11 Reasons Why I Wrote a Book Devoted to the Heart

________________

Part 1 of 2

I wrote a book and it's here! As I shared on social media, it feels like after a month of false labor, I just had a baby and it weighs 11 ounces. 😅🎉

It's short and sweet and nothing that you don't already know... but sometimes we forget.

This book is designed to be a daily reminder that adding in more heart to your life recipe will keep you feeling fed, deeply nourished and fulfilled.

40 Days of the Art of Wholeness: A Daily Devotional for the Heart

So, what's this book and what's it about?

Many of you opted to be a part of my 40 Days of the Art of Wholeness email campaign at the end of last year where I emailed a contemplation/story/reflection every day for 40 days as a free offering to keep us all on track for the "real reason for the season" around the holidays.

When my client friend said that she was enjoying the daily emails but wished they were in book form, I felt a chill go through my body. Book form, you say? I can do that. And I've been working on the evolved version of it ever since.

This book isn't just a devotional for the holidays, it's for every day. It's for everyone with a beating heart who enjoys daily reminders for staying connected, anchored, grounded, elevated, awake and aware in their life. I wrote it for me and I wrote it for you. Currently, my husband and I are following along together and I love how it reinforces the connection we have. I have the Hardcover, he has the Paperback and we're on Day 7.... Which leads me to Reason #1 why I wrote a devotional for the heart.

#1. All of Life is Relationship

Life is how we relate to ourselves and everything else. That's it. To our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our hearts, our emotions, our families, our community, our passions, our beliefs, and others' as well. Our entire life is about how we interact with, feel connected to or disconnected from something, someone, or some place. When we feel connected, we feel more whole. When we feel disconnected, we feel like something is missing.

Life is also about our relationship with time. We're either running out of time, don't have enough time, overwhelmed by time, over-managed with time constraints, have too much time on our hands, waiting for the right time or... we're in right relationship with timing.

Wholeness is about feeling deeply at ease in our body and you might agree that in order to feel at ease in our body now, we would have to spend time discovering what's keeping us from being at ease and also spend time fostering a relationship with ease.

When we feel whole, we feel patient, light and stable. When we feel separated from it, we feel anxious, more fearful, unsettled.

My entire life - with my clients in my work, with my family, with myself - is based on re-establishing, re-membering, re-newing, re-freshing, re-inforcing connection. My intention is to help people enter a state where they get beyond their preoccupation with time, where they're freed from the chains of time and space - even for just a short while - so they/we can access the intelligence of life, reorienting ourselves back into right relationship with the multidimensional aspect of ourselves.

The modem, the router, the transformer maintaining connection and distributing life force energy forever and ever beyond the boundaries of these bodies can be found through the doorway of our hearts.

#2. Religion Has Nothing To Do With It

One of the men in my HeartMath® training is a pastor on Long Island in New York. He has a doctorate in philosophy and religion, speaks fluent Italian and has a thriving congregation. He is a man of heart. He introduced the concept of "religious harm" to me and says he helps people recover from it. It gave me goosebumps because I totally understood what he meant. I feel like as long as we keep thinking that something outside of ourselves has the answers and we keep looking for salvation "out there", we will continue to feel co-dependent and separate from the truth that Source is within us and all around us.

Any great teacher I have ever come across encourages us to look within, to be loyal to, to care for, to have faith in, to trust in our own heart's wisdom - not as a selfish act, but because it's within our hearts where we are connected to the essence of all the great teachings and in greatest fellowship with all beings. From this place, we can co-create with others with reverence, with respect, with equanimity. Imagine a world like that... where we are all devoted to, loyal to, and have faith in the way of the heart.

#3. Re-framing Life as an Art

The heart is our creative center and art, by definition, is creation. Re-framing life as an Art of Wholeness helps us shift our perspective, open our focus and consider that our challenges contain hidden gifts and gems for us to learn from, share from, be inspired by, and keep us connected with others who are also navigating this Earth school. Creativity nurtures and fosters interconnection, beauty and the full spectrum of navigating the human experience.

We're here to feel life. To be moved by it, to be blessed by it, to experience it, to learn from it, to share it.

Living life as an art of wholeness implies that, though all of our paths are entirely unique, our highest expression is authenticity - not from our heads, but from what's written on our hearts.

#4. To Inspire is to Breathe In

This book could be 5 pages long and is incredibly redundant, just like any practice can be. It's basically just about setting aside time to breathe slow, deep, and complete with your attention and your awareness inside your body where your heart sits.

I have found that when I prioritize time to breathe into my heart's center - eyes open or closed - moving or in stillness - insights, inspirations, revelations, breakthroughs, a-ha moments, epiphanies, fresh perspectives and considerations emerge all on their own without me having to do anything... sometimes like a gentle breeze and other times like a magnificent storm.

Advice doesn't really work. What does work is cultivating time and space to be inspired by the answers that come from within us - our inspirations come from our breath and when we add breath into the heart, we quite literally bring our hearts to life. There's a great story about how a beautiful client of mine actually grew her heart biologically younger by doing just that - it's on Day 24 of the book.

#5. Practicing Heart-Brain Coherence Changes Our Biology

I feel so fortunate to have obtained permission from the renowned HeartMath® Institute to use one of their coherence techniques in the book and to also share some of their research on how emotions affect our heart rhythm patterns and produce physiological changes in the body. I learned across all three of my trainings with them that there is more information going from the heart to the brain via the vagus nerve than is going from the brain to the heart. Our brain and the higher centers of our brain either work better or worse depending on the quality of the signal coming from our heart rhythm patterns.

The heart is the great conductor in the symphony that is our body. Our nervous system, hormones, immune system, digestion all perform more coherently and in greater coordination when we practice heart-brain coherence. HeartMath research shows us time and time again that our emotions impact our biology whether we are aware of it or not. This book is to help us become more aware, more of the time.

We cannot think our way out of stress. Our brains are record keepers of the past. In order to have new conscious thoughts and actually follow through on those conscious, creative thoughts and ideas coming from the big, beautiful pre-frontal lobe of our brain, it's into the body we must go. These 40 days are opportunities - access points - to connect with our bodies through the portal of the heart - with breath, with our intention and our attention, with feeling qualities of the heart, with curiosity, with self-discovery - all from a more coherent, harmonious, tuned in state of BEing.

These are 5 reasons that I wrote a devotional for the heart. Stay tuned for Reasons 6-11 in Part 2 in next week's blog post.

Love,

Sarah

P.S. 40 Days of the Art of Wholeness: A Daily Devotional for the Heart is available for purchase in either paperback, hardcover or kindle form through Amazon.

Also, beginning the first half of June, it will be available through the following local businesses: Moonflower Market, Moab Made and The Last Page Bookshop and Juice Bar.

I set up a little shop on my website if you'd like to order through me directly. As I have some travel plans coming up, please note that orders through my website will not be shipped until the end of June, but they will contain a personalized love note of heart-felt appreciation ♡. Shipping is included in the price.