This piece draws on discourses including transpersonal psychology, religious mysticism, comparative religion, and cultural history, as well as direct, lived experience of cardiac illness. As I will attempt to show, the heart’s way is open, imaginal, spacious, and reflective, as well as curious, kind and discerning, sharing many similarities with the qualities and characteristics of contemplative pedagogy. The heart’s way is also courageous; calling us to remember an ancient part of ourselves that is always embedded in living relationship with the world – in all its expressions. When taken seriously, the heart’s way of knowing offers us the possibility to be in the world in a fuller, healthier way, across all levels of the human experience; from the personal to the political and global. In this sense, this paper shows that the heart, as an organ of knowledge, has the ability to facilitate a truly integrative education addressing the whole human being – mind, heart and spirit (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010). This paper aims to show how the wisdom of the heart and its ability to create space for an expanded epistemology and ontology, offers an exciting opportunity to support/enhance the discourse of contemplative pedagogy. In doing so, it presents implications for learning design; encouraging learners to experience themselves at a level and depth not previously available in more traditional areas of study and research. In this sense, this paper invites the reader on a contemplative experience, through their own heart – offering a glimpse of the potential of this approach.
Written by Louise livingstonE | PUBLISHED ON 21st June 2024 | Photo by Galina Nelyubova on Unsplash
Introduction
“How we know is as important as what we know” (Hart, 2004, italics in original)
Heart Sense is an approach towards life that my heart gifted me during my doctorate, as I learnt to reconnect with my heart, have conversations with my heart, and create the possibility to hear my heart’s wisdom; expanding beyond traditionally-accepted ways of comprehending the world and making meaning (Livingstone, 2019). It was developed through a transformative learning methodology informed by the depth psychological (therapeutic) approach of the active imagination. In that context, it is the result of a slow, organic, enquiry – a key feature of contemplative pedagogy (Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, 2017; Hart, 2004; Parker Palmer & Zajonc, 2010, p.112-115) – in relation with my heart and the world. The more I have opened my awareness to hear the wisdom of my heart, I have come to know and understand myself differently. Essentially, this is what educationalist Parker J. Palmer and physicist/philosopher Arthur Zajonc would term an “integrative pedagogy” – that is, my heart’s way of knowing combined with my discursive intellect (which one might situate in the brain), supporting the development of a way of knowing “that involves much if not all of the whole self in learning about the world” (2010, p.32), giving fresh eyes to see problems and possibilities and setting the state for creative action (2010, p.1)
An unexpected and priceless gift of this journey has been the gradual restoration of my health – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. As I have learnt to listen to, and trust, my whole body and all the ways that my body knows (and my heart in particular), agoraphobia, depression and severe anxiety no longer have a hold over me. I am also free of physical symptoms including debilitating cardiac arrhythmias.
Reflecting on my own experience with anxiety and illness, it is sad to learn that many students in higher education today are dealing with high levels of anxiety and mental illness (The Insight Network, 2020). What I hope to illuminate in this piece – by sharing my direct lived experience and outlining the development of the heart sense approach – is that our generally accepted ways of knowing and being in the world are contributing to this growing crisis. As practitioners of modes of enquiry that honour the rich complexity of the whole person, we are often required to be courageous and vocalise our direct lived experiences of such enquiry. I will speak a little about opportunities and challenges of this kind of enquiry later in this piece.
Firstly, however, I would like to return to basics. In this sense, I am taking as a foundational principle that we are experiencing beings, in living relationship with the world as it unfolds within, through and around us. With this context in place, it stands to reason that we always have the opportunity and possibility to use all the ways available to us for us to know our place in the world. For this reason, I cannot extract my research from my direct lived experience, and so it is in this spirit (orientation, framing, approach towards the world) that in this piece I will weave personal experience with theory – inviting you and offering you permission to enter the expansive, safe space of your own heart. This means taking the time and opportunity to sink into your body, into the vast expanse of your heart, and open a possibility within yourself to reflect on your own lived experiences in a fuller, deeper way. In this sense, we are always learners – learning in living relationship with the world, in communion with the world.
