Drew Heriot Discovered the Power of His Heart
DIRK TERPSTRA: Why do you think it’s so hard for us to live more from the heart?
DREW HERIOT: First of all, because we just don’t pay much attention to it. The simple act of shifting our awareness to our heart, allows us to start to feel its presence more and tune in and
receive all kinds of guidance and wisdom from our hearts. So, simple awareness is the first thing, but I feel the heart is our very own nature—highly creative, highly explorative and a bit rambunctious. It’s always on the edge of our next evolution. When you have that extraordinary experience, along comes the next burst of growth and the heart is right there, at the new edge. That’s why I think it’s perpetually fascinating, and heart has been at the center of all spiritual and religious traditions throughout the ages.
DIRK TERPSTRA: Earlier you mentioned that you walked the Camino in Spain. Are you willing to share with me why you took on this adventure?
DREW HERIOT: I was twenty-one at the time, and I had always wanted to make my first film by the time I was twenty-one. I really did my very best but didn’t quite make it. And so I thought it was time to reflect and redirect. And so I cooked up the most extraordinary, global adventure that I could. I thought: “What would be the strangest place on earth to go?”. I thought the Middle East would be the most different, and so I went through Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey.
Through all these very foreign lands and that was amazing. I finished with this walk through Spain; I heard others had walked. Paulo Coelho, who is also in the Power of the Heart, has walked the Camino as well. I just went along, with a backpack and a toothbrush, and started walking. I didn’t know what to expect, and it all crept up on me. It was really just a gradual, and quite a sudden opening of my heart. It felt like this warm breeze. And this is the thing, people often talk about love, and they talk about the heart as if they’re concepts, and that shows just how far we are from the experience of those things. They are not concepts. They are living, breathing experiences. And that’s what the Camino taught me. I had the living, breathing experience of all this on that walk. It left a lasting expression that I wanted to capture in some way and in all of my work.
DIRK TERPSTRA: What personally touched you the most when making this film?
DREW HERIOT: I made the film in Amsterdam, in your home country, and although that might seem very ordinary to you, that city left really a lasting impact on me. In so many ways, Amsterdam represents so many ideals I hold for what cities in the world can be like.
I was traveling around by foot or on a bike. The people there are so direct, and they are so honest and so progressive as well. It’s such a progressive country. As soon as I stood on the streets of Amsterdam, my heart just exploded.
But actually, the entire experience of making The Power of the Heart was extraordinary for me—more so than any particular moment. It was because of Amsterdam, but there was also a tremendous flow in the project as well. I just had five months to make that film, and that’s very short. It would normally be something like a year. But it was just extraordinary how the right stories showed up at the right time.
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