- Hi everyone, welcome
to The Gathering Room. Our topic for the day is
How To Heal Your Heart. I've been doing a few
coaching sessions lately, which I don't usually
do anymore, there's not, there's too much demand, frankly. So I train coaches, then
my coaches coach people. And that way there's more people, more co, more coaches to serve the demand. But I've done a few sessions lately here and there and I just
love it, I just love it. It's so much fun. And I realized that I used to
think that I could help people ha as if, I can't help anybody, I can't heal anybody's
broken heart anymore, that I can heal a broken bone. When there's a broken bone. The best anyone can do is put it in position and let it heal itself. And that is the only thing
that I've ever actually done for anyone as a coach, is try to hold them in
position where they're sort of aligned with themselves
the way a bone is. And then everything heals itself. Your heart can heal itself and it does. And it will no matter how deep your sorrow that the heart can heal itself. You just have to know how
to put it into alignment. And I was thinking about
this cause I was talking to this lovely man today and
he was like healing himself. You know who I, I'm
talking about if it's you? Anyway, it was such a moving
thing to see how much power and efficacy was available
to him for self-healing. And I thought, wow, we can all do this. And we all, we don't do it enough. We're sort of convinced that
something outside ourselves is going to help us, or that
if we can just destroy a part of ourselves that's
bothering us will be okay. And the opposite is actually the case. You only heal by going inward
and you only heal by including all the parts that are broken,
so to align with your heart, if your heart is broken at all, if you have a small heartbreak, if you have a massive
heartbreak, either way, just tune into it for
a second, don't worry, we're not going to stay here, but find the broken, the heartsick part, yeah. So the way to align it, to allow it to heal itself
like a bone healing itself, is to come into what I call integrity. To be completely aligned
with what is truest for us at the deepest level,
and to be just one thing. Not a whole bunch of things
split, but one thing united, okay, so I wrote this
book The Way of Integrity. And people said to me, many people said to me, here's the thing, I feel like I'm living
almost in integrity, but there's a part of me
like the part that, you know, wants to run away and not take
care of my responsibilities or the part of me that
wants to sleep all day. Or the part of me that wants
to yell at other drivers and I just can't get rid of it. Well, right away I know that they can't be in alignment
because the aligned part of us, the part that
is resonates as truest for us, never wants to get
rid of any part of ourselves. It is unconditionally loving of everything about you, your
nastiest, worst bits of self. It loves them all. So when I say bringing them into one thing, I don't
mean excluding anything. I mean bringing in all
the parts, and they, some of them may violently
disagree with one another. The part of you that
wants to sleep all day, there may be another part that
goes, what is wrong with you? You've got to get up. Walt Whitman wrote, do I
contradict myself, very well, then I contradict myself, I am
large, I contain multitudes. All of us are large, we all contain multitudes and
new parts of self are forming all the time. So I'm very much enamored
of parts psychology a way of looking at the human
mind that sees all these different aspects of the self as different, wholly different people, but whose goal it is to
bring the whole crowd in together so that they can be healed by the deepest self, which
I'll talk about in a second. But just looking at all the
different parts of self. When I say to someone,
how are you feeling? I'll be like, oh, I'm so depressed. I'm really miserable. And then I'll talk to them a
week later and they'll say, you know, I was, I, I've
really had a good week. And I'm like, wait, wait. My head is spinning. You said you were so depressed
and now you said you've had a good week, it's even more
common to have people go, oh, I feel great now, last week that was whew. But I was horrible, but
I'm great this week. The next week when I used
to see people weekly, they would come back, oh
yeah, I'm doing a lot better. I mean, last week was horrible. They always said last week was horrible, but this week's okay. And then they would contradict
themselves and it was because they were trying
to describe themselves when in fact as one thing, when in
fact they were many things. They contained multitudes. I've been doing a lot of painting lately. And one of the things about painting is that you combine
different colors to create, you create different colors
by combining the ones you've got, so I'm sure you
know, if you combine red and blue, you get purple, if
you combine blue and yellow, you get green, red and
yellow, make orange and so on. And if you put too many parts together, it looks really muddy. And one of the things that
you do as an artist is you try to break out the pure tones. You try to find the pure tones
and separate them a little so they're not all mushed together. And in part, psychology, at least internal family systems therapy, which I love, there's a
step called unblending. And it's when you look at all
