Heart Openers
If you’ve taken Yoga classes before, you may have heard a teacher refer to some postures as “heart openers,” and while it’s a romantic notion to think that a yoga posture can help you to open your heart, I think it’s helpful to clarify this concept and perhaps the intention behind it.
First, it’s important to note that Yoga is a much more in-depth practice than most people realize. Its roots date back thousands of years, when the original intent was to cast off the body and thwart karma, and therefore rebirth, by being an ascetic and essentially doing nothing, aside from mediating. Many people translate the word Yoga to mean Union, and while we’re often told it means the union of our body, mind and spirit, the original union that Yoga refers to, is a union with god. Ancient Yogis were not concerned with being happier and healthier humans, they were focused on being one with the divine, thereby hopefully avoiding this whole human thing all together. Furthermore, we don’t see in depth postural, or Hatha Yoga really enter the scene until a few hundred years ago, and even that was a far cry from what most people think of when they hear the word Yoga today. So just know that the idea that Yoga is a practice even remotely connected to opening one’s heart, is a fairly modern one.
In April we’ll take a look at the roots of Hatha Yoga, but for now, let’s stick with just the idea of heart openers.
The Physical Facts
Anatomically your heart is located roughly in the center of your chest, just a tad to the left. It’s housed inside your rib cage, which is made up of your sternum in the front, your ribs wrapping from front to back, and your thoracic spine. Your lungs “hug” your heart, and all three precious organs sit right atop your diaphragm, which is your main breathing muscle. Now let’s be clear, things are packed pretty snug in there, and it’s not really an area that we want to literally open up. If anything, we practice asana (the physical postures of Yoga) so that we can stay healthy and hopefully avoid having our chests and hearts cracked open!
But, if we wanted to “open up,” or stretch, this part of the body, we need to create a shape that draws the shoulders back, brings some extension into the upper back (aka the thoracic spine), and stretches the muscles across the chest. So which postures do all of that (and more)? Backbends. Not all back bending postures are going to create this shape, but many of them do, which has led lots teachers to refer to back bends as “heart openers.”
We can see from our little soulful soldier practicing Upward Facing Dog pose, that these postures may help to stretch the muscles across your chest, but we can’t really say that your heart is experiencing any kind of physical opening at all, let alone a spiritual or emotional one. Yes, we’re stretching the chest and possibly relieving some tension in the shoulders and back, but your heart is cosy in your rib cage and therefore unaffected, right? Again, it’s a romantic notion, but can we really say that back bends are going to “open the heart,” or even have any affect on it at all?
The Emotional Motion
I believe that everyone is fighting a battle I know nothing about. If you read March’s blog post, I am LOVE, than you might remember that I’m working my way through Louise Hay’s workbook, Love Yourself, Heal Your Life. In it, she states seven power points that she urges you to refer back to on a regular basis. Number three on her list is: Everyone is dealing with the damaging patterns of resentment, criticism, guilt, and self hatred. While the degree to which we all deal with these patterns varies from person to person, I do believe that we all struggle with them.
And I believe that those struggles cause many of us to adopt protective measures in order to prevent more heartache and struggle. There are any number of ways that those measures can manifest in how we interact with the world, but when it comes to physically impacting our bodies, the most common expression is to close off and protect the heart. We curl a bit inward, creating an exaggerated arch in our upper back, while drawing our shoulders more forward, in an attempt to make our hearts less vulnerable to what may sometimes seem like a constant assault from the outside world. Add in our cultural tendency to sit hunched over an electronic device and you’ve got a recipe for some serious discomfort and possibly pain.
The Odious Outcome
Unfortunately soreness and tension in the muscles of the shoulders, chest and upper back are not the only side effects of this hunched over, protective posture. Remember that I mentioned that your lung hugged heart sits atop your diaphragm? Well your diaphragm needs ample space to expand and contract in order to properly fill up and empty your lungs, a.k.a. breathing. I don’t want to give you the impression that there is empty space in your abdomen for your diaphragm to expand into, because there isn’t. In order to initiate your inhale, the diaphragm expands downward, drawing air into your lungs; in the process, it presses down into your lower abdomen, causing your belly to bulge out a bit each time you inhale. Then to exhale, your diaphragm contracts back up, causing the air to evacuate your lungs and your belly to settle back in.
Take a moment to sit up tall, place your hands on your stomach below your ribcage and take a few deep breaths. Feel the expansion as you inhale, and the contraction as you exhale. Now let your posture return to whatever normal is for you, and try doing the same thing. Does it feel different? Is there as much expansion happening on your inhale? Now really over exaggerate that hunched forward posture and try to feel your breath. What happens? See where I’m going with this? The more we protectively hunch forward, the more we limit our breath.
