The Mother Heart
To ease the transition to motherhood, it helps to return to the heart. During this time, also known as matrescence, it’s easy for us to lose touch with our center. But when we pause and bring awareness back to the heart, there is a subtle and powerful shift. Energy begins to replenish rather than deplete. Thoughts soften, emotions steady, and we begin to see beauty again.
I remember feeling this most vividly in the early days of motherhood, when everything felt raw and new, and when things didn’t go as planned. My mind would race with what needed to be done, yet when I paused and placed a hand on my heart, I could feel myself return to breath, to trust, to presence. The outer world hadn’t changed, but my perception of it had.
“When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” –Dr. Wayne Dyer
In The Secret Power of Yoga, Nischala Joy Devi interprets the Yoga Sutras through a feminine, heart-centered lens. She describes yoga as the uniting of consciousness in the heart so that we may abide in our true nature as joy and love. This wisdom, shared across many traditions, reminds us that the heart is not only physical, but also the seat of love, wisdom, and divine connection.
When we shift awareness from the busy mind to the heart, we reconnect with our natural state. Life feels more spacious and sacred, and we begin to access the inner wisdom that guides us through motherhood.
The Heart and Our Inner State
The heart is a bridge between the emotional, physical, and energetic. It reflects our inner state through rhythmic signals that create physiological patterns influencing every system in the body.
Feelings like gratitude, love, and appreciation create smooth, harmonious rhythms, often referred to as coherence, an inner state where the heart and nervous system are in sync. In this state, energy flows efficiently, the body selfregulates, and our capacity to realize our blessings expands.
Yogic traditions have long understood the power of the heart. Through the path of bhakti, or devotion, we cultivate love as a state of being, not just an emotion, but a way of relating to ourselves, others, and life itself. Motherhood becomes a living expression of this devotion, a sacred path.
What has been transmitted in the wisdom traditions is now being explored through science in the last few decades. The heart generates the body’s most powerful electromagnetic field, even stronger than the brain’s, and this field reflects our inner state. Research from the HeartMath Institute suggests that when we enter more coherent states, these patterns become more ordered and stable.
In these states, the rhythms of the heart, brain, and body move together in greater harmony, subtly influencing how we experience the world and how others experience us. It is why children and animals often feel our state before we say a word.
Practices and lifestyle choices that support the nervous system, such as chiropractic care, yoga, deep breathing, and rest, make coherence more available, helping the body return to balance more easily.
The Role of Attention
Attention is one of our greatest resources. What we focus on grows, both neurologically, as new pathways strengthen, and energetically, through the field we radiate. As one of my favorite teachers says, our attention is what makes something sacred.
When we attune our awareness to gratitude, love, or appreciation, our inner rhythm steadies, and possibility expands. But when stress, overwhelm, or fear take the lead and become our autopilot, our inner rhythm becomes irregular and energy drains. We can experience tunnel vision.
And when we cannot change what is around us, we come home to the heart. This shift from outer control to inner coherence transforms how we experience the world. The heart becomes our compass.
As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.”
Returning to Harmony
Coherence grows with practice and intention.
When we meet ourselves and others with kindness, forgiveness, and compassion, the heart opens and energy rises. We may feel coherence in the body, even for a moment, and gently notice, without judgment, when it fades.
Awareness and return. This is the practice. In these moments of returning, we begin to experience a sense of wholeness that has been there all along.
Returning to the heart not only helps us navigate motherhood and reconnect with our needs, but it also nurtures those around us. Our children and babies often attune to our inner state.
Indeed, we can learn to strengthen the neural pathways that support presence, intuition, and resilience. There are many doorways: through breath, connection, prayer, meditation, or clear intention, we can become aware, come back to the heart, and enter coherence. Even better, we can tune in with a baby on our chest or a toddler at our feet.
Heart Practice
A simple way to practice is to begin by noticing your breath and gently grounding into your body. Bring your awareness to the space of your heart, perhaps placing a hand there. In yogic traditions, this space is connected with hridaya, or the spiritual heart.
Let your breath soften, imagining it moving in and out through this space. Then invite a feeling of love, gratitude, or appreciation to arise through a memory, a moment, or simple intention. I often visualize my golden retriever and my children snuggled up together.
Allow this feeling to grow, gently deepening as you stay with it. Rest here for a few breaths, allowing the energy to integrate.
Each time we return, we replenish rather than deplete. We strengthen what nourishes us and those we love. We begin to trust the inner knowing that guides us through motherhood more surely than anything we could prepare for.
The heart is home.