Professional background
For ten years I worked in Higher Education in the West Midlands, UK, firstly as an industrial liaison officer in engineering and medical sciences, and then a careers consultant. Over the years, I watched the heart being extracted from my work and education in general – specifically, there was greater focus on quantification of working practices, and less focus (and value) on the rich complexity of the inner, lived experience of the learners themselves. I left the university because of health issues – specifically, cardiac arrythmias as well as severe anxiety. I did not have the words for my experience at the time, but deep in my heart I knew that there must be a more expansive approach to life than that which I was being invited to engage with in my work in Higher Education (and an approach that I could also perceive encroaching into the wider society and culture at the time). As Zajonc states in his paper Love and Knowledge, there is today a kind of violence to our conventional form of knowing, and he argues that we need a “contemplative as well as a critical intellectual education, one that seeks a comprehensive and deep understanding of self and world” (2006)
Guided onward by a deeper wisdom (which I later came to understand as my heart’s guidance), after my departure from working in Higher Education I discovered complementary therapies including Reiki and meditation, which opened a whole new world offering wider frameworks within which to place my experience of being human. In 2013, I found myself at the Schumacher College studying for a Masters in Holistic Science. This was followed by a PhD at Canterbury Christ Church University, and I gained my doctorate in 2019. During my doctoral research, I was based in the Faculty of Education (specifically in the field of transformative learning) and my thesis title was “How can the thought of the heart offer effective ways of engaging with conflict? An imaginal and reflexive study” (Livingstone, 2019). My work was inspired by a lifetime of cardiac illness, numerous Near Death Experiences, and a revelatory/numinous experience that I had with my heart in the mid-2000s during an lengthy episode of cardiac arrhythmias and severe anxiety, when my heart ‘spoke’ to me (Livingstone, 2019). This event led me to explore the possibility of bringing conflicting dimensions of myself together as part of a transformational journey undertook through the guidance of my own heart. In the case of my research, my heart, both physically and symbolically, was the uniting principle. My research was transdisciplinary, exploring discourses including conflict resolution, transformational learning, depth psychology, religious philosophy, spiritual philosophy, cultural history and holistic science.
An invitation to drop into your heart
As this piece is about the heart and the heart’s way of perceiving the world, I would like to invite you to bring your awareness into your own heart. Please read the following steps and then spend at least five minutes in your heart-space before moving on.
- Please make yourself comfortable in the place you find yourself and close your eyes if feels comfortable, or rest your eyes in a soft gaze. If it feels comfortable, place your palm(s) over your heart and breathe slowly, rhythmically. Breathe deeply in and out of your heart space at a depth and pace that feels comfortable. With every in-breath, you receive and take in this amazingly complex, mysterious, beautiful world and all its inter-relations, deep into your heart.
- If you have difficulty with this, bring someone or something that you care for deeply (a pet, partner, landscape) into your heart’s awareness. After about five minutes, bring your attention back to the present moment. When you are ready, please return your awareness to this time and space, and open your eyes.
As you continue reading, I invite you to continually return to your heart and breathe deeply into your heart. Notice any thoughts, reflections, or ideas that you may be experiencing as you continue to read – you might like to note these down in a journal.
Heart Sense and Contemplative Pedagogy
In this piece, I am speaking to the possibility for deeper, expansive ways of engaging with the world. These are ways of engaging with life that are implicit in the Heart Sense approach and also in contemplative pedagogy. Indeed, as Contemplative Pedagogy Network steering group members Mike Wride, Rosie Holmes and Chiara Cirillo discuss in their video Designing Contemplative Learning – the Contemplative Pedagogy Network’, a key feature of contemplative pedagogy is moving from a third person to a first-person approach that includes the lived, inner experience for educator and learner (2023). With contemplative pedagogy there is a slowing down to create space for reflection, a resisting of definitions, staying open with what is arising and bringing the whole self into the learning experience (2023). These qualities and characteristics are fundamental to the heart’s way of knowing and the Heart Sense approach (Livingstone, 2019).
As a foundation for this work and approach, I draw on the discourses already mentioned, and Goethean enquiry in particular. Goethean enquiry is a way of seeing and engaging with the world that was developed by the Romantic poet and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Goethe’s way of seeing was one of the key inspirations for the Heart Sense approach; as this way of coming into relationship with the world is made possible through the perceptive imagination and consequently remains in a mode of awareness that is open and curious, without closing down around answers, labels or definitions. In this sense, there are many similarities between the approach of contemplative pedagogy in Goethe’s practice.
Goethe’s approach
Goethe’s way of engaging with the natural world arose out of the early Romantic period. In recognising the limitations of a growing rational approach to knowing the world, Goethe developed a way of seeing that cultivated his intuition, sensory experience and feeling. Known today as Goethean Science, Goethe championed the imagination through his twin process of deep observation and exact sensorial imagination. The former involved taking time and contemplating the object of study without any preconceived, preformed ideas (Holdrege, 2005, p. 35). The latter involved inwardly recreating the object of study in one’s imagination to experience more vividly what was originally observed (Holdrege, 2005, p. 35). For Goethe, all is in the phenomenon (Holdrege, 2005), and it is by refining our perceptions that we are offered the possibility to see more clearly and deeply (Holdrege, 2005, p. 31). A scientist and a poet, Goethe cultivated a dynamic way of seeing beyond the limitations of his rational mind, using the converse, yet complementary capacities of his poetic mind. By entering “mutual interaction” with the subject of enquiry, it is possible to develop oneself so that one becomes a “better, more transparent instrument of knowing” (Holdrege, 2005, pp.30-31). Moving beyond pre-conceived thoughts and judgements, the world reveals itself in its wholeness.