the colors of yourself and you pull out the pure tones and
you just look specifically at the, what is the clearest,
purest note, color note, mood note that you can find, so for example, I just asked you find the heartsick part of yourself. So it might be heartsick because the state of the
world is so depressing. It might be heartsick because you're in love with someone who
doesn't love you back. It might be heartsick because
you're raising five children and you have no time for yourself. There are a lot of
reasons to be heartsick, but it's just going to
feel negative in some way. So I want you to find the most
heartsick part of yourself and then unblend it from
the muddy mess that you get in your mind when you mush
all yourselves together. This weirdly enough, separating in this way is
a way of creating unity in a painting, if you can get pure tones and combine, then you have harmony. But if you mix too many
pure tones together, you get this muddy consistency that's not, it's just not beautiful. So by separating the pure tones, we get something that we can
recombine in a beautiful way instead of just mush together. So whatever your heart's
at part is, have it sit, have it step outside you
and sit down facing you and be anything it wants to
be, but it is purely heartsick. That is what it is. And have it tell you why
it's not feeling good. Like tell you how it feels. Let it tell you what it doesn't
like, what it wishes it had, that it doesn't, and just
instead of reacting against it, I wish I could get rid of
you, then I'd be happy. Your job is to listen. Yeah, so you're going to
be your own heart healer. And the heart heals
when it is listened to, when it is understood. So listen, you can sometimes write it out, this is why I'm unhappy. And now we come to the part that is challenging for some people. The gentleman I was talking to today did such a wonderful job of it
that I really wanted to, it made me excited to
share it with you guys. Find the part of yourself that is pure unconditional acceptance. Okay, of everything actually. So he had a religious framework, so he, but a lot of people
have religious frameworks and they're not able to
find the loving part. They actually can be less
loving because of religious fundamentalism or whatever,
but this guy just was, God is love to him, so find
the part of you that is love. And here's the thing,
love takes many forms. Some of us associate the word
love with erotic fixation or feeling sorry for someone
or desiring something about them and real love,
there's no wanting in it. There's no pain in it, there's
no possessiveness in it. It is just, it is calm, it is free, it is unconditional, it is unmoved, weirdly enough because you
know, we talk about being moved as being loving, but
love never moves, really. It is it is we who go into
love when we are moved. But love is always waiting there
A steady state, it is like, it's like space, it's everywhere. So your essence, I believe
is this unconditional love. If you can't find a place that feels loving, find
a place that feels calm. Peace is a really significant
aspect of true love. And you won't find it in
things like erotic fixation or neediness or over attachment. There's no peace in something
that is just those things. Yeah. So find the part of you
that's most peaceful and there's your heartsick
part right in front of you and it's been telling
you why it's heartsick. And you don't have to do anything. Just observe it and see
if you can find compassion and understanding for its point of view. And it could be saying
stuff that sounds so selfish to a part of your mind,
or it sounds so, you know, it sounds so petty or small or
it's upset about things that you think are embarrassing or
whatever, it doesn't matter. The part of you that is pure
calm accepts it all equally. It all belongs. So it says, come in, come in. And then just think what
In fact, don't think, feel what the calmest part
of your psyche is saying to the most heartsick part of your psyche. So in the case of the guy I was talking to today, it was really simple. I'm with you, you're not
alone, you've never been alone. I'm here to help. You've always been led by me
and I will always lead you. Now if you can't find that, you can just say the words
like that, I am here for you. And if you do it, if you
address the heartsick part of you as an other, just
saying the words, I'm with you. I'm here for you, I've
always been here for you, might move you into the heart healer, into the essence of you. So you can actually use the heartbreak and then the sort of script
of unconditional love. I've always been here for
you, I'm going to be here for you, for you, I've always guided you. I always will, as you say the words, you can sometimes shift into
the essence into alignment. Now the two of you, the heart sick and the heart
healer are aligned like a two parts of a broken bone. And you just wrap that
the way you'd put a cast on a broken limb, once
the bone is aligned, you just wrap it up and let it be still. When I had my famous foot surgery, which I've mentioned I don't
know, 8,000 times to you guys, the surgeon sawed up one
of the bones of my foot, which were deformed and then
put them in a different order and pinned them in. And then I had to keep my foot wrapped and still and above my
head for eight weeks. Try keeping your foot above
your head for eight weeks. Quite an experience like
