683 thoughts on “Opening of my heart”

1. Every part of our body is giving us feedback if we care to listen. I really appreciate listening because I’ve already learnt so much. There’s never not something to learn.

2. It makes sense that when our arteries are unblocked we can love more … exactly like a river that is cleared so it can flow and very inspiring that with this you actually feel you have more capacity to love more than ever before.

3. Irene, I loved this statement, ‘I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages’. This is the relationship we need to get to with our bodies, then we can hear it more often. Our body is our friend and if we are uncaring towards it, then it will only end up letting you know that it’s not happy with you. Build a strong relationship with the body, and it will be by your side, simple…

4. What I can feel is how much pressure and imposition we are actually putting on ourselves and our body when we develop and live from a pattern of behaviour in reaction to the hurt and the fear.

5. Irene thank you so much for sharing your life, there are so many gems of wisdom here in your blog and I deeply appreciated your honesty, much of which I can relate to. “I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.”, when we think of illness as random it’s easy to consider ourselves a victim when a health condition arises, rather than it being a communication. For me working with Universal Medicine brought the understanding of the body, its divine particles, and our place in the Universe, that we are part of a larger scheme of things and that our body is supporting us to evolve back to our divine origins. Our choices and behaviours are either aligned to the soul or not and our body is able to constantly communicate the truth to us either way.

6. This is such a good example of how our bodies physically respond as a direct result of how we feel.

   1. Sandra, spot on. Our bodies react by cause and effect. Like anything materialistic, if left untreated, will break down eventually. Attend to it earlier or care for it, it will keep going. Just like a car, oil it, put the best petrol, service it, and the quality will be felt, and it will drive better. Our bodies are no different.

7. There are no baby steps to opening our hearts to others unless we let others in.

8. This makes so much sense to me, closed heart – blocked arteries! Feeling my own heart reading this blog I can feel a hardness where an openness could otherwise be. This has changed dramatically over the years but there is definitely more hardness to melt.

9. I like this phrase: to have an ‘original loving heart’. It introduces something great and ancient about being human.

   1. I liked that too Shami, and the distinction between our original loving heart and the emotional heart.

10. The way we are in life, has a profound effect on the physiology of the body.

    1. It definitely does Sarah. Reading and being aware of what our bodies are showing us is medicine.

11. Open heart, open arteries it makes sense, and you can feel the lightness expressed here in living this way.

12. The more we start to live in a natural way, following the lead of our body, the more we can see all the ways that we’ve disowned, abandoned and disconnected from our body.

13. How amazing it is that they can go into our hearts and unblock the build-up. It paints a picture of how we not only harden ourselves to keep the world out from hurting us but we physically build a wall inside our arteries and that is the end result of living that way. The sad thing is that this is such a common procedure these days.

14. Yes indeed… The term open-heart surgery sometimes it’s incredibly appropriate.

15. It’s amazing how the body keeps speaking to us and grabs any window of opportunity to let us know how it has been dealing with the choices we have been making all along and bring healing. It’s like it really knows the exact moment when we are ready to face more responsibility, or the lack of. Its timing is just impeccable.

16. Opening our hearts for others starts with an open heart and deep self-care for ourselves first.

17. I guess someone reading this might think ‘but how do I listen to my heart?’ Well for me it’s by turning down the volume of what my head is telling me. And it’s strange at first, to trust what you feel – what your heart is telling you – if you’ve been used to using your head to think, analyse, measure, etc yourself through life. But it is very natural and feels this way too.

18. So many of our behaviours are tainted by something that has happened in the past – I often remember something from my childhood and think to myself: “my god, am I still holding onto this?!” the answer is usually yes, if we don’t renounce the energy of that which holds us, it will forever remain within our bodies.

19. Getting to the heart of the matter of treating ourselves with the same gentle and tender love as we would a precious infant.

20. It is quite surprising that there are forms of being accommodating and helpful that are indications of a closed heart yet these forms are very common. A beautiful blog, Irene.

21. Thank you, Irene, reading this today has really helped me.

22. We can keep telling ourselves that we are loving or kind hearted but it is when we are offered a reflection of true love that really questions our relationship to ourselves. It is then a case of whether we choose to be inspired or react emotionally with a vengeance to that which we are not living.

23. Gentleness (a bridge to love). So true but where are we taught this or shown this, I have never heard this said other than at Universal Medicine, yet it is one of the key principles of understanding and being able to feel true love

24. I don’t think you are alone in not letting love in and out freely so it feels like your story carries a message for us all.

25. We think we are being loving when we help others – from acts of kindness to listening to their problems and offering support, yet are we forgetting that to love and care for another we need to love ourselves first, and from that love our heart opens like a beautiful flower coming into bloom.

26. Even those traits we consider ‘good’ are not necessarily all of us for if we latch onto them and not be the fullness we are, we are being less, it’s obvious with traits we consider ‘bad’ but less so with those we cherish as ‘good’ – a great distinction.

27. ‘I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.’ How amazing is our body and its ability to heal, in a way the diagnosis was a compliment of what you were choosing in being more open and truly loving towards yourself and others. We are not used to looking at it in this way but you do after the initial shock.

28. I agree Linda. A big part of being gentle with myself is accepting how I feel. I find when I try to push on and appear ‘ok’, my body suffers a lot. Whereas if I acknowledge that I feel anxious, tired etc my body can remain gentle and open.

29. I also had one of those ‘caring hearts’ that was emotional rather than truly loving in the way I cared for others. It came from a role I had adopted to get by in life rather than from my deeply caring nature. It was also devoid of any care for myself, which would be a warning sign, if we (especially women) were not sold the belief that care = sacrifice.

30. If we understood what the true meaning of the word love meant ie. no attachment or conditions but an openess to accept situations and people as they are then our heart would joyfully welcome and appreciate it. Holding onto hurts and imposing those hurts onto another is not love; being true to myself and holding it with not one ounce of reaction towards another is what I call love, a way of being that is natural and simple because of the willingness to love the self.

    1. Love is a beholding energy and it gives the other free choice and does not interfere with their free choice.

31. We can very much support our own healing and recovery when we accept the messages our bodies are trying to give us instead of resenting them for showing us the truth of how we have been living but haven’t wanted to see. What is also very cool to feel is that the more we accept ourselves and are okay with being honest, real and who we truly are, and open to ourselves and others, the more life appears to open up to us.

32. On a health note alone this shows the importance of letting love out and in .. something that I can very much feel I am currently not living and where I know I could be as I am feeling this in my body.

33. I am in awe of how our body waits and chooses a perfect moment for healing for it to be maximized.

34. It really is no surprise that heart conditions are endemic in our world… It is so vital, essential that we take time to reconnect to our gentleness, to our stillness, and our inner heart.

35. The more I move and express in a loving way consistingly, the more or quicker I can feel when I don’t. It’s like my heart closes, my body contracts and a hardness takes over, also in the way I speak. I had that yesterday in a conversation. What I appreciated in myself is that I was fully aware of it happening. I was reacting to a remark. Just by stopping myself and saying out loud: ‘oops, I reacted’ I gave myself an invitation to melt and open my heart again.

    1. Love it Caroline, being open and honest, transparent in this way, allows for instant reset and a different way in relationships that is bringing us up. This invitation extends to others too.

36. In sharing your experience, I can’t help but notice that there’s a link between the lack of deep self love and love in expression with heart problems. The expression of love really is medicine for the body!

37. When we start being gentle with our selves we can appreciate how delicate and truly sensitive we are.

38. When we have the experience of our chest lighting up, that beautiful warmth and glow spreading through our chest, in fact a general feeling of expansiveness, we do definitely have the feeling of our hearts opening.

39. I find it amazing that every part of my body will tell me if there is something I need to look at something in myself that is not a loving honouring way to be.

    1. Thanks for your comment Ruth, it really sums up the power and simplicity the body offers in its communications to us.

40. The heart is such a lovely barometer. It can fire up at any time and remind us of the love that we are connecting with. …..that we are.

41. ” I wonder what my other organs have in store to tell me? ”
    Perhaps your heart said it all for now, as all your organs are now getting a full loving blood supply.

42. Opening my heart to another at times means that I say no to their requests and needs without apology or guilt.

43. When we start to make simple changes to our life like going to bed early, preparing for the next day and caring for ourselves, we begin to open up more and our love slowly begins to blossom.

44. ” As I dug deeper into this I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself. ”
    This is a huge understanding , in how we allow our past experiences manifest how we are in our future interactions. Coming to this realisation allows for true change. Thank you for sharing Irene.

45. “I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way” – I love this Floris! Such an inspiring way to look at our anatomy and how we can maximise healing of illness and disease.

46. An open heart… a heart that allows others to come in and let the love to flow between each other without boundaries..

47. “It is all here within my own heart, I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it.” Wise words indeed Irene. When we listen with the ‘ears of our heart’ we will never be fooled by anything that is not true. Emotional drama is simply a trick that gets in our way and pulls us away from staying connected to who we are.

48. ” but when I started to make those first steps towards gentleness (a bridge to love) ”
    Its so important to start the process of re-connectecting to the love we all are in truth.

    1. Yes John and our body responds with every step we take, saying thank you, as deep healing commences.

49. This is a lesson for us all, showing us that how we live will always play out in one way or another. I got very sick with an infected appendix and this was body showing me that I was indulging in holding back.

50. It is beautiful how you describe the rhythm you discover under the chaos and agitation when you bring gentleness to your everyday moments Irene. It is so easy to forget that we can connect and confirm to our innate essence by bringing this quality into our everyday life.

51. It may not feel easy to make the changes you describe Irene, but it is so worthwhile going there, and actually once we start, it is far easier than we imagine. Opening our hearts is such a natural thing to do when we drop the protection.

52. “I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.” Although I don’t have blocked arteries – to my knowledge – I enjoyed re-reading your post Irene and have felt more open to everyone since attending Universal Medicine events. My challenge now is to open my heart even more – letting love in as well as letting love out.

53. I remember reading when I was about 20ish that soldiers who were in their late teens and early twenties had autopsies performed on their bodies only to discover some of them despite their great level of health and fitness had blocked arteries. At this time I was pondering about health/sickness/life so I was fascinated to learn this, as it confirmed that the majority of ill health was created by our emotions, lifestyle & genes were only small contributions in the big scheme of things (Emotions lead to certain lifestyle choices).

54. Irene, have you noticed a difference in how you feel or energy levels since the surgery??

55. 13 years ago I wouldn’t have known what you meant by saying Opening your Heart. With the enormous support from Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine modalities I am now choosing to do this on a regular basis. At times I can feel the reaction go on and then instantly the hardening. I clock this and say no and choose to be with my heart and it feels incredible.

56. The need to please others can be insidious and cause us to disregard our self care all for external validation.

57. When we carry others it can take away the opportunity for them to walk their own necessary steps to heal.

58. I recognise the need to be seen as caring and helpful as if our self worth depended on other people’s opinions of us. I lose myself in the process of trying to please others instead of simply being true to who I am.

59. I recognise the need to be seen as caring and helpful as our self worth depended on other people’s opinions of us. I lose myself in the process of trying to please others instead of simply being true to who I am.

60. Our bodies can surprise us in so many ways, especially when we become ill or sick even if just for a day! Yet our wise bodies know exactly what we need, and any and all moments it brings us to a stop, there is always a message for us, and if we listen and heed the message, we easily can make more loving choices to care more deeply for self and then others.

61. The more honest I am with myself and all I am feeling, the easier it is to stay true to myself and express what is there to be expressed without fear of a reaction from another. If I consider that I would hold back from expressing not to upset the other, but nevertheless hurt myself as that expression stayed in my body, I can really appreciate how far I have come and how I can so easily trust myself. Pretty cool!

62. When you start to undo the hurts and habitual behaviours we act out to cover up the hurts, you get to know the real you. This can feel more unpredictable than the stereotyped person we had created, but it is a source of surprise and delight to discover you are so much more than the person you thought you were.

63. Our body has always been like the dashboard of our car. Every morning, we wake up, and a full system check is performed, and we are notified by our bodies of any problems that we need to be aware of. We are the only one that can ignore the flashing lights.

64. ‘I started by practising gentleness in my daily actions in life, such as cleaning the house, cleaning my teeth, washing my face, drying my body after a shower, putting on makeup, washing up and putting myself to bed for the night. My life started to change to a less chaotic way of living where I was able to feel a rhythm to my day and a lovely letting go at night for rest.’
    It is amazing the difference this makes Irene – how it brings us from living beside ourselves with anxiety and rush – to a completeness that celebrates our beingness.

65. ‘I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.’ what a transformational place to come to in yourself, to see your body as your friend giving messages to guide you in your daily choices.

66. What an amazing journey you have been on Irene and very good of you to share so we can all learn from your experiences. We do need to open our hearts and live with this openness to inspire others to do the same.

67. Everything is constellating for us to open our hearts and express true love. Every moment opportunity after opportunity is also presenting itself for us to also feel and confirm the power of surrendering to this love.

    1. So true Vicky, there is so much support for all of us, and when we learn and grow from all life is presenting to us, we are given what is next that will continue our journey of living from our hearts.

68. Thank you Irene for sharing something so important with us. I feel that sometimes I close myself off from what may hurt me but I am learning to recognise when I do so and allow my heart to open again, allowing others back in.

69. Being ‘open hearted’ is great medicine for the physical heart… a maintenance that keeps it working beautifully.

70. It’s amazing how our body registers everything about the way we live. Clear crystal that shows to us how to heal our old patterns and hurts, for us to learn and return to a healthy life

71. My goodness yes indeed… If instead of TV or social media, everyone got to watch a replay of ….”My life today… Your pancreas”… ☺ then life would be very different

72. So beautyfull and inspiring I love to feel this realness and absolute honesty in the way you share here with us.

73. Your depth of understanding and your connection to the truth of your heart is inspiring Irene. Thank you for this reminder to keep our hearts open.

74. Thank you for sharing your experience of opening your heart. I’ve had the privilege of knowing you and observing, first hand, the changes that you write about. It isn’t always easy to make changes of behaviour, especially when the behaviour is deeply ingrained. However, when someone wakes up to the responsibility of their own well-being, miracles happen.

    Possibly many who read your article can make the necessary changes that they need to, deepening into a true open-heartedness, so that they don’t have to endure the medical procedure that you did. The body wants to be well. With just a little loving support from us, it will succeed.

75. Given our behaviours stem from reactions from our past hurts and our hurts come from an expectation or picture we had that was not lived up to by others. If we expose the pictures and ideals we have then we can let go of the hurts, as we would see they were self created. Then as you are sharing here Irene we would reconnect with the truly loving being we naturally are.

76. What if being deeply caring carries no emotion, emotion leaves us in a state that then makes us less able to discern and care and love for people. But for some that is too much, I guess it is for everyone to decide for themselves, but I know now that I am no longer regretful that I am not more sympathetic, as it used to be something I wondered why I struggled with, yet sympathy is yet another imposition and does not support another to deal with what is before them, but enjoins with another in the struggle.

77. It is beautiful that you have dedicated time to understand your heart and your body’s communication in full, this is the true meaning of healing, as you are addressing things from the inside out.

78. It’s only in the last few years that I have become aware of the difference between feelings and emotions and how emotions can really harm us. Honouring our true feelings gives us energy and leaves us feeling content and connected with ourselves, running with emotion leaves us drained and unstable.

79. Yes, you are right… when you start listening to the body, recognising that ..”“The body is the marker of all Truth” (Serge Benhayon) the body really does have a way of communicating that we do intimately understand. The amazing thing is, that once you begin to listen to the body’s signals, it is always presenting ways to support and deepen the care of you and your body.

80. The openness to heal is inspiring and turns ‘illness’ on its head.

81. Opening ones heart – from good to true. Awesome and inspiring Irene.

82. “… I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself….” It can creep up on you can’t it… how if we are bruised or feel hurt from an interaction or situation, that this has the capacity to disturb and change your movements in the body and consequently alter one’s natural expression. Just shows you how keeping your own heart open with yourself, to feeling any personal disturbances that occur, is the best medicine.

83. Awesome sharing. Reading this makes me wonder about the extent of our health as a humanity, and in particular heart disease. And how we clog up the arteries of our hearts so that the flow of blood is restricted; which clearly shows us that we are contracted and not loving ourselves or others. It never fails to fascinate how we manifest these illness that clearly show us the unloving choices we are making.

84. Irene you are so beautiful and sharing your open heartedness is profound and very simple to see how taking care and the quality and gentleness you brought to your every movement has changed your life and opened up your heart from the messages your body gave you. Inspirational

85. The true marker for an open heart is being able to say no to abuse but yes to the person, in the sense that we do not judge or condemn another for their unloving ways but neither do we condone these acts. We simply see that in this moment this person is choosing to behave in a certain way due to a variety of influencing factors in their personal equation and by bringing an understanding to this we remove ourselves from the hurt of it all thus being better able to remain in and with the love we are so that the other has a marker of love (the same love within them) that they can then choose to return to (or not) in their own time. The method is simple, the activity less so when we are invested in outcomes or wanting to stay stuck in our hurt and blaming the other for it.

86. Our heart is one of our most important and vital organs, and though we have many expressions about having an open heart, or a broken heart, do we actually consider our heart on a daily basis? I think it’s worth investigating what it truly means to live with an open heart, what this looks like, what it feels like and what is possible if you choose such a way of life

87. I did not realise you were in your 70s, it is amazing to look at your life today, the changes you have made, how you live, your commitment to work and then to also read the health problems you have had but how you look and feel today is incredible.

88. Brilliant Irene – our culture is full of of hearts and so many mentions of Love, but scarce it seems in descriptions of what this actually feels like in our body. It’s easy to talk about it at length but do we feel this warmth, connection and openness in our body then? If not it’s ok to say so, so much better to honestly stop than continue on pretending everything is ok, even though your heart is shut down to the truth.

89. I still have no real concept of how much I hold back the love that is available, I know I live a lot of love, but I can feel that it is still measured on what is occurring around me, less so but it still occurs and it is well worth being honest about where we are at with that and what we choose to not express that love.

90. Our body is so amazing as it knows exactly how to support us to open up to more and more love.

91. Irene you offer a greater understanding of what it means to be ‘open hearted’ and how anything less can affect our health.

    1. To share this with the world as the opening read on any daily tabloid would speak volumes on how we are living at a global level- far from the truth!

92. Amazing to feel how you changed your life around. Our bodies are marvellous at telling us how we have been living. We need to stop viewing illness and disease as the enemy and instead learn to appreciate the wisdom in the message given.

