My song today is, ‘Rhythm of My Heart’. This rock song was written by Marc Jordan and John Capek, which Dutch rock and roll artist Rene Shuman included on his 1986 debut album ‘Rene Shuman’.
In 1991, Rod Stewart recorded the song for his album ‘Vagabond Heart’ and it was released as the album’s first single. Rod Stewart's version reached Number 3 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’, and Number 5 on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, and Number 1 on the Canadian and Irish charts. The melody is an adaptation of the ‘Loch Lomond’.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The shortest of all spoken sentences is capable of producing the faster of heartbeats in us, like hearing another tell us “Yes” or “No” to an engagement proposal, or “I love you”, or “ I’m having a baby”, or “I have cancer”, or “I am dying”. One’s heart can stop dead with extreme shock or great surprise. Indeed, the irregular rhythm of one’s heart, allied with a sharp pain in one’s left arm, are possible signs of an imminent heart attack, and yet, the presence of immense pleasure allied to irregular heart rhythm, when experienced by an unfit man in his sixties (as the pop star and singer Adam Faith discovered when he died whilst making love with a younger woman) can produce the same fatal end!
When one thinks about it, only a heartbeat separates life from death. I suppose that a person’s life is best measured in heartbeats of time rather than months and years. The heart is, on one side of the equation, the most important body organ we possess, and yet, despite humans having a greater intellectual capacity than all other creatures on earth, mankind can get into all manner of trouble following their heart instead of listening to what their head is telling them about some major decision they are about to make. And yet, there are times when we ought to follow our heart instead of our head, especially if it involves winning the love of a lifelong soulmate and against all logical odds.
There was never one occasion during my romantic teens when my heart did not skip a beat whenever ‘I fell in love’ with some bonny lass. While I was just as capable of being ‘turned on’ by a sexy woman the same as any other hot-blooded male of my time, it has always been a sassy young woman who could make my head turn and remain turned. I have always loved the boldness of a confident woman, especially in the 1960s, when too many young women were conditioned and persuaded to sell themselves short of what they deserved.
I lived in an era when girls were conditioned to consider themselves as being the ‘inferior sex’ to the boys. This was a time when schoolboys from all social classes and educational backgrounds grew into men, to live in a ‘man-made world’, designed by men, largely for the benefit of man, and which was ruled by men in all areas of the church, state, law, education, the workplace, and the home! This was a time of all-male clergy, male MPs, male judges, and male business owners. This was an age where the general ambition of a girl was to grow up to be a woman who some young man would want to marry ‘and make his own’. The extent of a girl’s ambitions (whether she came from a poor or a wealthy household) was to be a good wife, a good mother to any number of children her husband wanted, and to make a good home base for her children to be brought up in and her husband to come home to. Whatever their social background, artisan or aristocrat, the women would never aspire to more than second-class citizenship in relation to the men in their lives.
In ‘working class’ homes, any young woman who was not married at the age of 20 years risked being ‘left on the shelf’ and becoming an old maid. The men even devised the sinister-sounding noun of ‘spinster’ to describe such ‘suspicious’ women who did not marry. Married by 20, most young women would be mothers by 21 and have two or three snotty-nosed children tugging at their apron strings by the time they were 24-years-old. Even those young girls whose knowledge in the classroom was every bit as great as the boy pupils had been conditioned to set their sights lower. Whereas boys aspired to become doctors and surgeons, a clever girl would be content with the glass ceiling of being a nurse. Boys would aspire to become train drivers, while girls would dream of one day pushing their own pram with their child inside. Boys with a sense of adventure might want to become a ship’s Captain while girls were told to stay in the kitchen and not to ‘rock the boat’. In my youth, a boy would aspire to become a wagon driver and a girl would be content by being someone’s wife!
That is why, successful, beautiful, strongminded, independent women brimming with self-confidence always attracted my attention ever since my late teenage years. These were my heady romantic days. These were days when I knew why my heartbeat. It was always for a woman; my kind of women!
As a Probation Officer working in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire for 27 years between 1970 and the mid-1990s, I worked with many hundreds of people who lived stressful lives and who could not switch off and relax. I have practised ‘Relaxation Training’ methods since the age of 11 years, and I instructed Relaxation Training groups in a vast range of client and professional settings over the years. During my Relaxation sessions, I would take heart rate, blood pressure readings, and oxygenation levels of all group participants before and after a half-hour session of becoming relaxed. During all my years in this kind of work, I used the Chinese emphasis upon the importance of relating body balance, posture, muscle contraction and suppleness, and breathing pattern to the task at hand. All these aspects can affect body function in either a tense or relaxed way. Similarly, learning to reduce high heartbeats, lower high blood pressure, and deepen one’s shallow breathing pattern is not only healthier and life-enhancing but can also improve one’s efficiency and effectiveness of performance.
After my early retirement on the grounds of disability in my mid-fifties, despite having been a Relaxation Instructor for 25 years, I ignored my own health by continuing to be engaged in my numerous interests and charitable projects between 1990 and 2000. I worked so long and hard upon many projects of interest to me, that at the age of 60 years, I suffered two massive heart attacks during the same week. I was so busy listening to the needs of others that I did not take time to listen to my own heartbeat as I met one impossible deadline after another and accomplished another stressful task. Eventually, when my heart realised that I intended to ignore any warning signs it was sending out, it took its own action. My heart said “Enough is enough! If you won’t stop the harm that you are doing to me, then I will stop you dead in your tracks!” And it did. For four days after my second heart attack, I remained unconscious in ‘Leeds General Hospital’ with my family gathered around my death bed. The surgeon tried unsuccessfully to insert stents in my heart, and I was not expected ever to regain consciousness. I managed to live on, but with a much-reduced lung capacity of 80% maximum. Successive cancers from the age of 70 years onwards (four in total involving blood, skin, and anal) decreased my breathing capacity further and lowered the level of oxygen in my blood (my oxygenation level).
Then, after reading that singing practice can improve lung capacity and increase oxygenation levels, I engaged in 2 hours of singing practice daily at the age of 74. Within one year, my lung capacity and my oxygenation levels had improved 20%, and today they are at an average healthy level.
So, my message to all of you is to always listen to your heart. Listen to what it is telling you. Listen to the speed of its pulsation, and monitor its rate as a regular daily practice, particularly when you energise your body. There are three pieces of advice I offer you.
First, learn to relax and to breathe properly. There are different breathing patterns that are more suitable to different daily tasks.
Second, invest in a blood pressure kit, a thermometer, and a pulse oximeter. All three items can be bought off the internet for less than £60 in total. I take my medical stats four times daily and have done so for the past 8 years.
Thirdly, it is no good having a ‘big heart’ in your everyday life, if all you finish up with is either a broken heart or a non-functioning heart. Your heart will not be broken if you use it in conjunction with your head, and it will never cease functioning (before its natural age span) if you listen to it regularly and do not over-energise it when you are unfit because of some disability that prevents normal exercise. Regular monitoring of your heartbeat and pulsation rate enables you to become more aware of heartbeat irregularities before it stops you dead in your tracks. Listen to the rhythm of your heart!
Love and peace Bill xxx