Commit to be Fit: Our heart is more than an organ, it is the center of our emotional and spiritual well-being

February is Heart Awareness Month. Dr. Jonathan Fisher, a cardiologist and mindfulness teacher, explores heart health in his book, “Just One Heart: A Cardiologist’s Guide to Healing, Health, and Happiness.” He challenges us to see the heart as more than just an organ — it’s the center of our emotional and spiritual well-being.

“The heart regenerates new cells throughout life, embodying the potential for renewal and transformation within each of us,” he writes.

Fisher describes four dimensions of heart health — physical, emotional, social and spiritual — stressing that true well-being requires us to nurture all of them. He explains how emotions like gratitude, kindness, and love strengthen the heart, while chronic stress, loneliness, and fear can weaken it.

Reading “Just One Heart” reminded me of my Opa. He was the smartest man I knew despite having only an eighth-grade education. He loved big ideas, was endlessly curious, and never stopped learning. But his schooling was cut short by the Great Depression — he had to leave school to work on his family’s farm. I remember him telling me that the day his father said he could no longer go to school, he walked into the cornfield and cried.

My Opa’s life was marked by moments of great joy, deep grief and profound faith. He lost his sister to a terrible chronic illness in her 20s. His oldest son, Jim, was a stud athlete, playing both football and basketball at the University of Iowa, when he was tragically killed in a car accident the summer after his sophomore year. Later in life, he lost his father to suicide. Yet, through all his sorrow, he carried an unshakable belief in something greater. He followed what Fisher would call “heart-opening practices” — he prayed, practiced his faith traditions with his family and found strength in something beyond himself.

As a carpenter, Opa would sign every piece he made with his name, followed by John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."

Faith, like the heart, sustains us. Just as the heart pumps life, giving oxygen-rich blood throughout the body, one’s faith has the ability to provide the same life-enriching meaning and sustenance to life. Whatever your beliefs may be, grow in them, live in them, and let them sustain you.

In the final days of his life, when my Opa was drifting between this world and the next, he turned to my dad and my aunt, his eyes filled with excitement. ““We’ve got it made,” he exclaimed. ““Nothing is attached! All is one.”

He was clearly seeing something beyond what we could perceive in this physical world. In that moment, “we are all one” was no longer just an idea, but a truth he was experiencing. It was both profound and reassuring to witness. His words felt like a gift — a final confirmation that love, connection and spirit transcend the boundaries of life and death.

Fisher writes about the interconnectedness of our hearts — not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. Science supports this — our hearts don’t beat in isolation. Studies show that when we sit with someone we love, our heart beats sync. When we hold hands, our stress levels drop. We are divinely designed for connection.

My Opa’s telling us that “all is one” at the end of his life will always stick with me and my family and I’m grateful I get to share it with you. For me, the idea of “Just One Heart” is believing that love is eternal, our lives are part of something greater, and that our souls are never truly separate from God or from each other. Across spiritual traditions and even modern physics, there is the idea that nothing is truly separate. Like waves in the ocean, we are individual yet inseparable from the greater whole.

Faith teaches us that love does not end — no matter where we are — love flows through us and beyond us and we all beat to the rhythm of one mighty divine heart.

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Kylie Alger is a certified wellness coach and co-owner of the Well-Woman: Body, Mind & Spirit. Comments: kylie@thewellwoman.org.