The Heart Sense approach that I developed as part of my PhD research involved expanding Goethe’s framework to understand the heart as an organ of the imagination (imaginal perception) which enabled me to bring more of the world into my awareness. While Goethe did not mention the heart as the organ through which he received the world and made meaning, expanding his methodology into the heart as an organ of knowledge helped me to develop a depth to my relationships in the wider world. Indeed, Goethe’s methodology and Heart Sense share the same qualities, including contemplating deeply another being, and becoming one with another, through connection, relationship, curiosity, love. By implication, this involves all ways of knowing that we have available to us and shares strong similarities with contemplative pedagogy.
By opening towards these ways of engaging with the world, we are gently challenged/invited by this enquiry to follow where this line of enquiry leads. If we cannot extract ourselves from this living enquiry (as a student of this enquiry), therefore, preconceived ideas, perceptions are often brought into sharp focus. This can oftentimes be both revelatory, and uncomfortable. Such ways of engaging are not generally favoured within the contemporary world, and the academy in particular, and I explore some of the challenges of this kind of work later.
Personal experience
For over forty years, my heart has been the focal point of my life, specifically in terms of cardiac illness. In contrast to Goethe’s way, I was not living in mutual interaction with the world and made meaning in the world in an incredibly restricted way. Goethe suggests that the world is our partner in conversation; that is, we are participants in the world’s unfolding and therefore we cannot be abstracted or distanced. The world I inhabited was full of conflict. I met the world as though I knew it already, with preconceived ideas, anxieties and fears that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consequently, I was often physically and mentally unwell. While the biological heart is central to human survival, when my heart began speaking to me over forty years ago through physical symptoms and many years later in audible words, it became necessary for me to revisit my own understanding of what the heart is (Livingstone, 2019). Essentially, whilst I did not know it, I began practicing Goethean enquiry in the sense that my body was telling me that there was more to life that I was living. I was being invited by my heart to be a participant in the unfolding of the world through me.
In 1990, at the age of eighteen, I was hospitalised for three months with myocarditis. Experiencing numerous cardiac arrests, I was left with a pacemaker, and taking heavy doses of a medication. Over the next two decades I experienced debilitating arrythmias. Slowly losing faith in my heart’s ability to keep me alive, I descended into severe depression and in a moment poised between life and death, my heart reached out and ‘spoke’ to me.
This numinous, extra-ordinary experience led me on a long journey of discovery to make sense of what had happened. Importantly, I did not want to medicalise what had happened, or to place the experience into what Professor Jeff Kripal (2014) calls a “rational re-reading” – where revelatory experience is subsumed into a rational framework. Indeed, this is the polar opposite to Goethe’s way. Therefore, I allowed this numinous, extra-ordinary experience to lead me on a journey of self-discovery to make sense of what had happened; through the world of self-help, to an MSc at the Schumacher College, and onwards to complete a PhD. Certainly, over many decades, I have had to revisit and challenge my personal understanding of what the heart actually is, creating the possibility to do this through the research methodology I used to create a space for my heart to speak (Livingstone, 2019; 2021).
The imagination
Taking up the importance that Goethe placed on the imagination as a way of knowing and making meaning, I researched similar frameworks that would support me to create the space for conversation with my heart in relation to the experiences that I had undergone. The research approach that made the conversation with my heart possible was depth psychologist Robert Romanyshyn’s imaginal methodology – (inspired by Carl Jung’s understanding of, and therapeutic use of the active imagination) that makes space for the unconscious dynamic playing out between the researcher and the work (in my own case, my heart) in what Romanyshyn calls a transference field (2013). It is interesting to be aware that the qualities of this approach also have close links with the approach of contemplative pedagogy – that is, open enquiry, resting in the not knowing, curiosity, expansive, slow (Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, 2017; Designing Contemplative Learning, 2023; Hart, 2004; Parker Palmer & Zajonc, 2010, p.112-115).
