The Warrior's Heart

The Warrior's got a brave heart. What does that mean? Thinking of all the movies (Game of thrones, braveheart, ..) we watch, that take us back in time and show us these brave warriors, we can see a similarity: A warrior's heart means opening the heart to fully connect body and mind. A warrior is brave, he doesn't fear pain. Opening the heart to others means that they can emotionally touch us. They can connect with us. They can hurt us. A warrior always knows that life can be over at any time. But fear and anxiety is not a solution, because we will die anyways at some time in our life. An open heart allows us to be brave and to have the full experience of every emotion. 
In Yoga, Virabhadrasana II, Warrior II is the position we can open the warrior's heart. It harnesses the archetypal spirit of the warrior. Many martial arts contain some variation of the warrior pose. Remember that the greatest warriors combine power with compassion that flows from the heart. Consciously expanding the chest stimulates the organs of the thorax, including the heart and lungs. This action illuminates the heart chakra—the energetic source of our emotions. In this Scientific Key, we illustrate some simple steps for opening the chest in Virabhadrasana II. Begin by drawing the shoulders back and down. Open the heart, open the ribcage, start to breathe deep. 
We waste our life, breathing in a short and fast frequency, but we can actually heal physical and emotional pain with these deep and long breaths. Breathing deep relaxes and stimulates our mind, it helps us to make decisions with our heart, not just with our mind. Breathing deep detoxes our brain. So many negative thoughts are stuck in our brain because we never really breathe. 

Breathing is the easiest way to connect with each other. We all do it, to survive, every second. 

Breathing is the most important thing we can do, and we barely use it. 

The first two weeks of my yoga journey have been a bliss. I really connected with who I really am, I finally started to breathe, to feel my heart. This is not just another spiritual "blablabla", the heart is a muscle and we often forget that. We can train that muscle the same way we can train our biceps or our legs. A strong heart can make our whole body, mind and soul stronger. Therefore we have to breathe. And nobody can help us with that, no pill, no machine would do that for us. We have to take action. We have to inhale, we have to let go and exhale. Breathing deep in any situation can help us, we see what is going on and we can learn to act, not to react. Emotional stress will fade away, and physical pain often caused by emotional stress will finally be healed. We can release all the negative habits and thoughts. Breathing deep allows us to be present. Being present in life means that there are no emotions like hate, revenge or reward. We don't do, get or deserve things because we did whatever we did in the past. We are here and now.