a meditation retreat. And sure enough, it grew a little bridge of bone
all by his like the miracle. All he could do was saw it
in two and pin it together and hope and it doesn't always work. And when it worked, it was a miracle. It was a healing miracle. And when I've aligned my
heart sick part with my heart healer part, it's always
grown a little bridge, a little new strong bridge of wholeness. But you have to be still
with it for a while. You have to take the
time for the heart sick to express itself and the heart full, the heart essence to
connect and wrap itself around that wound, and
then you let them be still. So if you meditate or
you have time in the car or whatever, be still with the
alignment of the heart sick and the heart healer and
they'll start to grow stronger. And the more time you can
spend in spill in stillness with those two aligned, the
faster your heart will heal. It's a good trick. It works, it actually works. So let's go to some questions here. Hang on. We have some questions coming in, Anne says, how do I deal with the heartbreak of total
rejection of a loved one? You find the part of you that
is really heartsick about it. You can picture that part of you. It might not look like
exactly like you look now. It might have a different hair
color or be a different age, or it might be a an animal. A lot of my different parts
take the forms of animals when I try to imagine them
and just listen to it, tell you how heartbroken it is
and how devastating it is to love someone and not be loved
back and be totally rejected and then start addressing
the heartsick one. What would it say to you, see,
I can't do that for you Anne. You have to like move into the space. So if you can find compassion for the one who is totally rejected,
I suspect when I do that, and I have been totally rejected
by people I loved, oh yes, I have been. And it's like the heart healer says, I could never reject
you, and somehow I know. I mean Richard Schwartz, who created Internal Family
Systems therapy talks about how this heart healer part, he
calls it the self capital S. And he says, the interesting
thing about it is when the client, when his
clients get to that, he'll say, so what part of you is that, and they say, this isn't
a part, this is who I am. This is the center, it's not just a part, but it holds all the other
parts, and he says, furthermore, it's the same in all people. It exists in all people, and
it's the same in all people. So when I go to, okay, the people who've rejected
me and I have been rejected, I'm like, well, I don't reject you. And the part of them that is
me doesn't reject you either. That's not even possible. So weirdly, even though those people
think they're rejecting me, I don't feel rejected because
I'm so in touch with my own heart healer that I can't
help but feel their heart healers as well. And I really believe that all
of us are totally accepted by the loving being at the
center of every person. Yeah, so that's, thank you Anne. I just felt really healed by that and I can only
hope it works for you. Alan says, can separating out our
grief into different parts, help to heal it, yeah,
this is the whole thing. And I love the word unending
that they use in ifs 'cause it, because I do visual art, it's,
it makes so much sense to me. Like the painting behind me right here, I don't know if you
can see it on Facebook, it's the cover of the book I
wrote called Diana Herself. And I didn't mix any
color for that painting. I just would paint like a bright, clear, transparent yellow and then wait for that to dry and then paint red
over that and then paint blue over that kind of the way
they do color photography, and because of that, it has
a glowy look, I think I liked the glowy look, and it comes
from the fact that I was using separated colors
instead of blended colors. There's an unblending that
creates clarity and transparency. And I love the metaphor for painting because it works
so well for me in my life, so yes, separating the
parts out is like getting the clarity and purity of each part. And then they combine in this way that is glowy and
beautiful instead of muddy. Hey, thank you. So Rose says, if there
are many different parts, how do we best make decisions, you, once you find the heart
healer, once you find the calm, peaceful one at the center, that's the
one that makes the decisions. And you'll go to it and
whatever makes you feel calmest and most peaceful, and it
most that part of the self, that's the person who calls
the shots and other parts. If you go, oh no, maybe if I do that, they'll never love me back. And the calm part will talk
back and say, oh sweetheart, if you don't do what you
need to do to be peaceful and they don't love you back then their love is not love
because it wants you out of peace, and how could that ever work? Even if they love you, you won't even be available to love them. So it's a wise self, it can help explain the dynamics of relationships, the dynamics of loss and love and all the things that are so difficult
for us as human beings. It knows its way through
all the obstacles. And your heart healer Rose is, it's much wiser than I am for you, it's your facet of the jewel, it is the one essence, the one soul. Maryanne says, I love this. What's the best time to practice it? I do it first thing in
the morning, first thing, but I also do it whenever
I am distressed in any way. Like last night I saw a play on Broadway, it's called Ohio State Murders,
