Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. ~Zora Neale Hurston
Green chakra located in the region of the physical heart. Its Sanskrit name is anahata. The heart chakra is the center of your spirit as well as the center of the chakras, making it a vital energy center for our spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. It is associated with love, compassion, safety, trust, adventure, self-compassion, forgiveness, and relationships.
The Anāhata Chakra is one of the most beautiful and richest Chakras. Being located right in the centre of our Chakra System, The Heart Chakra balances out our emotions (the top level chakras) with being grounded (our foundation chakras).
Compassion, love, self-love, understanding and patience all come from this Chakra.
If the heart chakra becomes unbalanced, you may feel detached from the world around you. Each breath we take that connects us to our physical and spiritual world is enveloped by the heart chakra, and if unbalanced or blocked can lead to a disconnection from the people we love, love for ourselves, and love for the earth. Problems in relationships heighten and we tend to lose hope. We lose sight of beauty, love, empathy, and compassion.
We all know the feeling when our heart is broken. Similarly we know when our heart sings. These vibrations initiate in your Heart Chakra.
When balancing our Heart Chakra during our yoga practice, we are invited to listen to ourselves – our body, our own movement without comparing ourselves to the others in the room. Starting with loving ourselves really lays a foundation of love for everyone around you. Just like the oxygen mask rules – you have to take care of yourself first, before you can (able) to offer any help to your loved ones.
The most important and most beautiful quality of the Anāhata Chakra is BHAKTI. Bhakti means love and devotion. Love and devotion manifest as understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion and helpfulness. If all people developed these qualities there would be no further arguments or wars. (Bhakti Yoga – a devotional practice of surrendering yourself for a “cause” – a selfless act of support and love towards others.)
When your Heart Chakra is unbalanced:
- You tend to put the needs of others ahead of your own (which leads to constant burn-out)
- Clinginess in relationships
- Jealousy
- Chronic relationship failures / withdrawal from relationships
Balance Your Heart Chakra:
- Awakening the Heart Chakra means feeling more comfortable being loved. This week – pay attention to how you receive compliments. What is your first reaction? Do you graciously accept it, or feel uncomfortable and try to immediately reciprocate?
- Deep breathing and yogic pranayama exercises are essential for your Heart Chakra. Remember, this chakra’s symbolic element is air, and breath is the aspect of the air element you can control. So breathe.
- It’s believed the Heart Chakra is green. So surround yourself by the colour green, and its revitalizing energy. Go out play in the nature, eat green foods,
- Practice Bhakti Yoga – surrender, forgive, send love to your neighbour (who might have broken your heart). Float in the beautiful, warm, loving energy of your Heart Chakra – allow it to wash away all fears and old heart wounds.
- Move (of course!)
Love your Chakras? Want to share your knowledge and inspire others? Join us on Instagram!
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
- Follow us on Instagram – @YogaHiveCanada
- Tune in to our blog here every week, to read up about each week’s chakra, and the ways we are going to balance it through the week. Remember, practice makes it perfect – so we will practice together. One chakra at a time! (Connect on Facebook, too, so you don’t miss anything important!)
- Post at least one photo per chakra every week on Instagram, tag us (@YogaHiveCanada) and use hashtag
#SpinMyChakras. Each photo will get you an entry into the draw – the more photos you post, the more chances you get of winning (make sure to cover each chakra!).
Namaste!
Keep moving. Be… Love!