Bikes, Bridges and Bells...oh my!

Harnessing the energy of your whole heart.

WHOLEHEARTED is a term I had been using over and over as it’s how I have been signing off my emails over the past year.

Wholehearted Love, Melinda

Wholehearted Care, Melinda

Wholehearted Gratitude, Melinda

But, in further understanding of myself, this word Wholehearted that I have been consciously choosing...what exactly does it mean to me. Expressively, how does my reverberating heart space define being whole?

Reflecting upon my ‘why’ and ‘how’ I needed to engage during this time in a global pandemic, leant itself to the deepening and widening of my sincere living. My breathing through, in and around this container - of me - offered clarity and creation to how living openly, fully, and completely by way of my heart was not just necessary, but vital. It is flourishing alive my compassion and sacred holding, from deep inside me, out and my far reaching outside, back in. For me, it means stretching to others, liken a bridge, where my arms can outreach as they fasten attachment that buttresses support to another’s well-constructed foundation spanning me across the people in my world. It means keeping generously attuned to the realness and authenticity of another not by way of judgment but by way of holding, listening, understanding, experiencing, and welcoming the entire presence of myself and of others.

Our structural hearts work remarkably as they pump to provide what we need to sustain our being alive. Am I manifesting a partnership of self and with others operating to mimic the total, vigorous, complete innerworkings of my physical, mechanical loving center?

Simply NO!

There are many ways I was hiding my positive, guarded and excuse applied thinking from the rounding of me and the developing in relationships outside of me. I felt half- breathing, half -thinking and half-showing up for all. I needed to jump start the wholeness of me...all of it for the good and the not so good...into expansion for comprehensiveness.

What does this mean? It means loving myself... all various thoughts, feelings, and needs honestly and authentically. It means accepting the who I am and where I am in the GPS of my pin’s drop to this exact not so polished moment. It is viewing self through the gentle lens of empathetic, acceptant, and valuable knowing. Its living by way of truth, tolerance, and totality.

I needed to feel my tangible heart, by its complex mass and size. Through the practice of life experiences that pump and flow each entering and exiting ventricle, I become vigilant to first get my heart jump started in cardio movement...literally. In this time, I became an avid cyclist. My coveted bike seat (although not uber comfortable) is the thrown of my palace’s Monarchy and nature is now my chosen dominion. While on the path of interconnectedness I ride, I become the boundless outstretched wings of a hawk, I become the insightful eyes of a doe during her timid graze, and I feel the quiet power of a snake clearing out of the thicket of grass. As I push and round my hips through my feet and propel my breathing on high, I for the first time of the day feel my vessel of self in its unbroken enormity. Here, my heart is pounding so fast that I am certain it is fully outside my chest cavity. While beating externally loud, I siphon through the listening of self and others, the holding to precious thoughts and the care taking to needs. Until this awakened beating, I’m not certain of much. Now, I’m most acclimated to what another divulges by diction, direction, and determination. I feel aligned with what they speak and what they silently shout but don’t dare utter. In meeting another in the middle, I can offer myself in an entirety I hadn’t been able to before. And here and now, I am greeting the meeting of ME! The wholeheartedness of living also births from the shifting of air that comes by way of change, growth, and evolution. I can’t go back to semi living. My heart needed this swelling as it nurtured through gratitude, acceptance to trust and faith. This is how I arrive whole heartedly with life.

Now, on my ritual rides, I am blessed to cross over 9 bridges and as I do I can profoundly hear the vibrations of my weighted presence vibrating rhythmically weathered wood plank by wood plank. As I pick up speed, in parallel I feel my heart not racing but roaring as I count and cross all my bridges that connect me to me. I can’t help but also ring my bike’s bell loudly listening for the brassy echo that reverberates among the hawk, the deer and the snake and claim:

I am here today world,

Wholeheartedly, Melinda!