What is the relationship between energy flow and the opening of heart?

"What Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., thinks is going on from a mystical point of view is that we are all systems of energy interconnected with all other energies. Yet we have the capacity, through our emotions, to step down the amount of energy that moves through to us, which means we can cut off intuitive energy and we can cut off the life-force energy that comes into our body. My intuitive sense is that when our heart closes in fear-and our biggest human fear is of abandonment, that somebody won't love us-it decreases that flow of life-force energy. It just doesn't get to the cells and tissues in the same way, and we literally starve, because we've cut ourselves off from that larger life force. Every time there is worry, or fear, there is stress, and I've always defined stress as that which is isolating. Anything that takes you out of the sense of connection stresses you.

"If we open our heart, the energy simply flows in and we are nourished by it. It flows in. And not only that, but it also flows out. An interesting piece of preliminary research about that is a pilot study that Dr. Janet Quinn did on therapeutic touch. She was measuring an index of immune function in people getting therapeutic touch, where the practitioner becomes a channel for life-force energy. This energy flows when the practitioner's heart is opened by feeling great respect, love, and care for the person they are helping. Dr. Quinn found that immune function increased in the person getting therapeutic touch, but it increased just as much in the person giving it. When the heart is open, that life-force energy doesn't end with us. An open-hearted person is always giving to someone else, and the act of giving is simultaneously the act of receiving. To me, that is the way that creation proceeds, when the heart is open to that life-force energy. We give it out in our creating, in our respecting, and in our nurturing. We also are allowing ourselves to be created and nurtured. Healing energy is something much bigger than the individual. An open-hearted person is always giving to someone else, and the act of giving is simultaneously the act of receiving."