93. It’s a lot of pressure to be a ‘nice, caring person’, it’s in fact liberating to realise that to do so, especially if it is against one’s own needs, and for recognition, is not true care and is actually not love at all.

94. Truly beautiful to read this and learn from as I have lived very hard and harsh. Time to love whole heartedly!!

95. Yours is a real life story about opening your heart Irene, physically getting your heart mended and energetically letting people into your heart. What a healing you have been offered, and as you appreciate this, it is an inspiration and confirmation of what is possible in a lifetime.

    1. There is a lot of difference between how love is energetically, in its true form, and how we think it looks on the surface of life. We can think we are ticking the box by meeting an image, but love is so different when it’s experienced in its truth. This story is such a great example of that, and also of whole body intelligence, as the mind can believe anything yet the body corresponds to the truth of the energy and its quality.

96. Our bodies and organs get such a hard time from us when we don’t move in the rhythm that the body knows so well, and instead, resist and become tense and making the body work so much harder to come back to balance and back to love once again.

97. How beautiful is your description of melting away the hardness, for it reveals that underneath these layers remains the natural tenderness that we are.

98. It was a revelation for me when I felt the difference between what the emotional love that I had lived my life before and then to feel the emanating quality of Love and how holding, precise and equal it is. From that point on I have been lovingly calling out what is not of this quality and keep coming back to what felt true in my body.

99. I wonder if our heart is always open but we put a layer of protection on top and opening our heart is simply letting that layer reduce and go.

100. A beautiful reminder and sharing on the joys and importance of opening up our hearts and the never ending journey and expanse of this from our innermost knowing and essence of who we truly are.

101. “As I took these small steps I could feel a melting away of the hardness and a more connected way of being.”

     I recently was very tense and anxious and something happened and I had a really big cry. It melted away the hardness and I connected back to myself. Gosh it was beautiful. It certainly beats hardness any day.

     Go these small steps.

102. “It is all here within my own heart, I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it.” Absolutely. If we just keep piling on the layers of unresolved emotions and dont express what our body is really feeling, the impact can be and often is irreversible, whether its on the heart of any other organ/part of the body.

103. “…my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself….” To recognise the link between our past hurts to how this unconsciously governs over the body and behaviour is a great realisation, as this awareness then precipitates one to deepen self love, undo behaviour habits and make more self loving choices.

104. This blog really brings home to me the fact that our bodies show us how we live and there is no getting away from this and isn’t that amazing. I have a deeper appreciation of me and my body now, and an understanding that discomfort and pain may just be an ask to let go and truly live me.

     1. Yes, there are discomfort and pain but the feedback of the body can also be joy, harmony and a great expansion of awareness.

105. We too often have a picture of what Love is and our interpretation of this, all the while striving to have it, keep it and find it when all the while we are Love, naturally and divinely so and as such, the Love we seek elsewhere is forever, already within, awaiting us to connect and allow it to express forth.

106. “I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend” What a game changer this is, congratulations for taking the time to build a friendly relationship with your body.

107. “…The angiogram pictures revealed to me someone who had been contracted for a long time by not allowing love to flow in and out of their heart…” This is a great example that indicates there may be a link between emotional and behavioural patterns and dis-eases in the body.

108. Even when the mind is being fed lies, they are never truly louder than the truth found deep within the inner heart.

109. “As I explored further I began to feel the harshness and hardness in which I lived. It was quite shocking to me at first, but when I started to make those first steps towards gentleness (a bridge to love) I could then feel the depth of the hardness and how far away from love I was actually living. As I took these small steps I could feel a melting away of the hardness and a more connected way of being. I was able to realise this by observing how I was feeling in my body.” For me, consistency is key and it is not about thinking yourself into gentleness, it has to be lived by our chosen movements day after day,

110. Wow it just goes to show how our body shows us how we have been living and also gives us the opportunity to deal with it, it is up to us to listen to the messages and take loving action.

     1. Yes – and this is True Love… that our body always shows us how we are living at any and every moment in life.

111. There is such an openness I feel you have allowed Irene to really hearing what your body has to communicate to you and respond in a more loving way. From this place we can really address and heal what is there that we previously ignored and dismissed.

112. We can give people a million hugs, we can say the nicest of things, we can proclaim that we Love others with our whole being but none of this truly matters if we aren’t open inside. There’s a part of us, our heart that has a flow and when we let it emanate and naturally operate people can’t help but feel the effect. We can still say and do all the ‘loving’ actions but let us never forget it’s the warm open heart to which people connect. It’s this that is what life is all about, as you expertly show Irene.

113. Understanding how ‘our body is a marker of truth’ offers such great insight to ask ourselves what the reason is when we do get an illness

114. When I read your blog about opening your heart, I had an image of how f-stop aperture and f-stops work in photography, it’s very simple with cameras the more you open up lens the more light that is allowed in, and I wonder if it’s the same with our hearts – the more open our heart the more light comes in – it makes sense, the more open we are with everyone the more at ease our whole body can be – and hence the more healthy our heart is.

     1. The more the light can flow ‘out’ as well.

115. Our body is such a amazing thing and supports us to be healthy under the most rigorous of conditions because of what we throw at it on a regular basis. Lucky for us, the body just keeps on keeping on and supporting us no matter what the best that it can. You would think we could give it some slack and be more mindful of the choices we are making.

116. Listening to our bodies and really developing our hearing skills (just like we practise with anything else) sets a foundation that brings wisdom and steadiness to our lives.

     1. Matilda I completely agree the more we listen to our body and develop our hearing skills, we become more aware and alert of the true messages, setting a beautiful foundation for wisdom to flow through as we build the steadiness in our lives.

117. Illness to the body seems to offer a way for emotional wounds to be healed, as it brings about a forced stop, a period of time for reflection and surrender of being cared for by others as well as time to adjust, change or stop unsupportive behavioural patterns, and be more caring and loving towards oneself… This is all on offer if we allow.

118. Living with an open heart is something all children should be shown and inspired to live by. With all the heart conditions and contractions in the world today it makes sense that the body is showing that living with a closed heart is going to literally close our heart!

119. Gentleness is a great bridge to love and to gradually develop a loving rhythm in your day that deepens as you let more love in and commit to your body and what you just will not accept.

120. What a beautiful sharing Irene. For the longest time I thought that not being mean or angry qualified as being open hearted. I thought if I refrained from ‘having a go’ at other people that this restraint demonstrated true care. But what I have come to see is this is not true and does not account for the energetic part of life. Each of our cells carries and operates with a vibration – so if we don’t feel this warmth and expansion flowing in then, then that is not ‘normal’ but a result of being shut down. The sad thing is so many of us live settling for just ‘good enough’ or better than yesterday when we can all live and know a deep level of openness. All we need to do is set a new standard for the quality of feeling we live with in our world.

121. It can feel so harsh that, once we start to make big changes in our life, diseases and illnesses can still crop up to be healed. Understanding the bigger picture – i.e. that ill conditions aren’t formed over night, but are the product of many decisions, over many, many years, and that actually disease and illness is the body’s way of clearing ill-energy that we allowed in, help us to bring understanding to our conditions and situations, without judgment: simply a message, and always an opportunity to make new choices.

122. They say the greatest way to hide something is to create a decoy that appears the same. We have a lot of talk and pictures in our world about Love and our heart. But what do they really add up to? You show here Irene that our heart may not be quite what we have thought. Through the healing courses I have done through Universal Medicine I have come to find that we can stand next to the check out person at the supermarket and be shut down in our body or choose on a cellular level to open up and shine our light bright. On the surface the two things might seem the same but boy oh boy are they different. – just try it. What we can find is that we all intimately feel and can know when people are open and ready to connect. It’s a warmth that invites us to open up too, like the words of this wonderful blog.

123. Concerning our past hurts and the layers of protection we have put on to attempt to guard ourselves from more of it, I am absolute evidence of it not working, if it it did we would not hurt anymore, but people are raging and not feeling loved, and injustice perceived or otherwise is rife. Being transparent and holding ourselves in love, is the only way to truly navigate in this life, shields, shells, hardness, just prevents feeling the love and joy that is naturally there.

124. My Dad died of a heart attack. He was a gorgeous man but did not know how to express himself or open up to people. The strain this put on his heart was huge. All that held back energy. It is our natural way to be open and to express love. When we don’t do this it can be fatal.

     1. I also have many family members with heart conditions, and many who have also died with it. It is mainly because they struggle to express them selves and bottle things up within. They find it really challenging to express their feelings and often feel they cannot speak or share due to their upbringing of ideals and beliefs.

125. From everything you’ve shared, it seems absurd to ‘open our heart’ to only one single person! Could it be that relationships are designed to be with everyone and that actually having a ‘VIP’ partnership where we express ‘more love’ is an illusion because every interaction with someone is equal, and thus being open with people is about ALL of humanity.

126. Love your attitude and such spunk too! I think looking forward to what the body has to say, rather than fearing it, is a great approach to take. Some may have let that diagnosis break their heart, pun intended, haha, but you have taken it in your stride. Seeing the world through your eyes reminds me that we are much more than this one life, so why not let the body bring on what ever healing needs to occur in order to clear any old pattern out of the body for good!

127. There is a purpose why one of the simplest organs is our heart and the most complex our brain. Our heart is the foundation of love, joy and harmony. The brain thinks it can improve on the heart from something outside of us. Listening to the heart will always be a no-brainer!

128. The physical body mirrors the way we live, how we speak and act. It is a very good barometer of our intentions – nothing goes unnoticed, nothing escapes its loving reflection.

129. I love the bridge of gentleness to love that you describe as an ever deepening process to living the love that we are in essence.

130. I agree Irene, we may like to ‘think’ of ourselves as open hearted but are we in truth, consistently so the whole time? Only this morning I can feel how closed my heart feels .. so perfect timing in reading your blog to change this within. Interesting that we ‘rescue’ others to make ourselves feel better .. a great call out and in truth we can never ‘rescue’ others .. unless physically from a fire etc as this has to come from the person themselves, through their choices, willingness, intentions and true love of themselves. I didn’t know you can get a build up of calcium in the heart!

131. A beautiful heart warming blog Irene. I used to think of being open hearted as being friendly or well disposed to the world. After a Universal Healing level 2 I got to feel that it’s actually a literal and very physical thing, where the cells of our body can expand and embrace life as if to say ‘yes’. The person I was working with placed his hand on my heart, with absolute integrity, and I felt an incredible warmth and a connection from my heart to his flowing through his hand. From that day I have come to understand that this connection is always possible, hand or no hand, if I am willing to open up and let people connect to me. If I shut down and look to them to persuade me it’s safe, well it just doesn’t work that way.

132. When we open up we open up areas that have been closed for some time… hence with opening up things will reveal within one and so there must be understanding of this process in oneself as much possible. Thank you Irene.

133. When we wear our heart on our sleeve, it can be like the outcome of the raw egg toss game. But, what if wearing our heart proudly builds our strength to be all we are with out the fear of being hurt? We well and truly know what contracting our heart does to the body. It should be a no-brainer which one we choose, but it is still a choice.

     1. Steve what is the raw egg toss game?!!!! I have never heard of that before but it sounds messy! Over the last few days I have felt a tension around my heart and been really aware of this. What it is showing me is actually how I have been living my life the whole time and how much of a struggle it is to live this way, like trying to swim against a tide. Whereas if we go with the flow, with the love and let go of protection everything is so much easier so why do we have this consciousness or belief that everything in life should be hard and a struggle?

        1. The egg toss is a line of couples that face each other and toss a raw egg, and after each successful catch, they both take a step backwards. The winners are the last one with an unbroken egg. It is an egg throw at each other near the end because of the distance. The egg always gets hurt in the end. The parallel of wearing one’s heart on the sleeve for when we distance our selves from our self also precipitates hurts.

134. What I have been playing with lately is letting go of my protection and really allowing myself to be open when I’m with people. To feel my chest warm and expanded with Love and not to turn this off, no matter what the situation. I still at times do this but I am starting to clock how this happens when I bring in expectations of what I think that situation needs to be, to take on what is going on around me or react to this also. Learning to let myself be and open is such a great thing to be bring my attention too.

135. I so love that, Gentleness is a bridge to love.

136. What I notice is that there are deeper and deeper levels that we can go to when it comes to opening our heart and letting people in. It feels like a forever development.

     1. Elizabeth thats super wise words as I used to look at life at getting to a point and that being it, whereas when it comes to opening our heart, when it comes to truth there is always the potential to deepen. It’s a reason why life can never be “boring” and neither need it be a “drama” simply a constant evolution.

     2. This is so true Elizabeth. There is always more of us to uncover, and the more we allow the layers of protection to drop away, the lovelier it feels as we connect more deeply with each other.

     3. I love that Elizabeth, and what I also love is the understanding that everyone just wants to be loved. So even if we meet someone who we find difficult, this understanding alone allows the relationships to be much more open than it would likely be otherwise.

137. Our bodies are the most divinely amazing vehicles completely geared to keeping us aligned to love and service to humanity, it is when we choose to resist and fight this natural rhythm that we cause ourselves problems and re-adjustments then need to be made.

138. I’ve recently moved to a new house where door locks stick and it is very easy to think I have to slam them, but looking closer and seeing what needs to be done enables me to be more gentle and the doors are closed securely and feel lovely to walk through next time.

139. “I began to understand the teaching by Serge Benhayon that “The body is the marker of all Truth” it took me a while to fully understand this and no doubt there is more for me to understand but there is no doubt that it is through my body that I can know truth as it is through my mind where there is complexity.

140. It’s possible to believe we are being kind and loving towards others, but in reality we are simply giving our power away in order to look the part and keep the peace. To look after others at the expense of ourselves is not love, and it can contribute to illness by way of self neglect. To truly open our heart we need to learn to love ourselves first in order to be able to share that love with others.

141. The organs of the body have many messages, some small, some large, but none that can be ignored indefinitely.

142. To love in a way that is not intrinsically what we already are, requires an investment into something , and it is these that often end up causing us difficulty when they are reflected back to us.

143. Hmmm, yes the illusion that we think to be loving to someone we have to ‘do’ something with our heart, when quite simply we already are and to try and love is a step away from it, in fact.

144. Our body is most certainly our very best friend – and not our foe.

145. “Opening my heart ” what a beautiful real reminder to the true way of living for us all it simply feels amazing when we do and the wonder of it all is evident as we go about out daily movements and interactions with others also.

146. It is lovely and inspiring to read Irene of the deepening relationship of self love and care you have with your body.

147. “…I started by practising gentleness in my daily actions in life, such as cleaning the house, cleaning my teeth, washing my face, drying my body after a shower, putting on makeup, washing up and putting myself to bed for the night…. My life started to change to a less chaotic way of living …” Just shows how we do have such command and charge over the wellbeing and health of our body and the association between the way we live and human illness.

148. I love the simplicity with which you present your story. It feels spacious and open and ‘whole -hearted’. I am inspired and also reminded to look at other organs of the body where frustration grief and anger lie.

149. I remember living being very open when I was younger and was often told, I was wearing ‘my heart on my sleeve’ and would get hurt. Then we protect ourselves and close up as you describe Irene. But when we claim and can feel the expansion within us as we open our hearts as you have done, it feels like there is an endless space within there that we can go to living the love that we are.

150. “It is all here within my own heart, I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it” . . . beautifully put Irene. We can get caught up in opening and closing the valves of our hearts in protection, measuring how much of ourselves we are prepared to let out. Obviously the body doesn’t work well in these half measures, as you have found out the hard way Irene.

151. I find saying no really difficult especially in situations where I don’t want to seem a bad friend or bad person, uncaring and selfish. It’s especially tricky when I don’t have a prior arrangement as an excuse!! But I am being more honest. What’s interesting is that I know those things my whole body is saying no to are also things where at other times I would absolutely love to help with. And then there are the times I am saying no because I am avoiding intimacy or a situation that though challenging is also potentially very healing. Or even that I am actually being lazy! I’m getting it’s not about right or wrong but making clear choices and being present with those choices and their outplays and always being open to learning and reflection.

152. The magnificence of my body never ceases to amaze me, but once upon a time I took it for granted and paid the price in many ways with exhaustion, illness and repeated injuries. So I was delighted that when I made the choice to begin to bring gentleness to a very hard and contracted body that it responded with appreciation and slowly began to soften. It wasn’t easy in the beginning to remember to move in gentleness but eventually it was a way of moving that I embraced and began to accept as my new normal.

153. Closing our heart and hardening our body is not natural to us. I realised choosing to protect ourselves from people can hurt us more than we sometimes want to admit and our body doesn’t shy away from letting us know.

154. You start reading about my open heart on a medicine blog, and I’m thinking heart bypasses etc… but this blog starts with the way we live and our love (or lack of it) for ourselves and humanity and gives us that link to then how our health plays out.

155. So beautifully shared Irene with the realisation ” that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.” This really changes everything for love is who we are and opening up our hearts is our natural way of being simple and very freeing and expansive.

156. I know when I am open and allowing the Love to pour through me and share this with others, my whole being comes alive and so does the other person’s as well. It begs the question: so why do I feel I can choose when to do this and when not to? If it brings such a harmonious and joyful response, who am I to determine whether this will happen or not? And here lies the responsibility of being the Divine beings that we are.

157. “Could what we think is our heart be an emotional part of us and not the original loving heart”? This is a very important distinction to make and one I was unaware of until I came to feel my inner heart again through the gentle breath meditation and esoteric healing therapies. We know pure love as babies but then learn the conditional, emotional love that is sold as love in society. One heals and inspires others, one harms the body and makes us compromise and manipulate out of emptiness and need.

158. I didn’t much care for ‘opening my heart’ but, once I knew what that was like, it massively improved my life, beyond recognition.

159. Irene, what you have shared is a beautiful experience in that it is there for all of us to learn from. I too have been working on opening my heart, and I have found that in this it is a whole body experience. If any part of myself is in protection, or not fully relaxed, then it is hard for me to hold my heart totally open to whatever experience I am having at the time. Hence what I used to think was an open heart, actually was open but only to a degree and there are endless depths we can take this to – and so this becomes the beauty of this life in that we can continually deepen the love for ourselves and each other.

160. We live in a universe that keeps reflecting the connection and interrelationship between all things, every single moment. Further more we live in a body that keeps showing us the same all the time, yet we are like kids with our fingers in our ears acting as if we don’t see or hear anything.

     I love reading stories such as this that offers a much more expanded understanding and relationship with our bodies, the world and ultimately the Universe.

161. I really enjoyed reading your blog Irene, it was beautiful to feel how honest you were through your connection with your body, that brought you to understand what your heart problem was trying to convey to you.

162. There is no other sensation and feeling better than surrendering and opening your heart. How this starts with ourselves being super honest and being transparent and then allowing everyone in.