and it was heartbreaking. Oh, really heartbreaking. Sorry if that's a spoiler,
very inspiring as well. But it was heartbreaking. And at the most heartbreaking break, part of the play, I kind of started to dissociate because
it was so heartbreaking. And so I just, I took my
eyes off the stage and I put, I dropped my eyes down and I
did a little meditation and I put the part of me that was
distressed in front of me, and I kind of contacted that
and I was like working with it. It's a play about loss and
racism and injustice and sexism and all these tragedies. And so the part of me that
needed to, that was heartbroken by all of that, had to go back to source, had to go
back to the heart healer. And then I was able to calm
down and I felt healed. And it was a very powerful piece of art. And it did that for me, it
broke my heart to heal my heart. And great art can do that for us. T-Bone Duke says, what if the
heart pain keeps coming back? Oh, it will. That's just what we do. So you just repeat, repeat. And it's not like, oh my
gosh, I have to do that again. The necessity of repeating
it, thinking of it is like, you know, I keep eating food
I love and it's delicious, but I'm hungry again
just hours later, like, why won't it stick? It won't stick because it's
meant to be a continuous process of nourishment, and because
the process is nourishing. Once you learn to do it, it's delicious. It's relieving. It's like being starving and
getting fed or being thirsty and getting a drink or being
hot and being refreshed. It happens again and again and again so that the heart heals stronger
and stronger and stronger. And so that the process
itself can be experienced in its full deliciousness. Just eating once and
never being hungry again wouldn't be as fun as having
delicious food every day right? Laurie says, are we afraid of wholeness? I think a lot of us are, because our wholeness includes
all the parts that hurt. And I know people who are always happy, always keeping themselves happy and excited, and everything's
great, everything's great, and I can feel a manic quality. And it's because they're saying, don't, I don't feel the parts of
myself that are heartbroken, no, they don't exist, they're not even here. That's why people are
always telling me, I was, I'm fine now, last week was
terrible, but I'm fine now. Like letting it into the present moment. Oof, you can't really do it. Like while you're at work, sometimes you kind of have to do to get by yourself to open a
really deep heartbreak. So yeah, we're terrified of our wholeness. Once we've integrated though, then there's so much more power
and wisdom to hold the pain of being human that it turns
out to be a huge advantage to be whole. And we stop suffering as
much and maybe we stop suffering at all. Hmm, I don't know. Tell me when you get there. Instarnet says, how do you know if it's healed properly aligned, or if it's grown over,
misaligned, really simple. When it grows over aligned,
you are completely peaceful, completely contented, almost unflappable. Peaceful, peaceful, peaceful. The one phrase that rings the chime of truth most deeply in the
most people I've talked to, hundreds and hundreds
of people is I am meant to live in peace. And when you say that, you
can feel the truth of it. And that's, that becomes
my bellwether, my, that's the chime of truth
that I'm always looking for. Does this bring me peace? And even believing something scary or heartbreaking, if it's
true, can feel peaceful. It does feel peaceful,
the truth feels peaceful, even if the news is not good. Like if you tried to say
to someone, you know, there's no suffering in
the world, they, okay, maybe there's no suffering in the world, doesn't feel peaceful and you, but if you say what
the heart healer says there is suffering, but there's a reason
for it and you'll be okay, that's more peaceful for me. You check and see what's peaceful for you, but that's how you
know if it's a line, peace constellations in her
bones, I love that tag. If we heal ourselves, do we
heal the larger community? Think of Martin Luther King as rejecting actually an illusion. Yeah, I think that's, well, there, there's a lot in that
question, if we heal ourselves, we can't help but become a component of healing for the larger
community, there's something, I'm sure you've heard of this called the
hundredth monkey syndrome. It was based on these people
who were studying monkeys in the islands off the coast of Japan. They're these monkeys that live in cold, they're the only monkeys
that live in cold climates. They were cut off in Japan
by the advance of an ice age. And they, they're very
wooly and have short tails and they like to hang out
in hot springs, but they eat the locals were giving them yams and rice to eat and they were on the beach. So the yams and the rice would get sand and it would grind their
teeth down and not be good. And one monkey on one
island figured out that if she threw her yams or rice
into the ocean into a pool, then she could wash them
and they'd come out clean. Even the rice could be
separated from the sand. So she learned to do that and
then she taught her babies to do it, and the whole troop started
watching and they all learned to do it. Now, there are groups
of these monkeys living on different isolated islands, and there were people observing
all of their communities. And it is said that when
