As I work with clients on healing their heart issues, it occurs to me that learning to understand how the (nonphysical) heart works is like learning a new language.

Some years ago we had an exchange student from Spain living with us. As Teresa tried to communicate in English and we in Spanish, it was awkward, funny, and frustrating at times. My daughter and I struggled to roll our r’s, and I suspect Teresa wondered what’s the big deal.

You may feel the same awkwardness about learning the language of the heart.

What I love about languages is the way it opens up your perspective. Though you’re dealing with words, it goes beyond words to a whole way of perceiving. That is the enriching part. For instance, when I would call my cat “Gatit0,” there is no exact English equivalent that captures the warm affection “-ito” expresses.

As you learn this new “language of the heart,” it will expand your perception of yourself, other people, and the world. The “grammar” of this language, as I wrote elsewhere, is governed by association, images, metaphors. To learn this language, you must be open to these non-linear, non-logical ways of thinking.

The language of the heart is largely governed by feelings. It’s the feelings that we trace to the memory. The feeling is the clue. It’s also the energy that is causing the negative frequency, the stress signal that’s causing your cells to go into “closed, death mode” rather than “open/growth/healing mode.”

So to learn this language, you start with feeling. You are open to seemingly illogical things, such as a certain color sparking panic. A client began to tune in to the fact that she had a stress reaction to the color red. Why? She had no idea. We traced it to an infant memory of terror associated with the color red. As that healed, her overall stress level went down dramatically.

Dreams can give us big clues as to what the heart wants to heal. Again, you’re looking for images and feelings. One client shared a dream with me and it became clear that her heart wanted her to heal some fear memories concerning her father.

With another client, we always start with the several dreams she has written down; they provide both clues to what needs to heal. Also, somewhat surprisingly, often her dreams portray the healing she has experienced. (I call those “progress dreams.”)

If you commit to learning the language of the heart, your heart will begin to send you more and more clues. It’s quite fun, actually.

Of course, if you need a little help decoding, feel free to contact me for some coaching.