163. The body is amazing and so accurately supported your re-connection to what was true. Being nice and pleasing people does not fool the heart and for each of us it is a choice we can make to heal our body and our relationships by beginning with truly loving ourselves and making choices that support this.

164. If I really consider whether I am fully open hearted, I have to admit that I measure and choose who I let in and when I share my love and care with others. It is a wonderful process to allow more of the natural flow of who we are back and forth between us.

     1. Beautifully said Jenny – it is a learning process for me too, in that I get to open up my heart in what seems like increments at times and leaps and bounds at other times. But we know there is a marker and a deeper level of openness we can keep taking it to, and this is the beauty of our heart of hearts.

     2. That is a process – we become aware and then we choose whether we want to continue that way. Beautiful, Jenny.

     3. That’s a great point you make jennym. And the fact that we know how to turn it ‘up’ and ‘down’ also means we are aware of how much love is flowing through our body. Learning to see why we stop the flow is key here.

165. There is no coincidence that I read this blog this morning after appreciating how great it feels in the body to open the heart. A deeper level of ease and settlement in the chest that not surprisingly holds you in how you walk and talk.

166. Opening our heart and showing the love we truly are, dissolves any protection and guards and inspires another to do the same.

167. “Opening of my heart” speaks of baring all. Of revealing the delicacy within and offering transparency to the world. This vulnerability is totally beautiful.

168. It is amazing how much our body reflects how we live. Incredible science that we need to pay much more attention too.

     1. Its been proven as a direct causal link with lifestyle illnesses topping 8 out the top 10 long term problems we experience when we get older. Yet the mainstream (NHS and Government) have not been successful at changing the way we live… hence there will be no drop in these long term rates.

169. It is quite astounding that how when we start to bring our attnention to the small details in our lives, the bigger things start to change and consequently offer us opportunties to see how we may have been avoiding these, but equally a chance to look at them as well. If we are willing to ‘go there’ then we cannot but benefit on so many levels.

170. “…As I took these small steps I could feel a melting away of the hardness and a more connected way of being. I was able to realise this by observing how I was feeling in my body…” This is a wonderful moment when you capture and notice how establishing self love can and does have a huge impression on our body. Self Love is medicinal for sure

171. Our illness and disease tell us a lot about how we are living. In this way they are a roadmap for us to support us in our healing.

172. Opening up my heart and opening up to love with the allowing of this really is life changing and something on my radar at the moment also. Very beautiful .

173. It strikes me as interesting how we call it ‘open heart surgery’. Perhaps we are being offered a key reflection here of the need to be ever more open and loving with each other.

174. I love the subject of this blog. Learning how to continuously open our heart to receive and express more love is never going to stop as long as we are breathing.

175. We certainly cannot be sustained with the version of love that we have through history accepted, it can only ever at best give us the feeling that we are loved. But nothing comes close to a truly loving movement from an inner heart that only knows how to adore you to the bone. This is surely heavenly.

176. “Opening of my heart”. It speaks of such fragility, whether this means a physical opening through surgery or the opening of ones heart energetically. Both expose an enormous vulnerability and exposure that is beautiful.

177. The more I practice opening my heart, the greater I feel that life is there full of love, yet I also realise just how often I go about my day with my heart closed and not open. The difference when I then connect and am open through my heart is incredible.

178. “Could what we think is our heart be an emotional part of us and not the original loving heart?” A really great question. When we don’t live truly loving, we can call anything and everything love but it won’t be true love.

179. The power of gentleness is amazing, it supports me to listen to my body’s wisdom and guidance clearly. Bringing gentleness into my life has been transformative.

180. It is amazing to read how just the simple act of choosing to be gentle with yourself has had such a profound and long lasting affect in your whole life. A great lesson here to share, thank you for writing about this so beautifully.

181. Thank you for sharing Irene. I particularly loved your words of wisdom in your closing lines . . . ” It is all here within my own heart, I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it.” . . . once we can discern the difference between what we falsely perceived love to be and what love actually is we are able to open our hearts and express the true love that we are.

182. I practised simply opening my heart when I was faced with a situation at work that seemingly had no way forward the other day. Opening up with no protection or outcome in mind, everything dissipated and we connected on the most real and gorgeous level. Relationships come before anything else.

183. It does feel amazing to actually be in allegiance with my body rather than resistance; to treat it as a trusted, supportive friend rather than an encumbrance.

184. Let people in more by letting our true selves out more.

185. So beautiful to read how your life can change by changing the quality of our movements. Keeping people out by protecting ourselves is just another movement which does not fit our natural harmonious essence.

186. Thank you Irene. Your blog certainly held my attention. It is a great reminder to continue to open my heart more and more.

187. I love reading about your transformation, Irene, your transformation through a deeper and deeper awareness, into your inner self. Not to mention how you connected more, and listened to your body and what it was telling you, showing you the truth of how you had lived. A great lesson for everyone, to take stock in our lives and stay true to ourselves instead of being overruled by emotions, pleasing others and shutting down. Thanks for sharing, really gorgeous.

188. ‘It is easy and convenient to think of ourselves in this way as we then don’t have to change anything and can keep living our life in the same old way..’ Ain’t that the truth! It’s very comfortable and convenient to believe this. We then have a built in excuse for our irresponsibility which we can defend to the hilt because we believe are good-hearted. It completely caps our evolution and denies others the much needed reflection of us living our full selves without labels. Could we go so far as to say it’s evil? I feel so.

189. What you shared makes absolute sense – when we close off our hearts and not let love in and out, it has to have an effect on the human body.

190. When need is being imposed on another, this is a very uncomfortable feeling and because this is not a truly loving way, the other person may react in not wanting any form of help or may even shut the person out but actually it is a rejection to the imposition. What we then is we have chosen to continue and play the game of emotions. To make the choice to love again, requires a steadiness and an honesty to begin to express and nominate all that has been held back.

191. I remember coming out of a long and big relationship in my mid twenties, caught up the pain of the separation, and lying in bed feeling my heart actually ache. What I was feeling though was not my actual heart but the contraction, the hard holding and protection I had gone into not to feel the pain of having separated – from myself and having thus lost me in a relationship with another that wasn’t truly working. The physical ache was tangible, and something that would recur many times, until eventually I tended to what was underlying that pain – the separation from my own soul that I so deeply missed.

192. I wonder what my other organs have in store to tell me? Irene, this sentence alone says so much about you and what you are saying yes to now. Such a beautiful journey and thank-you for sharing.

193. That’s beautiful how with your ability to read what an illness is presenting it’s not a failure to be healthy and develop a condition but an opportunity to live more lovingly. I too appreciate illness and disease for arising because afterwards I feel lighter and more open, more so than I was living before the condition arose. In the moments of experiencing an illness I ask myself if my life was amazing before with this running in the background, how grander will life be once that undercurrent is no longer there?

194. Our bodies do not lie as they can only live what is true. So either we surrender to this fact or we keep denying it, in which our body eventually does need to stop us and clear that what not belongs through illness and disease. So in a way it would be wise to connect more to the body and live open hearted with the world we are living in.

195. Beautiful Irene, how you have opened your heart! I love your openness and willingness to listen to the messages of your body and how, you living more love, revealed a long held pressure on your heart and arteries.

196. Thanks Irene…. Our organs are certainly there waiting with news flashes for all of us on exactly what is happening in our bodies our lives and our energetic awareness in general.

197. Opening your hearts just to love ourselves more is the best possible start to healing anything that we are feeling is unsettling or untrue.

198. Thank you Irene, this has me considering how open my heart is and how much more open it could be.

199. It is great when we no longer feel a victim to our body but know that our body is our best friend and that when we listen to it intently it can support us with just about anything we need….great friend indeed!

200. it’s interesting isn’t it, how we can think we are a certain way, with certain qualities, and then when the Pandora’s box of personal awareness is actually opened, we can see what lies within

     1. yes and we then get to see all the beauty we did not know we were, as well as all the nonsense we were not wanting to see.

201. This is such an exquisite sharing Irene that gives an entirely new meaning to the term ‘open heart surgery’. To live with an open heart frees us from the crushing force upon our chest we otherwise experience (but often ignore) when we close ourselves off from truly feeling and engaging with the world and each other.

202. The heart is open to give and to receive equally and this is a natural state for us all. How many of us live this naturally? How many of us live the opposite or a percentage of it as our normal? If we are truly honest with ourselves, anything that leads us away from our innate naturalness feels diseased, and it hurts us and asks us to return to a deeper humbleness, and thank goodness for the honesty of our bodies, our ultimate marker of what is true and what is not.

     1. Sure we have to be very thankful for the honesty our bodies live Adele, as without that honesty and natural connection with the All, we would have been more lost and much deeper entrapped in the miasma of temporal life is pulling us in.

203. It is quite phenomenal to read about the transformation of you.

204. I have found it very difficult sometimes to stop patterns. I think I’ve stopped only to find the pattern has crept its ugly way back into my thought or actions. I am finding the way forward is not willpower or being hard on ourselves, but to get a sense of what that pattern brought us: a relief, or an ease because there is something we are not wanting to see. It is all a part of keeping our hearts open learning about our healing and moving on, as you so beautifully describe, Irene.

205. We do seem to be living in a very hardened and harsh way with ourselves and others, we have learnt how to protect ourselves from other people. And I feel this is getting worse as our standards of decency and respect are being eroded away. I wonder how much lower as a society do we need to fall before we say enough is enough.

206. ‘I have always considered myself a fairly “kind hearted” person who cared about others and made myself available to help others whenever I could’ – These are certainly the values most of us hold very highly and aspire to be; caring, considerate, open-hearted, put others first and so forth, but the fact that we can do all of these things and still feel incomplete within ourselves or our relationships as many people do indicates that there may be more to life than we think…

207. “..opening our heart’ is a wonderful reminder of how deeply healing returning to love and treating our body with regard and respect is, as often we get caught up in ‘doing’ this first for others, instead of having this activity towards ourselves first.

208. An open heart is an open door to the universe.

209. The opening of one’s heart is often associated with the outside world and letting others in … but what if this related to opening your heart to the quality of your own love?

210. A beautiful inspiration for us all to go there and heal our hearts with the illness and disease symptons guiding and showing us all along. Opening our hearts feels a beautiful medicine ” I am already everything that is glorious and loving and that the parts of me that I think I am are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts.”

211. So much can happen in a seemingly simple moment when we open our hearts and let people in.

212. When we start to work with our bodies and not against them we can truly feel in the flow of life.

213. When we struggle against our bodies and life they can show us through inflammation the quality that we are living in so clearly.

214. ‘Opening our hearts’ can mean a range of things depending on what way it is we have shut down or closed off from the love we are, or the love others might offer us. For me it was about ‘letting people in’, and happened as I allowed myself to let in one particular person in my life. What I discovered was that by letting in this one, I actually opened up to everyone more.

     1. Me too. And then how each and every relationship then supports and develops the others. So cool.

        1. Very true Matilda, understanding there is no separation between all our relationships is a revelation in itself. I certainly grew up thinking that you had ‘special’ relationships like family, partner and children where it was normal and expected to love them more than anyone else, which is essentially the same as ‘letting them in’. Being able to see that actually the amount anyone is ‘let in’ is based on the lowest denominator, as in the person we let in least, is quite a leveller and pull up to the responsibility to deal with our hurts and not hold anything against anyone.

215. The power of bringing true quality to the things we do every day is to realise the true power of rituals.

216. Working with the medical profession and listening to one’s own body as to the cause of illness is the way to true healing.

217. The common accepted way to live with an ‘open heart’ is to put other people first but as you share, Irene, that in fact has the opposite affect. It is not being selfish but by being totally honest and loving with oneself first then one can love others with and an ‘open heart’ as there is no need for any protection.

218. When we get to know our bodies on this level and understand how each organ provides insight and guidance into the way we are living and the impact this has, we have a very wise and supportive guide in life.

219. Keeping our hearts open and not closing our body down to love, is key to not shutting people out when there have been any reactions flying around.

     1. And when we feel we may be reacting to someone or something this is when we can go ok what is happening here, take a step back observe the situation, return to the love that we are and suddenly the reaction fades because we begin to understand what is going on. Otherwise it is so easy to take things personally and hence shut down to others.

220. Our physical heart is such a direct reflection of our energetic heart. If we are open hearted and let others in and allow our love out there is naturally more room in our vascular system and the flow of blood will be more healthy. If we are closed down to ourselves and to other people it makes sense that there will be a natural tightness in this area of the body resulting in restricted blood flow and an unhealthy heart. It’s a wonder that more people do not have an understanding of this.

221. It’s an interesting pattern to realise a reliance on being needed by others. This is a strong one for me, I can feel how much satisfaction I get in being of use to others. But I guess this really only reflects a lack of self worth if I measure my value by what I offer others.

222. There is nothing like returning to what we know is truth. After living years and lives of being shutdown and contracted with walls of protection around me to be able to let this go and open up, trust all is absolutely fine and that the love is there to pour though. Then magic can happen in every day.

     1. Yes. Absolutely. And having dispensed with the walls of protection I am touched by how sweet and simple life is.

223. Letting people in and letting our true selves out with an open heart is a blessing for ourselves and others. Sharing your experiences and your wisdom Irene is a beautiful example of someone (you) taking responsibility and making loving choices to live with an open heart, thank you.

224. What a great reflection of your body, Irene. I am amazed about the deep healing you received from your body.

225. It melts not my heart but that layer of protection over my heart when I meet another with an open heart. It is an ongoing process to keep allowing another in and share what is fact our natural essence.

226. It is always a very humbling moment to truly connect with our heart and our body, to acknowledge our choices and to know we always have the power to make different choices.

227. What a great blog to share with the world. Opening our hearts to another can be such a simple process when we make life about opening our heart to ourselves first. This connection can’t hide or hold back the same quality to another.

     1. I agree. And with the open heartedness comes honesty which touches every relationship with the sweetness of simplicity… no games, no holding back… very inspiring.

228. Irene it is great how you have read and fully understood what your body has been showing you and now with the support from the medical world for your body you can work with why you developed this illness and that you can re imprint with new choices.

229. It is amazing what is possible when we open our hearts, and the knock on effect this can have on others and on ourselves. Being open literally does allow doors to open in ways that we could never have previously imagined.

230. I was just pondering how whilst from the outside many people would say I have always had a very open heart, putting other people first and always wanting to include everyone, what was missing was the love for myself. And I have come to see that it is impossible to truly love another if first you do not love yourself. And if you try to without loving yourself first, it comes across as a need and a want for the other person rather than the love you intended.

231. I know how I have reacted and closed down with confrontation or disagreements. Keeping our hearts open helps to complete our side of any situation and holds everyone, including ourselves in love. Thank you for sharing the great journey of this learning, Irene, so we can all gain from it.

232. I often appreciate the timing of things and how in this timing we are supported to heal and evolve. You were given 6 years of re-imprinting choices before the physical issue of the heart revealed itself, by which time you had all the resources and practical support you needed to handle the medical intervention – very cool!

233. I can very much relate to this; ‘I realised the reasons I helped others was that I found it almost impossible to say “no” to requests and that I enjoyed the fact that I could be seen as “a good person”. It is very inspiring that you have been saying no when you feel to and that you have been putting yourself first and allowing others to take responsibility for themselves and their choices.

234. Wow amazing thank you Irene for sharing, your story shows us the deeper level there is to all illness and disease and when we see this we can see it for the blessing it truly is. Awesome work, well done you for going there and getting to the root cause – an inspiration for us all.

     1. It is the word ‘deeper’ here and in your article, Irene, that really inspires me… I love the sense that the deeper we are prepared to go in our exploration of our bodies’ wisdom the more there is to discover… there is an unfathomableness that fills me with awe.

235. I realise this may not be your intention, but this sharing feels like an invite for the reader to live in a more open-hearted way and to see that how we are emotionally can affect our bodies.

236. Opening up your heart both by both the emotional and surgical way has to be a full healing all round! Shows how both important aspects in health care of the human body.

237. Treating myself in a less harsh way allows me to feel how I have imposed myself and been harsh towards others even if the intention was to help.

238. It almost feels like a different movement between being kind hearted and open hearted. I can be kind hearted towards another in an outward gesture or movement but still stay protected behind my own little wall. Or I can be open hearted which feels much more like a two way movement where I let people in towards me and share myself openly back out towards them.

239. ‘I started by practicing gentleness in my daily actions in life, such as cleaning the house, cleaning my teeth, washing my face, drying my body after a shower, putting on makeup, washing up and putting myself to bed for the night.’ the opportunities we have to make markers of this in our daily lives are almost endless and it is inspiring to read this.

240. ‘…the parts of me that I think I am are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts.’ Whenever I develop to a new level of awareness I am always surprised by (but rather pleased) to be given another opportunity to look at a new layer of hurts, or behavioural patterns so that I can let go of them. What I always feel in this awareness that I have been living with something that is not natural and once aware of it I am grateful when I can let it go.

241. Irene I’ve been experimenting with keeping my heart open as I go about what I am doing, feeling the connection with myself and with all others, it’s a very different experience to normal when certain things will perhaps be a bit too confronting for me and I close down.

242. We are the heart of God but have concocted false borders to our borderless hearts. We keep ourselves walled in and others shut out but it’s an illusion, there are no walls, we are the endlessness of love.

243. The pattern to please others and to be needed can have us agreeing to almost anything, especially when what we really want to say is no but we find ourselves nodding our heads instead, and usually at the expense of our own bodies and well-being.

244. It’s amazing that when we start to love ourselves by being super honest we then naturally feel loving towards others. We create our own walls by being shut off from ourselves first and foremost.

245. ‘As I dug deeper into this I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.’ this is revealing for me also – we can always go deeper and there is no point of arrival, we have the opportunity to choose to constantly evolve.

246. A beautiful example of complementary medicine – Universal Medicine and an energetic approach complementing Western Medicine. Both are necessary parts when it comes to a deep and true healing.

247. One day when we stood in front of each other with eyes closed during a Universal Medicine workshop so that we simply could feel ourselves and the person opposite without any picture or judgment it was the first time that I got to realize that when I allow myself to be fully ‘seen’ and felt with all my imperfections and all my greatness in full acceptance of everything of me that my heart and whole body opened up like never before with no need to hide, protect or pretend. Since then I have a marker of what it feels and how to give myself permission to be open-hearted.

248. Live what you share about bringing an open heart into everyday actions. It is pretty incredible and shows how it is the quality of what we do that matters.