This methodology was supported by the foundational understanding that the heart is an organ of imaginal perception. This understanding was informed specifically by the late religious philosopher Henry Corbin, who was influenced by the twelfth century Muslim scholar and mystic Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), who himself was drawing on Platonic teachings. Through Arabi’s work, Corbin understood the heart as the organ of the imagination – an organ of knowledge that mediates between the material world of flesh and the transcendent world of spirit (1997, pp. 221-236). It is the heart, as the organ of active imagination, of imaginal consciousness, that receives the images from the world, offering forth an imaginal world that is “ontologically as real as the world of the senses and that of the intellect” (Lachman, 2017, p. 94). In this view, the faculty of the imagination supports individuals to engage seriously with whatever might lie beneath outward appearances. As Hillman states, we cannot go any further forward in our endeavour without this understanding of the imagination in place (2007, p. 6).
In this sense, Corbin helped to develop the contemporary idea of an imaginal mode of consciousness which, for Corbin, enables an individual to converse with subtle, transcendent realms, which are deeply spiritual and infinitely real. For Corbin this ability is made possible through the organ of the imagination; specifically, the heart.
Corbin’s work particularly influenced the depth psychological approaches of Carl Jung and James Hillman, who understood the imagination as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious realms of the psyche. The term imagination, therefore, as I am using it here, is to be understood in its broadest sense; that is, as a way to engage seriously with whatever might lie beneath outward appearances. This is in stark contrast to contemporary understanding that defines the imagination as an escape from, or substitute for, reality (Lachman, 2017, p. 31). In the modern sense the imagination is childish, mere fantasy, the imaginary equated “the unreal” (Corbin, 1997, p. 181). The imagination, in the context that I am using it in my research and in this piece, is a valid way of knowing – a way of deep inner knowing, through the heart, that opens the possibility for greater depth and breadth of experience in living relationship with life itself.
Of course, it must be pointed out that Corbin, Jung and Hillman’s use of the imagination differs in the sense that Corbin takes a philosophical-religious approach, and Hillman and Jung take a depth psychological approach. However, what is important to say here is that the imagination, or an imaginal mode of consciousness, offers a way of engaging more fully and deeply with the rich complexity of life – and it is the heart through which this mode of perception, and knowing, arises.
At its foundation, Corbin, Hillman and Jung’s understanding of the imagination enables a dialogue between different realms of human experience that are often obscured from view in modern approaches towards knowledge production; inviting in the whole person, in living relationship with the whole world. In this case, the imagination facilitates hidden/quiet ‘voices’ to speak and live; voices that may otherwise be missed in ordinary modes of perception. Instead of narrowing our focus, the imagination – and its organ of perception, the heart – opens us to the possibility of a vibrantly rich world. In essence, the knowing of the imagination is deeply contemplative.
A moment to reflect: I once more invite you to return to your heart by breathing deeply into your heart and/or placing your palm over your heart. Rest in this space for a few minutes. Notice any thoughts, reflections, or ideas that you may be experiencing – you might like to note these down in a journal.
Re-imagining the heart for contemporary times
For Corbin and Hillman, the heart is an organ of imaginal perception. It offers possibilities for engaging more fully with life; moving beyond the narrower interpretations that ordinary, every-day modes of awareness allow. It is a way of opening ourselves to let more of the world in – nothing is hidden, it is we who are the instruments of perception; and it is up to us to sharpen these receptors. Certainly this was the approach of Goethe. For Goethe, all is in the phenomenon (Holdrege, 2005), and it is by refining our perceptions that we are able to see and comprehend more clearly and deeply (Holdrege, 2005, p. 31).
In this sense, and extending Goethe’s practice towards our whole lived experience in relation with the world, the imagination, and the heart as its organ of perception, is the creative space which is able to assist us to come to know ourselves better in direct, living relationship with the world. It was with this understanding of the imagination and the heart in place, that I was able to begin to bring my heart’s voice into my awareness. In this sense, I committed to putting my heart and my heart’s way of knowing first – in partnership with the analytical brain – to make sense of my own world through a reflexive process of looking and looking again, committing to a continual movement of meaning making (Livingstone, 2019). Taking seriously the heart as an organ of knowledge and developing the Heart sense process in dialogue with my heart, has resulted in the creation of a process that offers up deeper insights that might not ordinarily have been made visible through a narrower focus or framework of study.
