Prerequisites to fully understand this post: Knowing what chakras are, please read the blog The 7 chakras first if you are new to the argument.
Name: Heart
Sanskrit: Anahata
Element: Air
Energy type: Affective energy
Sound: The mantra is VAM, musical note RE or D
Symbolic animal: Dove
Metal: Silver
Colour: Green. Complementary colour: pink.
Endorchine gland: Thymus
Phrases and keywords: "I love". Love, affection, friendship. Sharing. Charity, compassion, forgiveness. Power of healing. The hinge of passage between the physical and spiritual planes, it is connected to all the other chakras.
Linked physical organs: Heart. Lungs, bronchi, the deepest part of the trachea. Chest, the upper part of the back. Arms, hands. Mitral valve. The chakra also controls blood pressure.
Physical correlations: Cardiocirculatory disorders, cardiac arrhythmias. Angina pectoris, coronary problems. Hyper and hypotension. Asthma. Respiratory pathologies (also check the fifth chakra). Joint pains in the arms and hands. Disorders of the thymus.
Psycho-emotional correlation: Affective sorrows, "broken heart". Feeling that the world is hostile, and lacks trust in others. Inability to forgive. Envy, jealousy, hate. Lack of generosity and compassion.
Body positioning: Front chakra: heart height in the centre of the chest. Posterior chakra between the shoulder blades.
Front aspect: The fourth anterior chakra gives us information on how the subject loves, for example, his greater or lesser ability to offer unconditional love not only to other people but also to animals, nature, the world, and life. Furthermore, the good functioning of the chakra denotes an attitude of compassion and forgiveness. If the chakra is disharmonious we will have difficulty loving without expecting anything in return and we will find it burdensome to appreciate our fellow men in their entirety since we will tend to consider in the first place the defects and not the positive sides of other people. Problems in social relationships, friendships, and two-person relationships are similarly attributable to disharmonies of Anahata chakra. For a therapist, it is important that the fourth vortex is strong, as it is connected with the healing power: the energies transformed by the first 3 energy centres go up the current in a vertical direction and pass into the heart chakra before leaving the hands or eyes of the therapist. In this way, earthly energies are transformed into spiritual energies and vice versa.
Posterior aspect: The posterior aspect of the fourth vortex is also related to healing. In particular, it controls the love for oneself and for one's body, the will to keep oneself healthy and in shape: it is through love and respect for one's individuality that one is able to give love to others. This chakra is then appointed to receive the love that others give us; it connects to the attainment of one's vocation, to the purpose of each of us in life, and to the desires that we would most like to fulfil. In the case of heart problems and circulation disorders, it is good to treat both the anterior and posterior chakras. Often also the constraints of an emotional nature, the various types of abuse that the subject may have suffered, and sentimental sorrows respond to the posterior aspect of the fourth chakra
Crystals: Fire agates, copal, chrysocolla, chrysoprase, heliotrope, pyrope garnet, kunzite, malachite, sunstone, hyaline quartz with black tourmaline, rose quartz, rhodochrosite, rhodonite, ruby, black tourmaline, green tourmaline, green aventurine, unakite
Essential Oils: Bergamot, cypress, lavender, marjoram, myrtle, rose.
Bach flowers: Cerato, cherry plum, crab apple, Elm, Gentian, Holly, Mimulus, Olive, Pine, Red Chestnut, Rock Rose, Rock Water, Scleranthus, Star of Bethlehem, Vine, Water Violet, White chestnut, Willow.
The Anahata - Heart Chakra is your centre chakra, it's located right in the centre of your chest essentially directly over your heart. The heart chakra is associated with the colour green and is also associated with the air element.
The heart chakra governs the heart, the circulatory system, emotional regulation, the lungs, shoulders, arms and hands, breast and lymph system, beginning with the thymus gland. A little-known fact is that our brains are governed by our heart, it is our heart that gives messages to the brain and the brain then obeys those messages, this is why the hurt of mental illness is in fact an emotional hurt. Anytime you see an issue with these aspects of the body you can be sure the heart chakra is out of alignment.