249. Our relationships are constantly reflecting to us how open or closed we are in the heart.

250. I used to hear people say this a lot, ‘it is a harsh world out there’, but now I wonder if this view of our world is because we are perhaps too harsh on ourselves? And then, we then tend to take on this perception that the world is harsh. Yet if we open our hearts and our eyes and treat ourselves with love and gentleness, would we still view our world as being harsh? For me definitely not, I now realise how we view our world is related to how we view and treat ourselves.

251. ” I became more aware of my “helping” patterns and started questioning the reasons I did things for others and what energy I actually did them in.” Imagine if we all did this Irene! It would certainly expose how many ‘good deeds’ are done in the world that are not done from a place of truth, but from more of a wanting some sort of recognition for doing it.

252. Opening the heart does wonders for ones quality of life.

253. It is very powerful coming to the understanding of what it is to live with and open heart. The intention to and commitment to live with an open Heart has already revealed healing outcomes for you Irene – thank you so much for sharing.

254. I find that my heart opens when I manage to be completely honest with myself and express that to others. My heart then opens like a flower.

     1. It is the most natural thing for us to open our hearts, this is why it hurts so much when we choose to contract.

     2. Transparency and an open heart really go hand in hand.

255. What a beautiful and real sharing of the open heartedness we all are naturally and truly and the journey you have been on to reclaim this “It is all here within my own heart, I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it.” The joy and simplicity of being the love we truly are and allowing it to flow is felt here so beautifully.

256. There is much that we take on, particularly as mothers, thinking we are being loving, caring and supportive, thinking we know the answers and trying to stop our children(even as they grow into adults) from hurting themselves, but in actual fact there is no true loving in what we do, not for them or ourselves, when we are continually there, either at there beck and call or when we jump in, often unasked, to pick up the pieces. Our interactions with those closest to us can reveal very much about ourselves if we are willing to look and often saying ‘no’ can open up a whole world of possibilities and healing for all involved.

257. Thank you for this in depth account of such a huge change from living from the emotion heart to the inner heart, and what a transformation. It is a rare but priceless process to start seeing the patterns for what they are; as the behaviours we use to not feel hurts. This is a dedication well worth doing.

258. Being open hearted might not be associated with the idea of saying no, being firm and resolute in not going to another person’s assistance, and yet love comes in so many forms of behaviour and often not helping another is the greatest form of help and thus love. I love this piece of writing as it is very honest and open about the process we can go through to become more open hearted, and as Irene says most of us would love to be this more.

259. It is such a journey your body has taken you on to learn to open your heart, Irene, and what a worthwhile lesson it has been. You know are listening to the true energy of the heart which is so healing in our lives, whatever age we get the message, it’s great.

260. Lovely how you bring the emotional and physical and mental together, one can’t help but impact the other and the more we accept this and see how all physical illness is an outplay of our mental and emotional ‘bodies’ the more we can take our own healing into our own hands, taking responsibility for our part and supporting the medical teams by prevention, management and healing of our illnesses and diseases.

261. We need to know how to discern what that actually means, ‘opening one´s heart’, because when we confuse it with the emotional version, what we allow to enter and pour out will not be love but a toxic emotional intensity that actually buries the inner heart where love resides even with more agony and giving-up-ness.

262. It will be such an amazing day when modern medicine finally accepts that the only answer to truly healing the root of our ill conditions is changing the way we are living. Such a healing to learn that part of having a healthy heart is to consistently be loving yourself in even the most simplest of actions!

263. If we have been taking responsibility for people in our life, doing heaps of stuff for them, and we stop, often they are most upset as they now have to take responsibility for themselves. Many do not want to do this so they find some-one else to fill our place.

264. ‘This was a shock to me, to my friends and family and even the doctors, who were puzzled as I presented as a healthy, vibrant 71-year-old woman. A very different person than I had been six years previously’ – This is something that is really key and important for us to understand. Even AFTER building the most amazing relationships, looking after ourself and turning things around, it’s possible (and shouldn’t be despised or fought) to still fall ill and be supported to rid ourselves of the momentum of previous un-loving choices.

265. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have conversations with our internal organs, and to ask them how they were feeling and what would they like in terms of true support before we actually did anything! But by allowing ourselves to connect and feel what our bodies are asking for using our clairsentience, this is in fact possible. Its worth considering when it comes to our own health care as this would be true preventative medicine, and it would certainly take the pressure off the medical system.

266. Listening again the messages of the body is a gateway to the truth that our bodies hold. What is beyond this gate is spectacular because it is the essential essence of the real you.

267. Opening my heart definitely feels similar to a door – letting love out and letting love in and learning how.

268. Our bodies are this huge storage unit of events and love, and these events, if not gone through with truth or love leave their mark in our bodies’ organs, muscles and so forth. So when we accept that we only exist because an energy is running through us all of the time, you get an appreciation of the body, the science behind it, and how every particle is, absolutely from heaven, and this needs to be honoured as best as we can, with respect and love.

269. The ultimate open heart has the one without individuality, he who is love without any conditions.

270. Your question at the end of this article is a playful invitation to start a dialogue with different organs in our bodies and what is great is that every point of discovery deepens our relationship with ourselves and therefore life and everyone else.

271. I spent years trying to ’help’ family members, only to realise they did not really want the ‘help’ I was offering. I was doing this so I could be seen as a ‘good’ mother rather than surrender to and be the naturally loving woman I am.

     1. It can be very, very difficult to allow the other the choice they make, especially when the choice is devastating and they continue making that choice knowing so.

272. Letting people in and letting our love out is a far better alternative than all the hardness we have to endure to keep everyone out.

273. Discovering we have an illness or disease can sometimes feel like a failure, especially if we have been taking good care of ourselves. You are showing how we can read what our bodies are telling us and see it as an opportunity to make different choices.

274. We meet so many people in our day and each of them can feel how open our hearts are. How beautiful it is then when we drop our protection and love with an open heart.

275. True freedom comes from re-learning how to love with an open heart, unimpeded by the reactions of others and the walls we thus erect to not feel them.

     1. This sure is true freedom, the ability to be all that we are in every moment without holding back in any way.

     2. Allowing the learning is very worth appreciating also being light and loving as we re-connect again to our inner-hearts.

276. It is in the smallest of actions, like brushing our teeth, washing our face, folding our clothes and so much more, that we begin to slowly but steadily build a relationship with our body and from this a connection grows that enables us to hear the messages it is constantly offering. Taking the time to build this precious relationship is so very valuable as it develops the foundation that will carry us through life; a foundation that will support us through the joys as well as the challenging times.

277. I have found it extremely valuable to have this knowing of who I truly am. It serves as a marker and a way to consider everything that is happening and how I am at any time. Am I in my fullness or can I make an adjustment to be in my fullness? Over time the cumulative effect is powerful.

278. Great discussion here – could it be possible to be kind, nice and good in nature and still be closed off to humanity? In my experience yes it is, as I too have for most of my life been a very kind and good natured person, however have still kept others out behind a wall of protection and guard. In fact being nice and kind, is one of the best forms of protection because it means most people like you or at least find you agreeable and you don’t have to speak up or speak your truth or express your full love.

279. I loved reading your blog, so many people have heart conditions but understand why, what you have shared will support so many. It’s about listening to the true energy of the heart, not about being liked or nice. Speaking the truth, living the truth, being open and letting people in.

     1. It definitely is not about being nice and I mastered nice growing up and now can feel how much of a need for acceptance and recognition being nice comes with. It is like there is an underlying energy of not being enough and so wanting the approval from another. Whereas when we are just love and speak the truth we are holding everyone naturally as equals knowing that just like ourselves they too are love just may not be choosing it – so then we do not try to moderate our words to fit in as that is essentially judging them saying they do not know. I know for myself when someone is nice to me when I am struggling nothing changes and all it really takes to make me see clearly again is someone to be real and honest with me, after all they are simply confirming what I already know, just have not wanted to fully see or admit.

280. The more we open our hearts to humanity and let them in then they start to feel the love that they are because we are letting it out. Before we know it over time we will be meeting each other with no protections just a willingness to be open and loving. We can only start with ourselves first and bring awareness to this and when we are not being this.

     1. That is one of the keys Natalie, I used to try to open myself up to everyone and be loving but was not 1st doing it for myself. It makes sense and is logical when you think about it to say that you cannot love another if you 1st do not love yourself. Yet I grew up being told that loving myself was somehow selfish yet it is the complete opposite.

281. Irene i can relate to so many of the changes and challenges you have experience since being introduced to Universal Medicine, its so astonishing that through introducing greater love and tenderness into our lived way we lay a foundational nest from which we can bring understanding and acceptance to our hurts and in turn see them for the creation they are.

282. Opening our heart is so much about opening up to people at large, letting ourselves be open and seen, sharing ourselves the way you have here Irene. And when we do do this from a connection within ourselves that holds us, what we share is an invitation for another to open up as well. The key to the tender invitation to another’s heart – to melt…

283. I’m glad to hear you have a wonderful opportunity to change your life with your wonderful open Heart. Thank you Irene.

284. Yes our reactions in life and to what life presents for us can certainly allow us to not open our hearts.

285. A very heart felt analogy of your story Irene…. always interesting how the body is our marker, and we may change our behaviour, but the real change happens when that flows into the body (potentially exposing a long term pattern that needs healing in the process).

286. To open my heart is to learn not to judge people.

287. You highlight such an important point here Irene, in that the care we offer others is not true care when we do not care for ourselves first.

288. I too started to have blood tests later in life, about 5 years ago and found all sorts of deficiencies with my health which I have been able to deal with over the years. Regular blood tests are a very necessary part of taking responsibly for our health and well-being as well as dealing with and letting go of past hurts

289. Ohhhh I’ve never considered I do the ‘nice caring person’ to be liked role – but I do. I get involved in other people’s lives when I don’t need too. I actually take their stuff on then drag it around with me. It’s great to be aware of this and now work on stopping it.

290. It’s just occurred to me, as I’m thinking about things this morning, that the answer is to love myself. Then everything else will transpire from there.

291. Hi Irene, this is a great sharing as the body always shows just how wrong we can get things. I was brought up under the misconception of needing to be there for everyone and that this was an unselfish, humble, loving way to be when in fact it is the complete opposite. As it is self-centered and arrogant to think that we know what is best for another . . . and there is no love in that. This is what hardens us . And when we are also overlooking our own needs, which is a disregard, we are looking after the other in this very same disregard.

292. The insight, understanding and awareness you have Irene as to what your body is showing you and healing for you is incredible. What a blessing it is for us all to know Serge Benhayon and the teachings of Universal Medicine.

293. This is an amazing blog to read for me right now – a perfect reminder of all that is there for us when we open our heart and let go.

294. To walk with an open heart is to walk with God, The Universe and Us All.

295. This I know…it has happened to me…”As I explored further I began to feel the harshness and hardness in which I lived. It was quite shocking to me at first,…” To go deeper into what has hurt us, how we have treated ourselves, the reactions we have had means being raw and this can some times be shocking…keeping aware that these things are just that reactions and not us as we clear and heal them is key to opening up and rekindling our access and connection to love.

296. I often have wished I could somehow spread open my chest with both hands when feeling how much is in the way to be truly open-hearted. As open as I am today, more than I ever could imagine years ago, there is so much more openness I still can and will develop by letting go of protection, holding back, withdrawal, holding on to hurts and reservations. There is no limit to love.

297. It is interesting to notice how we can care for others but in a protective way which all the time is hardening the body and not really letting others in.

298. It is not for the faint hearted but exploring and letting go of old patterns like being the helper or good person is a beautiful and essential part of opening your heart. These false ways of being, however nice they appear or how suitable they are for others, creates an imposition on the body’s natural way of being. Most of us run around with a hardened, sunken or protected chest and heart. It was not until I experienced open hearted through Esoteric Healing modalities that I knew any different. With this marker I can now clearly feel the contrast between protection and openness and feel the effect this has on how loving I can be.

299. Thank you for this absolutely wonderful and very clear sharing Irene. You have beautifully described the steps of healing that many of us have taken to reconnect to our inner heart.

300. Roseto effect is indeed about open-heartedness and something we can all certainly learn from to grow.

301. It takes a lot of strength to show our true heart and our true heart-felt ways in our current world. We are often taught to follow rules and to be nice, which can go against what we know in our heart to be true. To really be open hearted and to really allow this to be seen and expressed in all that we do is deeply freeing, but a freedom that we sometimes are scared to embrace.

302. I love the honesty and transparency you share Irene. Our body is indeed the true marker of health, and so often we override it. Your lived experience with a serious heart condition reveals the importance of opening our heart not only to ourself- knowing that everything we need is within us; and letting others in, and in doing so we let humanity in also.

303. ‘Opening of my heart’ is both feeding back, or re-turning love back within one’s own body and opening up / less protection of expressing love with others. A ‘win-win’ for all.

304. It can be very hard to stand by when the people we love are in some kind of distress and the phrase ‘detached compassion’ comes to mind meaning we are there, totally present, feeling what is going on and not reacting or going into sympathy, but doing what is needed in each moment, allowing that others have the capacity to resolve their own issues and we can be there for support.

305. True Shirley-Ann, people seem to be closed down and resistant to these findings that we actually create our own disease and that we can take responsibility by understanding that we do this by the choices we make each day. Once understood, we actually free ourselves from the victim role that disease happens to us randomly and we are unlucky if it strikes. Maybe if one by one we take responsibility for our choices then others will be able to realise they can do this for themselves.

306. An open heart is an open door to Humanity.

     1. Beautifully said Michael.

307. Personally I like to break it down to when I am not loving humanity, each one of all of us, I am ‘heart-sick’ in one way or another.

308. I love your willingness to pay attention to detail in your life and how in turn this is the real game changer.

309. “These reactions were mainly from family members whom I had taken on as a “rescue mission” for years and believed I could help them live a “better life.” – I can relate to this. I’ve taken it as my mission to ‘bring people back to their loving selves”. This came with a drive and definitely with a need for recognition and acceptance. Over the years I am learning that whatever I feel is mine and whatever others feel is theirs. The ideal of wanting to help people came from my ‘wish’ or better said ignorant belief that somebody else could heal that which I didn’t want to know about myself. Quite an illusion and lack of responsibility. How beautiful is it to have found and often accept that I can simply observe others and take (only) responsibility for what comes up for me. Which is enough (not too much) to deal with.

     1. Yes Floris, rescuing is such an illusion and I feel has more to do with us than helping others. I know myself that I needed others to change so I could feel connected with them and when they stayed the same I then chose to align with where they were at so I could feel that I was connecting. Trouble is I wasn’t connecting to myself, just looking for comfort with others and ultimately feeling very unhappy with myself and probably blaming them for not stepping up to my expectations of how they “should” be. I didn’t want to “lose” them but in the process I was prepared to “lose” myself. I love how you have shared that “somebody else could heal that which I didn’t want to know about myself”.

        1. To me it is shocking Irene to read “I didn’t want to ‘lose’ them but in the process I was prepared to ‘lose’ myself. The shock is how prepared I was (and often am) to ‘lose’ myself in order to keep a certain harmony. Taking responsibility for staying with me and express what is to be expressed (no matter if this is in words or in movements) has grown importance today.

310. Helping people as I am learning can be imposing and draining. It’s not actually helping anyone, it’s getting involved and not letting them evolve themselves.

311. I think we all live with the pressure of pictures we create. The ‘perfect’ pictures we have to live. Such as the amazing, cute, loving, always happy, non arguing perfect girlfriend that can deal with anything, the mum who’s amazing and never has a hair out of place or gets annoyed with her kids, the wife that has the house spotless and perfect meals made, the husband who provides for his family, goes to the gym, has a great body, good car, great job, who’s got it all’, the perfect student, – there are so many images, pictures are roles we create and try to live up to or do live, instead of being ourselves. This is so so damaging to our health. It’s exhausting and draining us.

312. The way the life is set up and is operating there is no encouragement to be connected to the Love that we are. So when we do start to choose this it is a choice that has to be made every second. We have patterns and a way of being that has overridden this for so long that it still wants to have the reigns.

313. When I came to my very first introductory talk by Serge in London, we did a mini workshop on clairsentience, and as part of this exercise we were asked to connect to our heart standing opposite another. What I experienced slightly puzzled me at the time, I was connecting to my body in a different way, but it confirmed to me that the heart, or love, was not in the physical heart, (nor was it an emotion) but actually radiated out and down my arms. My body introduced me to the fact that love is within us and cannot be confined to one part alone.

314. “My life started to change to a less chaotic way of living where I was able to feel a rhythm to my day and a lovely letting go at night for rest.” it’s amazing to appreciate every single step of each moment in our lives, it’s something I am working on as it can be so easy to take for granted how grand life is and in that we don’t enjoy the magic of each step.

315. Important to crush the lie an open heart is pleasing others at our own expense. It is a surrendering to the love we are within, being gentle with ourselves and from this love opening our hearts to others without need or expectation.

316. Many of us needed a crowbar to open our hearts they were shut so tightly!

     1. Alexis that made me laugh. It is a tragedy that so many us can for so long go around ticking all the boxes of living an okay life, yet at the end of the day we are left in the misery of feeling alone and separate.

     2. Strange to say it out loud, but true. Makes me wonder why though?

317. It can be a challenge to accept that we are already amazing and all we have to do is allow that amazingness out, in other words, to express in full who we are. Not expressing is not a humbleness, it is holding back, depriving the world of our light.

     1. It is a shame that accepting that amazingness that we already are can be a challenge because really, we should be brought up knowing this from the start, and not waiting till we are older and then trying to undo all that we are not.

318. Medicine is wonderful as it allows us to go through procedures that can clean up the consequences of our old momentum. A bit like paying off a big debt in a few days or weeks.

319. Living in loving ways is very practical – ‘Part of this process was to start to take responsibility for my health and I began to have medical checkups, something I had neglected in the past.’

     1. I neglected going to the doctors too, along with not valuing myself enough to have regular dental visits and I was so missing out! It feels lovely to care for myself these days. More recently I went to see my naturopath, not because I was sick, but because I knew that the next few months would be busy for me and I wanted to support myself as best as I could. It was such a change to care for myself so that I don’t get sick rather than be in the reaction, trying to find a solution because I didn’t care and then ended up sick.

320. Thank you for reminding me how valuable it is when we are willing to bring a deeper understanding to the root of our illness and disease to allow true healing to take place.

321. Our bodies are so amazing in how they tell us exactly what is going on. Lovely to read how you are now more open hearted with yourself as well as with others.

     1. Exactly Elizabeth and great to see also how Irene did not stop asking questions and went deeper to understand the patterns and behaviours in the way of her natural open heart.

