How to Get Out of Your Head and into Your Heart

Do you find it difficult to get out of your head? This is a common struggle for many highly sensitive people. Despite having an inherent ability to feel, it can be tough to get out of your head and move into your body.

Or you may feel like you spend enough time feeling your emotional heart, which can be pretty painful for many HSPs. But what I’m referring to in this article is different than the emotional heart and I’ll explain what I mean in a moment.

I’ll also share a few tips for moving from your head to your heart, as well as a video with a step-by-step technique.

First, let’s examine why we spend so much time in our heads.

Why It’s Hard To Get Out of Your Head

Highly sensitive people pick up on loads of sensory information and our brains process that information slowly. So, it makes sense that we spend a lot of time in the landscape of our minds. 

We pay more attention to the feelings of others and forget how to listen to our own hearts and bodies.

We’re critical thinkers so we analyze every angle of problems, perspectives, and solutions, which can be a positive part of the HSP trait. But we can also be too cautious in a way where we weigh pros and cons excessively leading to overthinking.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s why we feel so drained in certain environments. If you’re like me, you already feel like you have a court trial, policy debate, and therapy session going on in your brain throughout the day.

So how do you get out of your head and into your heart? Well, first let’s take a look at what it means to be aware from the heart.

What It Means to Get Out of Your Head and into Your Heart

As a human being, it’s normal for your awareness to surround your head. We tend to prioritize intellect and rationality over feeling and emotion in our society. We get consumed by the thinking mind and even identify with our thoughts.

The mind serves us in numerous ways when it comes to learning, planning, and so forth. But your mind only knows the past and future. It doesn’t really commune with the present and it cannot access the deeper presence and compassion you have within you.

Accessing the space of your heart is not about living from emotion. It’s a sense of an inner knowing and calmness that can only be known from the heart. It can’t be understood through the intellect, as it’s a felt sense of compassionate expansion.

When you live from your heart, it becomes easier to connect with your inner truth. You arrive at compassion-centered decisions with ease and openness. You are able to tune into your body to know when it needs rest or exercise. And you tap into a deeper awareness that reflects qualities of calmness and presence.

3 Ways to Get Out of Your Head and into Your Heart

1. Welcome your thoughts and emotions. Rather than shooing away mental chatter and accompanying feelings, allow them to sit with you and practice sitting with them. You may ask your thoughts or emotions to separate from you so you can have some space to breathe. But instead of pushing them away, lean in and get curious.

2. Move your body. Bringing movement into your body through qigong, yoga, dance, a walk in nature, or even simple movements in your hands and feet can help you to not only shift from your head but also become more embodied. You may try synchronizing your breath with movement as we do in many yoga classes or simply shift your awareness to another place in your body besides your head.

3. Practice heart-centered awareness. Learn simple ways to drop into the space of your heart center and become present. As you access your Higher Self, you’ll be able to allow mental chatter to exist but mellow out while remaining aware from a place of open compassion.

The video below offers a tool to get you started!

How to Get Out of your Head and into Your Heart

The exercise in this video is adapted from the work of psychotherapist and meditation teacher, Loch Kelly, and his book Shift into Freedom. I recently attended a retreat with Loch in Italy. I’ve found the techniques in his book to be extraordinarily useful for moving into open-hearted awareness.