The traditional name for the heart chakra is Anahata, in Sanskrit, roughly translated, this means unhurt. That's an interesting thing to keep in mind because it gives you some key insight into the heart chakra. All chakras in the body are essentially doorways to non-physical consciousness, they are doorways to the spiritual dimensions. However your heart chakra is the centre point between your physical chakras and your spiritual chakras, so we can see the heart chakra as the unifier between spirit and body. The heart is the first organ to manifest physically in a fetus for the same reason. You can think of the heart chakra as the central power point generator of love, love is the central theme of the heart chakra. This is why it is seen as the chakra most associated with healing because vibrationally speaking the frequency of love is the highest healing frequency of all. It is also the chakra that is associated with compassion, forgiveness, emotional safety, the absence of fear, gratitude, hope, trust, generosity, joy, altruism, kindness, and connection. Because it is the unifying chakra, it is the one with the capacity to bring you into integration and therefore homeless. Our heart chakra maintains the truth that we are connected to all that is, we can never be alone because we are an integral part of the web that connects and makes up the entire universe.
What causes this chakra to go out of alignment?
It is hurt that occurs in conjunction with your connection to other people, relationships hurt. This is why I find it fascinating on the outer the Sanskrit name for heart chakra translates to unhurt, because unhurt, invincible, is essentially how we feel when the heart chakra is fully open but conversely it is hurt that causes it to close. Both negative and positive emotional states that apply to our relationships with other people are governed by the heart chakra. Around your heart is a membrane, we can think of it as a bit of a sack, that also has fluid inside of it, and this contains the heart, which is called the pericardium. The best way to imagine the pericardium is to think of it a bit like a gestational sack in the womb, it both protects and nurtures your heart, it's an amniotic part sack. But the emotional energy that you feel, especially chronically, affects this pericardium, especially the fluid within the sack or takes on the same vibration as the emotions that it is most closely inundated with. This is a good thing if the emotional energy you feel is a positive emotion but represents problems if the emotion you feel is a painful one, this is especially the case with grief.
The pericardium is an inborn wall that protects your heart but it does so naturally in a way that allows love to come in and also loves to flow out. However, what do we see when we encounter emotional entry in life? We see the pericardium, on a non-physical level the heart wall, strengthening. So when you encounter somebody and you feel like they have an emotional wall, this is a fact that you're feeling, it's the fact that when somebody's hurt they decide to armour that wall that is around the heart space and as a result of that armouring love doesn't come in and it doesn't go out. The painful emotions associated with the hurt that you experience become trapped inside the heart wall, they strengthen the heart wall and love cannot flow. There is one thing that we need to get out of the way completely before we see how to open the heart chakra, it's this idea of balancing your chakras, it's not going to work. See a lot of people in the spiritual field and self-help field, approach spirituality from the concept that we need to find balance, and to do that we need to limit aspects and then exaggerate other aspects of our life to find some kind of equilibrium. This is the attempt to find equilibrium through control. An adjunct to this idea of controlling balance through finding equilibrium or creating it somehow, a super abstract concept, is the idea that it's possible for a chakra to be too closed or too open, this could not be further from the truth. You will hear all kinds of theories going around relative to the heart chakra, such that if the heart chakra is too open you'll experience weak boundaries and co-dependent relationships through missing logic, which couldn't be further from the truth. When all of your chakras are completely open you experienced natural equilibrium because non-physical spiritual energy, the energy of your higher self, it's flowing fully into the physical dimension. As a place for co-dependent relationships and weak boundaries, those are in fact imbalances that apply much more to your sacral chakra and to your solar plexus chakra but both are the results of closed chakras, not open ones. Co-dependent relationships are not relationships that occur between people with open-heart chakras, the opposite is in fact true. The co-dependent relationship, on both the behalf of the narcissist and the co-dependent, is in fact the result of closed heart chakras, it's a transactional relationship, which has to do with meeting needs in ways that are dysfunctional. it's about meeting needs therefore it has nothing to do with love. To the untrained eye, a co-dependent relationship looks like a relationship between an abuser and the victim. Of course, this is our tendency, as a social species, to see somebody as a victim and as the underdog, unless the good guy. What we don't understand is that the co-dependent is in fact getting something out of the relationship which is why they can't live. In other words, there are more sinister motives at hand for the co-dependent and so does a tendency in conjunction with this need to see the co-dependence as the victim, innocent and good, therefore. There's a tendency to assign this kind of idea that they are too loving and that's why we think that they have a too-open heart chakra when it is not the case. Just like the perpetrator the victim also has a closed centre of love.
