Open up your heart

We can be spacious yet full of loving kindness, full of compassion yet serene. Live like the strings of a fine instrument
-not too taut but not too loose.
-The Buddha

During my teens I listened over and over to Love songs. Today I still get goose bumps from many love songs. They touch me. In our heart the energy center is related to the sense of touching. We love to hug and being touched.

The camel pose, ustrasana, opens up your heart to love and compassion.

This very deep backward bend opens the whole of the front of the body as elongating the spine. It brings us out of our daily habitual posture of rounding the back and hunching over. Especially all office workers that lean toward the computers should do this pose several times a day.

When our heart center is in balance we experince wisdom, stability, equilibrium and pleasure. We are able to surrender to, unconditionally accept and enjoy life. When we love our life we feel happy and are in peace with ourselves and others.

The heart center is imbalanced when we can't express deep emotions as joy, fear and sadness. We get physical blockages that include tuberculosis, hypertension, heart disease, asthma, high cholesterol, breast cancer, shoulder problems and we suffer from selfishness and envy.

The camel represents fortitude and determination. This four legged animal walks in the desert with a hump filled with water throughout day and night. Camels can accomplish the impossible. This pose isn´t perhaps the most popular among yogis. The reason might be that we usually connect to the earth with our feet. In ustrasana it´s our knees that has that mission. And we can easily experience that we have been cut off at the knees.

The wonderful thing when we expand our chest is that we get the ability to move forward even when the sandstorm passes by. We learn to trust and have faith.