Healing The Heart

February is Heart Month.  Also within this mid-winter month is Valentine’s Day, and Eating Disorders Prevention Week.  At first glance, these may seem unrelated, but upon closer examination, they are intertwined.

With the media focus on American Heart Disease, obesity, and dieting, there is an emphasis on weight loss for the sake of preventing coronary artery disease.  At the same time, the food and weight obsession of teenage girls in particular and women in general has connected dieting with acceptance of body and self while encouraging eating disorders.

Beneath both of these, there is the issue of opening the heart  ~ anatomically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Whether we are talking about reversing heart disease or healing eating disorders, work must be done at a deep level to support the lifestyle choices that are life-enhancing rather than self-destructive:  Work designed to mend a broken heart.

On the physical plane, this means feeding the body’s nutritional needs according to one’s individual biochemistry as well as hunger and satiety  cues.  This does not mean “dieting”, which, according to recent studies published in Sports Medicine Digest and the ACSM Health and Fitness Journal,” . . . Is a direct predictor of future significant weight gain.”  Rather, it means permanent lifestyle change to nourish the heart, accompanied by appropriate physical activity to strengthen the heart.

However, this is only the beginning, for whether the heart is weakened from cardiovascular disease or from an eating disorder, a wounded heart must be healed emotionally and spiritually as well as physically.  This requires introspection, and honest self-reflection, assisted by therapeutic interventions (psychodrama and expressive arts therapies are particularly helpful), as well as meditation, prayer and on-going support.  This work is not short-term, but on-going, and requires commitment and fortitude.

In the words of renowned heart specialist Dr. Dean Ornish, “work . . . Based on the premise that addressing the underlying causes of a problem is ultimately more effective than  addressing only the  symptoms. . . truth . . .  expressed opens the way to real healing, and is profoundly transformative in ways that go beyond what we can measure . . . ”

Give yourself the Valentine of healing your heart.