THANKFUL FRIDAY
Cindy Maddera
10 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "I heart you"
What is the current state of your heart?
This was a question posed to me earlier in the week at the beginning of yoga class. We were taking our focus to our hearts. Every time I am prompted to focus on my heart, to visualize the state of it, I always picture a living anatomical version. I never picture a cartoon or paper mache version. It is always the real deal, as if I have ripped it straight out of my own chest and I’m holding it in my hand, looking directly at it. I guess I imagine that my own heart is about the size of the palm of my hand. Except when I look at my hands, which are small, I think that my heart has to be bigger than that. Then I start to wonder about the weight of that muscle, what it would feel like to hold that weight in my hand. Yes, I realize that picturing myself holding my own beating heart in all its gory detail makes me sound a bit disturbed. Please remember that I have a very scientific brain. You should have seen how excited I got this week over tissue sections of cavefish ‘eyes’ (they don’t have have eyeballs, only fat cells where their eyes should be, fascinating).
So there I was in yoga class, holding my beating heart in my hand and really studying it and I have to admit that it is not a pretty heart. There are wounds that have been partially sealed up with Frankenstein’s monster like sutures. Some of those sutures have seen better days and are worn thin and frayed, straining to hold together some wound that just doesn’t seem to ever want to heal. There are places between sutures where those wounds sort of gape open, irritably. I mentally give my heart a little shake, tap it with a finger and put my ear to it. I am surprised to discover that my heart sounds better than it looks. I have a Timex heart; it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. The next thing I do, only because I don’t know what else to do, is to mentally re-stitch those frayed sutures and tighten things up as best I can. I mentally clean things up a little before setting that heart back into place. Then I laugh at myself because it’s only during yoga or meditation where I mentally pull out an organ to study. And it always seems to be the heart. It probably wouldn’t hurt to repeat this process with some of my other internal organs. What is the current state of my spleen, for instance.
Sometimes, when I am meditating, I imagine thoroughly sweeping my brain with a broom.
After putting my heart back into place, I can tell you that my heart is holding together just fine. Michael says that I am not allowed to use the word ‘fine’, but it is suitable for now. Despite those unhealed wounds, the muscle is beating strong with a steady rhythm. I only feel a slight ache when I’m still enough to really pay attention and even in my morning meditation practice, my thoughts do not settle into that ache. My thoughts move about randomly as thoughts do. In a sense, I am never really still enough to pay that much attention to it. So I’m going to use the word ‘fine’ describe the state of my heart because it’s not a pretty one, but it is functioning properly. There is maybe even a little flicker of joy tucked inside of it. It seems almost monumental for this to be true for me in these winter months that I tend to hate so dang much. I am grateful for every wound on my heart. I am grateful for every suture holding those wounds together.
I am thankful for the strength and the determination of my heart to continue to beat strongly day in and day out.