How Heart Sense can be used to support/enhance contemplative pedagogy
Over the course of twenty years, and through direct lived experience in my personal life and in my professional life as an educator with individuals studying for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, I have come to understand the importance of engaging with the heart as an organ of knowledge; carrying just as much importance and value as the discursive intellect situated in the mind, and when combined, offer pathways to knowledge that are surprisingly creative and illuminating. Therefore, at this stage, I suggest that it would be appropriate to briefly explore how the Heart Sense methodology could be used to support/enhance current practices in Contemplative Pedagogy and offer an additional approach for the contemplative educator to explore. Like contemplative pedagogy practices, Heart Sense is slow, open, curious, enquiring with, learning with, the world’s unfolding. However, in the Heart Sense approach, an individual moves purposefully into their own heart – engaging with the heart as an organ of imaginal perception, an organ of knowing. Here, I am saying that if we are to be truly integrative (as espoused by Zajonc – 2010), then by definition, we must engage the whole person and all possible ways that an individual may come to know their place in world. As educators, we therefore need to take seriously the potentialities and possibilities of engaging with our heart as an organ of knowing. Indeed, Palmer writes in The Heart of Higher Education:
We are being called into a more paradoxical wholeness of knowing by many voices. There is a new community of scholars in a variety of fields now who understand that genuine knowing comes out of a healthy dance between the objective and the subjective, between the analytic and the integrative, between the experimental and…the receptive (2010, p.x)
In the context of this paper, I suggest that head and heart could also be usefully added to Palmer’s list. Certainly, when considering the heart’s way of knowing, and the head/mind’s way of knowing, I would now like to briefly compare the contemplative practice of ‘beholding’ – i.e., intimately exploring and internalising images and objects through sustained attention (Barbezat and Bush, 2014, pp. 148-157; Haynes, 2005) with the Heart Sense approach. In the practice of beholding there are five stages, which unfold over 10-15 minutes.
- Select an object or image to observe
- Gather basic information about the work
- Analyze form, shape, and color with full attention
- Explore content, iconography, and symbolism
- Identify contradictions and conflicting elements
- Behold the work
As you may be able to appreciate, this process is very similar to Goethe’s approach of deep observation and exact sensorial imagination as detailed earlier – in both these practices, the heart is not mentioned as a place through which knowledge is produced or developed. However, if we now look at the Heart Sense approach, it expands on Goethe’s methodology, engaging seriously one’s heart as an organ of perception from which to observe, engage and deeply relate with one’s focus/subject of study (in a similar fashion to the practice of beholding).
Please find the Heart Sense approach detailed below, which you might like to take some time to practice now (Livingstone, 2019). Allow at least 10-15 minutes for this practice of deep relating. Before starting the exercise, you are invited to choose someone or something that you would like to connect deeply to (a loved one, a pet, a tree, flower, or the subject of your own research).
Preparation: Find a quiet space. If it feels comfortable, close your eyes, & place your palms over your heart. Breathe into your heart and breathe back out to the world.
- Commit to sinking into your heart – physically feel the qualities and characteristics that would normally be associated with it; love, openness, compassion, kindness. Rest there for a while; continue to breathe deeply into, & out of, your heart.
- From your heart-space, recognise the ‘other’ in relationship with you (the focus of your attention). In whatever form that ‘other’ takes – yourself, another person/more-than-human other, the world, and so on.
- From your heart-space, encourage the ‘other’ in relationship with you to reveal itself & to tell you its story. Remain curious and open. Keep breathing in & out from your heart.
- From your heart-space, listen deeply and authentically to the ‘other’. Look for connections, honour differences. Can you understand what the ‘other’ wishes to say to you?
- Cultivate a sense of wonder at the different conversations you might be able to have.
- Continue to move in the space of your heart; flowing between yourself, your heart, & the ‘other’ in relationship – co-creating the possibility of a different, mutually enabling, supportive, flourishing story.
- Continue meet the world from your heart-space, aware of this never-ending dance of possibility with the world, in all of its expressions. Keep a notepad close to you to jot down experiences or flashes of insight, knowing that this is your heart speaking to you. Return to the present moment – give thanks to your heart, the ‘other’ and what has arisen in the space between you (Livingstone, 2019).
As I reflect upon both approaches, I am struck by their similarities – being with, attending to, slowing down, being respectful and curious, leading to a deep relationship with the subject of one’s attention. Indeed, in my own doctoral research, I would enter deep relationship with the subject of my study and found that moving into my heart (with its inherent benevolent qualities of openness, non-judgement, compassion, empathy) opened the possibility of deepening my relationship with the focus of my study highlighting themes that very often surprised me. Most importantly, through this approach I discovered that not only was I bringing forth something otherwise hidden within the subject of my focus, but in this depth of attention and receptivity, the subject of my study was also able to bring forth something from me. This is what neuroscientist and humanities scholar Dr Iain McGilchrist terms a mutually “responsive evocation” (McGilchrist, 2012, p.133). In this relational space, there is the possibility for a depth of being and knowing arising from all parties involved that would have remained hidden through a narrower lens of enquiry.
