Hand Over Heart

Does putting a hand on your heart area feel edgy? 

It did to me, too… at first. 

Several years ago I noticed a friend of mine started placing a hand on her heart when she would share something emotional or vulnerable or feel awe/inspiration. I remember thinking this is my woo-woo friend, that makes sense for her. (Notice here how protective my brain was, and not very curious). 

A couple years later, I was at this point where I felt like life was just happening to me, and I was reacting to it, and I wanted to be leading my own life. I found a somatic experiencing program, and wouldn’t you know it, self-contact was one of the tools to build more embodied awareness and to help you become more self-led. I was willing to try it, since I joined this program and it was being recommended by an experienced practitioner (I cringe at my internalized patriarchy here - needing an expert to tell me how/why to do something… but that’s for another post). 

Whew! It felt edgy and uncomfortable. Noticing that space of my body, feeling my heart beating, and connecting to it through touch was overwhelming at first, because emotions welled. I wanted to cry almost every time I put my hand to my heart. 

Expression! Expression felt overwhelming, because I had spent most of my life holding it in. And there may have been good reasons for that as a young person - it was protective, but now my life was safe and secure.

Self-contact offered a way home to myself. It sounds so corny, but it’s true. 

When you’re someone who has lived in a state of fight, flight, freeze, it becomes the dominant state, the familiar state. Our brains like familiarity. Switching into parasympathetic energy felt REALLY unfamiliar, and to the brain unfamiliar can signal danger, even when danger is not actually present. And when something sniffs danger, we avoid it. I was avoiding putting a hand on my heart for a looooong time. I wasn’t stabilized enough when I was younger to express safely, and to be compassionately witnessed.

But at the time of joining the somatic experiencing group I was beginning to create the conditions to hold myself compassionately, and to express one hand on my heart at a time. And this expression helped me move emotions through, rather than hold them in. 

So, what’s happening when you put a hand on your heart? 

Self-contact offers a proprioceptive input that signals to the body it’s okay to move into the parasympathetic state. Proprioception is the sensory feedback from your muscles and joints to your brain about where you are in space and how you move through it. 

A hand over the heart offers physical containment, which can be helpful when overwhelm strikes. Self-contact also stimulates the vagus nerve - the wandering nerve that is involved in the parasympathetic system which governs heart rate, blood sugar, respiration and the immune system - and this “rest and digest” state is where we integrate our experiences, and assimilate our food and other inputs. 

Self-contact offers a way in. I often find that a hand over the heart feels good when I’m journaling, having a cup of tea or with friends I feel safe enough with. It helps me feel contained, and to anchor in experiences of joy, of vulnerability and when I need to reinforce my boundaries.