Eternal feminine wisdom synchronizes the human heartbeat with the heartbeat of the universe. The Dalai Lama famously proclaimed that Western Women can save the world. But many modern women are painfully dissociated from Sophia, their inner spring of feminine wisdom and the primal source of their power and nurturance.
Western women from around the globe have deep archetypal roots that have lain dormant after millennia of patriarchal control. Sophia awaits collective rebirth and her portal for rebirth is through the heart.
Sophia, who the ancient Greeks regarded as the goddess of wisdom, represents a threshold through which we can access the deep reserves of archetypal wisdom veiled within our hearts.
“The eternal feminine hithers us on” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust II
To reveal this wisdom, we must open ourselves to methods beyond logos, the masculine principle of logic and structure that underlies the scientific approaches characteristic of our “enlightened” age.
Paradoxically, as we begin to lift Sophia’s veil, we encounter scientific profundity, proving that masculine and feminine are not fundamentally at odds. Sophia does not replace logos but instead offers a balancing perspective, a wisdom beyond sense perceptions.
Praise for Unveiling Sophia
“Taylor’s Sophia is truly a book to be read by medics and psychotherapists as well as anybody with a heart condition. It offers a competent, intelligent, sensitive passage through the quarrels of our time by addressing the complexities of the multiple forms of connection between body and soul that is responsible for heart coherence.
Taylor draws upon a wealth of scholarship and clinical experience to capture the essence of what heals, and what kills the human heart. She captures the transcendent dimension that has never been explored with such thought-provoking arguments and elegant style.
After reading this book, the healer as well as the patient will understand why the actual emphasis on diet, medicine, exercise, is radically insufficient to grasp why some hearts heal and some don’t. As many many wisdom traditions have repeatedly taught, the heart has intelligence unknown to the brain; it is urgent that we learn from it.”
-Ginette Paris, Ph.D. author of Depth Psychology after Neuroscience (Routledge).
Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Why I Wrote This Book
- Why We Need Sophia Now
- Heart Rate Coherence: The Bridge between Logos and Sophia
- SECTION ONE: THE PHYSICAL HEART
- Chapter One: Coming to Understand the Heart
- Pre-Enlightenment Ideas About the Heart’s Structure and Function
- Harvey and the Enlightenment
- Emerging Paradigms
- Experiential Practice: “Cardiac Dance: The Spirals of Life”
- Chapter Two: The Beating Heart
- The Heartbeat
- The Electromagnetic Field
- The Neurological System
- Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems
- The All-Important Vagus Nerve and the Polyvagal Theory
- Heart–Brain Communication
- Chapter Three: Heart Rhythm Coherence
- The Coherent Heart
- Heart Rate Variability: An Underutilized Biomarker
- A Dynamic Window into the Autonomic Nervous System
- Experiential Practice: Heartbeat Awareness Meditation
- SECTION TWO: DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HEART
- Chapter Four: Depth Psychology
- Jung and Archetypes
- Archetypal Heart Coherence
- The Serpentine Sine Wave to Individuation
- Temple of the Heart
- The Role of Emotions, Psychological States, and the Coherent Heart
- Experiential Practice: Ocean Breath Meditation, Ujjayi Pranayam
- Chapter Five: Descent to the Underworld
- Depression: The Dark Side of Low Heart Coherence
- Jung’s Heart Attack Visions: Image and Individuation
- Experiential Practice: The Rainmaker Story, Expanding the Rings of Coherence
- Anne’s Story
- SECTION THREE: THE ARCHETYPAL HEART
- Chapter Six: Archetypes and Patterns
- What Is an Archetype?
- Number: The Archetype of Order
- Sine Wave Patterns in Nature
- Chapter Seven: Spiral Archetypes, Spiral Universe
- The Archetypal Spiral
- The Sacred Snake
- Experiential Practice: Activating the Archetypal Imagination: Tantric Yantra Meditation Ritual
- SECTION FOUR: SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS AND THE HEART
- Chapter Eight: Taoism and Heart Coherence
- The I Ching as a Model of Human-Cosmological Coherence
- The Transcendent Function
- Experiential Practice: Transcendent Function: The Reconciliation of the Opposites
- Chapter Nine: Kundalini Yoga: The Science of the Soul and Path to High Heart Coherence
- The Holy Bone and the Chakras
- The Autonomic Nervous System and Kundalini Yoga
- Jung and Kundalini, and the Feminine Voice of Individuation
- Experiential Practice: Twin Serpents Breathing
- Chapter Ten: The Wisdom of the Heart in Other Traditions
- The Wisdom of the Heart in Sufism
- Archetypal Psychology and ‘Cor’ Values
- Experiential Practice: Christian Contemplative Centering Prayer
- SECTION FIVE: THE COSMIC HEART OF SOPHIA
- Chapter Eleven: The Feminine and the Heart
- The Many Faces of Sophia
- Unveiling Sophia
- Sophia and Coherence
- HRV as a Tool for Unveiling Sophia
- Experiential Practice: Lectio Divina: The Ancient Practice of Sacred Reading
- Experiential Practice: Use the excerpt below or select one of your own choosing
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- APPENDIX A: CASE STUDIES
- Roland’s Post-Heart Surgery Experience
- Case Study: Lillian and the Emergence of the Divine Feminine
- Lillian’s Dream Visions (Autumn of 2016)
- Images of Transformation: The Feminine Side of Individuation