How to lighten a heart.

Reflect on how you hold what’s heavy and hard in your life. 

Do you avoid what’s there? Do you make them your identities? Do you bypass yourself? Is it a blended response? Is it fluid? Are you grasping and holding it tightly? Do you wrap it up in a pretty bow? Do you carry it all on your back? Does it weigh you down to the ground? How much space does it take up? Is it held with care? Is it fragile? Is it held with caution and safety? Are you unsure?

There’s no doubt life is heavy and hard. There’s no doubt some of us carry more weight than others. Is it helpful to compare and place hierarchies on our pain? Underneath all of this, the weight of our suffering yearns to be heard, validated, and tended to. 

So much of what I witness in my work with clients, in groups, or see online forms a bridge between our suffering. We desperately need deeper forms of TLC. More compassion, more connection. More witnessing and more listening. This could sound like the scariest thing you could ever imagine receiving, or it might reveal just how much you need it, whether you’d like to admit it or not. 

We can understand this, but can we know it by feeling and living it?

Bless our hearts that beat to the varied rhythms of love, joy, pain, and grief. They can hold so much. Our hearts are capable of expanding compassion that can wrap our entire planet and into the multitude of galaxies. When our hearts are heavy, we’re capable of constricting into tiny forms of existence as we block, shrink, and shield ourselves from ourselves, and the outside world. As we live through this time of mass death, grief, violence, and uncertainty – what is certain is for us to continually alleviate the weight of our hearts from the weight of the world. We need more open hearts. 

Throughout my life I’ve experienced those closest to me exist with the intensity of a constricted heart–while also experiencing those, regardless of their circumstances, expand their hearts in ways I wasn’t capable of. I’ve personally lived with both ‌extremes in my life and for me, I love living with a more expansive heart. There’s much more possibility, space, enjoyment, pleasure, depth, meaning, and connection. It’s been a long and challenging journey to get here, yet I thank the practices and the people who have helped me along the way, changing my life with their open hearts. 

Here are some practices that have helped lighten my heart:

✷ So often our pain is too heavy for one person to hold, and it requires others to help us hold it so we can let go. Go beyond social media and speak to someone you can trust. 

• Call on a friend, family, or community member. 

• Join a facilitated support group. 

• Speak to a grief or death doula. 

• Book a therapy session.

✷ Move the weight of our pain through and out of us.

• Free write or journal with no judgment. Be free. 

• Create art in any medium. 

• Physically move through walking, stretching, dancing, exercising, etc. 

✷ Someone once said: when you’re suffering, try helping someone else. Depending on where you’re at, you may not have the capacity; other times this can be a pathway for letting go.

• Reach out to someone and see if you can offer them something. Whether it’s presence, listening, a cooked meal, or what you’re naturally gifted at (reading, planning, jokes, etc.).

• Sign-up for a volunteering opportunity. 

• Smile or compliment a stranger. 

✷ Use your senses to expand your perspectives.

• Witness with curiosity.

• Taste something delicious. 

• Touch something soft. 

• Smell something soothing. 

• Experience nature and be open. 

Wishing you courage as you tend to your heart and let me know how it goes. 

With care,
Mangda