I love Upward-Facing Dog Pose. Like most heart opening poses, it’s symbolic. While you’re physically opening your heart and releasing tension, it’s also an opportunity to opening your heart in a figurative sense.

Opening your heart is also one of the best ways to make the world a better place. I’ve written before that I think one of the most significant things we can do in life is to treat people well. I mean, why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we open our hearts to another person’s pain? Hear them? Listen? Put ourselves in their shoes?

Heart opening is a huge aspect of yoga. And I associate it with Jesus’s heart: open, ready to share love.

In Matthew 25:35 Jesus said:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Dr. Benjamin L. Corey said it well, “I think Jesus would turn away from the television and scratch his head in bewilderment. He’d then look over at us and say, “I thought that you guys would be the people who would always err on the side of radical hospitality for immigrants. I expected the culture to immediately associate the word “Christian” with the idea of immigrant love.”

Jesus was an immigrant who almost died. Matthew 2:16 reads, “King Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.” But Jesus survived because his parents took him across a border to a land where he was safe.

My heart is open to listening, to hearing people. My heart is also filled with compassion for refugees and immigrants. As a yoga instructor and a Christian, I feel compelled to advocate for mercy, generosity, and love.