about a hundred monkeys on one island learned
how to wash their yams, suddenly all the monkeys
on all the islands knew how to wash the yams. So the idea that we're all
connected, I believe is literal. And I believe that consciousness
communicates things. So if enough of us get to a place of heart wholeness, you just
walk through a Starbucks, you're a force for healing, if your heart is at peace, you walk
through the United Nations, if your heart is at peace,
you'll be a force for wholeness. We all help heal the world
by healing ourselves. And furthermore, it's the only way. If you're not healed, you
can't, you can't give healing. Not the deep heart healing. And I think Martin Luther King knew that. And I think he had, he had deep reserves of
acceptance and compassion for himself, for his people,
for even the people who had so horrifically oppressed other people, his people specifically. The rejection, for example, of black Americans by white Americans, is not an illusion on the
level of form, it is real, and it happened, and
yet Martin Luther King and everybody who followed
him in the social, in the civil rights
movement of an any person of any color, found a depth
of acceptance that was able to encompass the horror of that past. And that is, and that is truer. That is a truer source of
reality than just getting focused completely on oppression and suffering. So you have to include it, remember, you're not getting any rid
of any, you have to include the truth of discrimination
and injustice and horror. You include that in the heart healing. And that way you end up
healing every part of yourself. And then you can even eventually, I hope, start to heal others who are
maybe not so just and maybe who are in positions of
privilege and they like it and they're abusing it, even
they, that was his legacy. He said, even they will
come to find the truth, to find compassion, if we can
just keep this up, you know? And I hope we all can treasure his legacy and tomorrow, as we
celebrate the day named for him, if we can really
heal our own hearts and turn it toward the world, even the parts of the world
that are truly not just. Gail says, can you talk about the
difference between clean pain or pure grief over loss versus dirty pain. Pain caused by the stories
we tell about a loss? I can't tell if my hearts sick
part is feeling clean pain or dirty pain, that's pretty easy. You look to see if you're
responding the way an animal would or if there are words
attached to your suffering. That's the key. Are you talking to yourself
about the suffering? Because the only way you can suffer from thoughts is if you're using words. So when I think about, you know, the death of someone I love, there's the kind of pain
that makes dogs go sit on their master's graves,
you know, that kind of thing. But when I think things like, oh, I've been so deprived by life
and nobody should ever die and whatever, then I'm not at peace. And there are words
attached to the not peace. And those words will always be a lie. I promise you, the heart
healer will tell you, honey, that's not true. But I'm listening and
I get how hurt you are by your own words, I hope
you can get past that. And the clean pain you're
feeling will heal so strong. It heals so strong when it's loved. Couple of more little over
time, but that's fine. We started a minute late, donna says, what if the heart's sick
part of you is a part of you that you loathe and
feel has made terrible choices? And it is hard to even
listen to that part. Then you take the part that
hates it, that is loathing, that is making judgements
about the terrible choices. And you put that in front of you because that raving angry loathing
self needs your love as well. So you listen to it, let
it rant, let it loath, and then say, wow, you're suffering a lot. You're in a lot of pain, I see that. Tell me more. And just let it keep telling you its story and say, I'm listening, I'm listening. If you can find the a way
to mean it, when you say, I really want to hear you,
I really want to understand, don't contradict it, just listen to it. Eventually you'll find a
part of yourself that can see why it has that perspective
and can accept it anyway. And then it starts to
change its nature and soften and become less aggressive,
if you push against it, you're trying to kill it, of
course it's going to fight back. I would too. Okay, Cleo finally says
Cleo, which means star. I love that. Are there specific differences
to this technique we can make for pre-verbal heartsick parts? Yeah. If you draw at all, you can draw a picture of
the party that's grieving. If you don't draw, you
can choose something to stand for that, like
a little stuffed bear. Or you can find a picture of a little kid. I remember when I read
tennis is a tennis man who said, so runs my hope,
but what am I an infant crying in the night, an infant
crying for the light and with no language but a cry. I remember reading that
and having it touch the part of me that has
no language but a cry. So if you find a symbol
for that is kinesthetic or visual or a tactile,
you can just cuddle it up, wait for it to heal because
you can't heal anything. But it heals itself if
you come into alignment. So I hope all your hearts are
very healed and that you feel very peaceful and that I
will see you again next time on The Gathering. (kisses smooching) Thank you everybody. Love you.