322. “As I dug deeper into this I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.” – this is a very revealing sentence…for so often we can just be in denial of the fact that another level of deepening of our gentleness is being presented, and we can go blue in the face thinking we are being gentle with others but this does nothing unless we give ourselves the same depth of gentleness. The level of gentleness that we live with can be gauged with how gentle we are with ourselves. How are you with yourself when no one is watching? Are you tender and delicate or caring with yourself? For in the end, this is what we really give to others…

323. Irene, what a gorgeous and honest sharing! Thank you so much for sharing your experience – it is super important for us to listen to the body and read and understand the messages that it shares with us. I love your openness about what message your heart had for you, and also how you say that each organ has a message for us…

324. One of the first things I realised by attending these presentations is that I am already everything that is glorious and loving and that the parts of me that I think I am (but am not in truth), are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts. I then believe that I am this person, whether it be a positive belief, such as “I am loving and caring” or a negative belief that I am “a horrible person who hurts others”. This is oh so very true Irene, and the negative beliefs tend to have a stronger hold over us as we don’t value ourselves enough and so can attract, or be fed these thoughts. Great to call out those untrue thoughts when you feel your body resisting and going in tension because your thoughts don’t match, or are in discord with the body’s naturally loving flow.

325. How beautiful it is to be in the presence of someone with an open heart.

     1. Too true… we all know what love is and feels like and we know when it is truly present in a connection with someone who is open to us.

326. We’re to learn first that to hold the love in our hearts we’re to deeply love ourselves first. To make our choices from what we feel, rather than what others want us to do or what we tell ourselves what we have to do. Only when a choice comes from our body it is true. How can it be any different if we consider that our body is an ‘object’ – the ‘object’ – that is in a certain alignment with the Grandness of the Universe. It knows what is needed in regards to ‘the whole’. How beautiful is it to start a process knowing that this process will bring us back to the love that we are. This sharing to me is absolute Gold and a testimony of the value of opening up our heart.

     1. I agree. Once we have a connection with love and are able to express and receive love it becomes a case of confirming that love in more and more places and it then grows automatically.

        1. Great point Christoph when we have that connection to love and are able to express we are confirming it all the time in our movements.

        2. Beautiful Christoph. I realise by reading your comment and mine how important it is to have a true definition of what love is. Expressing and receiving love is to be felt. Love isn’t a doing, it is an emanation and it can (only) be received when we’re truly open.

327. “…I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted”… Bringing this awareness to the medical treatment you received offers a deep healing to the body.

328. I love how you point out that your body has it’s own language, and it is all up to us whether we care to read and honour this language in our daily lives.

329. I am constantly learning the difference between love and need, love and comfort, love and recognition – true love does not have anything else as a part of it – if i am coming from a place of need, comfort or exclusivity, then it is not love no matter how amazing it looks or pacifying it feels – true love is the only expression we can provide where everyone, ourselves included, gets to be more.

     1. I was smiling reading this because we get to be more of who we truly are so get to be more by expanding but you could also say get to be less because we let go of all that we carry as Irene described that is not who we truly are. Love is not at all what we “think” it is and does not have one ounce of emotion. Unimedpedia Love: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html has some great quotes and audio about what love is and is not.

        1. I love the Unimedpedia, truly reigniting the words for the truth of their expression.

        2. Indeed Nicola, a wise man once told me that “love is the being-ness, the knowing-ness that we are everything already.”

     2. Yes, love has just truth, harmony, joy and stillness with it together with a big dash of awareness.

330. It’s amazing the detail we can take from life if you choose to truly read it. This article is an example of it and shows how supportive and understanding this can be for us, or we can just see life as life and keep living until one day we don’t. I have always seen there is more to life but couldn’t bring it clearly in view. No matter what was happening there were always points where I could see things weren’t ‘right’ and usually what would come would be something similar to “there has to be more”. This article brings clearer the more and while we can take on things and carry them with us, there is another way to live and be that allows you to feel free, free to see more and more. It’s clear to me that if we are taking on things and not dealing with how things go in life then this takes more energy, even if we aren’t physically moving, the thoughts or the process is still running. Why not stop and deal with the part that is loudest, stop and ask the question of what is truly going on. Life is life but the quality of how it is, is our choice to make true in each moment.

     1. “Life is life but the quality of how it is, is our choice to make true in each moment.” – beautifully said Mr Karam, as is your whole comment. When we know something is not the whole picture, we need to keep saying so and asking for more, otherwise all the dimensions of life are not revealed to us. A life without multidimensionality is not a true life lived.

331. ‘My life started to change to a less chaotic way of living where I was able to feel a rhythm to my day and a lovely letting go at night for rest.’ A beautiful confirmation that simple and consistent self-care and nurture is the foundation of true well-being.

332. Every moment, every move, every thought is either of love or not, open-hearted or not, embracing life or not, an expression of evolution or not. We can´t escape it and the body will always reflect each moment as well as the sum total.

     1. Yes and when we don’t express our arteries start to get blocked, causing our heart to shutting down as there is not enough blood flow to the heart, where the fullness of our heart beat is.

333. Thank you Irene. This is a great reminder for us to be open and loving to all and at the same time not overlook ourselves in the equation.

334. Even though most of us spend our whole lives in protection what we all truly long for is open heartedness. The fear of being hurt stops us going there. But ultimately if we allow ourselves to open our hearts there really is nothing that can hurt us. It is the protection that hurts us the most.

335. Discovering I am ‘already everything that is glorious and loving’ has brought a profound steadiness to my life and body.

336. What an amazing learning to live in a more open hearted way, so beautifully written and shared for us all to feel. My heart feels more open in simply reading this and the looking after one’s self and one’s choices in gentleness lovingly certainly makes all the difference.

337. Trying to help others is exhausting and it’s really imposing. We take on other people’s stuff when we try to help them. It’s much better so to speak to allow people to help themselves by simply reflecting a different way to live and deal with situations and people. We are not saviours as many of us like to indulge in. It evolves no body.

338. I shut down to people – especially those really close to me – why I don’t know yet, to not let them in – yes why again I am not sure of as yet. Maybe it’s just a game I play to not evolve.

339. Studying with Universal Medicine has made me realize just how much of my old way of life made me ill on a constant basis, from painful periods each month, regular headaches, cold and flu. Allowing myself to really connect with my body and pay attention to the many messages it sends me has been a fundamentally life changing experience and one where these days feeling ill is a rarity and something I never imagined was possible.

340. Something that stands out for me is when I have a session and feel my heart and my chest open up, where I feel that layer of protection, that shield in front of me, dissipate. Whilst I live in a way to support me to be open hearted, there are times I close down, so having the tools to be open hearted is something that is part of my toolbox.

341. Irene I love the way that your own exploration of what lays beneath what you do, and why you do it, metaphorically speaking shone the light on the cobwebs in a dusty room where you could then dust them off to make the space clear and free, opening up your heart.

342. “One of the first things I realised by attending these presentations is that I am already everything that is glorious and loving and that the parts of me that I think I am not are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts. I then believe that I am this person, whether it be a positive belief, such as “I am loving and caring” or a negative belief that I am “a horrible person who hurts others”. Imagine if we already knew this from the moment we were born, and that then it was nurtured in us to actually live what we knew to be true! How different would our lives be, including our relationships with others if this were the case?

343. We are not our behaviours for we are each, in-truth Love… it goes to show that our body reflects the choices that we make and whether or not we express the love we are- whether we accept it, allow it in and freely express it forth.

344. This is a very beautiful sharing Irene. What you share shows how deeply we are connected to our body and how we live and express, affects our body. As you shared, for you it was living in the past in an unloving towards yourself and others, although you saw it as caring, but your body showed you different and now it literally has opened its heart, for you to live the love that you are. I love how you shared as you now live more loving and gentle towards you in your life, you feel lighter and more joyful – this is what resides with us, lightness, joyfulness and vitality, if we live connected to our inner home – love.

345. Even having one marker of gentleness consistently in your body begins to expose all other actions that are not of the same quality.

346. If what we think is being loving is actually an emotional harm then it stands to reason that this will be causing a hardening and locking of our body up. I know from my own experience the difference of how I feel when I am trapped in emotion compared to the openness and vitality I feel when I am making choices from what I now understand is my inner heart, the part of me that is not attached to certain ways of thinking, to ideals about people and circumstances but much better able to take life as a flow and not react to anything that comes my way.

347. To me, opening the heart means letting people in and expressing genuine love to them.

348. To be in my (inner)heart is the most precious thing I’ve re-discovered over the past years. Even though I’m often not in my heart, the difference is huge when I am connected or not. It’s been so worth to come back to feel the precious connection inside of me!

349. Listening to my heart and discerning when I’ve gone into sympathy/empathy. Or bringing an understanding that is loving but in no way emotional. Often, to not go into sympathy, I become hard and lose my understanding of the situation. It’s great to become more aware of this so I can catch the sympathy or hardness in motion.

350. It is amazing just how involved our hearts are in everything – they react the minute we are scared or anxious or excited, beating faster – they can literally squeeze and ache with sorrow, and it has been known for heart strings to snap in the heart under extreme grief causing actual heart break. I know that when I get angry or hurt or I pull away, I can feel my chest close up and my shoulders draw in to protect myself – the hardness in my muscles will transfer to my heart which is itself a muscle and the extra strain of pumping while contracted is going to have long term consequences if that is how I chose to live on a daily basis. But these connections are not shared enough and discussed, so that we often live life without considering the end result of our choices.

351. “…I started by practising gentleness in my daily actions in life,…My life started to change to a less chaotic way of living where I was able to feel a rhythm to my day…” Absolutely Irene, introducing gentleness into the way you move, brush your teeth, close or open doors etc, is the start to introducing self love and care to the body that then initiates enormous benefits in every direction.

352. It is incredible the numerous spurious reasons there are behind being ‘good’, ‘benevolent’ and ‘helpful’ as your example here. On reflection I have noticed that most of my life I used this behaviour as a way of proving myself. I often hoped to change people or a situation and often considered others as ‘needing’ my help. What has been shocking to see is that by definition with this belief I was not seeing others as capable as me and my ‘helpful’ actions would have been cementing such a relationship.
     I am not surprised that our championing of such disharmonious ways has an impact on our bodies.

353. ‘I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.’ – This is huge Irene – we tend to blame the body and think it has let us down if something such as illness and disease is playing up, instead of owning up to the fact that it is us who are disregarding the body and overriding what it is communicating to us in the first place, and that the illness is a consequence of these choices.

354. This line opened my body to the truth being revealed – “I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it.”

355. We can trick ourselves into thinking that our “kind hearted” personalities are for others and that we just love people but in truth it’s usually covering something up. I have over compensated with others in the past because of a lack of self worth. It’s interesting to hear about the after math of not deeply loving yourself. You sound like you have handled it well. 

356. Recently I’ve been experimenting with saying yes. Yes to what I feel, yes to opportunities, yes to appreciating me. What I found is I started to feel great, warm and open in myself. And then I freaked out at the possibilities and responsibilities that came my way, and started to say ‘no’, at first in subtle ways and then actively leaving projects and things I’ve taken on. It seemed like the ‘right thing to do’ at the time but today I can feel it wasn’t true. So rather than strip away or reduce my ‘load’ I feel like the real answer is to make sure I stay open to life and keep saying yes with all my heart. Thank you Irene for what you share.

     1. Wow thanks Joseph. There is a lot in what you have shared. Yes the spirit is so tricky we can sometimes believe that saying no is taking care of ourselves when in fact it is avoiding life. I know this one well. Lots to ponder on here.

     2. Thank you Joseph for sharing “saying yes with all my heart”. What a difference this makes to the quality and purpose of the yes.

357. Being ‘open hearted’ is not just a concept, it is an embodied way of living. If our bodies do not represent open heartedness then we are just fooling ourselves in the belief that we are open hearted. Noticing the defences we have we can work on dropping the hardness and protection, for without doing this there can be no true openness at all.

358. It is a wonderful moment when you realise you are not a victim of your body and begin to understand what it is communicating isn’t it Irene, you can really begin to appreciate what is being offered.

     1. So true Ruth and appreciation is the key.

359. Opening our hearts more widely and letting go of protection must surely apply to 99.9 percent of the world’s population?

360. Saying ‘no’ was one of the self loving things I introduced, and the world is still turning. It used to be the hardest thing for me to say because I was always more worried about what others might think about me, rather than if i truly had the time and space to do carry out the request. Saying yes when I really meant no, then bred resentment, so a double whammy for myself.

     1. I can relate to what you are sharing here Debra. I have been catching the resentment lately even though it is minuscule compared to my past. I realised that if I do agree to help others and they don’t show appreciation then resentment is still there. A good one to catch as it is so poisonous to the body.

361. “I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.” This in itself is a huge change and one to really appreciate. How many people especially women in their elder years are willing to see see their body as a marker for truth and be willing to read the messages it is offering and then make the necessary changes. Our body is a representation of all our choices not only in this life but in the many previous lives and if we are open to this miracles really do happen as you have shown Irene and it is possible to begin to change some really old patterns.. Your blog is truly inspirational and a joy to read.

362. “I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.” This is a powerful moment, to realize that actually the body is at the mercy of our actions, intentions, thoughts and behaviours rather than the other way around. Once we truly comprehend this, responding to how our body feels in response to how we are living empowers us to address some very deep-seated health issues and behaviours with astonishing results.

363. The hardness that I am now able to clearly see that I lived with, was so extreme it’s as if I lived my life from inside an army tank and to add my guns were positioned and ready to shoot on sight.

     1. Great analogy to hardness and an armed tank – one I can relate to for the majority of my life, before attending Universal Medicine presentations where this was exposed. The possibility deepening awareness, making new choices and true healing followed and continues so.

364. This blog confirms to me once again that our bodies are so honest about the state it is in as it cannot be anything else than be honest. While our mind is thinking we do quite well, our bodies suffer the consequences of this way of behaviour but finally will tell us loud and clear, mostly through illness and disease, the true state of how we are. We then have a choice, to reconnect to our body and accept that what our body is telling us, or we can reject its message, choose for a quick fix and continue our lives in the same way.

365. Great blog Irene, what you have shared with us is insightful and inspirational. I love the questions you pose for us to ponder. Listening to our organs and bodies is certainly the key to connecting to our true heart and inner wisdom.

366. Just the title of your blog Irene “Opening of my heart” is such a catcher to read because so many of us can relate to needing to do this, the essentiality of it, feeling the smoking upsetting choke of not.

367. “The body is the marker of all Truth” It certainly is! Recently I couldn’t hide from myself the hardness I held in my arms- how they’d even cramp up and go hard. It wasn’t until I stopped and allowed myself to feel the hurts I was holding there and surrender and stop fighting God’s love that this disappeared.

368. Such a great and life changing experience for you Irene, so glad that you shared it with us all as we all get to feel the power of choosing truth and how that transforms the physical body.

     1. I am also inspired to listen more attentively to my body – it speaks loud all of the time!

369. I never much cared about this ‘heart’ stuff. I cared about truth. The strange thing is that they are one and the same and by ignoring the heart I also ignored truth and that did not help until I learned.

     1. indeed Christoph, it is all one and the same, just another angle to watch life from. But truth can only be ignored at the cost of something and mostly it is our body that has to suffer the consequences and in that makes us aware about our not so wise choices, always open for presenting a learning.

370. ‘I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.’ How beautiful it would be if this could be shared with the hundreds of patients around the world who have heart surgery each day, that true healing comes from opening our hearts.

     1. I totally agree Jane and that is because we do need to know the energetic cause behind our illness so we can understand and heal completely, so many of us get sick and don’t accept our part in it and try to blame everything else and not look at the way we have been living life.

371. Thanks for sharing Irene, you write beautifully and reading your story offered a lot – I’m pondering on how much I listen to my body.

372. We never stop learning and the more open hearted and the more we listen to our bodies, the faster we will know it all.

373. ‘Could what we think is our heart be an emotional part of us and not the original loving heart? Yes!!! I too like you used to think I was ‘open hearted’ but what I come to feel and realise now is that this was not in fact coming from my inner most .. my inner heart but instead laced with emotion, need and in wanting to make myself feel good about me and others to like me! All very yucky and insidious. Since meeting and knowing Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have got to learn and feel so much especially to do with patterns, behaviours and beliefs (and this is still unfolding) that I was not honest about or wanting to truly feel. I can honestly say I feel far more real in my life than I have ever done before and have a better understanding of what open hearted truly means.

     1. Perhaps some of us naturally have a beautiful, open heart but misunderstand and think that being good is to have an open heart – almost the same but a world of difference and an example how our strength can be turned against us.

374. It is great to realise that we already are everything before we think ourselves to be something or someone. Whatever we think who we are already underneath that does never change. How beautiful is that.

375. Deepening the connection to your own love, certainly seems to offer the body an energetic angioplasty!

     1. Love it. True medicine.

376. To be open is often translated as being unprotected, vulnerable, to be at the mercy of someone. To be open-hearted is quite the opposite, nothing makes you more powerful and untouchable than a loving heart. Our essence is untouchable by any harm; to live from that essence means to be free of the harm being done to you, ie it will not take you away from the essence.

     1. Beautiful Alex, being open is often seen as a weakness when in truth it’s a strength. Earlier in my life I held many things back fearful of how it would be seen or received. As you say ‘nothing makes you more powerful and untouchable than a loving heart’.

377. a great reminder here that our bodies are made to love, and that is true because look what happens when we dont, it gets hard, inflamed and builds up calcification in the arteries, ewww.

378. Valentine’s Day comes along every year to remind us to open our hearts so it is known by everyone that Love is within us. There is little point living Love one day of the year when we can be open hearted every day. We can be a great reflection to younger people Irene when we can make changes from the harshness and hardness we have lived and return to living open hearted with whatever support we need.

379. Our body is constantly communicating with us. Question: How willing are we to listen?

380. We are born with our hearts wide open into a world where nearly everyone has closed their heart, which makes it nigh on impossible to keep our hearts open. But now there is a teeny tiny hardly detectable wave of adults who are re-opening their hearts and they are starting to have an effect on all of the billions of people whose hearts are closed still. It will take time, sure it will, before we all have our hearts wide open again but we will get there, we most certainly will.

381. It is amazing how when we start to become aware of how we are in one area of our lives, and bringing a change to that, we become more aware of how we are in every other area of our lives as well. It is in this way that we can really start to bring about change to how we are in everything that we do.

382. I loved reading about your developing understanding of living a greater expression of ‘open-heartedness’ and the parallel journey of your body requiring physical support in opening its arteries and the flow through your heart. It is a great example of how our life choices and what is reflected in our physical bodies are intricately linked.

