Hot Tea and Mid-Morning Yoga

Leading my friends in yoga has been a wonderful experience for me. My mind. my heart, stretches itself even farther in my meditation when I take the responsibility of aiding another in a similar meditation upon myself. As we lay in Corpse pose, a traditional yoga ending pose, I allowed my mind to drift towards those bodies laying around me. I could hear so much when I let my thoughts loose from their usual egocentric track. Their breathing, slow and even. The pulse of blood through a nearby wrist. But more, I could hear even farther. Traffic lulled by a few blocks away, people chatted a few yards away, I felt as though I could even hear each single leaf in the wind.
Something was in the way though, preventing my perception. I just wanted that rhythmic interruption to cease. And I realized that it was my own heartbeat that I perceived to be impeding my abilities to know the world around me. Just as I had become very thankful for my mind and my new understanding of it, I, too, felt new love of my heart. It was very much like my heart had grown in size to accommodate a space to love itself. And yet I could not prevent one philosophical thought from clinging to my brain cells: Could it be that my own life prevented my ability love and understand others as I ought?
Do thoughts of myself distract from thoughts of others? Certainly. But this is natural and there is nothing wrong with that. One cannot care for another unless one has cared for oneself. There must be a balance. And, perhaps, the body affords yet one more bit of wisdom for us. our heart beats and we hear only ourselves, and it is followed by silence where we see the world and others. The physical heart pounds out a rhythm: Beat. Beat. Silence. Beat. Beat. Silence.
Perhaps the metaphorical heat ought to beat a similar rhythm: Beat (meet my needs). Beat (observe the world around me). Silence (be selfless).