Love at the Core: An Exercise in Peace

I joined the little gym in my parish, and a friend of mine went with me to help me develop a fitness routine with weights, etc. She was teaching me about strengthening the “core.” You know, the abdominal area, your tummy - your center of gravity basically - which supports your balance, your back, and everything else you do.

Something occurred to me as she was talking and it reminded me of the wonderful pastor at a local church who talks about the “heart space.” Simply put here: moving out of your thinking head and holding people and situations in your heart with love. Once there, finding healing and peace for you, other people, situations, etc. This is a wonderful exercise, I do it all the time now. I am discovering however, that sometimes holding some situations in my heart make it ache. Hurt. Bad.

Painful situations are hard to accept. I have had several of these lately, from the very tragic death of a former co-worker, to being misunderstood and subsequently rejected from a situation I was trying to make peace with but instead I severely hurt it. My heart pysically hurt. So I consciously and in my imagination moved these situations from my heart to my core – my stomach area.

Amazing. The mind is silent, the heart relaxes and the core seems to take over and naturally process the situation. It is like your stomach “system” naturally keeps what is good, or necessary for you to learn from the situation, and eliminates the rest.

Maybe this is something everyone knows about, but I got real excited about it. I haven’t practiced it enough to know if this will work again. It seems to be related to practicing abdominal breathing to relax . You know breathing like babies do when they sleep – stomach rising and falling. It is a little different in that you incorporate your imagination to move the situation from heart to tummy.

Perhaps the heart space is where we find empathy and other healing qualities but the core space is where we actually accept God’s will. Once God’s will is accepted we can move back up to the heart again.

I just love this sort of stuff. Im going to work on it and post back later.

Peace
Keren