Yoga, the Heart, and the Practice of Care
Exploring movement, breath, & emotional care during February’s season of the heart
February often sneaks up on you. After January’s push toward resolutions and routines, February settles in like a quieter companion—asking you to slow down, breathe, and tune back in. It brings with it two cultural touchpoints that appear very different: Valentine’s Day and American Heart Month. One is wrapped in chocolates, roses, and greeting cards; the other in statistics, wellness campaigns, and reminders to schedule check-ups. Yet both point toward the same organ, the same metaphor, the same source of life and meaning: the heart.
When you think about heart health, you might picture cardiovascular fitness, blood pressure, cholesterol, exercise, and stress management. And all of that matters deeply. But your heart is more than a pump. It is an emotional center, a metaphorical home, and the place where breath, nervous system, and awareness meet. A healthy heart isn’t just one that beats efficiently—it’s one that softens, expands, and supports connection.
Yoga offers a rare space to explore heart health on all three levels at once: physical, emotional, and relational. In February, those layers feel especially relevant.
The Physical Heart: Movement, Breath, and Circulation
Your cardiovascular system thrives on rhythm, consistency, and breath. When you move through sun salutations, hold standing postures, or stay with a shape like Warrior II, you encourage circulation, deepen respiration, and strengthen the muscles that support posture and breathing. Over time, this supports heart health in tangible, measurable ways.
Yet yoga is not just physical exercise. Unlike movement driven by intensity or competition, yoga emphasizes awareness. You listen as you move—tracking breath patterns, sensations, and boundaries. That attention helps shift the nervous system from “fight or flight” into “rest and digest,” reducing stress hormones and easing strain on the heart.
Chronic stress is one of the most overlooked contributors to cardiovascular disease. Suppressed emotion, anxiety, and prolonged tension keep the nervous system in a heightened state. On your mat, you practice the opposite: regulation, grounding, and release. When you leave class feeling different than when you arrived, that shift is happening on a heart level as much as a muscular one.
“A healthy heart isn’t just one that beats efficiently—it’s one that softens, expands, and supports connection.”
The Emotional Heart: Opening Without Forcing
February also invites reflection on the metaphorical heart—the seat of vulnerability, courage, joy, and grief. In yoga, these qualities are often explored through heart openers and backbends. Yet anyone who has practiced them knows the experience is rarely just physical.
Camel pose may bring emotion. Bridge may surface memory. Wheel can evoke exhilaration, fear, or resistance. The front body houses the heart, but the back body stores support. Opening the chest often asks us to trust what’s behind us.
Later this month, the studio will hold space for this exploration through Sarah’s 90-minute backbending workshop on February 7. Backbends can feel intimidating, and typical 60-minute classes rarely allow enough time to explore them safely and thoughtfully. Sarah understands this deeply—not only through more than ten years of teaching, but through her own experience navigating low-back disc herniations that once made backbends feel inaccessible.
When you give yourself time to explore poses like Ustrasana (Camel), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge), or Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel), you’re not only building flexibility and strength. You’re practicing courage. You’re listening. You’re learning to trust your body enough to open through areas that instinctively protect the heart.
“A heart opener isn’t about performance. It’s about safety, awareness, and choice.”
This kind of heart opening isn’t about dramatic shapes. It’s about curiosity, safety, and choice. With thoughtful preparation, props, and hands-on support, students are guided toward the most intelligent version of a posture—not the biggest one.
Physiology Meets Self-Love
Heart health evolves across the lifespan. During perimenopause and menopause, cardiovascular wellbeing becomes especially important as hormonal shifts affect blood vessels, cholesterol, and emotional regulation. These changes can arrive subtly or with surprising intensity.
“Caring for the heart isn’t about intensity—it’s about consistency, attention, and respect.”
Michelle’s ongoing Yoga for Perimenopause series explores these intersections in a workshop centered on Heart Health & Self-Love. Through gentle Hatha yoga, supported backbends, and restorative postures like Legs-Up-the-Wall, students create space for circulation, nervous system ease, and emotional release. Movements that lift the sternum and mobilize the thoracic spine support healthy breathing, while restorative shapes invite deep rest.
The invitation to come in pajamas reframes wellness as nurturing rather than striving. There is no pressure to push or perform—only an invitation to care. The workshop closes with a long, heart-soothing Savasana, allowing the body to integrate movement as a message of permission.
Self-love is often treated as a seasonal buzzword, but in practice it looks quieter: listening to your body, respecting your limits, choosing rest without guilt, and recognizing that your heart—physical and emotional—deserves support.
Valentine’s Day and the Art of Relating
Valentine’s Day often centers romantic love, but yoga widens the lens. On the mat, love becomes relational in many forms:
Compassion for yourself
Kindness toward your body
Patience during challenge
Community with those practicing beside you
The studio becomes a small ecosystem of connection. You may not know the stories of the people around you, yet you breathe, move, and rest together. In a world where isolation is common, that shared experience matters.
Yoga reminds us that love includes friendship, family, creativity, solitude, boundaries, and the relationship we hold with our own heart.
Slowing Down as an Act of Care
Heart health experts emphasize prevention through consistency rather than intensity. Small, steady choices matter more than bursts of effort. Yoga reflects this wisdom beautifully. You don’t need to master advanced poses to support cardiovascular health. You don’t need perfect alignment to reduce stress. You simply need to show up and pay attention.
February invites the same approach—slowing down enough to notice how your heart feels physically, emotionally, and energetically. Caring for your heart becomes less about obligation and more about respect.
Yoga offers a place to practice that care—honestly, gently, and over time.
Ways to Practice with Care This February
Explore Heart Opening with Strength & Support
If you're curious about backbends—or hesitant to approach them—this 90-minute workshop offers a thoughtful, well-supported space to explore strength, mobility, and trust. Guided with care and experience, it’s an opportunity to open the heart without forcing or strain.
→ Backbending Workshop in Geneva, IL
Support Heart Health During Perimenopause
Heart health becomes especially important during perimenopause. This gentle, nurturing workshop blends Hatha yoga, restorative postures, and education to support cardiovascular wellbeing and emotional balance. Pajamas welcome.
→ Yoga for Perimenopause & Heart Health in Geneva, IL
Practice with the Heart in Mind
Heart health is supported through consistency, not intensity. Our weekly yoga classes offer space to move, breathe, and regulate your nervous system—one practice at a time.
→ Explore the February yoga class schedule in Geneva
As you move through February, what does caring for your heart look like right now—on or off the mat?