The Song of the Heart
By Sandra Couts

Have you ever noticed how some people cringe when the solution to an emotional pain they are experiencing is to simply “love yourself”? Do you think they cringe because this phrase sounds redundant or because they really do not know what it means to love who they are? Perhaps the discomfort lies in both of these questions.

I will address the latter, what does it mean for you to love you? Love is a word that is difficult to define through words. Love seems to be felt more easily through a hug, a smile, laughter, or by hearing “I love you”. Indeed, when the emotion of love is expressed, it encompasses one of the highest energetic vibrations on the earth. This strong and powerful feeling is easily felt through the physical and energetic heart. That is, you have a physical body and an energetic body that matches the physical body. Emotions are felt, expressed and often contained in the physical body. The energetic body holds the emotional imprint. The heart is the organ in the body that contains and maintains the energetic vibration of love.

To love your self is to experience the energy of love through accepting all parts of you, by learning to be true to your dreams and visions, and by learning to appreciate your humanness.  One way of truly loving your self is to develop the art of establishing heart connections.

Heart connections are a way to connect with the power of love. When your emotional or energetic heart is constricted or closed, it is difficult to feel love, for yourself or for others. Heart connections free you to express and receive love. Loving yourself is easier when your heart is open and expanded. One way to open your heart so it can connect is by discovering the song of your heart. This unique song belongs only to you. You do not have to have any musical ability to create and sing your heart sound. What is required, however, is willingness to be vulnerable, silly and spontaneous with your self.

Steps to connect with your heart in order to create the song of your heart:

• Place your hand on your chest in the heart area of your body.
• Take three or more deep breaths.
• Let your body soften and relax.
• Your eyes can be open or closed.
• Begin to see or feel that your hand is a direct link to the energy of love by imagining that your hand is touching your heart.
• As you feel the heart connection, imagine that love is flowing from your hand directly to your heart.
• Now imagine that love is flowing back from your heart to your hand.
• As you feel the heart connection, imagine that love is flowing from your hand directly to your heart.
• Now imagine that love is flowing back from your heart to your hand.
• Allow yourself to enjoy this heart connection. Know that a connection is occurring.
• Take three more deep breaths.
• Now close your eyes and let your heart sing a song by allowing any words, any sounds to flow from you, creating a tune. Your song may be one word or several sentences. Sing the song of your heart as long as you want.
• You may want to write the words on paper share them with others or keep them private. Your heart may have more than one song. Explore, have fun, be as silly and spontaneous as you want.

What is a Family?
By Sandra Couts

A common question that people frequently ask each other is “how is your family”? The answer to this caring question could be complex depending on whose definition of family the question is considering. At one point in time, the definition of family was limited to the mother, the father and any number of children. An extended family then included grandparents, aunts and uncles. Family was defined according to biological connections.

Currently, the definition of family has a more expansive inclusion of a variety of people. The following points demonstrate how families can be defined.
A family is

• A group of people living under the same roof.
• A group of people living together sharing the same values.
• A group of people living together sharing the day to day responsibilities of caring for children and maintaining a household.
• A basic unit of one or two people raising one or more children.
• A group of persons united by certain convictions, common affiliations or spiritual practices.
• A group of persons united through ancestry ties. 
• Two or more people living together out of a love and commitment to each other and the relationship.
• A group of friends who do not live together but are emotionally close and caring with each other.
• A group of people connected through biological ties or the same upbringing.

January 1st
By Jennifer MacLellan  

January 1st.  Like millions of other people throughout the world I used to make several well-meaning resolutions—to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend more time with my friends. Yes, the promise of a new year and a chance to reinvent myself and my life was alluring, yet it was also coupled with the guilty awareness that most of these resolutions would never be fulfilled.

What I have come to know is that the reason these intentions rarely succeeded was that they were not my heart’s true desires. I didn’t know how to make the distinction between what I thought I wanted (in most cases what others wanted for me) and what my heart wanted.  However, a “chance” encounter with a book showed me the difference in a profound and lasting way.

