wrong. Empathize with others.

• In Reiki, by Bodo J. Baginski and Shalila Sharamon, the authors give existential reasons for many illnesses, and the antidotes for each. The hardening of arteries, they claim, indicates resistance, tension, rigidity and narrow-mindedness. The cure lies in openness, flexibility, tolerance, affirmation of life and the the world around you.

High blood pressure arises when you haven't expressed your thoughts and emotions over a long period. You are constantly living on the brink of conflict, without coming to any kind of conclusion, which puts you under continual pressure. The solution is to take a good look at your problems and at whatever else is annoying you. Feel your way into them and live them out without holding onto anything.

Heart Facts
• To reduce the risk of arteriosclerosis and of heart attacks, remember three things:
1. Eat optimally. Eating a bit less does not do much harm but overeating does.
2. Reduce the percentage of calories derived from fat.
3. Shift from saturated animal fats to unsaturated vegetable fats.

• A vegetarian diet has low cholesterol. Take more of seasonal fruits and cooked or raw vegetables. Some people find onion and garlic useful for the heart. If you are a non-vegetarian, prefer white meats. A high salt content in your diet raises blood pressure. Avoid.

• Serpagandha (Rauwolfia serpentina), an Indian plant, known to ayurvedic doctors for at least six centuries, has been found useful in treating hypertension.

•Some useful Bach Flower remedies: Heather for developing unconditional love, Holly for free-flowing love energy, Red Chestnut for expressing truelove.