Eexercise from Irvin Yalom

An interesting exercise from Irvin Yalom — a wonderful American psychotherapist and psychiatrist, MD, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University; author of popular science and fiction. Will help you experience life in a deeper way.

There is one rather dramatic but useful exercise in existential therapy. The point is that existential psychotherapists believe that through the realization of the idea of death a person gives life meaning and value.

The exercise itself.

“For a few moments, distract yourself from what you are doing right now. Put your hand over your heart. Listen to your heartbeat. Feel its pounding through your rib cage. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. And so every second, 60 times a minute, 360 times an hour your heart is beating and you don’t realize it. Now focus all your attention on the way your heart beats, as if nothing else exists in the world. The heart is a muscle, it makes the blood circulate. But it is also a muscle that wears out over time. And at this very moment, it inexorably continues to wear out. Each of us is allotted a certain number of heartbeats, after which it stops forever.

Now think of all those beats you spend every minute, every day, every hour. Think of all those beats you are deprived of when you are bored or you waste time on entertainment, as if the number of beats of your heart were infinite. But it isn’t. Maybe there are one hundred of them left. Or a thousand. Or even a million. But still, the number is finite.

So now the question is, “What are you going to do with those precious strokes you have left?””.

If this issue really excites you, your heart is probably beating a little faster than usual right now. But that’s the point of the existential approach — death saves us by motivating us to live more fulfilling and engaged lives.

Have you done it?

P.S. If you haven’t read his books yet, it’s time to remedy the situation. Very easy to understand and explains deep and important things in a very easy to understand way.