 During a particularly rough period in my life, I decided to spend the day shopping with a dear friend in an area of Vancouver I had never been.  This day’s adventure led me to a new age bookstore, my first, where I felt drawn to scan the shelves for something, anything that could help lift me out of this dark time.  Less than a minute after I had begun wandering through this bright, airy store, a book literally moved from its secure home upon a crowded top shelf and fell directly into my hands.  I checked to see if anyone had witnessed the miracle of the moving book, but my friend, who was the only other customer in the store besides my trembling self, was in animated conversation with the clerk behind the cash register. 

Incredulous, I brushed my hand across the cover and read the title: Tantra for the West by Marcus Allen. I laughed out loud, wondering how a book on tantric sex was going to serve any purpose in my life as I was newly single. However, as I read the introduction, I realized that tantra, as Allen writes about it, embraces much more than sex.  His main premise, based on the Indian philosophy of tantra, is that we have the power to change our self-limiting thoughts and beliefs through the power of affirmations.   In those moments, as I read his simple but powerful words, my heart rate increased, my body started to tingle and my eyes welled up with tears.  The importance of each word became magnified while my brain seemed to bypass the intellectual nature of the material and opened my heart in a way I hadn’t experience before.

Of course, I bought the book. It was never really a choice. I rushed home and devoured the 200 plus pages that spoke to me about how each one of us has the power to lead the lives we have always envisioned but have been unable to manifest because of our restricting thoughts. Each page I turned, each word I read, the same physiological reactions I had in the store persisted but were now accompanied with brief sobs of gratitude for having found a book that spoke to me the way it did.  Immediately after finishing the last page, I set out to follow Allen’s suggestions about creating affirmations in the areas that were most important to me at the time: money and relationships. Not only did I write out and speak aloud my desires, I started to visualize money flowing to me and the ideal man walking toward me.  My belief in the messages of this book was so strong that I didn’t even consider for a moment that my tantra mantras would not work. And I was right.

Money flowed into my life from unexpected sources and the relationship that had prematurely ended weeks before started a new chapter (ten years later our loving partnership is still flourishing).  As the months went by and I experimented and succeeded with my affirmations, I noticed that my affirmations were becoming more spiritual in nature.  The desire to have radiant skin was replaced with the desire to radiate light.  The desire to have secure work was transposed by the desire to help others through my work.   My guide to forming each affirmation evolved: if my heart started to race or my emotions began to stir, I knew that I was locked on. I learned the heart not the head knows best, something that I had not been cognizant of when I used to make resolutions at the start of each new year. 

Just as important as understanding the heart connection when creating affirmations  for transformation was the power I had been given to change what I had previously believed was unchangeable. I was no longer a witness to what I thought was an accidental life. The messages in this book had provided me with the insight into how to connect with my heart and become a powerful creator, the author of my life’s story alongside a powerful source open to anyone who desires to tap into it.  Since finding Tantra for the West, I have read numerous books by authors who expound on the power of affirmations, offering various philosophies and techniques and I have taken something away from each one.  More than the authors’ words, the changes in my life have been my inspiration to continue to make affirmations a daily part of my life—in the shower, at work, in the grocery lineup, in my car, in bed before I fall asleep and before I rise. That’s the beauty of affirmations—there is no waiting.  Any time I feel scared or sad or insecure, I can change my thinking, one thought at a time, to something that takes me closer to who I truly am underneath those false layers of regret, rejection, anger, woundedness, and fear.

As time ticks on and another January 1st has quietly slipped away without my making any guilt-ridden resolutions about a new diet or exercise regime, I sit here in gratitude for that book that spoke to me so clearly that day, telling me that I never have to wait again for a January 1st or a new moon or the start of a work week to profess my intentions to make meaningful changes.  Every moment of every day presents itself with the opportunity to mold my life into the incredible, awe-inspiring, love-filled, abundant life to which I am entitled.  Yesterday has passed; tomorrow may never come.  What I have—what we have—is now, so that’s where I begin to take charge and create. I begin now.

Jennifer MacLellan, B. Ed., is an intuitive and an educator who is passionate about laughing, love, spirituality and the power of words. For any comments or questions, please contact her at jennnymac@shaw.ca.