Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. Hope you are doing great wherever you are! Let’s breathe and smile.

What are you learning from your heart?

I like talking about heart when I teach relaxation. And I don’t mean it in metaphorical way. I am talking about the heart as anatomical part of the body. Huh! Have you ever thought about how heart is working?

Well, perhaps you know that heart never stops. All life! Never takes time off, vacations, even weekends. It is working all the time! How is it doing that?

Let’s look at basic physiology. Bear with me as I want to make a point. If we take the average normal heart rhythm 75 bits per minute, then it makes one bit 0.8 seconds. The heart has 4 major parts: 2 atria and 2 ventricles. Atrial contraction lasts about 0.1 second, and ventricular contraction about 0.4 seconds. Then they rest together for 0.4 seconds.

Here’s an important point: do you realize that atria contract for 0.1 and rest for 0.7 seconds? So actually half of the heart rests 7 times longer then it works! If it was our work day, then you’d have to work 3 hours and rest remaining 21. Can you do it?

I know, ventricles work half of the cycle, and rest another half. But they don’t have to worry about anything else at all. That is a total undisturbed rest.

Heart works in a very well coordinated cycle. And the part that is not working is resting. If the cycle gets off, then problems begin. We’re not talking about that now.

Sorry, I did not mean science you into sleep. What I learned from the heart is that there’s no need to keep tension in the muscles we are not currently using. It is not easy to relax them, I know. But this is what can remove unnecessary tension and fatigue from our life. This is something we learn in the martial art I am practicing. I call it selective tension, meaning we only use muscles we need at the moment, and relax the rest of the body. So come by one day, if you are in Phoenix.

But anyway, we’ll talk more about that.

Thanks for tuning in! You can subscribe to my podcast on my site HPLN.org.
Now let’s breathe and smile. I will talk to you next time.

PEACE!
Jin

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