But, that’s not all. Picture a plastic straw, balancing upright on a table in front of you. Now imagine that you’ve put your hand on top of the straw and smushed it all the way down to the table. When you take your hand away, most likely the straw will come back up to some degree, but now it’s all bent. You could probably straighten it all the way back out, but if you took a good look, you’d notice a bunch of crease marks along the length, which represent a sign of weakness in the structural integrity of your straw. Each time that straw gets smashed back down, it would follow the same crease patterns, continually wearing away at the strength of the straw, and eventually resulting in those creases becoming cracks. We’ve all been there, trying to catch the servers eye so you can get a new straw because this ones all broken and you can’t drink your milkshake out of it. Yeah that’s annoying but what the heck does that have to do with heart openers?
Well, if you think of the arteries and veins in your abdomen as the straw, and your hunched over posture as the repeated downward smush, well… you see where I’m going here. I’m certainly not implying that your arteries and veins are as fragile as a plastic straw, because they definitely are not. However, that repeated downward pressure can eventually begin to have an impact on the structural integrity of your arterial and ventricular walls. Over time, that impact can grow and possibly turn into an issue.
I bet you’re trying to sit up straight now, aren’t you.
That’s great, keep it up.
But I’ll bet you can’t, unless you repeatedly tell yourself to sit up straight over and over again. And over and over again some more. Unfortunately, your muscles are most likely trained to hold you in that hunched over position. The muscles across your chest are tight, and the muscles across your shoulders and upper back are tense, and probably a little weak. But they’re used to it so that’s the shape they continue to hold. You have to fight that pattern to get yourself to sit up straight, and unless you remain conscious of it, your muscles will default back into that pattern the moment your focus is elsewhere.
The Helpful Heart Openers
The two big benefits of backward bending postures are that they strengthen the back and/or they stretch the chest. Hooray! Everything we need to happily open our hearts! Yoga is the best! Just hop on your mat, whip out a few cobras and up-dogs and you should be good to go.
I wish, but unfortunately re-patterning the muscles in the chest and back can take some time, especially if you’ve been in Quasimodo mode for quite a while. Many of us have been protecting ourselves in this way for most of our lives, so one or two yoga classes is not going to do the trick. Plus you can’t just focus on strengthening the back OR stretching the chest, you have to work on both of these simultaneously, and consistently to actually create lasting change.
A solid Hatha class should involve numerous back bending postures, which can help you to work on the strengthening piece, assuming you practice regularly. But it’s Restorative Yoga that’s really going to help you with the stretching side of things. There’s two important factors to remember when it comes to gaining long term benefits from stretching: your nervous system and time. You need to be able to relax into a supported posture; if you’re tense, either mentally or physically, then you’re nervous system will stay in stress mode, and it’ll be tough for your body to reap the rewards of the stretch. However, in Restorative Yoga we use props to hold the body in the posture, so that every part of you is supported, and has the opportunity to relax.
I say opportunity because of course the mind can still race, however, we also really take our time in Restorative Yoga. You move slowly and deliberately from one posture to the next. And when you arrive in the shape and fully settle in, you get to stay there for quite awhile, giving your body the chance to let go if it’s willing. That time is the other key; it takes a full 60 to 90 seconds for your muscles to begin to let go and lengthen. So popping up into bridge pose for 10 or 20 seconds might feel good, but it’s not going to produce the longterm effects we’re seeking. In a Restorative class, we’ll spend four to five minutes in the propped up pose, which affords your muscles the chance to actually let go and lengthen.
Over time, if you work on strengthening your back muscles, and lengthening your chest muscles, you’ll be able to consistently sit up straighter. And as your posture improves, you’ll be able to breathe more deeply, plus your arteries and veins will be happier too. So while back bending postures won’t “open” your heart, they do have the potential to make it healthier.
While the practice of Yoga offers countless physical health benefits, it’s the emotional impact that really gets me. A regular, well rounded practice may enable you to connect with your body in a way that you never have before, thereby deepening the relationship you have with yourself. As this relationship grows stronger, you may find yourself a bit more accepting, and even loving, towards yourself and others. And the more accepting and loving you find yourself, the more open you are to the world around you.
So… maybe there is something to this heart opening stuff after all.
P.S.
When I set out to write this post, I was skeptical and possibly a little eye roll-y about the idea that back bends were “heart openers.” I began by attempting to dispel the myth, but as I wrote, I ended up convincing myself that back bends really do have the potential to open your heart in many ways. I love when I prove myself wrong.
P.P.S.
I should point out that I have yet to do enough Yoga to love when others prove me wrong.