Many say this entire month is dedicated to Love because it includes Valentine's Day. So let us talk about Love and Heart this week. What runs our hearts is love, flow of love is flow of life. Is nt't it? We see so many of our friends and loved ones ending up having heart issues or at least circulatory system or cholesterol issues in recent years. What gives rise to heart issues? Would you believe me if I say its lack of love? Our entire lives revolve around seeking love, appreciation or approval from others. All that we do is for love, seriously.

When we don't feel loved, we go to either of two extremes, emotionally. We either become a nice person and give ourselves to others or we become an angry rebel and say I don't care for you. In both situations, we do not know how to really receive the love that we are looking for. These days, we are listening to many new age gurus asking us to love ourselves first and make ourselves a priority and only then consider others. It is radically different from what is taught to us from our childhood. Our parents or grand parents asked us to love someone else first, give importance to someone else. My parents and grand parents were always in sacrifice mode where they gave up many things for someone or other. They are right, giving up for others is satisfying but only when we can do it from a place of fullness. But how often we can give from a place of love? Often it is in hope of getting love or approval from others through giving to others or giving in to others. I call this 'good boy/girl' syndrome. When we do these sacrifices, our need for love is not met anyway and it leaves pain in our hearts.

Are you aware, continuously ignoring self ultimately leads to inability to give or receive love? Why so much of fuss if we can't receive or give love? Because blocks to flow of love literally leads to blocks in flow of blood, our life force, or heart issues! Do you remember the instructions when you are about to take off in a flight? The flight assistants ask you to first look after your own oxygen masks in case of emergency, even before you attend to your own child. Because if you are not safe, you cannot save your child anyway. Same way it is better to share love from a heart that is not seeking love from outside but full from within. Remember, your love is valuable because of you, remove 'you' from the equation and there is not much value to the love. Is n't it?

What about those who are aggressive and angry on a constant basis? They attend anger management or stress management workshops with no result. How can it get resolved unless their need for love is not addressed? Many of us express or feel this pain of not being loved or valued in form of anger. But because anger is bad, we resist feeling it or we blow our fuse. Whenever a person is expressing or suppressing anger, literally it is like a small block of cholesterol being formed obstructing the flow of blood. The real lack of love is suppressed underneath it all and the anger continues to manifest till they end up for some heart procedure. Anger itself is not bad, what damages health, is not attending to our true feelings. In the recent past, I have been experiencing many young clients of about 30 to 40 years of age coming to me with a complaint of high cholesterol levels and some of them experiencing blocks requiring immediate procedures. Although there are many physical risk factors for heart attack like sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits, alcohol or other addictions, we need to consider emotional causes also. Most of the time we group all emotional issues under 'stress' and say it leads to health complications. In fact, all that was ever needed here is loving attention, nurturing and care towards self.

We give much importance to doctors' advice to get our cholesterol levels checked up at regular intervals and keep a tab on heart health. At the same time, it is also very important to ensure that we keep a tab on our own emotional health. We can keep our hearts healthy with a good dose of self love. It just takes a little bit of self care and attention towards our true feelings. When we are in the habit of only giving to others without considering our needs, we develop blocks in receiving love from others. No matter how much others try to love us, we are unable to receive it. I have noticed often in my clients that when we deprive ourselves from receiving love, we develop issues in the veins. Same way, when we stop ourselves giving love to others, then we develop issues in arteries. In both the cases, it can lead to cardiac problems, heart attack being one of the primary life threatening disorders. It's not just at heart, unresolved anger shows up in other places too, like liver, kidneys and knee cartilage. I have observed health of liver and heart are often directly connected. Liver has to work well for the heart to work well. Lack of self love has to show up at the heart, because we are depriving ourselves of love and Love relates to heart. Loving ourselves moves us out of fear and insecurity and leads us back to happiness.

We are born as embodiment of Love, but we have learnt all our lives not to love ourselves. At least before our body starts reacting with health issues, let us start unlearning all that we have learnt about self love and start seeing ourselves as pure love and nothing else. The body will shift its gears at once and cooperates with us with all its Love towards us. We then become more loving towards others as we do all our actions out of love for self and love for others. Our giving will then truly come from unconditional love, not for gaining love from others. Can any addiction be bigger and larger than Self-love? Taste it once and you will know it makes a world of difference to your life! Let us commit to love ourselves to the fullest starting this Valentine's Day!

Medical Disclaimer: This article is speaking only at a high level emotional issues. There are many variants within cardiovascular diseases. This deals only with some of the emotional causes and doesn't dwell deep into physical aspects or reasons for cardiac problems. Please consult your cardiac specialist or GP for your issues. This is no replacement to medical assistance. The above discussed are just the experiences and opinions of the author.

-Ramakrishna Maguluri
Engaging with life
ELAI
engagingwithlife@yahoo.com