Heart Surgery™ for Difficult Emotions

Heart Surgery™ is a mindfulness process I created that teaches/empowers children how to be present and process challenging emotions in the body.  It is used for for clearing any tension or stuck feelings in the body.

How it Works

I ask the kids if I can employ them all to be “scientists and investigators” for me and their “field of investigation” is their heart. In this process, we become aware of where a stuck feeling is in the body and what color and form it takes.

Then I ask permission from the child if we can “perform surgery” and then we make an “incision” over the heart with our “love scalpel” (finger) and let our imagination pull out whatever energy wants to be released. We also become aware of the expansive space in which the feeling/contraction lives, moves, and changes. Once our awareness of this commingling occurs the experiencer goes through a shapeshifting process which eventually dissolves this once multilayered, painful feeling.

We always end surgery by blowing love, peace, or happiness into our hands and sealing the incision with that energy. After “surgery,” kids claimed the unpleasant feeling had disappeared, and said “I’m happier and more open.” Whenever we complete it, they know the process. I then ask they go teach another child and an adult. I have many stories of children stopping me on the schoolyard with challenges they faced (deaths of pets, issues with friends) and when they used this process the difficult emotion was GONE.