As I reflect on this approach, the possibility arises for me to receive as much of the world as possible – deepening and expanding my experience and consequently knowledge, through tasting, witnessing, and participating in a wider, expansive, relational, responsive field of enquiry. This was invaluable for me as a doctoral researcher engaged in a process of learning more about my own heart beyond any preconceived ideas I may have already had. Additionally, in practical terms, by combining my heart’s knowledge with the knowing of my mind, I have discovered that this practice has not only offered research insights that I could never have discovered through a traditional lens, but has also transformed my personal life, and led me to understand its deeper implications within the contemporary world more broadly (Livingstone, 2019; 2021).
Bringing the threads together and challenges of this work
“In a world beset with conflicts, internal as well as external, isn’t it of equal if not greater importance to balance the sharpening of our intellects with the systematic cultivation of our hearts?”
(Zajonc, 2006, p.1)
Through many decades of research, I have discovered that the heart makes possible a deeper, expanded way to experience the world. Whilst this way of knowing is nothing new, and particularly not for traditional cultures, this way of engaging with the world in the Western contemporary world has been so maligned that we are now having to find frameworks that offer us a pathway back, inviting us to open to the world’s conversation. However, as more people begin to research and explore these frameworks in these modern times, I suggest that it is vitally important for us to resist the temptation, and comfort, to reduce ancient ideas of the heart and ancient ways of knowing (including the practice of contemplative pedagogy), into materialist explanations.
Certainly for numerous ancient cultures the heart was the place of wisdom and intellect (Arguelles et al., 2003; Perloff, 2010, p. 1503), the seat of conscience and mind (Loe & Edwards, 2004), and the place “associated with one’s spiritual identity” (Naydler, 1996, p. 250). While the heart in contemporary times still carries a range of meanings, from a biological organ, to the centre of life, the seat of emotions, mind (in the broadest sense), feeling or sentiment, character, disposition, conscience, courage, love and affection (OED, 2019), since the time of the Enlightenment and the dawn of modern science in the West, heart and mind became increasingly separated (McGilchrist, 2012; Naydler, 2009, p. 168). Through my research, I had a strong sense that my heart was calling me “to attention” (Kidel, 1988, p. 11), guiding me to become aware of a contemporary approach towards knowledge that seems to have split the individual, and the individual’s view of reality, into two – championing the rational intellect over the intuition and the imagination (McGilchrist, 2012).
One key challenge of this work is moving beyond the pre-conceived idea that many carry today in modern society in relation to the heart. Specifically, the heart is only ever engaged with at the political level through a medical/scientific framework – that is, as a biological organ. The consequence of this framework means that any other heart beyond the biological organ is deemed sentimental, irrational and therefore not valuable. However, based on my extensive research and lived experience with my own heart as an organ of imaginal perception/an organ of knowledge, I suggest that this is a limitation of the currently accepted framework of knowledge production, rather than a limitation of the heart itself.
Therefore, if we are to move seriously into the possibility of engaging the heart as an organ of knowledge, I firmly believe that we need to highlight and challenge these preconceptions by understanding the roots of our limited perception of the heart (Livingstone, 2019; 2021). In relation to this idea religious philosopher Gregory Shaw observes that “we live in a profound disconnect between private experience and public discourse” (2015, p. 279). Bound Alberti also points out that the move from cardio-centrism to cranio-centrism remains “entrenched in twenty-first century medical theorizing” (2012, p. 7), and generally speaking, this is the dominant narrative through that drives contemporary society.
Perhaps the difficulties we are experiencing in so many aspects of modern life are guiding us back to a fuller experience of ourselves? If we don’t listen to the wisdom and guidance of our heart, what might we lose? What are we missing out on in terms of our understanding and engagement with life through our modern perceptions when we do not have sufficient ways of engaging more deeply with life? Can we contemplate the possibility of hearing other hearts that may be speaking, beyond our understanding of the heart as a biological organ (Livingstone, 2021)?
Certainly, I have found preconceptions of the heart to be challenging, particularly in my own work with Heart Sense, and no doubt these preconceptions might prove to be a challenge for other similar approaches like contemplative pedagogy. However, when we understand our history of ideas through a transdisciplinary lens (as in my own work), and discover ways of articulating this, I have found that possibilities open for conversation and the opportunity arises to gently challenge preconceptions (Livingstone, 2019).
Implications
Like contemplative pedagogy, the foundation of the Heart Sense approach is living relationship – specifically, the approach opens to, and takes seriously, the lived inner experience of all beings. As this piece has attempted to make clear, the heart’s way is open, imaginal, spacious, and reflective, as well as curious, kind and discerning. At its foundation, it is relational and deeply participatory. It is movement in living relationship with life. As Zajonc says, “We know by virtue of connection….because we are identical with the object of our attention” (2006, p.4). In this sense, this way of being in the world is also courageous; calling us to remember an ancient part of ourselves that is always embedded in living relationship with the world – in all of its expressions – supporting us to be in the world in a fuller, healthier way. It is a high form of seeing and of knowing; participating fully in a living, breathing, continually moving world. Within the possibility of this kind of engagement lies courage, and a surrender into a wider reality; the something more of existence.
