Since there are many ways to connect with your heart’s wisdom, these guidelines are offered to expand your own unique practice. Your comments are appreciated!

This represents a piece of what I have been developing over the past 30+ years. If what I offer here is helpful for you, and you would like more information regarding my next experiential event “Create From Your Heart,” you can reach me through my contact page. I will be traveling extensively beginning this May. I will continue to be available for both phone, skype and in-person sessions.

Guidelines For Accessing Your Heart’s Wisdom for Decision-Making and Guidance

• When you first begin this practice, take a break from whatever you’re doing, where you can reduce both internal and external “noise.” Notice if there is any feeling of pressure to get answers in a hurry. If so, allow them to be, as you begin to focus on your breath, allowing your body to relax as your breath begins to deepen. Although you can access information quickly, it’s optimal to practice with stress free conditions inside and out.

Each question requires more or less time and internal quiet. When you create the time to take a break from “trying to figure it out” or from taking actions that may be motivated from worry, fear etc., you consciously connect with your soul. Through your soul, you connect to the One Mind, where infinite possibilities exist. Your soul connects you with those possibilities which resonate with it. Solutions to impossible situations can show up in ways your intellect would never have imagined. Your life could also take an entirely different direction, which allows your true creativity to emerge and flourish. Every challenge is an opportunity to expand from your core, your essence. Interestingly, “cor” the root of the word courage is the Latin word for heart.

• Developing patience and your ability to trust is an important part of this process. Timing is often an issue for our personalities; we are often more focused on results than in creating a deeper relationship with our own souls. In the midst of our busy, and often challenging lives we want answers and solutions, like some CEO’s, “yesterday!” Living with your question for whatever length of time your soul requires is a powerful practice which can transform your life.

• While objectively witnessing your inner state, you can ask your heart/soul about anything that concerns you. Focus on your heart and breathe, allow your mind to rest in your heart so that it can let go of all it thinks you “should” be doing or of any undesirable future outcomes it may imagine! Observe the inner responses you notice as you express or visualize whatever is on your mind. Avoid an automatic verbal answer or judgment before fully inhabiting and listening to your body-mind.

If you are making a decision, you can place each possible choice, one at a time, in the center of your chest. Here are some examples of what you might notice: your body may either feel expanded or contracted, energized, neutral or tired, breathing full or shallow, light or heavy feeling, light or dark or shades of either. Once I felt as though someone had turned off a light switch inside my body. The light came back on as soon as I made the decision to leave the consulting company where I was currently employed! Remember that your body does not speak in words, and as the wonderful Martha Graham said, “Your body doesn’t lie.”

• You will sense your answer before or as your intellect has words for it. You may experience it as a knowing or feeling of what is–not Right or Wrong–but most beneficial for you in your current present. Your answer can also come at another time through a person, a dream or even a song.

If you have a sense of neutral or gray, depending on the situation, it may be that your soul is not resounding with a fully energized “Yes” at this time. You could also be receiving guidance, which is letting you know that a certain situation is not harmful for you, depending upon your question. As your intellect learns to interpret the messages your soul sends through your body-mind, including through physical symptoms, the simpler and more fun it becomes to live in alignment with your soul.

• To insure you receive an accurate message, practice non-attachment to the answer. When you are attached to a particular outcome or to thoughts that you must find an immediate answer or solution, you are motivated by the emotions connected to those thoughts. This usually blocks the answers you most need. A relaxed, released state generates ideas or attracts seemingly unrelated events that can change everything in unexpected and often marvelous ways.

In our current evolutionary process we are each being asked to let go of the personality’s illusion of control. Any attempt at trying to “make” something happen or being in the grip of  thoughts and feelings that a certain thing “must, should or needs” to happen or might happen, will cloud your ability to sense what really ENLIVENS your soul, which is the object of the exercise–to bring your personality into alignment with your soul.

• If you truly feel energized, enlivened and joyful from your core, that’s accurate feedback that the message is from your soul. When you feel uplifted, or the opposite, you won’t need to ask anyone else what they think–needing to ask is often a sign that you know your answer and your intellect thinks it should be different. It’s a relief to be honest about what’s motivating you; “..the truth will set you free.”

Your personality could initially have a less than joyful response, and you would then be aware of feeling both a heart-soul response and a personality response. When that first happened to me, it was very clear that my personality’s unhappiness was fleeting and bearable, while my heart’s unhappiness was the kind of pain I did not choose to experience.

When you have no idea what to do next, you are being asked to deepen your relationship with your Essential Self. Sometimes there’s no desire or energy to Do anything. Your personality may desperately want “to do” and yet your soul is asking you to focus inward rather than outward. Our Western culture, as a whole, has a very little understanding or support for this process. You might feel helpless, insecure, confused and/or frightened when this particular “Soul Invitation” occurs. It’s worth repeating that this process requires trust, patience, and the willingness to let go trying to control from your personality. It is possible to experience intense emotions such as fear, while also feeling excited, expectant, courageous and adventurous. Your soul will create a far more interesting and enlivening future than your personality is capable of conceiving on its own.

• Perhaps the most transformational aspect of this process is that it is necessary to let go of resistance to your current present. If you judge your current situation rather than accepting it, the resistance you feel actually prolongs it. Accept what is, while staying connected with your heart, and remaining open to what it is unfolding in its own time. The birth or creation process is a Mystery that cannot be rushed according to linear time.

I understood this best both experiencing and teaching natural childbirth. If I tensed ,i.e., physically resisted a strong contraction, the oxygen my uterus needed went to the tensed muscles, and actually prolonged the labor and discomfort. When I relaxed, the oxygen went to my uterus and it could then do its job most efficiently. I also noticed that rather than feeling increased pain as the contractions grew stronger and more frequent, I experienced them as intense sensations in my body. All fear dissolved and I was in a heightened state of awareness and peace. The key for me was my breath, focus of attention and surrender to the process. Since that time, I have noticed that my life challenges are like contractions, and the birth of something new always follows.

When you let go of judging yourself and resisting your life, you are in the field of all possibilities. The same field Rumi spoke of when he said, ” Beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.”