So what does all this mean? It means contrary to all the warnings you may receive, don't have any fear about opening your chakras
How to re-open/re-align your heart chakra
What's in the way?
We have to become aware of what is preventing our heart chakra from opening. What's in the way? Intuitively, what emotions do you think you're struggling with that are keeping your heart closed? Have you been hurt in the past or recently? What emotional memories are unhealed? What do you feel in response to the word relationship? Nothing affects the heart chakra quite like grief, it is in fact the cardinal emotional bondage that we're dealing with when we're working with a closed heart chakra. So be sure to look into what is still causing you grief. When we are in a situation where we are dealing with grief we have to perceive ourselves as losing love, in this situation we say we're heartbroken.
Be open with your emotions
Repression of emotion is the undoing of the heart chakra. What we have to do is to become aware of our feelings, express our feelings, and then allow them to go instead of clinging to them.
Self-love
The heart chakra is the chakra that is thrown out of alignment most especially because of our painful relationships with people. But who are we in our primary relationship with? Our self! An often overlooks fact is that lack of self-love affects our heart chakra immensely and causes it to close down. If you're struggling with self-hate, what essentially is happening, is you were putting your heart in the kind of prison where the jailkeeper, which is you, beats it up every day. Self-love is the only solution to this.
Manifest!
Many dimensions, outside this particular reality, do not have a time-space aspect to them. What that means is thoughts instantaneously manifest! It means if you think "heart chakra open" the heart chakra opens! The chakra system influences the physical but as a multidimensional aspect of you, which is why they are invisible to most people. It means if you think of your heart chakra opening and visualizes it opening it opens. The visualization that I see working the best with people is when people put their hands over their heart area and they imagine while breathing in and breathing out of this area, that there is a kind of vortex of emerald energy and if they take their hands and move them clockwise imagining that by doing so they're opening their heart chakra to about a foot wide, with the help of their hands. Then let the hands completely open towards the sky, imagining this heart space both sucking in energy from the world and also giving energy to the world.
Become intimate with your heart wall and see if you can talk it into coming down
Imagine your heart wall, if it was made of something, what would it be made of? The answer could be granite glass or wood for example. Feelings to the reason that this heart wall is there and see if you can intuitively feel what caused it to be there. Then ask your heart what it needs in order to be able to let go of that heart wall. Now, this is imperative, don't try to tear down the heart wall, if you approach a heart wall with an attitude of "I'm going to get into you", of course, the reaction of the heart wall is going to be to strengthen harder. Why? Because it's going to perceive you as a threat, is there to protect you remember. So what I want you to do, is to try to convince the heart wall that there is no longer a need for it to be there, if you manage to get to the point where the heart chakra is willing to release this heart wall, imagine the heart wall being lovingly dissolved or release in whatever way feels best to you.
Stimulate the heart chakra with sounds
You can find binaural beats specifically designed for the heart chakra online, you can listen to the sound of singing bowls that are specifically designed for the heart chakra, or conversely, you can take the traditional approach and simply make your own sounds. Traditionally the sound that is associated with the heart chakra and stimulated the most is "YAM". It should feel like it's causing it to buzz, make sure that you play with the tonality of the sound because some people need a higher note and some people need a lower note. Traditionally the B note is the one that resonates with the heart.
Surround yourself with the colour green and pink
Wear this colour, surround yourself with this colour, decorate stuff with it, and eat things that are that colour!
Eat green leafy vegetables
These are the foods that vibrate the most closely with the heart chakra and do cause it to come the most into alignment. Eat things like kale, spinach, lettuce, dandelion greens, cabbage, charred, broccoli, and collard greens. Also include green tea, basil, sage, thyme, cilantro, and parsley.