383. Even after 11 years of studying Universal Medicine I am still unearthing areas of harshness within me and my attitudes to life. The difference these days is that I am embracing the exposure, as opposed to feeling ashamed of it as before. I can now truly say that anything harsh within me is not actually who I am, it is just a stiff old bandage stuck on a hurt that I don’t want to take responsibility for. The more I reclaim these responsibilities, the more amazing I know I am.

384. Doctors, heart surgeons, modern medicine all do such an incredible job in repairing the human body – truly amazing what can now be done. BUT, wow wouldn’t it be incredible if the surgeons, consultants and after-care nurses were to start bringing the wisdom of this blog to the world – to start inviting us to entertain the possibility that there might be more to it than just the physicality. I feel that steps have been made in the way we talk about lifestyle choices; but that never goes beyond diet, exercise and occasionally stress issues. This blog is taking it to a whole other level and until we start to engage in this science, then heart disease and other relatable multi-symptomatic diseases will continue to rise exponentially.

385. When I connect to joy my heart opens; when I have an open heart I feel joy.

386. “Opening of my heart” – the more i open up myself in losing protection, perfection, judgement, critique, my body has opened up to be more honest, and my heart opened. An open heart is the hearth of the body that is so inviting to people who love to make a visit (!)

387. This is an awesome expose Irene…”I am already everything that is glorious and loving and that the parts of me that I think I am are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts.” And how much focus, time and energy do we put into maintaining that cover-up… when we could be living a glorious life!

388. A beautiful understanding of what the body tells us through its own medicine and intelligence how to live.

389. It makes a difference when we understand that feeling hurt is a choice we make – we can choose to look at what each situation is reflecting back to us about the way we live and our understanding of life in general.

     1. Absolutely Carmel, feeling hurt is a choice we make… the reaction from those hurts are loaded with everything that the trigger does not in fact deserve(!) and so to name the hurts (and the reactions) brings understanding to our own behaviours and what we choose from that point onwards.

390. Thank you Irene, it is amazing to read how much power and control we can give to our hurts and how the body will always show this as disharmonious to our natural way of being, which is ultimately to live open-hearted.

391. The body communicates in amazing precise ways. What if what is revealed isn’t random, isolated, unlucky, unfortunate etc. but rather an essential indicator of where we have been and an opportunity to choose where we are going?

392. Thank you for sharing your experience Irene, it is super important to look deeper than the physical and explore what our body is truly telling us.

393. Very beautiful sharing of the unfolding process of discovering a truly open and loving heart. What I find helpful to know where I am at in this unfoldment is relating to the ultimate reference point: Unconditional or Absolute Love. Feeling the level of love I am willing to live in reflection of the unconditionality of love (the only true love there is) I can recognise the limitations, the conditions I still hold and thus am aware of how to open more and more by letting go the contraction. Unconditional love is unlimited. The simple fact that our bodies are not capable of containing such absoluteness already is showing the way, ie to ‘outlove’ the body.

394. This is an amazing sharing…it seems that your ‘open heartedness’ is well and truly transforming your life on all fronts!

395. I can really relate to pleasing others and being afraid of the subsequent reactions if I stop doing this. And the reactions I understand because I’d helped set them up: encouraged people to rely on me to do for them what they needed to do for themselves. This is what I needed because I didn’t appreciate what I bring through simply being myself. My lack of appreciation for my qualities meant I didn’t appreciate them for theirs and neither parties grew. Realising attempting to stunt another’s growth so I could feel safe and needed is a big ouch. All the more reason to appreciate and know who I am more deeply so I no longer look to others for confirmation but can bring this appreciation of others to all my relationships.

396. Your blog truly is inspirational and insightful in relation to understanding human dis-ease… ” because I had learnt to “read” what my body was telling me, I was able to understand that my heart was now showing me how contracted and harsh I had been living for so long…”

397. What a healing your body has gone through Irene, and an insightful awareness how contraction to love had an energetic and physical response in the body. Surrender to one’s innermost love certainly is medicinal to the human body.

398. ‘I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.’ – What a turnaround serious health conditions can be, if we choose to see it as an opportunity for true healing and letting go of something that did not really serve us, as opposed to seeing ourselves as victims or recipients of ‘bad luck’.

     1. Absolutely Eva, and this is being seen more and more in people who are choosing to look at the real underlying reasons for their ill health and truly healing those reasons, rather than blaming the illnesses on some outside influence that has caused them to be ill in the first place.

399. Forget a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down as a nursery rhyme once said what we need is from the day we are born is to feed ourselves back the Love that we are. No one else can give this to us, we choose to be all of who we are and then the Love pours through.

     1. I love this Natalie. ‘No one else can give this to us’ so why do we keep on searching when in any moment we can choose to live in a way that allows us to feel the love that we are.

     2. And all the other zillions and zillions of fad diets and quick fixes that are sold to us daily (selling un-true health is surely one of the fastest growing boom businesses of our time?)…and yet, inside of us all resides the greatest doctor, surgeon, operating theatre and recovery ward that we could ever imagine.

400. We can be so used to doing things a certain way that we don’t realise that there is a loving way to do this. But when we start to explore this and be willing to let go of the old, then we start to see and appreciate that even our movements are ever developing. That being more gentle is only just the beginning and as a woman I am feeling more and more the possibility of deepening my delicateness.

401. I can relate to the experience of hardness melting in the body. Often when I have had Esoteric Medicine treatments, I have felt this very clearly. Amazing the depth of openness we can express the more we heal our protection and hurts.

402. It is concerning to think that when we think we are helping others we may well be harming them.

     1. Great choice of words Carmel – when we think we help we are most likely being harmful, yet when we truly feel then the opposite is true and we can bring healing in our movements.

403. I was a huge sucker for this within my family for years as I hated arguments and confrontation from a very young age.
     “These reactions were mainly from family members whom I had taken on as a “rescue mission” for years and believed I could help them live a “better” life. It allowed me to feel important and that I had all the answers, that they weren’t even searching for. ”
     I felt that I was helping and could not understand that they did not want helping that they were quite content moaning about their lives but were not willing to make any changes. And even worse was that while I was running around trying to sort out my family and their relationship issues it gave me a perfect excuse to completely ignore what was going on in my life and kept me distracted from the fact that my life was falling apart at the seams too.

404. Belief systems run our lives if we are not aware of them. They override what we know is true until we see this and choose a different way.

405. Good point Susan, we have this picture and belief about what “a good person” is and try to live up to that, mostly not realising that this is at the expense of our own bodies, our health and has an effect on people around us as well as they may feel bad that they cannot live up to the same standards.

     1. Spot on, striving to ‘being good’ prevents us from knowing our truth!

406. I love what you share here Irene, as it shows how we can have a picture of what ‘opened hearted’ is but you got to experience what it means in truth and how it feels in your body, which is such a different and liberating realisation that brings a whole other dimension into our lives.

407. We can’t go wrong if it’s coming from the heart, but oh how wrong it can go if it is not.

408. ‘I began to understand the teaching by Serge Benhayon that “The body is the marker of all Truth”. For me this teaching took a while to filter through a consciousness that dictated an overriding of the body’s messages, but it really is cool how quickly the body responds to what is going on, what you eat and what thoughts you allow.

409. Living from the understanding that “The body is the marker of all Truth” turns on its head the whole present approach to education.

     1. Agreed Jonathon – especially as in these terms it is often easy to observe that those teaching and lecturing others in our education clearly aren’t learning their own lessons according to their bodies.

        1. This illustrates the consequence of living from one’s head and learnt knowledge rather than from understanding from lived experience rather than from an open heart.

410. Recently I have started to become aware of how tight my body is across my chest and this shutting down restricts my natural expression of love and joy, by bringing awareness to this area I’m starting to let this go and feeling far more freedom in my movements.

411. Wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is a reflection to the world, how open we are, but can also allow you to be exposed to be hurt unless you have a solid foundation. When we enable the world to control us and our expression is capped the body takes the hit that after years of holding back begins to show the damage that has been caused. There is more than great wisdom is observing and not absorbing the ill energy the surrounds us daily, our body is allowed to support us, rather than trying to constantly have to defend us.

412. “The body is the marker of all Truth” Whatever views and beliefs we have going on in our head, our body consistently points out the truth via the quality of our health and vitality. Universal Medicine honours the truth in the body first and hence empowers us to jettison the beliefs, ideals and images that have prevented us from really embracing our full potential.

413. Pleasing others and being nice I agree is not an easy behaviour to let go of but I know it is possible and not by being hard on myself or with others. To be aware of those moments I go into pleasing saying ‘Yes’ when my body is saying ‘No’ is brought about by learning to say ‘Yes’ to me in the way I choose to be with myself and live my life. I am finding that the more I can say ‘Yes’ to me the easier it is to be aware and say ‘No’ to the false energy of doing good and needing to be liked.

414. “As I dug deeper into this I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.” What a revelation and point of real honesty, our lives can be changed in so many ways by the choices that we make, yet we often have undercurrent of patterns and behaviours that keep us in separation from others but first from ourselves, until we start to live with an open heart..

415. Re-reading your blog this morning I was reminded of someone I knew who died of a massive heart attack a few years ago. She was often described as having a huge and ever-open heart, but her dedication to community service was at her own expense. Beneath the facade of friendliness, generosity and kindness were deep seated hurts unresolved from childhood. In the end her body could not sustain the level of disregard inflicted on it and no coincidence that she died of heart disease.

416. A beautiful article, thank you Irene – I appreciate the openness with which you have shared your experiences. I also love the playful curiosity of your last question, a testimony to the sweetness of your relationship with, and respect for, your body.

417. How fascinating Irene that your ‘self-development’ focus or interest for all these years was about the heart; the truth of being ‘open-hearted’… and that the illness in your elder years confirmed this life-long lesson you’d innately felt years earlier as imperative later registered by the body, by the heart itself with the operation.

     1. I often find we are drawn to what it is we have to learn in this lifetime, even though at these certain points we don’t necessarily realise it, and that these threads running through our lives present opportunities to expand and learn as we become more honest with ourselves and others.

418. So much is revealed from this blog and it seems the revelations may appear on the surface that there is now a requirement or a suggestion from the temporal world that one must not become so ‘stressed’ in life, but from what I am feeling now it would appear that the facts of the matter, the true core of the issue is possibly that we have spent many lives in contraction, not only due to the choice of keeping one’s self to one’s self in supposed protection, neither opening the heart to loving others or allowing others come close, but in addition to this a belief in the old paradigms of putting one’s self last in whatever may be the situation – i.e. not allowing love to ‘come in’, or loving one’s self. I am learning in life now as a result of the Divine presentations of Serge Benhayon that the calcification in my own Aorta is as a result of the above example, and behind all of that and beyond the deeper anger and frustration lies the deepest sense of sadness that is indescribable – a sadness that would seem to stem from my original choosing to step away from the Love that I innately am at the core of my being. There seems much for we human-beings to re-member and to re-learn.

419. Could it be that all the talk about the heart being open etc. and it is actually not in the doing but in the being so that being who we all naturally are we can then bring the equality of being the Sons of God? This is then possibly allowing others to be our equal, and then maybe it takes away comparison, which would be generally considered to be self-critique? So true Irene as you have shared when we do not react but respond to any given situation then we bring an ‘understanding to the situation and allow my heart to stay “open” and in connection with myself and others.

420. Everything has an effect and thus choices we make have an outcome – if the outcome is something we do not want then every moment brings an opportunity to make choices that will change, heal, re-imprint the past choices.

421. I have found it very surprising that practising gentleness in daily life is a doorway to something much grander, especially as I did not consider this much grander actually existed.

     1. I agree Christoph, for something as simple as choosing to be gentle in our movements, with ourselves and with others the impact is immensely profound.

422. Such a blessing to work with the body and to be honest and see what causes the illnesses we can get. Not always easy to accept when we actually live more healthy and with ourselves but this is why the body can bring in healing to the old patterns we have carried in our body.

     1. Yes and this is a depth of understanding that is really transformative – the acceptance that our bodies are more able to express our past wayward choices as we develop our relationship with them and allow healing to unfold.

423. The more we open our heart and let the Love in and through and know this to be our truth the more our lives will be living with the divine order of the Universe. We a part of one ginormous cosmos that every particle in us can not deny it – so when we allow ourselves to emanate and express from this quality the Love is magnificent.

424. I feel that while living in the illusion that I was intensely loving and open hearted, the reality was that I had lost all connection to my heart and was only familiar with the emotional interpretation of love. Over many lifetimes I have lived in a way that kept true love at arms length – and even further. As I open my heart I am beginning to feel an expansion in my chest as I make more room for true love and connection.

     1. I used to think that certain people in my life were loving because they openly hugged me and others but recently I happened to bump into one of these people and felt the truth… how I had fallen for emotional love thinking it was love when it could not have been further from the truth reflecting to me how being good and nice can be so deceiving if we do not discern the energy as to where it is coming from. The hug felt hard and cold and done with a duty. As I allowed myself to feel the warmth inside me the other person couldn’t move fast enough to back off and I was left in the observation of the other; a blessing reflecting to me that was how I used to live and still do at times as I learn to let go of being nice and good and the harm that is caused to myself and others all because of my need to be liked and popular in the world.

        1. The duty of being loving is felt in an instant. So often giving or receiving love this way is layered with the ideal of being and looking like the person that we want the world to see. The body reads at a much faster rate than we care to consider and we all know that the truth is always there for the offering.

425. It’s great how you combined Universal Medicine and Orthodox Medicine to support you and your body in the True healing of your illness, covering all aspects that were contributing.

426. I love how you have pointed out the process of making more loving true choices for yourself and how you sometimes get challenged by the old pattern of pleasing others at the expence of yourself. Such an important awareness to have to be able to make a true and lasting change.

     1. Yes, definitely because when we’re not aware of the self harming things we do in order to please others, we can live a very illusional life.

     2. We have such ingrained patterns of smiling to be liked or to fit in, to say yes so that we feel like we are doing the ‘good’ that it can be hard to shift the momentum. Living as our true selves in connection from our bodies is so completely different to what 99% of us are used to that it takes time to adjust and accept how lovely it feels to be nothing more than ourselves.

     3. i know from all of my considerable ‘people pleasing days’ that no one can be truly pleased by the energy that is used in people pleasing.

427. One thing that shuts down our hearts is being ‘nice’. So much lurks beneath nice – resentment, anger, even rage and often a deep sadness and bitterness that we bury underneath the layers of niceness we present to the world. The thing is, there is a plague of ‘nice’ in the world – there is in fact a demand for it, and so we heed this demand and play ball with it. It is little wonder that heart disease is on the rise — we are not naturally made to keep our emotions locked up and buried underneath a smile that communicates a sadness we don’t want anyone to see.

428. We can choose to be nice and do the right thing, but is that true service, or are we just holding fast to the ideal of not wanting to tarnish our reputation and be seen to be a bad person with others?

429. It has been a pleasure to have met you before you and I both attended our first Universal Medicine event Irene, and to watch you heal and open your heart more and more as you have gone through a lot, and it is awesome to read your blog… I know you have many more stories to share that others will be inspired by…. and gosh I wish there was a photo of you because no one would believe you are 71!!!

     1. Thanks Rosie. Yes it is wonderful to watch each other expand as we live more fully in the Way of the Livingness. Our bodies are the marker of where we were before and where we are now seven and a half years after attending our first presentation by Serge Benhayon. I am feeling more alive and vital now than I have ever felt as I am not weighed down by the falseness of my emotions.

        1. Me too Irene, I feel like I am getting younger as I get older and I love and appreciate my life more than ever before.

430. ‘The angiogram pictures revealed to me someone who had been contracted for a long time by not allowing love to flow in and out of their heart.’ It is very beautiful when we choose to find and heal the root cause of our illness and marry it with conventional medicine as you have chosen Irene. Very inspiring to read, thank you.

431. I love the reminder that gentleness is the bridge to love Irene as I had been feeling just how hard the world around me has been feeling this week and how I can react to this rather than hold steady with my innate gentleness.

432. I have discovered that I am a naturally loving being and so when I simply choose to be myself I am innately caring with myself and others.

433. If we go into ‘rescue’ mode trying to help or save others two things happen, as you say the ‘rescuer’ can go into being nice, drive and anxiousness .. ‘got to do’ mode. And the person that is supposedly being ‘rescued’ doesn’t truly get to feel where they are at in order to truly change and heal this for themselves. Sometimes if we do not take note or are aware of the choices we are making or how we are living we need something to happen in our life to make us really feel this in order to change … to love ourselves more. Also I think it is really important what you have shared here ‘I learnt that I actually have a choice to allow someone else to so-called “hurt” me’. And this is something I have learnt over the last few days, hurts are not just things that happen to us but a momentum of what we have allowed in our life. For example if we do not truly honour what we feel the whole time and not express from the love we are this then creates gaps in our life for a hurt to happen.

434. It is awesome how by being willing to open up and listen to your body and your heart it has been able to clear what is probably lifetimes of debris and bring clarity to you for you to share with us all.

435. We can never predict what will happen to us health-wise, even if we live what society might deem a ‘squeaky-clean’ life. We carry imprints not only from our current incarnation but those of many lives prior. For the same reason we can never judge another for the conditions they manifest.

436. I love the way our bodies reflect so much. It is such a gift.

437. I whole heartedly agree with the miracle that living open heartedly is.

438. Any form of protection cuts us off from ourselves, we separate from our hearts in the attempt to protect them. For years I felt I was like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, with a hard exterior and no heart, because I felt I couldn’t feel it. But of course the heart is always there, waiting for us to clear away all the protection of those old hurts and reconnect with it. Through working with Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine Practitioners I am beginning to feel at last, (I am in my seventies too Irene) that I do have a heart, and more than that — an inner heart, my very essence and soul that can never be hurt or destroyed, whatever others say or do to me.

439. It’s a hard pill to swallow initially when you realise that the way we have been living is so far from the person we are in truth, and then there’s the realisation that hits when you feel the hardness and the disregard, and then the resistance and the momentum to going into gentleness.

     1. Very true Julie but then there is the immeasurable joy and support that can be felt from simply being open to all that is love on this journey.

440. I never stop marvelling at how much the physical body and the energetic reading are in synchrony with each other – this wonderful blog tells the story of a heart literally and energetically being opened up and the barriers cleared to allow more love to flow through. So beautiful how modern conventional medicine can work together with esoteric medicine in this way to support this process.

441. Our bodies are so amazing at literally spelling out to us how we are living, and if we choose to read these messages we could prevent so many symptoms of ill health and disease. Imagine if we started having daily conversations with each of our internal organs, and actually asked them how they needed to be treated each day?! Now that really could change the general state of physical health of today’s society.

