Beginner’s Guide to Chakras: Part 4, Heart Chakra
What are Chakras?
Before I discuss the heart chakra, let me address chakras in general. Have you ever heard someone mention chakras but never really knew exactly what it meant? Well you’re not alone, many people find them esoteric and elusive, and unfortunately miss out on all the benefits of knowing about chakras and how they work. Chakra literally means wheel, and represents energy “wheels”, along the spinal column. Ultimately the 7 chakra system is a philosophy related to human consciousness, behavior, and enlightenment. Each chakra represents a wheelhouse of propelling life energy (also called pranayama), going in and coming out, focused on 7 different domains of human psyche and existence. Chakra philosophy originates back 4,000 years ago in India, and has been incorporated into many traditions and philosophies including yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, and most recently within western psychology. This blog series serves to give you a beginner’s guide to the 7 main chakras most widely acknowledged.
Chakra Four: The Heart Chakra, Anahata
OVERVIEW
The fourth chakra is called Anahata, or The Heart Chakra. This energy force is located in our chest, arms, and upper back.. Each chakra is represented by a color, and the fourth chakra’s color is yellow.
HEALTHY LOVE OR TOXIC PATTERNS
The basic right of the heart chakra is to love and be loved, according to chakra expert Anodea Judith. When this chakra is balanced it means we are owning this right in a way that enhances our knowledge of ourselves and honors our ability to love ourselves and others. Addressing issues like love, intimacy, compassion, and self-reflection all influence the balance of this heart chakra. Furthermore making an effort to truly process these issues is what separates people who experience healthy love from people that experience toxic patterns that sabotage their ability to have healthy love in their lives.
THE GREATEST LOVE AFFAIR
This chakra highlights the fact that the greatest love affair we will ever have is with ourselves. This is because the heart chakra is affected by our ability to love ourselves as a by product of receiving love. The initial experience of love for most people, is when they were a child with a parent or caregiver. Unfortunately if a child did not have a healthy love affair with any caregiver (i.e. physical, mental, emotional abuse, neglect, complex trauma, or loss), it will affect their ability to love and be loved for the rest of their lives, unless they are able to do the conscious work to fix their toxic patterns of unhealthy love. However, when a child does receive healthy love and security from at least one caregiver, they experience transforming intimacy. As adults when we enter into a loving relationship where intimacy arises, it exposes our shadows, flaws, and darkest parts of ourselves to our loved ones. The transformation happens when these shadows are brought to the light and our partners are able to accept us just as we are. In doing so this type of intimacy propels us to integrate our own shadows into our perception of ourselves. Intimate and accepting love is like our partners are holding up a mirror and being able to see ourselves in new ways. This self-reflection allows you to love yourself in ways that you could never experience without that mirror.
Fortunately for those of us that didn’t have the perfect first experiences with love either with our parents or first relationships, there are other routes to self-love that also allows for self reflection and the ability to experience healthy love. In the section “Balancing the Chakras” below, I describe helpful ways to balance this chakra and make sure your life is filled with healthy love and NOT toxic patterns!
LIVE IN YOUR TRUTH
The Heart Chakra allows us to examine our relationship to self-love, love, and intimacy. Balancing this chakra will help you harness your ability to attract an abundance of flourishing love. Flourishing because it allows for the fluctuations of devotion and closeness that happens in love, but continues to grow with a dedication to consciousness and reflection.
Each wheel can either live in balance or imbalance, and this is reflected by our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and traumas related to each chakra’s wheelhouse. Take a look at how our lives are affected when the Heart Chakra’s energy is in balance (meaning the energy going into the wheel is balanced by what is coming out) versus when it is imbalanced.
Balancing the Chakras
If you find that you identify with some of the qualities of the third chakra when it is imbalanced here are some things you can do to bring balance to this chakra:
Meditation:
- Try guided meditations focused on loving kindness
- One example is to envision someone you love and imagine them sending you warm and abundant love as you them.
- Then after a while imagine sending that love right back to them.
- Then do this same thing with someone that is an acquaintance and then someone that is a stranger. Finally end the meditation refocusing on the initial loved one.
- Set an intention for your meditation to expand your ability to love in ways that honors your true self.
Yoga Poses:
Psychotherapy:
- Work with your therapist processing your initial experiences of love with an intention of understanding how you learned what love is and a willingness to address possible factors that do not serve you anymore
- Processing trauma to the Heart chakra such as issues of grief, loss, co-dependency, or betrayal.
- Furthermore working with a therapist on co-dependency issues can help balance this chakra as well
*** I offer an 8 week Mindfulness Based Therapy Program that addresses such issues, click here for more information ***
– Tiffany is a holistic psychotherapist providing counseling in Woodland Hills (West Valley). She specializes in women’s empowerment related to self-esteem, self-confidence, and relationship issues. Her writing, public speaking, and teaching endeavors are dedicated to helping others elevate consciousness and well-being. Find out more about Tiffany by clicking here
