NAICR’s Heart/Work Development Programs

NAICR is developing a Heart/Work Trainers’ Manual for those who have taken the training, and through practice are beginning to engage heart awareness in daily life.

In addition, we are sponsoring a Heart/Work Research Project in which specific populations, such as refugees, battered women, the mentally and emotionally handicapped, and children, are being offered elements of the Heart/Work training, for evaluation purposes.

There are also, in progress, audio tapes and video tapes of the training that will be coming out by next year.

People have asked,” what is the difference between the Heart/Work and the work of HeartMath, the business research and training organization in Santa Cruz, California?” From what we have been able to determine, these programs are very similar. The difference seems to be that the organizing focus of HeartMath is to make something better – for me. There is a self-focus to the work – make me more effective, make me more productive, make me happier, reduce my stress, save my marriage, win me promotions, etc.

With Heart/Work, we are inviting you to go a step beyond this self-focus and allow yourself to enlarge your frame of reference beyond the merely personal. The larger context includes the personal but is not limited to it. This is an invitation to go where your heart would have you go – not where your emotions and your mind would have you go. As you respond, you learn to listen to that and to learn to distinguish that from what is emotionally or mentally driven.

In our understanding, the heart is not something to be used, any more than the soul is something to be used. It is that part of you that is connected to what is real. Your proper relationship to heart and soul are not to enrich your personal self by picking and choosing from this rich resource. That does not work. It is for you to give yourself to that – to serve that and to love doing so. As you begin to do that, the pressure comes off, the creativity flows, and you see a lot more than you were willing to see before. You are then in the world in a more connected way that enriches you and everyone around you, as well as contributing to peace and goodness in the whole world.

In the words of philosopher, John deRuiter: A little baby is in it. There is a flow of love, and yet there is no agenda to love. The moment there is an agenda to love for any reason at all, what is inside is no longer clean. The only reason you could have an agenda to love, is to get something out of it.