“One sees rightly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery
Young children innately interpret and absorb the world around them through the lens of the heart. The Breadcrumbs core practices of mindfulness, heart-centered breathing and heart-centered reflection are meant to highlight, cultivate and preserve their natural connection to the wisdom of their hearts.
According to Doc Childre, Founder of the HeartMath Institute: “...children… in their early years of development… are still connected to the higher frequencies of their natural heart attributes, such as uncomplicated love, transparency, lack of prejudice and their super-power to release and move on.” He advises that: “It’s especially important for children to maintain connection with their heart’s guidance amidst society’s hard and fast entrainment in overstimulation, ambition, competition and techno-mania.”*
One of the best ways to help children stay connected to their hearts is to practice it ourselves! And, a magnificent resource for adults has just come into being! I am excited to whole-heartedly recommend an amazing new book that was released June 2020:
Sarah Blondin’s Heart Minded - How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love
This book is a triumph! Whether you have just a moment to read a paragraph or two, a lazy afternoon to enjoy it from cover to cover, or a year to devote yourself to the powerful meditations and practices, you will find yourself richly rewarded. Like Breadcrumbs, Heart Minded shares the objective of maintaining a deep connection to our innate, heartful sensitivities—love and kindness.
Sarah’s prose is at once profound and breath-taking:
“You were born thin-skinned, as soft as milk. Still tied to the moon and starlight.
Built into the fibers of your body is an intricate system of sensitivity. This system is governed by love and kindness. Therefore you, as a human being, are governed by these same virtues.
Because of this system, you are able to see and sense all incongruent, hurtful transactions between souls. Your ability to see and feel this discord is intended to support all human life. It is intended to help you strive toward actions of love and to help in healing the apparent disharmony you perceive…” p.25
Heart Minded is a visionary roadmap to clearing the debris that has built up over a lifetime. Debris that has distanced us from our “feeling sensitivities," dulled our compassion for ourselves and others, and muffled the messages of our wise hearts. In these uncertain times, Heart Minded shines a brilliant light on an extraordinary journey we can all enjoy in the safety and comfort of our own homes… the journey 12 inches south—from the mind to the heart.
* Doc Childre, Howard Martin, Deborah Rozman and Rollin McCraty, Heart Intelligence, Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart, Waterfront Press, pp. 227-228.