Heart Chakra (Anahata)

Color: Green

Position: Heart Area

Focus: “I Love” and “Love Is Divine Power”

Crystals: rose quartz, diamond, peridot, aventurine

Rights: to love and be loved

Developmental Stage: 4 to 7 years

Demon: grief

Key Words: love, relationships, compassion

Connections: 

1. Chakra of Emotional Power (Eastern religion): lessons related to love, forgiveness, and compassion
2. Sacrament of Marriage (Christianity): to receive or bestow a blessing for union with oneself, symbolizing the need to love yourself in order to be able to fully love another
3. Sefirah of Tif’eret (Kabbalah): the energy of compassion, harmony, and beauty

Issues: love, balance, self-love, relationship, intimacy, anima/animus, devotion, reaching out and taking in, hope and trust, forgiveness and compassion

Excess: The chakra will have a lot of energy outward with not much coming in. This causes a reaching out to others in the same excessive manner.

• SIGNS: codependency, poor boundaries, demanding, clinging, jealousy, overly sacrificing

Deficiency: The chakra will have rigid boundaries, resulting in inability for the energy within to get out and the energy outside to get in. This causes isolation.

• SIGNS: antisocial, withdrawn, cold, critical, judgemental, intolerant of self or others, loneliness, isolation, depression, fear of intimacy, fear of relationships, lack of empathy, narcissism

Balance: compassionate, loving, empathetic, self-loving, altruistic, peaceful, balanced, good immune system

Physical Effects: disorders of the heart, lungs, thymus, beats, arms, shortness of breath, sunken chest, circulation problems, immune system deficiency, tension between shoulder blades, pain in chest

• SPECIFIC: asthma, congestive heart failure, heart attack, mitral valve prolapse, cardiomegaly, lung cancer, pneumonia, breast cancer

Healings & Meditations: breathing exercises, pranayama, work with arms, reaching out/taking in, journaling, self-discovery, psychotherapy (examine assumptions about relationships, emotional release of grief, forgiveness when appropriate, inner child work, codependency work, self-acceptance, anima-animus integration)

1. Heal & Empower Your Heart - Click here for steps to healing past wounds and empowering your heart.
2. Visualize a green, crescent moon across your upper chest - Imagine a green, crescent moon that stretches across your entire chest. Intensify this colour and shape. As you intensify the colour, feel love and compassion filling it. Visualize yourself in a nature scene where you feel protected and loved. Let nature bring you healing and peace. Know that, within your heart, you always have access to that eternal light that brings you love, protection and healing.
3. Self-Acceptance & Wholeness: The Inner Family - This exercise is meant to help with accepting each part of yourself and to help build connections within yourself to form a whole. Start by making a list of various aspects/parts of yourself (ex. the ambitious one). Next to each name, write a few words that describe how you perceive this part of yourself. For example, the ambitious one might be driven, willful, or direct. Next, write down what you think each part wants. The ambitious one might want to constantly succeed or get what it wants. How realistic are these parts desires? Do they always succeed in getting what they want? Now start looking at who relates to who, what parts relate to others. Identify which parts need to work on their relationship with one another and create a dialog between them until a resolution occurs.
4. Opening Up Love Using Breath Work - This exercise is best done with a partner. Lay down with your legs bent so that your feet are on the floor. Make sure your chest is open and not hunched or rounded forward as this constricts the heart chakra. Have your partner take note on your breathing pattern. Have them point out to you, either through touch or words, various parts of your body that aren’t expanding or contracting with your breath. As your partner points each out to you, bring awareness to each part of the body and fill it with your breath. Next, extend your arms outward with each exhalation and pull them into your chest with each inhalation. Keep these motions slow and conscious. When you pull in, think about what you are reaching for in regards to love. When you reach out, imagine what you are letting go of or what you are offering. Have your partner take note of any hesitations in your actions of reaching and pulling and have your partner bring them to your awareness. Lastly, have your partner hold your hands. Continue your reaching and pulling, but with your partner offering resistance. Through resistance, your energy flow increases and opens up blocked feelings. Have your partner observe and offer feedback on what they observe.
5. Forgiveness - Start by forgiving yourself. Identify all areas in your life that you have not forgiven yourself for. Replay the situations and observe any feelings that arise that you have not yet dealt with or didn’t have time to deal with at the time. Try to come up with an understanding for why you did what you did. Figure out which part of yourself was activated at that time (ex. the quiet one, the ambitious one). Imagine how you would react if another were to act in the same way you did. Would you judge them as harshly as you did yourself, or more? What expectations were put upon you in that situation? Were these expectations just? Be compassionate to the part of you that was activated in this situation. Look at what it was trying to find or accomplish, what is needed. Try and offer it forgiveness. Next, follow the same steps that you used to forgive yourself to forgive others. Forgiveness releases the past and pulls you back to the present by softening and opening up the heart.
6. Come Closer, Go Away - This exercise requires a partner, specifically one you have a relationship with (romantic or any other form). Sit in front of your partner with your hands meeting each other halfway at heart centre. Have you partner pull your hands to his heart while saying, “Come closer.” Offer some resistance, not enough to stop the pull, but enough that requires effort. Next, have your partner push your hands away from his heart while saying, “Go away.” Again, offer some resistance. Repeat these actions until your partner realizes a domination in one of the actions. The dominating action tends to relate to what the person wants more of in the relationship. Now switch places and do the same. Discuss with your partner both of your observations and see how they relate to your current relationship.