442. A great example here of esoteric medicine – medicine from the inside out – that we are already everything we will ever need to be and it is a process of discarding those layers on top that we have put there by choice, which once we realise we have done this, we can choose to let them go.

443. Irene thank you for sharing your experience of life and Universal Medicine. I felt just how powerful are these hurts that we take on from young and then colour the rest of our lives as we then live from the reaction to the hurts. I feel from my own experience of therapy that we tend to look at the surface issues of a problem but do not go deeper to look at why the problem was there in the first place.

444. ‘I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.’ This was quite a shocking realisation for me that what I had considered to be gentle and loving wasn’t gentle or loving at all and it was not until I built a far more loving relationship with myself that my relationship with others started to change.

445. “I no longer felt a victim of my body and began to understand it was my friend and I began to take notice of its messages.” the same happened for me and whilst I was in pain with IBS I started to explore why this was and what a gift it actually was.

446. What an absolutely superb sharing, it shows how important it is to live with an open, loving heart as we are hurting ourselves the most when we don’t. With the increasing rise in all illness and disease we do have to look at the energy we are in for this to happen, and then if addressed we won’t have to go through all this needless suffering when we are able to listen to the heart and the body and all it is telling us.

     1. Yup, I am in accord with all of the above. And what I love about Irene’s writing is that it is full of light hearted curiosity and humility rather than fear and victimhood.

        1. This is the key to it all I feel. Fear, judgement, guilt, victimhood (and the rest of the long list) are self-fitted padlocks on the doors to our hearts.

447. It takes a time to understand what is meant by hardness in the body. Over time it becomes clear. It’s founded on the protective guard we keep around us, our shields, and masks expressed in how we speak and move. It is a holding on to old and restrictive patterns rather than surrendering to divinity, the universe and love and letting them speak through us.

448. When we begin to study the Ageless Wisdom with Serge Benhayon, we are brought face to face with how we have been treating our bodies and the consequence of years of neglect and abuse. What a glorious opportunity to expose the truth and begin to address your health from the inside out, restoring a true appreciation and care of your self towards the end of your life, in readiness for your future lives to come.

449. I remember a time when, believing I had an open heart, my pattern was to let everyone in to walk all over me. You show Irene that an open heart first and foremost regards and is deeply loving of ourselves. It is not about pleasing others at the expense of your own health and wellbeing.

450. ‘This was not an easy pattern to change.’ The inspiration you offer through a willingness to see, first of all, the patterns developed as a result of your hurts and then to heal them with an openness to becoming more aware and going deeper – is huge! The grace with which it was done/is being done offers everyone the reflection that it is possible – and that not only is it possible, but our whole relationship to life changes as a consequence to become more accepting, allowing and loving.

451. I’m so inspired by the way you approach life Irene.

452. Most of us think that being hard is the best protection ever – I was one of them and it took me a while to open my heart in full again to the best of my ability on a daily basis – and boy oh boy there is so much to learn to not react and leave the old hurts behind but I have to admit that this is really the best medicine ever!

     1. Indeed, healing our hurts is a medicine that lasts.

453. Beautiful Irene – whatever it is we do in life, we always have a choice – to live with Love and tenderness or take the harder route. We recognise this choice in key decision moments when things are tough but the reality is it’s actually a moment to moment decision that we make. Just living a ‘better’ life with nice food and a good car is not enough, we are designed to be open and transparent with everyone alive.

454. It is beautiful to be able to trace the pattern that has led to our health issue and I love how a Universal Medicine supports people to that level of understanding. Nothing is random. There is an absolute science and order to every aspect of the Universe we are part of. Paying attention to the reflections available to us in our life supports us to deepen our awareness about our responsibility and our relationship with the All that we are part of.

455. I had never heard of the ‘Inner Heart’ before I met Serge Benhayon but then, having been brought up as a Catholic, God and the Soul were untouchables for us humble humans. Now I am learning that the Soul is always there and we can access it by feeling into our Inner Heart, that it is part of us that allows us to feel our essence, the innately beautiful part of us that is ‘untarnishable’ by life’s events. It opens up a whole new meaning to life, we are not just a body and a brain, we are so much more, there is much to explore when we truly open our hearts.

456. Thank you for sharing your open, loving appreciation for what your heart has offered. A true healing for us all.

457. The normalisation of this kind of conversation offers humanity a huge opportunity. Serge Benhayon has been presenting on the truth of illness and disease for nearly twenty years, and it is through people like you and blogs like this, that his teachings can get out to the wider world and become an everyday dialogue. To have someone stay open to the deeper teachings that this kind severe illness is showing is very inspiring and very rare in our current world. In fact most would be so scared and freaked that they’d close down even more and just run to the one dimensional medical cure – which is utterly needy and vital – but you are seeing the multi-dimensionality of what is being offered. The way forward for all of us.

458. Being “a good person” is something most of us hold with extremely high regard, but what if our current standards of ‘good’ are missing something? What if there was a whole next-level dimension to live from, and we all had a unique and divine duty that far supersedes the measures of ‘good’?

     1. Love this – the willingness to look beyond those things that we perceive as ‘good’ because in my life it has been there that the most trouble and complication has lurked.

459. Nice is a killer. It may take us a while to learn that…and if we continue to hide behind nice then our bodies will force us out into the open.

460. This blog reminds me of my experiences last Saturday when I was in London. I noticed that when I was at the train station or in a shop people where very helpful, friendly and was almost like we had been friends for some time even though I had not met them before. In the past, I would have wondered what I was doing differently but I quickly realised that it was simply that I was open to people and therefore they could be this way with me and me with them. Felt amazing but it went deeper. I realised that in being open to Love, we are always held by so much more than us – I was blown away by the feeling of knowing I had nothing to fear in any way, no need for protection and in a moment, I felt like everything was taken care of and did not have to do anything but remain open. A beautiful feeling.

     1. Go Michael! The world is crying out for this true form of medicine.

461. I find it quite frightening how blind we can be to ourselves and our ways. But with a willingness like you have shown we can awaken and let the veils of illusion drop.

462. This is certainly a detailed look at the body and it’s illnesses in a way that few have seen before. The body as a whole is looked at more like a functional thing rather then an interconnected part of everything you do and have done. It’s great to have modern medicine there to support when you have something go on and also to have this style of reading to bring clearer the cause of why modern medicine was needed in the first place. I can relate to the ‘good person’ scenario and this article gives us a detailed account of how that can look in your body over time.

     1. I agree. This is the perfect combination of modern medicine and a deeper reading of the true causes of the illness so that you can not just repair the damage but also change the movements and choices that caused the illness in the first place. True medicine.

        1. Yes perfect, these two in “combination” bring us the “true causes of the illness” and this is the way we need to heal for the future. We can’t just rely on modern medicine as we can see the system is becoming overwhelmed from the sheer scale of our illness and disease. It’s time for us to bring our heads from the sand and look wider for what is missing. “True Medicine” is this wider view and there are a huge amount of people already singing its support.

        2. Whilst it is clear that modern medicine can do amazing things it is also crystal clear that it is very far from being the answer. Just look at the statistics, the state of humanity’s health and the intense pressure that our medical systems are under. Only the most deluded could persist in believing that we had the answers. We have to be real, honest, humble and accept that we are zooming down the wrong path. If we can at least admit that we are getting it wrong then we might start to be open to seeing another way. The problem is that our pride (and the gigantic amounts of money that the world’s illness makes for Pharma companies) means that we are not seeing the bigger picture.

463. Irene, what an inspiring and light-hearted (pun intended!!!) reading. I too am considering my body as a friend and I am fascinated by how it speaks aloud. Just today I woke up with an inflammation in one eye, something that I used to have in the past. This time I understand it was triggered by some food that does not suit me, which I was eating more than ususal recently. So when I saw the inflammation I thanked my body for this message.

     1. Beautiful process Priscila, I bet only a few years ago you could have even been annoyed with the body for not functioning the way you would like it to…

464. Wow you really see the truth in this diagnosis and the potential it offers. No victim here but rather you claiming what you are reading. It is pretty awesome for you to share this and not hold back – certainly part of you opening up more to the world. Beautiful to read.

465. As we walk through life that hardness and harshness you speak of, is relevant to so many. The hardness I feel in my body feels pretty horrible compared to the openness I can feel when I let go, trust and appreciate my qualities.

466. Our perceived hurts are very real until we start to deal with them honestly and come to an understanding of our role in this equation; if not, we hold others to ransom, either by clinging to the hurt/s or adopting the deceptive notion of ‘forgiveness’.

467. There’s no other way to come back to our loving essence, to our hearts, than to be honest and truly feel what is communicated on the inside. I’m inspired to read how you’ve chosen to start listening to the hardness that was presented. I love the lovely flow within my body, but I find it much harder to really feel that I’ve chosen hardness. Your sharing makes me feel more confident to stop ignoring the ‘hard’ choices I’ve made. By writing this I can feel the understanding for myself grows as well as my appreciation for you Irene. Thank you.

     1. Yes Floris I find hardness can be so subtle and a tricky one to catch. I catch it in my voice sometimes when I am speaking to my grandchildren, usually after the fact. I believe I am being loving but my voice is presenting as harsh. I know by their reactions that they can feel it too. A work in progress.

468. Through telling your story about why you had heart issues, you lead the way for others to consider how to live their lives, myself included. When I’m closed up (in my heart), I feel a dull pain. It’s a (sometimes worrying) reminder to open up to love.

     1. True Nick. The body is always communicating we just need to open up and listen.

     2. The way the body communicates to us when we close ourselves down to love with a dull ache in our heart is so telling if we are listening!

469. There is a beautiful song I loved singing with a group ‘Open your heart, I am here with you, and I will be here when you choose to return, and I will be here when you choose to come home to your heart.’ I really appreciate the gorgeous group of people who run that group and the man who wrote this song because it always opens us all up and connects us to open our hearts.

470. it amazes me the type of surgeries that we have, such as drilling the build up of calcification in our bodies! wow. When we consider your amazing sharing of esoteric healing and how by incorporating The Livingness, your way of being has changed, and your body has shown that it needed an update to that!

     1. I love the lightheartedness of this, harryjwhite – our bodies upgrading and refining as we deepen our relationship with them and commit to healing.

471. ‘As I explored further I began to feel the harshness and hardness in which I lived. It was quite shocking to me at first, but when I started to make those first steps towards gentleness (a bridge to love) I could then feel the depth of the hardness and how far away from love I was actually living.’ – You have so beautifully described the process of re-connecting with who you truly are, Love. To allow ourselves to truly feel the hardness and disconnection we have lived with is key to healing our buried hurts and issues.

     1. Yes, knowing the hardness gives us a choice: Do we want to continue with the hardness?

472. When I help others often underneath it all I want recognition for it. I’m realising this more and more as I do things, I don’t need someone to notice, or give me praise, recognise me, or say thank you etc. It’s no different to kids at school wanting points or stats for things. So you could say that’s where it all starts – or earlier – where we get praised and recognised for what we do
     – that hurts – not the amazing and delicate, super light, sweet and loving and deeply caring beings we are.

     1. Absolutely Gyl. I am still noticing that need sometimes for recognition, especially from my grandchildren who are in my care
        but the true hurt is not having others feel how amazing we truly are without the doing.

473. We use helping others as a way to feel good about ourselves, but when we learn to feel good about ourselves from within, then we can open up more and be of true service to all.

     1. So true Carmel. We have it back to front. Once we feel good about ourselves first then we are just sharing that with others in service, not having the hidden agenda of needing something for ourselves.

474. I shut people out, it’s like I’ve got a big fortress with a door and I’m the only one with the key – I have to get past needing people to prove I can trust them and that they won’t hurt me. All the time I’m keeping love locked in and out. It can be a very vulnerable and fragile time opening up. I’m learning to not have expectations of anyone or any situation then I can’t get hurt – and it would be much easier to let people in – because I wouldn’t be holding them on a pedestal, I’d see them for who they are and be far more loving with them. This is not lived experience yet.

475. Opening our heart allows the Universe to pour through.

476. It is amazing the physical impact how we live has on the body – I know how my body feels tight and contracted and pent up when I have something I want to express but I hold it in, or when I chose to hold myself back from someone I love dearly I can feel that in my body – now imagine living that every day, firstly we would get used to the feeling and not notice it any more but secondly it would have a compounding effect on our very makeup

477. A beautiful sharing – we all would like to say we are warm, kind and open hearted, but often a lot of things like hurts and reactions and protections get in the way of us being that. It is a process of letting these things go, but we find that the truth of who we are underneath all those layers is amazing and well worth discarding all that we are not.

478. Our organs hold much wisdom, and communicate everything to us.

479. In all of my considerable years of being a kind hearted person who constantly did things for others, there was not a shred of self love in my body. In fact my body was bankrupt. Love for others must first be manufactured through self love, if there is no self love then there is no currency to be transferred to another.

480. Delightful to read your transformation Irene and that you have chosen to listen to your body rather than being good, nice, and better, all of which have a harming effect on the body, and each other. Thank you.

481. This is an amazing blog to read and I feel that what you have shared with everyone is very relatable because we have all come from a contracted heart, as we have been living in protection trying to hide that actually human beings are very sensitive and vulnerable. We can feel this as children but we have to toughen up because society has said that being sensitive and feeling vulnerable is somehow soppy or whimpish. I can definitely remember being told as a child to toughen up and stop being a sissy.
     I am so thankful to presentations of Serge Benhayon because through those teachings and with the support of Universal Medicine practitioners I have like you started to un pick all the hurts that I have chosen to ingest into my body and let them go and as you say the more I am able to do this the lighter my body feels… Amazing! And to wake up with joy in my body is pure gold

482. It’s true there are so many expressions about our heart – open hearted, hard hearted, kind hearted – what if all these were not just words but had an actual impact on our bodies?

     1. This is a stop-in-your-tracks comment. We throw these expressions around so willy-nilly – I certainly do. But what you are asking us to do is actually stop, consider and take it to the deeper understanding that each of these different expressions, ways of being have very different and direct impact on our bodies. Almost never do we actually consider the effects of someone being “such a nice guy”. In truth and as taught by Serge Benhayon, those four words are actually a medical diagnosis. WOW!

483. Is it possible that because you were able to bringing healing to your body through the understanding that putting others first isn’t Love, that your body was then able to clear loads more through your heart condition because of your willingness and openness to heal? Pretty awesome.

     1. Yes that feels true Lucy. My body needed to catch up to where I was at. Since the physical opening of my arteries I have felt that the body is ahead of me now and there is room to open up more. It is pretty awesome.

484. I love how you explore your developing friendship with your body and the depth of communication that is possible when we allow it. The damage we inflict on ourselves with the dis-ease of being nice is something that I am currently recognising and just how much it has impacted my body over the years. Thank you for sharing so open heartedly.

485. It is interesting how our bodies are literally a representation of the energetic reality at play. We present as loving and kind and the body also can look that way on the outside, but underneath what is the truth? It raises the issue of how superficial our relationships and connections can be at times and how much we accept on the surface as being the apparent truth as being the truth when it is not.

486. Never saying no and being nice seem on the outside to be wonderful caring people, but we have to look at the energy and reason for why we are doing it. If we are doing it to be liked or not make waves it is not true love and as you have shown Irene we are not being truly open and transparent and this eventually takes its toll on the body.

487. There is nothing more self defeating than helping someone who isn’t looking. I think we all can say we have experienced that at one time or another, and I now understand exactly why it is so much more valuable to place care into our own wellbeing and offer that as reflection, rather than force change onto another who may not want nor value such intervention.

488. Wow that is fascinating, how much damage was done by being all ‘nice’ and pleasing instead of true and honouring. I am amazed at the body’s ability to show us exactly how we are living and then in our ability to ignore that.

489. Your comment Irene about ‘I wonder what my other organs have got to tell me?’ made me laugh and I was also impressed at your openness and willingness to learning and changing despite having a major health scare that would unsettle most people. We do have so much we can learn from our bodies and even when they are showing signs of illness and disease, they are actually helping and supporting us to come back to the love we are.

     1. Yes Andrew seems I have opened a can of worms. Since I wrote that “I wonder what my other organs have got to tell me”, my digestion has been out of balance. I am seeing a gastroenterologist this week so now working with my stomach and “acceptance”. I am noticing that since working on acceptance the condition has improved but will still check out the physical side of things. In the past this would have all been a disaster and I would have felt like a victim but having the understanding about the body I have learned from Serge Benhayon and now know to be true, allows this to be a clearing and an expansion. I appreciate having this opportunity in my later years.

        1. Ha! you asked the question and your body has responded with the answer 🙂 I agree Irene it is amazing when we can read energetically why things are happening in our bodies and it allows a much deeper wisdom and understanding to be there that we would otherwise not have considered and also prevents a lot of freaking out!

490. ‘I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.’ What you are sharing here is so inspirational – I am sure this has been an incredibly tricky journey and yet the learning, acceptance and the evolution arrived at are monumental. Thank you.

491. Gorgeous blog Irene. Indeed you are open hearted. xx

     1. Who best to learn from than you dear friend. xx

492. Yes the term open hearted has been misused in the sense that people who talk a lot or care a lot are called open hearted yet what is not considered is the quality of their care and words. And that is exactly what is important.

493. If we choose to understand that the body is communicating and offering us a truthful reflection of how we live, then our relationship with it is very empowering. More empowering than the relationship with a mind that can clearly make unwise choices, ignoring discomfort, numbing hurts and pushing through pain for example. The mind working in harmony with the body in full is perhaps its true function and one that honours the innate wisdom of our physical form.

494. To realise that we not the hurts and reactions to them as we believe but are “already everything that is glorious and loving” is huge and I thank Serge Benhayon everyday for showing this to me.

495. I remember being repeatedly told as a child to be a ‘good girl’ rather than a ‘true girl’ one that is true to herself. A good girl meant doing things to please others, not speaking up or rocking the boat this was a route to recognition, sometimes rewards and appreciation. It also leads to a denial of self, holding back and ultimately traps us into a false way of living, we don’t know who we are, and consequently others don’t get to know us either. Opening our heart means opening it for ourselves firstly, and from there be open to all others.

496. A huge moment to realise and then explore, explore, explore the behaviours that have developed in reaction to past hurts and fears. I know that only this way can I stop the reaction, feel the vulnerability and sensitivity, and allow others in, to see me, rather than keep them out by whatever way it is that I’m choosing to harden and protect myself from the perceived hurt.

497. We have so many sayings about our hearts and our bodies for that matter. They all convey a truth about the emotions and qualities we choose that have either a positive or negative effect on the delicate bodies that we live in. Being genuinely open hearted is superb medicine.

