Listening with the Heart

Have you ever made choices that felt right on paper but heavy in the body, and others that made little sense yet carried a calm you could not explain?

We have all taught to trust the mind to lead.

The mind knows how to analyze and solve. It gathers information, builds knowledge, and moves things forward.

But over time, I noticed how loud it had become.

Thoughts layered on top of one another. Expectations, timelines, comparisons, attachments. The more I tried to think my way through them, the more crowded everything felt. Not wrong, just noisy.

Listening with the heart began quietly.

Moments when I stopped asking what made the most sense and instead noticed what felt steady. The answers did not arrive as plans or explanations. They showed up as sensations. Ease or tension. Openness or resistance.

I am not trying to replace thinking with feeling. There are days when structure and analysis are exactly what is needed. But there are also moments, especially when decisions touch who I am becoming, where thinking alone feels incomplete.

I notice this most in stillness. When the mental chatter softens, something simpler comes forward. Not certainty, not answers. Just a quiet knowing that feels honest.

Practices like yoga and meditation have helped me listen this way. When the body settles and the breath slows, the noise thins. What remains feels clear, gentle, and grounded.

Listening with the heart, I am learning, is less about doing something new and more about making space.

In many ways, this mirrors the season of shedding I am in.

As I let go of the need to perform, to stay on track, to fill every moment with output, there is more room to listen. Fewer voices competing for attention. Less to sort through.

What I am shedding creates space. And in that space, the heart becomes easier to hear.