In every part of my life – personal and professional – my heart, my heart’s voice, and my heart’s wisdom and knowledge, is my point of focus and driving force. In short, the voice of my heart takes precedence. Following the Heart Sense approach, my heart can guide me through deep contemplative practice. Once my heart has offered imagery, ideas and feelings, I follow what has been gifted to me with an in-depth review of source materials to help make sense of what my heart is saying. In practice, in my research and in daily life, direct, personal experience in relationship with my heart takes precedence and is followed by critical reflections – supporting me to approach the world differently, and develop deeper, expansive ways of approaching, and developing knowledge about, the world. In this context, my heart’s guidance is given priority and value, followed by critical enquiry to make sense of the feelings, imagery and messages arising. Through the act of expanding my awareness and cycling between imaginal and rational ways of knowing, it has become possible for me to bring deeper understanding and meaning to previously conflicting areas of my life. As much as I am able, I am in the world with my whole self.
What might be the implications of coming to see and know the heart in such a different way for us personally, and for contemplative pedagogy? I can attest personally that my engagement with the world has completely changed. My world is richer and deeper. In this sense, there is an approach, offered by our own hearts, that could complement, support and enhance the wonderful work of contemplative pedagogy. By re-imagining our heart’s place in our life; taking seriously the heart’s ancient role as the seat of the soul and wisdom, we could explore how this understanding might creatively inform our engagement with challenges in contemporary life. Certainly, the journey I have taken with my own heart has transformed my relationship with, and understanding of, my heart, myself, others, and the world around me, in numerous ways.
Taking seriously the understanding my heart is an organ of imaginal perception and is a valid place of creating knowledge about the world, has offered me the opportunity to look into the world beyond outward appearances and create deeper meaning in life. By committing to move into my heart and learn to communicate with it through its language of the imagination has expanded my understanding of the heart and given me access to a rich, complex and mysterious world that is often not available through a reductive lens (Bortoft, 1996; Lachman, 2017; Romanyshyn, 2002, 2013).
By reconnecting with my heart and committing to taking my heart’s wisdom seriously, the way that I see, understand and engage with the world has transformed – improving all aspects of my life; particularly my inner world. In the same way, contemplative pedagogy shifts awareness to the inner world, supporting learners to connect their learning to their own values and sense of meaning, enabling them to form richer, deeper relationships with their peers, communities and the world around them (Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, 2017). Certainly, I suggest that the Heart Sense approach has implications for learning design within contemplative pedagogy and could support/enhance contemplative practices within a HE setting – supporting numerous students who are struggling with a “diminished ontology” that is obscuring the true depth of our world (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010, p.10).
As I have detailed the Heart Sense approach earlier in this paper, I would encourage those readers whose interest has been kindled to practice with the approach as detailed, exploring the possibilities and potentialities of including the heart’s wisdom in the contemplative space. In very simple terms, this could entail asking learners to take the breath into the heart or touch the palm of the hand over the heart area – resting in this space for several minutes; feeling, sensing, and noticing any shift of awareness. In a more detailed sense, contemplative educators might like to compare and contrast the Heart Sense approach with other established frameworks or mix and match approaches to design something that works for them and their particular group of learners. There is no right or wrong way of engaging with the Heart Sense approach. All that the heart asks is to be included in the development of knowledge for the overall benefit of the learner; supporting the learner in all aspects of their life.
In my own practice as an educator, I am engaging the Heart Sense approach successfully in everything that I do, from my mentoring practice to my teaching practice, which are all deeply experiential. I also have multiple testimonials from students and mentees who have benefited greatly from the Heart Sense approach. I am also consulting on a project through the Scientific and Medical Network to engage young people – most of whom are studying in Higher Education either undergraduate or postgraduate level. The first project was a Symposium, which was founded on a combined methodology of the Heart Sense approach and collaborative enquiry. The Symposium was a resounding success and brought forth something more – a special, tangible, beautiful energy that people were talking about for weeks afterwards. As many attendees remarked, the event touched their hearts, revealed things about them and their work that they were not previously aware of, and finally, many reported that something in them changed. I will leave the concluding words of this paper to Mark Nepo:
“Today, we are learning that the habits of the heart are…at the deepest level human. Therefore, it is the responsibility of humanity as a whole to incubate and cultivate this vitality of heart. As the Dalai Lama has said, ‘There is a need to develop…the heart. This [has] important implications for fostering the ideals of community, compassion, and cooperation in our homes, public institutions, and society” (Nepo, in Parker & Zajonc, 2010, p.ix)
A moment to reflect: I once more invite you to return to your heart by breathing deeply into your heart and/or placing your palm over your heart. Rest in this space for a few minutes. Notice any thoughts, reflections, or ideas that you may be experiencing – you might like to note these down in a journal.