Essential oils
You can use essential oils to help stimulate and open your heart chakra. Use rose, melissa, neroli, marjoram, chamomile, yarrow, and eucalyptus. Using these oils in conjunction with placing something warm over your heart area, like a warm water bottle, works the best.
Gemstones and Crystals
Use Crystals like Tourmaline, especially Green Tourmaline, Watermelon Tourmaline, Pink Tourmaline, Aventurine, Green Cayanite, Chrysoprase, Rhodonite, Rose Quartz, Malachite, Emerald and Jade (crystals in the picture below follow the same order as listed).
Movements
Move your body in ways that open the chest up to the world and to the Universe at large and to other people. The traditions of yoga can suggest many poses to do which are set out to accomplish this thing. Think really seriously about doing these kinds of movements in the outdoor setting because nature, especially places with the breeze coming through it is especially nourishing to the heart chakra
Practice living from the heart and also speaking from the heart
Criticism closes off your heart chakra so fast that is a really good idea to be aware of the aspect of you that feels negative towards the world and so negatively appraisals the world. I want you to imagine loving or caressing or holding this aspect of you as opposed to trying to condemn it and force yourself not to be credible. When you speak I want you to imagine speaking from the heart. So when we think about a thought that we were about to say, we can feel it generally around the head area, that's why when you ask people what they are thinking, they naturally look up. I want you to imagine bringing these thoughts down through your throat to the heart space and then when you're about to talk them, imagine bringing those same words up your throat and out your mouth so that even though they are coming out of your mouth, they are in fact filter or generated through your heart space.
Emotions
Deliberately think thoughts, say things, take actions and seek out experiences that cause you to feel any of the emotional states that are associated with the heart chakra. For example, think thoughts, take actions and seek out experiences that cause you to feel love, compassion, emotional safety, the absence of fear, gratitude, hope, trust, forgiveness, generosity, joy, altruism, kindness, and connection. Any experience that causes you to feel these emotional states will bring your heart chakra into alignment. So for example start a gratitude journal, take some actions that show somebody else in your life that you love them, do random acts of kindness, and initiate a gathering with like-hearted people. It's critical when you're trying to open the heart chakra, to begin connecting with other people. If we have experienced trauma in conjunction with relationships, how are we going to heal that trauma? In conjunction with relationships! We have to have a different experience, instead of a traumatic experience with connection, we have to have a positive experience with the connection.
Practice Meta
Either once a week or every day depending on how brave you feel. To practice Meta, you begin to like you would have any meditation and you imagine that your breath is coming and going for your heart. After a while, you see whether there are any intentions or words that are generated from the heart space towards yourself. Things like "may I experience peace", and "may I experience a feeling of joy of wanting to be here" for example. You feel that and keep experiencing those generated beliefs or those generated intentions, or thoughts, of kindness and well-being towards yourself for as long as it takes for you to feel a bit of relief, and then, you extended a bit further, perhaps you extended to somebody in your life, like your son or daughter. "I hope that they feel well-being", "may they feel peace", "may they feel connectedness" and when you have done that you extend it a bit further, maybe to an aspect of the human race or maybe to the world at large, you just keep expanding and expanding it, so you can imagine yourself at the centre of a ripple in the lake. Almost like when you drop a stone, you see those concentric circles eventually going out until they take over the totality of the body of water that you're in. It is an option not to just do this with people, you can also do this with anything in existence. You could do it with animals, you could do it with plant life, you could do it with all that is. The point is that you are making yourself the epicentre of the generation of love.
The bottom line is that your heart chakra is the centre of love, anything you do that causes you to feel love towards yourself, or towards other people is going to cause your heart chakra to open. By intentionally doing things that will cause your heart chakra to come into alignment it does open it to become a channel from non-physical consciousnesses to a physical embodiment. You will be setting yourself up to live a life in harmony with the rest of the world, and all relationships that you have or will ever benefit from by you doing so.
But the relationship that will benefit you the most is your relationship with yourself!
Light and Love
Reiki Master Stefano