Valentine’s, Heartbreak and Healing

By Dr. Bradley Nelson

Valentine’s Day is a time for celebrating love, but what if you have lost someone you love? Heartbreak is not just an expression for the strong emotions we feel surrounding loss. It is a very real condition that can damage your health and even lead to premature death. A recent study in the UK found that bereavement doubles a person’s chances of dying of a heart attack or stroke.

You can probably remember a time in your life when you thought your heart was going to break. That sensation may have felt like an elephant were sitting on your chest, or that you couldn’t breathe. These are common physical sensations that result when your heart — the core of your being — is suffering from a deep trauma.

In the ancient world, the human heart was thought of as the seat of love, the seat of the soul, the core of our being, and the source of our creativity. New research is beginning to reveal that the heart functions more in these ways than we have imagined. For example, heart transplant recipients often report strange symptoms, including changes in their music, food and entertainment preferences, as well as handwriting changes. Some even reported receiving memories that were not their own.

There are thousands of stories of “cellular memory” like these. How is this possible? The answer may lie in new technological developments. It has been proven in the laboratory that your heartbeat becomes instantly measurable in the brain waves of another person when you are focusing love and affection on them. There is an invisible communication going on between us that we had never been aware of before.

When you are experiencing deep grief, hurt or loss, it may be interpreted as an assault on the core of your being, on your heart. These feelings of heartbreak can be so uncomfortable, so foreign and so difficult to deal with, that they often result in the formation of an energetic “wall” put up to protect the heart from further injury.

Miranda is a perfect example of how a “heart-wall” can interfere with a love life. She was an attractive 38-year-old nurse who came to me suffering from neck pain. During the course of my examination, she mentioned that she had not dated anyone in years and had no interest in having any kind of a relationship with men anymore. When I tested her, I was not surprised to find that she had a heart-wall.

Eight years before, Miranda’s heart had been broken in a relationship with a man she had deeply loved. In an effort to protect her heart from experiencing that kind of pain and injury again, her subconscious mind had created a heart-wall.

In Miranda’s case, three lingering emotions had been trapped in her body all those years, blocking her from experiencing a loving relationship. She had no idea that these trapped emotions were the major underlying cause of the pain she was experiencing in her neck as well. Her neck pain had been going on for some time, and was considered chronic and even a bit mysterious by the other doctors she had consulted, as nothing seemed to relieve it.

One by one, we cleared each of these emotions.

I didn’t see Miranda again for about three months. When I did, she looked incredibly happy. I asked her what had changed and she excitedly said, “Everything!” She reported that her neck pain was long gone. But there was even better news than that.

“Right after I saw you last,” she said, “I ran into my childhood sweetheart. I hadn’t seen him since elementary school. But it turned out he had been living around the corner from me, less than a block away for almost eight years. We started dating and something really sparked between us. We’re in love! I think he’s going to ask me to marry him.”

The woman who had come into my office complaining of neck pain and swearing off of men was gone for good. She was like a completely new person.

When a heart-wall is released, people sometimes say it’s like they can finally feel again. They can give and receive love freely for the first time in a very long time. In that state, very interesting and wonderful things can happen.

In addition to bereavement and loss, the inability to forgive is a major cause of sadness, depression and loneliness. Here are three steps you can take to heal the heart:

• Write a letter to the person you need to forgive. It helps you express angst and negativity that might be in your soul about yourself or another person, even if you don’t mail the letter.

• Burn the letter. Take the letter outside and light it with a match, burn it up and send it out to the universe. That can really help you to let go and forgive.

• Speak Forgiveness. This can be telling yourself or another person whom you truly have forgiven the one who has wronged you. This helps seal the forgiveness.

When we withhold forgiveness we may think that we are getting even with the person who hurt us, but nothing could be further from the truth. What we are really doing is hurting ourselves. But when we allow ourselves to finally forgive our own selves or that person who has hurt us, the end result is peace for us.

Dr. Bradley Nelson has lectured internationally on the natural healing of chronic illness and, as a holistic chiropractic physician, successfully treated patients from across the U.S. and Canada. For more information, please visit http://www.EmotionCode.TV