Hot Springs BodyTalk

09/20/2025

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.

This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Divine Beauty (Europe) / Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Lough Inagh, County Galway, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

09/15/2025

Thanks to our friend Caramaya for this post.

Most people think the brain is the sole command center of the body, but science reveals a deeper truth: your heart is not just a pump, it is an intelligent organ that actively influences how you think and feel. In fact, the heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart, shaping emotions, decision-making, and even perception.

This connection is made possible through the vagus nerve and the body’s intricate nervous system. The heart generates powerful rhythmic signals that travel upward, directly impacting brain regions linked to emotion and cognition. When your heartbeat is steady and coherent, it promotes calmness, clarity, and focus. When it becomes irregular or stressed, it can trigger anxiety, confusion, or irritability.

Researchers have also found that the heart produces its own neurotransmitters, including dopamine and oxytocin, chemicals usually associated with the brain. This means your heart is part of the conversation that regulates bonding, trust, and joy. It is not only reacting to your emotional state—it is helping create it.

This relationship explains why stress, anger, or grief can affect physical heart rhythms, and why practices like deep breathing, meditation, and gratitude can quickly shift both mood and heart health. When you calm your heart, you calm your brain. When you care for your heart, you strengthen your mind.

The traditional view that the brain is in charge and the heart simply follows is incomplete. The reality is more of a partnership, with the heart playing a central role in the flow of information that shapes who you are.

Your heart is more than a muscle keeping you alive—it is a guiding force influencing how you feel, think, and connect with the world around you. Learning to listen to it may be one of the most powerful ways to nurture both your emotional and mental health.

09/07/2025

08/07/2025

What a powerful tool in our journey to know ourselves! Please read and check this out for yourselves.

Send a message to learn more

07/27/2025

Healing from within.

06/17/2025

Absolutely!

Walking helps us process emotions. Our eyes move naturally in bilateral motions as we walk— going from right to left. This turns on the logical and emotional parts of our brain and helps us make sense of what we feel.

So many people say “feel your feelings.” And it’s true we do need to feel them. But think a better way to say this is: “walk your feelings.” When we’re sitting still, parts of our brains are inactive. Our amygdala (threat center) can go haywire. Walking turns down the amygdala’s volume.

If you’re having a difficult conversation, walk with that person as you talk. This is especially important for people with complex trauma. You’ll both be more regulated and logical. You’ll have more access to the natural compassion that always lives within you.

Walk and then notice how much calmer and at peace you feel. Your body knows what to do. If you can, listen to the birds or the wind in the trees. For thousands of years these sounds grounded your ancestors— they’ll ground you too

06/08/2025

Energy, present moment, horses, humans, life.

04/11/2025

How to help yourself feel that oh so clarifying 'Yes!' with somatic awareness....Slow Down and Feel It!

08/03/2024

Good advice!

07/27/2024

"...we're alive just as nature is alive; to be here, to be beautiful and strange. We don't need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness."

"Western cultures believe we must be alive for a purpose, to work, to make money. Some indigenous cultures believe we’re alive just as nature is alive; to be here, to be beautiful and strange. We don’t need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness.” ~Melanie Lau

06/22/2024

This!

As Walt Whitman said, "Divine I am inside and out."

06/19/2024

This!

"Eternal peace belongs to the wise, who perceive Source Consciousness within themselves—within all beings, within everything. By the mind alone is Source to be realized; when multiplicity is seen as the expression of ONE." ―Katha Upanishads

"The total number of minds in the Universe is ONE. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings. This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole.” ~Erwin Schrödinger, physicist

"You are part of the Universe; you are made of stars... We cannot take anything out of anything else. We are the mountains and rivers; we are the sun and stars. Everything inter-is..." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind. It is like a boundless void which can't be fathomed or measured. It is only necessary to awake to the One Mind, and there is nothing whatsoever to attain. This is the real Buddha." ~Huang Po, Zen patriarch

“Never forget that the Universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and One Soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.” ~Marcus Aurelius

"Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind become still. All things in the Universe rise and fall, while the Self watches their return. They grow and flourish and then Return to the Source. Returning to the Source is stillness, which is the Way of Nature." ~ Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

"Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a Source to be some God outside you. Your Source is within yourself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the Source and merge in it." ~Ramana Maharshi

“Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows. A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet." ―Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Until we realize the Unity of Life, we live in fear. For the seeker who knows not the Self, his separateness becomes fear itself. When one realizes the Self, in whom All Life is One, changeless, nameless, formless, then one fears no more." ―Taittiriya Upanishad

"The inner being, the Real Self, it draws you from within. The ego-self is different from the Source of all, the absolute. Knowing oneself is only being One Self, as there is no second existence. THIS is Self-realization." ―Ramana Maharshi

"The One Mind is the real Buddha. This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha Mind." ~Huang Po, Zen patriarch

"If you really touch one flower deeply, you touch the whole cosmos. The cosmos is neither one nor many. When you touch one, you touch many, and when you touch many, you touch one.." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

"Awakened mind is the actual state of everything. It exhibits an unceasing quality. Naturally occurring timeless awareness—utterly lucid awakened mind—is something marvelous and superb, primordially and spontaneously present. It is the treasury from which comes the universe of appearances and possibilities, whether of samsara or nirvana. Homage to that unwavering state, free of elaboration." ~ Longchenpa, Chöying Dzod

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