If you do choose to use the Heart Sense approach with your learners, I would be delighted to hear from you and receive any feedback. You can reach me via the following email address: louiselivingstone@heartsenseresearch.co.uk
About the author
Louise Livingstone, PhD is the Director of the Heart Sense Research Institute, and Co-Director of the Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred. Her doctoral research took an imaginal, auto/biographical approach to exploring ways that heart-centred knowing might support different ways of engaging with the phenomenon of conflict. She also supports students and researchers within the Scientific and Medical Network.
References
Arguelles, L., McCraty, R., & Rees, R. (2003) The Heart in Holistic Education’. ENCOUNTER: Education for Meaning and Social Justice, 16(3), pp. 13-21.
Barbezat, D. P., & Bush, M. (2014). Contemplative practices in higher education: Powerful methods to transform teaching and learning. New York: John Wiley & Sons
Bortoft, H. (1996). The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science. Edinburgh: Floris Books.
Bound Alberti, F. (2012) Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine and Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘Designing Contemplative Learning – the Contemplative Pedagogy Network’ (2023) 4 July. Available at: https://contemplativepedagogynetwork.com/
Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2017). Contemplative Pedagogy. Columbia University. Available at: https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/contemplative-pedagogy/ (Accessed: 16 March 2024)
Corbin, H. (1997) Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Hart, T. (2004) Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(1), 28–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541344603259311
Haynes, D. (2004) Contemplative Practice and the Education of the Whole Person. ARTS: Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. 16: 8-10.
Hillman, J. (2007) The Thought of the Heart and The Soul of the World. 5th reprint. New York: Spring Publications.
Holdrege, C. (2005). Doing Goethean Science. Janus Head, 8(1), 27–52.
Kidel, M. (1988) Illness and Meaning. In Kidel, M. & Rowe-Leete, S. (eds.) The Meaning of Illness. London: Routledge, pp. 4-21.
Kripal, J. (2014) Comparing Religions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Lachman, G. (2017) Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Edinburgh: Floris Books
Livingstone, L. (2019) How can the thought of the heart offer effective ways of engaging with conflict? An imaginal and reflexive study. PhD. Canterbury Christ Church University.
Livingstone, L. (2021) A Methodology of the Heart: Making Space for the Heart’s Wisdom in the Research Process. Journal for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, 1(1), pp. 67-97.
Loe, M. J. and Edwards, W. D. (2004) Part 1 – A light-hearted look at a lion-hearted organ (or, a perspective from three standard deviations beyond the norm). Cardiovascular Pathology, 13(2004), pp. 282–292. doi: 10.1016/j.carpath.2004.05.001.
McGilchrist, I. (2012) The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press
Naydler, J. (1996) Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred. Rochester: Inner Traditions.
Naydler, J. (2009). Goethe on Science – An Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings. Edinburgh: Floris Books
‘Heart’ (2023) Available at: http://www.oed.com (Accessed: 15 August 2023)
Palmer, PJ. & Zajonc, A. (2010) The Heart of Higher Education: A Call To Renewal. San Francisco: Josey Bass
Perloff, J. (2010) The Metaphoric and Morphologic Heart: Symbol and Substance. The American Journal of Cardiology, 105(10), 1502–1503. doi: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2010.02.001.
Romanyshyn, R. (2002) Ways of the Heart: Essays Toward an Imaginal Psychology. Pittsburgh: Trivium Publications.
Romanyshyn, R. (2013) The Wounded Researcher – Research with Soul in Mind. New Orleans: Spring Journal Inc.
Shaw, G. (2015) Platonic Siddhas: Supernatural Philosophers of Neoplatonism. In Kelly, E., Crabtree, A., and Marshall, P. (eds) Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 275–314.
The Insight Network. (2020) University Student Mental Health Survey 2020. Available at: https://assets.website-files.com/602d05d13b303dec233e5ce3/60305923a557c3641f1a7808_Mental%20Health%20Report%202019%20(2020).pdf (Accessed: 16 March 2024)
Zajonc, A. (2006) Cognitive-Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning: The Relationship Between Love and Knowledge. Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning, 3(1) (Fall 2006), 1-9.
JUICE 