There’s a quiet truth I’ve come to embody in my healing journey — a truth that didn’t arrive through logic, but through deep, felt experience: the heart remembers.
Not in neat timelines or organized facts like the mind. The heart holds memory like soft clay — emotions pressed into its surface, shaping how we feel, how we respond, and how we move through the world.
For so long, I believed that healing was a mental task. That if I could rationalize pain, detach from what hurt, or convince myself to just “let go,” I’d be free. But what I’ve learned — through reflection, spiritual growth, and stillness — is that healing isn’t something you think your way through. You feel your way through it. And the heart leads that process.
The Heart's Central Role
While reading Yasmin Mogahed’s “Reclaim Your Heart” and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s commentary on “Purification of the Heart,” I found language for what I had been intuitively sensing: the heart isn’t just the seat of love — it is the seat of everything. Intention. Presence. Clarity. Attachment. Surrender.
In Islam, the heart — the qalb — is at the core of the self. It’s mentioned over a hundred times in the Qur’an, not as a metaphor, but as a living center of consciousness. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) taught, “Truly in the body, there is a morsel of flesh which, if sound, the whole body is sound. And if corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. Truly, it is the heart.”
Science Meets Spirituality: The Heart-Brain Connection
What’s more humbling is that modern science is catching up. The field of neurocardiology has revealed that the heart contains over 40,000 neurons. It has its own intrinsic nervous system — a kind of “heart brain” that communicates directly with the brain in our heads. In fact, 90% of the heart-brain communication flows from the heart to the brain.
This means that how we feel in our hearts can directly shape how we think, decide, and even remember. The heart doesn’t just follow the brain — it guides it.
Even more profound is the discovery that the heart emits the strongest electromagnetic field in the human body — 60 times greater than that of the brain. This field shifts with our emotions and can be measured several feet outside the body. Our hearts, in a very real sense, are broadcasting our internal states.
Heart-Aware Living
This reframed everything for me. My growth wasn’t about denying emotion or disciplining myself into detachment — it was about becoming more heart-aware. More heart-present.
From Hamza Yusuf, I learned that the diseases of the heart — arrogance, envy, heedlessness, excessive attachment to the material world — are not just spiritual flaws. They are weights. They cloud our perception, close us off from alignment, and harden the very center we were meant to keep soft.
From Yasmin Mogahed, I absorbed the reminder that reclaiming the heart is not about becoming less emotional, but more spiritually intelligent. It’s about returning the heart to the only One who can truly hold it — Allah. Because when our hearts are anchored in Him, we stop outsourcing our peace. We stop chasing fullness from things that were never designed to complete us.
Questions That Keep Me Aligned
My current path — in healing, in growth, in alignment — is heart-focused. Not emotionally impulsive, but heart-aware. I now ask myself often:
Is this softening my heart or hardening it?
Is this attachment deepening my peace or disturbing it?
Am I centered in presence, or caught in ego?
And when discomfort arises — sadness, longing, uncertainty — I don’t run from it. I meet it at the door of my chest, hand over heart, and say: “You’re welcome here. You’re a part of this, too.”
Modern Healing Tools and Islamic Alignment
This is also why I see modern practices like mindfulness, inner child work, and discomfort tolerance as deeply complementary to the Islamic path. They aren’t in contradiction — they work hand in hand. These tools, when used with intention, help us become more present with our emotional realities. They teach us to witness, to regulate, and to soften — all things the heart needs in order to return to its natural state of fitrah.
A Return to the Heart
The heart doesn’t forget. But it can be purified. It can be softened. It can be healed. Not by erasing what it holds, but by slowly, gently, releasing what no longer serves.
This is what reclaiming your heart looks like: not a dramatic moment of detachment, but a daily act of returning. To yourself. To your center.
And that, I believe, is where real healing begins.
The Heart Remembers: Where Healing Begins
There’s a quiet truth I’ve come to embody in my healing journey — a truth that didn’t arrive through logic, but through deep, felt experience: the heart remembers.
Not in neat timelines or organized facts like the mind. The heart holds memory like soft clay — emotions pressed into its surface, shaping how we feel, how we respond, and how we move through the world.
For so long, I believed that healing was a mental task. That if I could rationalize pain, detach from what hurt, or convince myself to just “let go,” I’d be free. But what I’ve learned — through reflection, spiritual growth, and stillness — is that healing isn’t something you think your way through. You feel your way through it. And the heart leads that process.
The Heart's Central Role
While reading Yasmin Mogahed’s “Reclaim Your Heart” and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s commentary on “Purification of the Heart,” I found language for what I had been intuitively sensing: the heart isn’t just the seat of love — it is the seat of everything. Intention. Presence. Clarity. Attachment. Surrender.
In Islam, the heart — the qalb — is at the core of the self. It’s mentioned over a hundred times in the Qur’an, not as a metaphor, but as a living center of consciousness. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) taught, “Truly in the body, there is a morsel of flesh which, if sound, the whole body is sound. And if corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. Truly, it is the heart.”
Science Meets Spirituality: The Heart-Brain Connection
What’s more humbling is that modern science is catching up. The field of neurocardiology has revealed that the heart contains over 40,000 neurons. It has its own intrinsic nervous system — a kind of “heart brain” that communicates directly with the brain in our heads. In fact, 90% of the heart-brain communication flows from the heart to the brain.
This means that how we feel in our hearts can directly shape how we think, decide, and even remember. The heart doesn’t just follow the brain — it guides it.
Even more profound is the discovery that the heart emits the strongest electromagnetic field in the human body — 60 times greater than that of the brain. This field shifts with our emotions and can be measured several feet outside the body. Our hearts, in a very real sense, are broadcasting our internal states.
Heart-Aware Living
This reframed everything for me. My growth wasn’t about denying emotion or disciplining myself into detachment — it was about becoming more heart-aware. More heart-present.
From Hamza Yusuf, I learned that the diseases of the heart — arrogance, envy, heedlessness, excessive attachment to the material world — are not just spiritual flaws. They are weights. They cloud our perception, close us off from alignment, and harden the very center we were meant to keep soft.
From Yasmin Mogahed, I absorbed the reminder that reclaiming the heart is not about becoming less emotional, but more spiritually intelligent. It’s about returning the heart to the only One who can truly hold it — Allah. Because when our hearts are anchored in Him, we stop outsourcing our peace. We stop chasing fullness from things that were never designed to complete us.
Questions That Keep Me Aligned
My current path — in healing, in growth, in alignment — is heart-focused. Not emotionally impulsive, but heart-aware. I now ask myself often:
And when discomfort arises — sadness, longing, uncertainty — I don’t run from it. I meet it at the door of my chest, hand over heart, and say: “You’re welcome here. You’re a part of this, too.”
Modern Healing Tools and Islamic Alignment
This is also why I see modern practices like mindfulness, inner child work, and discomfort tolerance as deeply complementary to the Islamic path. They aren’t in contradiction — they work hand in hand. These tools, when used with intention, help us become more present with our emotional realities. They teach us to witness, to regulate, and to soften — all things the heart needs in order to return to its natural state of fitrah.
A Return to the Heart
The heart doesn’t forget. But it can be purified. It can be softened. It can be healed. Not by erasing what it holds, but by slowly, gently, releasing what no longer serves.
This is what reclaiming your heart looks like: not a dramatic moment of detachment, but a daily act of returning. To yourself. To your center.
And that, I believe, is where real healing begins.
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