This Heart iQ teaching begins by connecting the two primary life-force channels. We call these channels "The Great Polarities of Life".
Polarity is based on contrast. The bigger the potential difference between light and dark, the greater the force of energy that is 'pumped' through your energetic-emotional system. This is a way of describing something felt rather than measured, a model for working with sensation and attention. In Heart iQ we practice clearing, opening, widening and deepening these channels, so that more of this contrast can move through us without contracting or shutting down.
The vertical polarity
This is the polarity created between the contrast of the Essential Masculine and Sacred Feminine within ourselves. It is the sacred union of the Divine Father and Great Mother, a way of describing two qualities of energy that meet inside the body.
The Divine Father
The Divine Father represents your connection to the sky, to the heavens, to the realm of the absolute, to love, light, consciousness, wisdom and clarity. In this teaching, this quality of energy is described as moving from above, down through the crown, into the mind and towards the Heart. It is the Divine Essential Masculine, the still, clear, knowing quality.
The Great Mother
The Great Mother represents your connection to the earth, to nature, to the land, to the great cosmic womb, to the ancient and the sacred dark. This quality of energy is described as moving up from the ground, through the feet, into the base of the body and up into the Heart. It is spoken of here as creative, sexual life force, the Sacred Wild Feminine, the quality that generates and manifests.
The circuit between Heaven and Earth, between the Essential Masculine and Sacred Feminine, between Divine Father and Mother, creates a channel through which potential energy can flow vertically through the body. Working with this polarity in Heart iQ practice means learning to feel both ends of that channel at once, rather than favouring one over the other.
The horizontal polarity
This is the polarity created between the contrast of the Essential Masculine and Sacred Feminine with yourself and with others. It is described here as the sacred union between men and women, though in practice it refers to a dynamic that can be felt in any relationship where one person holds stillness and another moves.
When someone occupies the masculine pole in this dynamic, they are in witness to what moves in another, holding a space of unconditional love, support, acceptance and protection. This witnessing energy, infused with stillness, is in direct polarity to that which is being witnessed, which is everything else, the sacred feminine. All that moves, all that is, is spoken of as the feminine in this framework.
This contrast between movement and stillness, giving and receiving, observing and being observed, conscious witness and life force expression, is the Great Horizontal Polarity. Neither pole is fixed to a gender or a person. Anyone can occupy either pole at different moments, and part of the practice in Heart iQ is learning to recognise which pole you are in, and to move between them consciously rather than getting stuck in one.
Together, the vertical and horizontal polarities give a map for where energy moves in the body and between people. The vertical polarity is worked with internally, connecting what is above and below within yourself. The horizontal polarity is worked with relationally, connecting what moves in you to what witnesses in another, and back again. Clearing, opening, widening and deepening both channels is the ongoing practice this teaching points towards, not a state to arrive at once and be finished with.
The Two Great Polarities
Vertical Polarity
The union of Divine Father (stillness, clarity, connection to the heavens) and Great Mother (movement, life force, connection to the earth) within a person.
Horizontal Polarity
The dynamic between people where one holds witness and stillness (masculine pole) while the other moves and expresses (feminine pole).
