Living from the Heart (first published by Random House in 1998) is the spiritual classic that first introduced the modern form of Heart Rhythm Meditation to the world. Full of wonderful stories that will open your heart, incredible techniques of breathing and elemental energies, profound descriptions of the experience of the One Heart, and a comprehensive heart-centered philosophy, Living from the Heart is a must for every lover of wisdom.
In the new Living Heart Media edition, co-authors Puran and Susanna Bair refine and expand their delivery of the message of the heart; over 100 new pages of text have been added, including new illustrations, new stories, and a new appendix that details the historical development of heart-based meditation in Christianity and Sufism.

“Living From the Heart is a river, exquisitely gentle. It carries the tremendous blessing brought to consciousness by those heart-masters that are sometimes called Sufis. I’ll be going back to it again and again for a long time.“

Coleman Barks, translator of The Essential Rumi

“Living from the Heart is both a down-to-earth guide to using meditation as the valuable tool in everyday life and an inspiring expression of profound mystical truths. Puran and Susanna Bair have long experience in helping people bring their unique meditative techniques into their lives, and the details of their experiences give this book a solid ground underneath its brilliant analysis of the ways of spiritual development. This is a rare and important book.“

Luke Rhinehart, author of The Dice Man, Long Voyage Back and The Book of EST

“It is wonderful to find a meditation as simple and as universal as the Heart Rhythm Method. Puran and Susanna Bair offer us a way to remember and reclaim our essential unity with God, with the planet, and with each other. “

Luke Rhinehart, author of The Dice Man, Long Voyage Back and The Book of EST

A Note From Co-Author Puran Bair

Dear friend,

Living from the Heart is about the heart, both the poetic heart that is the instrument of deep feeling and the physical heart that synchronizes all your body’s cells to a common beat. The development of the heart is the great goal of life, both a practical goal and a spiritual goal.

Everyone is attracted by the heart of another; the heart is the agent of creativity and the source of inspiration; the rhythm of the heart is the key to physical, mental, and emotional health.

Although you might aspire to living from the heart, perhaps it isn’t clear what this means or how you might do that. Living from the Heart describes a model of a heart-centered life and a method for attaining it.

The book’s principle is that concentration on the physical heart leads to awareness of the poetic heart, and that leads …

to a higher quality of life. When one is aware of the beating of the heart in the chest, and the echoes of pulse throughout the body, the foundation for discovering the heart’s magnetic field is laid. The heart has a measurable magnetic field, extending for at least several yards in all directions, according to the sensitivity of today’s instruments, and the whole field pulsates with the heartbeat. Actually, the magnetic field of the heart has no boundary, and our fields interact with the fields of all those around us, all the time. Thus the magnetic field is both a metaphor for the poetic heart and a physical reality.

The simple breathing techniques given here can develop the sense of the heart’s magnetism. This is not a book of philosophy; it’s an instruction workbook that teaches a method called Heart Rhythm Meditation to bring about a more heart-centered life. Avoiding platitudes about what you ‘should’ do, Living from the Heart lays out, step-by-step in great detail, a method you can learn and practice to achieve tangible and practical results that improve your health, relationships, and achievements. You already know about the wonders of the heart: courage, compassion, joy, love, and peace. Perhaps you do not know how to access the heart easily, naturally, and reliably. One needs a method.

Learning Heart Rhythm Meditation is about as hard as learning how to swim, and at least as enjoyable. Some people do learn to ‘swim’ without any instruction and without following any method. They are the ones with the hearts we admire whenever we meet them. For the rest of us, living from the heart is something to be learned, a further development beyond adult maturity. Learning to swim gives you access to a new mode of living in harmony with water. Heart Rhythm Meditation has that same excitement that swimming lessons had, and the result is also a life-long skill that you’ll enjoy whenever you want and never lose.

A section at the end of the book shows how to establish a Heart Rhythm Practice group to share discoveries, give encouragement, and celebrate the results of living from the heart. I wish I had found a book like this 25 years ago, when I was learning meditation. I studied under the guidance of a master Sufi teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, in a time when the methodology was a privileged secret, revealed but never written down. Now the time has come for the secrets to get out — the power of the heart is so wonderful, so great, and so needed that the benefits far outweigh the risks of misappropriation.

The format of the book is meant to be friendly. There are five kinds of paragraphs that are intertwined throughout the book:

my text, printed plainly;
the many stories are shaded so they stand out from the text and you can easily find them or skip them;
borders offset the actual instructions for Heart Rhythm Practice so you can jump from one instruction to the next to form a sequence for meditation;
all these instructions come from well-worn techniques; as illustrated by the quotes in italics from some of those who have explored the human depths and heights before us;
there are occasional milestones by which you can self-assess your progress.
If you can do what’s described there, you’ve learned the steps so far. Just the milestones themselves form an interesting description of the path of the heart.

I think meditation is the most worthwhile thing you can learn. I’d love to hear from you about your problems with it, your discoveries, and your application of the power of the heart.

I hope you enjoy the book.

warm regards,