498. What a great example of the damage we cause to our body with years of abuse that is hidden. The body is amazing, how it compensates to support our ill choices but always reaches its limit and ability to carry on, it can become our last call if we don’t listen!

499. This blog to me shows once again that our body is the marker of truth. In your case Irene, it was the blocked heart arteries that show clearly a contraction and holding back of the love that so naturally wants to be shared with everybody we meet, an issue many people are suffering from as we can see from the statistics on cardiovascular disease.

500. A beautiful example of healing at every level Irene… we have to change the way we approach illness and disease to understand that everything we have lived out of line with our true essence, is felt as a disharmony within the body, and as such, eventually has to come back out. In that sense we can understand how the changes can be made, in your case to have already begun the process of opening up again, but the body can be a little slower to reflect the fullness of those new choices. I call it clearing the backlog…

501. Irene you have brilliantly exposed a deeply ingrained belief that many of us erroneously espouse as being a truth. The belief that there is merit in being a ‘good and helpful’ person. I blindly followed this belief for years, which prevented me from connecting to the truth, the truth being that there is no truth in beliefs and therefore by acting out a belief we are in effect spreading lies.

502. It takes a lot to stop and reflect on your life and be prepared to expose the patterns of behaviours that come from a protection rather than a truth. I love that through the presentations of Universal Medicine, people are inspired to commit to such levels of self awareness with an understanding free of criticism and a dedication to unfolding the love within to address and heal what is there… Choosing to step out of our own mess is an inspiring reflection the world needs to see.

503. Awesome to hear your experience and journey Irene, this level of detail that your body is communicating is fascinating and extremely important. I love how you are totally open to exploring and feeling what is going on and going beyond what has been the focus but taking it even further and asking your other organs what is going on. That is super cool.

504. I find choosing to open my heart is easier since I have chosen to heal my hurts. I know I have more layers of hurt to let go whenever I harden my body and recoil back into protection. Sometimes old hurts are not always obvious but whenever I react to people or situations it is a sign that I am not choosing to open my heart.

505. When we make a serious and sustained effort to be more of who we truly are, we then have to deal with the momentum of our life up to that moment. There are quite a few advantages on being older when making that effort, but one disadvantage is that our momentum can be substantial, leaving more than traces in our body.

506. Love this Irene a great example of choosing to be open and honest by being willing to deal with past choices and let go of old hurts. What a wonderful clearing for your body and healing you have had by taking energetic responsibility for your choices. ‘The body truly is the marker of All truth’ .

507. It’s interesting how we can spend a lifetime trying to please others, only to end up ill and a far reduced version of ourselves, and often pretty resentful about it. How amazing Irene to read of your turnaround and willingness to accept and listen to all of your body’s messages, as uncomfortable as it must have been to hear them at times after the changes you’d already started making. Not a single choice we make gets past our body, registering it all and patiently giving us messages until we listen.

     1. Super cool Bryony – ‘Not a single choice we make gets past our body, registering it all and patiently giving us messages until we listen.’ You are absolutely correct – our body experiences every choice we make, all of the time. Awesome said.

508. The body is a powerful reflection and a deeply loving companion.

509. It’s beautiful to hear of how you’ve developed a greater surrender in your life to your heart and what you feel is true rather than being slave to beliefs or pictures of how you think you should be. I think also when we build true value and worth within ourselves for who we innately are we are less inclined to do things to seek recognition and more impulsed to express the true love we innately are.

510. This feels like a gorgeous unfolding process to being more ‘open hearted’

     1. Indeed Michael, open hearted is the way to go one day for all. To come to that point we all have different lessons to learn because we all have made our individual choices in life that will define what lessons are needed in our return to who we naturally are.

511. I feel like in writing this for yourself, you wrote it for all of us. Thank you for the insights into how we live affects our body and for the inspiration to let more love in and out.

     1. I agree Sarah, this may be a personal experience but it is universal in the way it has been expressed and shared.

512. This process continues and expands as I learn to be more honest with myself and others and not live with the pressure that I need to be a “nice, caring” person so others will like me. Very lovely your sharing Irene, and I can relate to this paragraph very well. I too have needed to look at holding onto wanting to be nice and do the so called, right thing so that others will like me, and in the process, totally ditching my own truth and knowing for this man made and totally disempowering way of being with others. There is no being nice, doing the right thing, obligation or duty within sacredness, only a solid to the core holding reflection of absolute love and truth.

     1. I have never wanted to be nice, so for me it was less a question of learning to say ‘no’ but more a question of saying ‘yes’ to people.

513. Interesting choice of words when you write “I just need to be open to listening to the true energy of the heart, not the false, emotional one that can overlie it”. It struck me that “overlie” is truly a lie as are the emotions that we can so easily fall for while thinking we are doing good and being helpful.

     1. In the light of the clear sharing within this blog, this comment “…thinking we are doing good and being helpful.” offers me much to ponder on and not only in the arena of volunteering, especially as I have been alerted by way of recent x-rays to the presence of calcification in the aorta. Time for some deeper reflection and self nurturing methinks.

514. It’s so interesting how as you became more open, all past ways of being needed to be cleared from the body so that your physical body could catch up to your heart and the lightness it was living.

515. I love the realisations you share on this blog. It is so deeply healing to choose to live with at least more gentleness with ourselves every day and thus this is a natural sharing with others.
     “As I dug deeper into this I realised that my behaviours had developed in reaction to my past hurts and fears and that I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself”.

     1. I am reminded of how I used to be with myself. I used to trash and thrash my body. I repeatedly rode rough shod over it, driving back and forth over my defunct carcass until my poor old carcass would go no more.

516. ‘One of the first things I realised by attending these presentations is that I am already everything that is glorious and loving and that the parts of me that I think I am are only cover ups that I have learnt to live by, to literally cover up my hurts.’ Well said Irene, a great realisation to support you to true healing and learning to let go of hurts of the past.

517. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog, often we develop over the years a negative relationship with our bodies, as though it is trying it’s hardest to punish us, but this is so far from the truth. And after much resistance to listening to it I am finally starting to accept that there is so much communication going on with my body and that if I was wise I would stop and take note.

     1. It is such a turn around to consider the body is communicating with us for healing. In the past I felt a victim of my body and that it was somehow “out to get me”. I suppose this is why the media talk about the “fight against cancer”.

518. If we had been living contracting our heart for a long time, then learn to reconnect with our true essence and live from the heart, it would be a pretty major change of way of being for the body to adopt to. How amazing is that your body has seized the opportunity for healing now that you are so well aware and equipped to bring it to a full healing.

519. When I saw you recently in a local shop, your joyous presence was there for all to see and feel – it was contagious, and there was no holding back of the gorgeousness you are… your heart was wide open 🙂

     1. We were reflecting each other Paula. Very beautiful to feel.

520. A beautiful sharing Irene… with not one ounce of victimhood or negativity towards yourself – just a deep and honest willingness to observe how life has been and how it can now change.

     1. Yes Paula, a beautiful observation, as our tendency is to resent our bodies or feel that we are a victim of life which does not get us to the level of honesty required for true healing.

521. It is extremely liberating when we finally crack the shell of niceness that so many people have gathered around them so that they do not have to feel the lack of self-love that is always there eroding the foundations of every relationship that we try to enter into.

522. I am so very pleased conversations like this are happening. Understanding our illness and learning what part we had to play in them is a true gift, as we then have the blue print of how and what to adjust to support our bodies to heal.

523. I love the openness you have shared your experience with Irene, no more blocked arteries with your willingness to explore, understand and talk about how your body is and what it has to say.

524. “Could what we think is our heart be an emotional part of us and not the original loving heart?” Wow Irene – what you share here is absolutely huge! I can see that most of the things I believe that I am are actually constructs from my head. I get the sense that I will only get to know who I really am through my feeling heart.

525. A beautiful example Irene of how a deeper understanding of what is showing up physically in the body is an opportunity to heal the condition on that deeper level – to address the behaviour and way of being that got the body to display the condition is where healing lays.

526. I am so hard and harsh on myself – I don’t think I realise the true extent of it – my upper body is rock solid – I know underneath it all I’m so sweet, delicate and deeply caring and loving – whether it’s a picture I have in my head of how I think I should be or whether due to hurts I don’t let people in – maybe both – it’s time to work on letting it go. I find it very difficult to be at ease and rest in my body. I’m nearly always anxious, on edge or worrying about things. There is also a lot of shock, trauma and agony in my body from a recent event I don’t want to feel. Ha ha even in the comment I’m being way to hard on myself.

527. This is one of my favourite blogs ever. So lovely in how it’s written, so inviting.

528. I’ve lived a life of striving to fulfill my beliefs, much at my expense and short lived highs. Through listening to Universal Medicine present on life, making life’s focus as how much can I learn to live life from within has felt far more sustainable, consistent and enriching. And I too love what the body presents when open to the fact that it is communicating my choices to me.

529. It is very beautiful to be with our body like this and instead of disliking or even hating what our body is showing us, to see it as a roadmap where we have been and the possibilities that lay ahead, knowing we are able to make different choices.

530. I too used to think I was kind hearted Irene, and I think we were, kind hearted to everyone else but ourselves. When we truly feel how we have been living in our bodies, and the hardness is exposed, it is quite a shock to the system and of course, the different organs in the body reflect the years of contraction. What a beautiful healing journey for your heart to open up in this lifetime.

531. A relatively new and deepening experience for me also to allow love to come in and come out, not hold it back and attempt to measure how transparent I am and expressive of the natural love that is within. I can so feel the difference in my body through making this choice how ever, amazing.

532. I love how much our bodies can show us and what we can learn from them when we actually listen rather than trying to override them. You have also shown that there are consequences from the way we live and our bodies can only handle so much abuse and that often when we actually start to change and heal it all has to come out so that it can make way again for the love that we are.

533. I love this article because it highlights how easily we can identify with a belief about ourselves and keep on perpetuating that belief throughout our lives…..until we wake up, and it is never too late to do that. Waking up means an opportunity to change and to open up our lives to a new way of being. From then on every day is a new day, every moment a new moment offering us evolution.

534. Thank you Irene. Your willingness to be open to the communication that your body offers, and your humbleness in accepting the messages is inspiring. Enjoy your open-heartedness.

535. Our organs tell us so much and we can be in such denial of their messages. We evidently need the shock treatment that you experienced Irene to wake us up to extent of the damage we do to our selves as a consequence of our way of life. When we join up the dots it becomes evident that our bodies are victim not only to our physical way of life, but our emotions, thoughts, beliefs and habits too. Once we truly understand this, we can begin cleaning up our act and Universal Medicine offers us some very dependable healing and wise guidance on how to successfully resume a healthy relationship with our bodies, lifestyle and psychological outlook with miraculous results.

536. The most powerful healing I feel in reading your every word here Irene, is that you have opened your heart so profoundly to yourself. You judge not the ways of the past you have been willing to see, that did not in truth serve you or those around you, and there is a deep peace in the acceptance of the heart procedures you have gone through, and what this all means to you.
     A beautiful sharing about true and ‘whole’ medicine, that encompasses not only the physical body, but the being that you are… Thank-you.

537. Irene, the simplicity with which you are able to accept what your body is showing you about your past choices is totally inspiring!

538. Irene, what a deep awareness you share here. Powerful, inspiring and so clear on the differences between emotional love and true love. Love how you have stopped to listen to the truth and wisdom from your body.
     “I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way”.

539. A beautiful reflection that your arteries are giving you Irene. What an amazing awareness you have come to.

540. “I now have an opportunity with open arteries to live in a more “open hearted” way.” beautiful Irene. When we listen to or body – and our heart – we can make different choices which have huge impact on our lives – and the lives of others.

541. Are we open hearted if we are nice, what does it mean to be open hearted. I could say I have had good intentions yet got annoyed with others who were not acting with care. That perhaps then is not open hearted as it does not allow understanding. Great blog Irene, very thought provoking and revealing.

542. Thank you, Irene, for your open hearted personal sharing of your journey to an open heart. It is very revealing to look at one’s perception of oneself and it can at times be a painful process but one that is so worth it, as you share.

543. We can have this idea that if we change our way of life to a healthy one, that we wont get ill but our body has to clear basically all we have been living in the past and this can’t always be done without an illness or disease. It is a great thing to learn as otherwise it is just another way to beat ourselves up for not living well.

544. Irene you write tenderly with an openness and honesty that goes straight to the heart, we feel your every word. I can relate to much of what you share: beliefs we hold about ourselves, especially ones that convince us we are caring and kind and yet cover up our own deep seated hurts. You also show that healing can grace us at any age, as long as we are open to see the wisdom an illness or condition brings.

545. ‘I wasn’t being as gentle and loving with others as I had previously believed and I especially wasn’t being gentle and loving with myself.’ This is a real kapow moment! I had a similar moment and I wonder if I hadn’t had it so young, in all possibility the same cardio issues could have been bubbling away to manifest later for me in life too. What a shocker it is to discover that ‘being nice’ is a far cry from being true and being loving and that ‘being nice’ is all about self and nothing about self!

546. Discarding what is not true is an ever unfolding process, as you have shown Irene. We carry many layers of protection and think we know, until our bodies show us otherwise.

547. This was an astounding blog! One that was very inspiring to read. Could it be that from being in unloving behaviours and constantly contracting and protecting ourselves we are putting pressure on our cardiovascular system and are causing its blockages and disease? Like you I was brought up to believe that love was emotional and was more akin to being ‘kind and nice’ – but was never confirmed that I was already love and didn’t have to interrupt the flow in my heart and body.

548. It can stop us in our tracks when we realise that all the good helpful kindness we think we are doing may be harming another by preventing them taking responsibility for their own life and choices and may also be harming us at the same time furring up our arteries.

549. Our body is constantly giving us opportunities to see how we have been living, what has been imposed on it and what needs to be cleared that has been allowed to get in the way of its natural loving flow. I was just talking with someone today about heart disease and heart attacks and how some afterwards choose to open their heart again and some choose not to. It’s like with everything, we can listen and take heed or we can ignore and allow things to fester and become blocked. This is a blog and lived experience that should be studied for the depth of understanding and awareness that it offers us all.

550. It is hard, to wear one’s heart on their sleeve without getting it battered and bruised, that makes us hide our heart and build walls to protect them! But, we can choose to remove the walls and display our inner heart to the world when we observe and not absorb the world we live in when we express from who we truly are!

551. Hello Irene, thank you for your blog, it’s a very insightful sharing. I can relate to your pattern and to not understanding the difference between true love and emotional love and helping. My body has also tried to show me the difference repeatedly! It is indeed very tiring to be hooked by emotional love and all the behaviours that come with it. It’s important to remember though as we extract ourselves out of emotional love that the innate loveliness of who we are is still there and was not part of the false love – and the innate loveliness is there to be appreciated.

552. Irene thank you for sharing what your experience of opening your heart has been, what open hearted is, as it’s something that people say in different situations but we don’t often ask what it means. Your choice to have medical checkups is one example of the result of being open hearted and willing to connect not only with yourself but others. I look forward to connecting more to the tenderness and care you’ve shown in your article about the way you live today.

553. A great reminder to keep an open Heart and not just look after others but ourselves also. We often look at ourselves without really seeing the truth of how we are and how the world sees us. Thank you Irene.

554. A wonderful testimonial to the fact that the way we live impacts on our body and that our body will always respond with a message. It is always talking to us, sometimes more loudly than others. The words “opening of my heart” will certainly have a more encompassing meaning for you, and I am sure for many of us, now Irene.

555. So beautiful Irene – we so often think of openness as our willingness to be kind or nice or friendly at the very least. What attending the Universal Medicine healing courses has shown me too is that it is much more to do with the very physical part of me and you. The tension in our upper chest, the way we roll our shoulders in, the hard shield we have made in the centre of our being – all this is telling us the truth of how we are living. It’s time we made our body the true gauge of our life not the words we happen to like.

556. “I wonder what my other organs have in store to tell me.” Well your heart sounds truly wonderfull Irene, I look forward to your other organs’ disclosures.

557. It is incredible how our body reflects and reminds us to be open and loving, and if we resist, this affects our body. This also affects the people around us and beyond. It is inspiring Irene how open you are to listening to your body.

558. “The angiogram pictures revealed to me someone who had been contracted for a long time by not allowing love to flow in and out of their heart.”

     Thank you Irene, this is so simple yet so profound and greatly assists us all in relearning how to listen to our wisest teacher in life – the body we are enhoused within. When we do this, our illnesses are never a failing on our behalf but a great lesson in love and how to more openly express it.

559. You have shared so much of yourself and your way of seeing and living life in your blog, Irene, that has inspired me to stand back and take a closer look at how I am choosing to be and see (or not see) things in my day-to-day living. Lots and lots to consider there . . . Thank you.

560. Irene, this is so wonderful to read and so supportive in understanding the wisdom of our body and the communication it brings. The multilayers we have that we live through and allow which impact the quality in which we live are revealed here so beautifully and it is very confronting that society often demands a way of living from us that is so damaging to our health both physically and energetically. Thank you for deepening my awareness of the importance of being open and loving without holding back.

561. Thank you for sharing this Irene, our bodies present us with such wisdom and opportunity to expand our awareness. When we are willing to be honest and look at our behaviours there is always a link to how we have been living and the ailments we experience in life. It can be truly healing to live in this way.

562. It is interesting how we use words like open-hearted, cold-hearted but also open-minded and cold-minded. We try so hard to separate the two, even when using the same word to describe both, but instead of fragmenting parts of us, what if we could claim that we were an open person? Or a loving, respectful person? Does our self-criticism get in the way of saying this, and thus we have to excuse a distant, disrespectful, cold, calculating or selfish fraction of us?

563. A great point shared here Irene on the gift offered by your heart to let go of the old ways and make way for the true you. Now it is only natural to start asking the same questions about the other organs!

564. What a beautiful opening of your heart Irene, in all respects. I love your acceptance of it all, from the self-assessment you undertook, to the surgery you had, despite the discomforts apparent in each step.

565. What a beautiful sharing Irene. I am inspired by your honesty and commitment to yourself. Our bodies are magnificent and such a reflection of how we live. Your experiences show this up so well! Thank you and yes I wonder what our other organs can tell us and how our open heart can support their healing.

566. Thank you, Irene, for sharing you story, it is a stark reminder to all of us how contracted we can live our lives and how it directly affects our bodies. Helping people has been a theme for me with the phrase ‘Big-hearted’ and mine is big now, literally, because of atrial fibrillation and having to work harder, some parts of my heart muscle have developed larger to compensate. Like you, I know now that the way I was helping others was just making me ill, it came from a very needy place of wanting to feel useful and therefore loved.

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