The heart doesn’t just pump—it also listens to the flow of blood. Between stillness, expansiveness, and warmth, a living cycle reveals itself. To turn toward the heart is to turn toward the place where love becomes the impulse of life.
What does it mean to listen to one’s heart? To act from the heart? To rest in the heart? How can we move toward this place that knows our very individual path? How do we find a connection to the living continuity of our being through the jungle of everyday life, the emotional roller coasters, and the multitude of possibilities?
A first step is to understand the heart through the lens of the story we’ve been telling about it since the 17th century. Our thoughts shape reality. If we imagine that the heart is a pump and that it pumps blood through the body with all its strength, then it’s not far-fetched to feel that we must pump our heart’s desire into the world with all our might—to build pressure so that something becomes possible. But when we perceive our heart as embedded in the continuous circulation of blood in which the relationship between source and destination, center and periphery, is woven into a rhythmically moving flow—our perspective changes. Then the blood possesses a living force that moves the heart—just as there are forces that cause seas to surge, springs to gush from the earth, and rivers to flow. So could it also be that there is an invisible force—one that is not mechanical in and of itself—that causes our blood to flow?
How is it that even today the heart is still described in textbooks as a suction-pressure pump? In the 17th century, William Harvey discovered the closed circulatory system in which the heart functions as the central organ. He assumed that the contraction of the heart propels the blood. Since then, the heart has been studied as a pump. Today’s physiology textbooks still teach the Frank-Starling mechanism. Mr. Frank removed a frog’s heart and perfused it with bovine blood. He observed that the more the heart muscle was stretched by the blood, the more blood was ejected. Two decades later, Mr. Starling observed the same phenomenon in an isolated heart-lung specimen from a dog. The mechanism describes the heart muscle’s ability to generate force—that is, to contract—in response to stretching (i.e., from the volume of blood), thereby propelling the blood forward. This occurs even without nervous innervation, simply through the relationship between blood and the heart. This contraction also generates pressure within the heart. From this, a model was developed in which the heart was described as a unified, pumping mechanism for blood. All these models, however, consider the heart in isolation and disregard physiological conditions. And there are some inconsistencies. For example, the heart muscle can generate only a fraction of the force of a skeletal muscle (200 g/cm² versus 2–5 kg/cm²) and would therefore be unable to generate the cardiac output—that is, the volume of blood flowing through the circulatory system in one minute—through muscular contraction alone.
If we consider the anatomy of the heart, we notice that the inflow and outflow angles are very steep. Such a steep structure is very inefficient for a pump: the steep inflow angle causes the blood to slow down significantly at first. Inside the ventricle, the blood then makes a 180-degree turn before flowing out again. In effect, this slows the blood down and briefly halts it before it flows in the opposite direction with renewed momentum. If we visualize this with our senses, we can experience the vibrant momentum and pulse inherent in the blood. If we do not consider our heart in isolation from the circulatory system but instead take into account the dynamics of movement in the blood capillaries, we find that there, too, a very active exchange takes place between cells and capillaries along a concentration gradient. Pressures are at work there as well: on the one hand, colloid-osmotic pressure draws fluid into the capillaries, and on the other, hydrostatic pressure forces fluid from the capillaries into the interstitial space—the microscopic gap between cells. In the arterioles—the small arteries that connect larger arteries to capillaries—the hydrostatic pressure is greater. In the capillaries, the pressures balance each other out. Therefore, there is a kind of zero point before the colloid-osmotic pressure exceeds the hydrostatic pressure and fluid flows back into the capillaries. Just as there are turning points—moments of stillness—in the heart, there are also threshold reversal points at the periphery. It is as if, in this stillness, the blood is reinvigorated, finding its way back to the center with all the substances and information it has absorbed from the body’s cells.
All these movements occur simultaneously. Where does this continuous cycle begin? How does this movement of blood arise? Can you imagine how it might arise from the blood itself? From the relationship between vessel and flow? Of its own accord, perhaps even out of love, out of joy, out of longing? What is the true source of this movement? Can you open yourself to this force that is simply there? That sets us in motion? And what, then, is the heart’s purpose if its power no longer lies in its pumping function? We must free the heart internally from this pumping function in order to sense what it is truly meant for. What is the heart’s true power? And what do we need to live from the heart or to follow our heart?
Silence, Expansiveness, Warmth
The heart’s function is not to pump, but to hold the blood for a moment—to pause—before it flows on again. This moment of stillness serves to absorb information from the blood and gain an impression of how the body is doing. This is important for its ability to regulate the pulse, blood pressure, and fluid balance according to the body’s needs. The heart is entirely at the service of the entire organism. The heart can rest when the blood is flowing. However, when we lose our openness to the invisible force that sets our blood in motion—for example, due to stiffness, stress, or deposits caused by metabolic disorders—we often live with the feeling that we ourselves are the driving force and exert pressure to create movement. This places a strain on our heart. The heart gets no breaks or recovery periods, unlike, for example, the brain during sleep or the gastrointestinal tract between meals. It beats as long as we live. How can we support it in this honorable task? Between the heart muscle cells is the protein titin, which ensures that the heart muscles can withstand significant stretching. At the same time, the pericardium protects the heart from excessive stretching. The heart’s true strength, then, lies in its ability to expand to receive blood without losing its integrity. It holds the blood for a moment, which automatically creates pressure. We don’t need to generate this pressure ourselves; it simply arises from the volume of blood held in the heart for a moment. When the pressure—or force—is great enough, the valves open and the blood flows onward. When we are filled from within, enough force is automatically generated for love to overflow into the world. We also find the warmth of the heart physiologically within the heart itself. The generation of heat remains a great miracle in and of itself. Nevertheless, there is one type of heat generation that has been studied physiologically: in the heart, turbulence in the blood can be observed. This creates counter-flow vortices. As a result, part of the blood’s kinetic energy is retained and released in the form of heat.
Making Room for Individual Expression
In medical school, we learn that when we listen to heart sounds, our primary goal is to distinguish between healthy and diseased conditions. But if we listen closely, we hear that every person has a completely unique sound emanating from the heart. In biometric research, there is even discussion about whether the heart sound could serve as a distinguishing feature, like a fingerprint. The entire person resonates in the human heart sound. Depending on the tone with which the nervous system affects the blood vessels, which substances pass from the body into the blood, what thoughts we think, what feelings we feel, and what air we breathe, the nature of our blood flow changes—and with it, the sound of our heart. And yet something remains unmistakably unique, allowing us to recognize ourselves as individuals within it. When we listen to our “heart sounds” and encounter the flow of our blood within them, we can sense how it shapes landscapes. We can ask ourselves what influences we wish to allow to flow into it through our breath, our thoughts, and our nourishment. How do we want to—and how can we—rest humbly in our hearts? Within the life-affirming interplay between forming and being formed, creating and being created?
Translation Laura Liska
