Daily Gratitude: This follows on nicely to the quote about the 16 inches between your brain and your heart.

It’s a wise saying that is worthy of our attention. Often you hear people say they can’t escape from their thoughts, that they feel a prisoner in their heads.

Just as often, though, there are people who are driven by their heart whether you consider that to mean being guided by emotions in general or by love specifically.

I personally think this quote is aimed toward people like myself who don’t ever acknowledge their heart, their emotions. I learned long ago that it wasn’t safe to express them and worse yet, it wasn’t safe to have emotions. Here we see the truth behind mind-body medicine. You cannot escape these emotions (your heart). They will manifest some way, some how. And if you don’t acknowledge them , they will make themselves known in and through your body. 2017 proved that to me. My body expressed all that had been stored up for decades and it wasn’t pretty.

If you’re like me, you have to make a conscious effort to recognize your emotions at least. Then it’s a good idea to learn how to cultivate them. Once the door is open, it becomes easier – just like everything else in life. It’s all about taking step after step. Perhaps that’s why this year’s vol state was even more meaningful. It was just that – taking step after step. And my my more experienced parts tried to escape my heart by numbing me but fortunately there were other parts that stood up and decided to make themselves known. It’s a process and I’m only now, as I write my book, understanding all that happened.

Yet if I’d just ignored the experience, I would have missed so much and just stuffed all those emotions away in the lockbox of my heart.

Listen to your heart. What is it telling you?

Daily Gratitude: I have so much difficulty making this trip. It’s not only the longest for me but it’s also the hardest.

The strange thing is that there are so many life connections in that 16 inches. Some of us work very hard to put up roadblocks and others work to create effective road blocks. It’s like trying to make it over a mountain pass with avalanches every step of the way.

The brain is all powerful and it seems to rule everything and in many ways it does. But in order to be so mighty, it has to receive oxygen and nutrients. And how does it do that? Via the heart. Perhaps we could spend some time reminding the haughty brain that it would just be a pile of mush if the heart isn’t working right or isn’t doing its job.

It’s like life. We need each other to be the most effective and efficient people. Taking baby steps to allow these two primary organs to communicate and love one another is crucial to healthy living. One way to look at it and help you visualize the connection developing is to think of the spinal cord and all the nerves that come off of it connecting the brain to the rest of the body, including the heart. So there is an open path. I used to sneak up and down the back stairs (did anyone else have back stairs?). That got me from my room to the kitchen and that’s exactly where I wanted to go.

See if you can visualize a young child (or maybe just yourself) scrambling up and down those back stairs (the spinal cord) bringing secret messages from one organ to the other. Make the visualization a game. Once enough secret messages have been delivered, each organ can come out of hiding and greet each other like armies or spies can do when the war is over. And now they understand each other better because they have all the messages n

Work on this a little bit every day and see if you can create a truce, an armistice between your thoughts and your emotions. You’ll be glad you did.

Daily Gratitude: This is so beautiful. And so useful. We can spend a long time trying to find some sort of meaning in what we do. Once we do, though, then it’s time to realize that we must give it away in order for that meaning to be meaningful.

A purpose has to be about other people somehow. How can we spread our knowledge and compassion to others to help enrich their lives? That ought to be a question we ask ourselves every morning.

Most people go through life searching for their purpose without realizing they have to find the meaning first. They have to find something that strikes them deeply. Something they are passionate about. Something they live and breathe every minute of every day. They need to find that before they can begin with their purpose – the giving it away. I loved medicine. I wanted to be in the “blood and guts” constantly. I was passionate about medicine. But my purpose was to use it to help others – to give it away.

This can seem a bit tricky but if you take some time to contemplate it or meditate on it, I think it will become clearer.