Heart Chakra - Love

Heart – Love

The heart chakra (Anahata) is one of the most important chakras since it connects the bottom three chakras (associated with materiality) with the top three ones (associated with spirituality).

4th Chakra Symbol: 12-petal Green Flower and Two Triangles Within – The Union between Masculine and Feminine Forces. 

Location: Your heart chakra is in the middle of your chest at the centre, just above the heart.

Associated Themes & Emotions: Love, joy, and inner peace.

As the name suggests, this chakra can influence our ability to give and receive love—from others and ourselves. It of course represents, love, unconditional love, acceptance, compassion and intuitiveness forgiveness and trust.

The colour is green and the associated organs are the heart, the circulatory system, the arms and hands.

When you have a balanced heart chakra, you will be kind, loving and generous towards others. However, you will be hateful, fearful in your relationships and jealous when your heart chakra is wounded.

You can realign this chakra by focusing on the colours green and pink.

The symbol for the heart chakra is air, and you may feel more compassionate when you hear the musical note F. When you’ve aligned your heart chakra, your physical body nmay heal more quickly.

During the balancing process, you should spend time outdoors and eat a large number of green vegetables.  

Meaning & Function: love and nurturing.

Signs of Imbalance or blockage: love cannot flourish, feelings such as jealousy and envy are common and there is enormous resistanceto change.

Negative feeling: possessiveness.

Positive feeling: compassion, unconditional love, and peaceful harmony.

Typical conditions: heart attacks, chest infections, asthma, frozen shoulder, angina, ulcers.

Age of development: 12-15 years of age.

The Heart chakra needs more focus than the others in contemporary times. We are making the shift from the Age of Pisces to Aquarius, represented in the chakra system, by the move from solar plexus to heart. In other words taking our focus from personal power to open-hearted, inter-dependency. Moving from the love of power to the power of Love.

Love? In Sanskrit there are over 60 different words to describe the different faces of love. In the west we have only one that we use to describe our feelings about everything from hot buttered toast to God. The Love that is the true feeling of the Heart chakra is called unconditional love, which means that it is freely given without

any expectation of getting something in return. But charity begins at home and until we can begin to love ourselves, we can never truly love another. “Love they neighbour as thyself”, said Jesus. We remember the part about loving our neighbours, but somehow the last two words escape our attention. Perhaps that is because loving yourself conjures up images of preening in front of mirrors and strutting around saying, “I am the greatest”. Those postures belong to the ego and personality – they are not the attributes of Heart Love.

Perhaps we do not understand the meaning of unconditional love because we have never experienced it. Love was shown to us WHEN we behaved in a certain way, or IF we ate our lunch and stopped crying.

There are many current models of people demonstrating the true love of the heart: Mother Teresa or Mary Jane Seacole are just two, who worked in appalling conditions in India and in the Crimean War and wanted nothing for themselves in return; Nelson Mandela, who holds no bitterness from his long sojourn in prison, and the Dalai Lama, whose country and culture have been raped by China. Just think for a moment of the many ways we refer to our hearts – and we are not thinking about mechanical pump that moves blood around our bodies…

• Broken-hearted Home is
• where the heart is
• Getting to the heart of it
• Heart-felt feelings
• Harden your heart
• Heart and soul
• Big-hearted
• Warm-hearted
• Open-hearted
• Heart to heart

What are the qualities that we are referring to when we use the word ‘heart’ in this way? They are a different set of feelings from the ones that go on in the solar plexus, are they not? Mercy, compassion, tenderness, peace, joy, true love, sister and brotherhood are not feelings that are conditioned by the mind, but are feelings that come from the very heart of us. One of the most important aspects of Heart Love is non-judgement.

We have become adept at making judgement about ourselves and other people. While there is judgement, there is no Heart Love. We have no idea what goes on in another person’s skin. We have no idea what lessons they have come here to learn, or how early life experience has shaped a bully, rapist or murderer. That does not mean their behaviour has to be condoned; simply treated with the understanding that we are all part of the same whole, and that this whole includes shadows as well as light.

The heart understands this because it is the interface between Heaven and Earth. It is the chakra in the middle of the system. The three lower chakras are concerned with life on earth, and the three higher centres with their higher frequencies are more in touch with the realms above the physical plane.

The heart is the meeting ground for Heaven and Earth. Going back to the roots of religious beliefs we find the heart representing soul. The ancient Egyptians believed that in the afterlife, a person’s heart was weighed against the Feather of Truth. If your heart was found to be heavy and cluttered with attachments to physical existence, you would then have to return to have another go, to live another lifetime or as many as it took until the heart was filled with light.

It was their aim to think with their hearts and to feel with their minds, which led to a life that was focused on the heart’s wisdom rather than intellectual knowledge. This is the symbol used by the Sufi order – the winged heart – and it was also used by Jesus as a symbol of his teachings. We are not talking about ‘marshmallow’ love here, either. Sometimes there is a need for tough love – loving someone enough to do something that may cause pain initially, but will water their growth in the long run.

What stops us from opening our hearts to ourselves and to others? Fear? Fear of exposing our vulnerabilities, of being taken advantage of, of losing power, or appearing too soft? These, once again, are messages from the ego and solar plexus that do not understand that there is a strength to be found in admitting our weaknesses. We are all wounded in some way, after all. Heart Love is not like money. It is not a commodity. Too much spending will not result in bankruptcy. With love, the more you give, without expectation of receiving, the more you receive.

Our arms and hands are closely linked to our hearts. We talk about ‘being touched’ by someone’s kindness or ‘reaching out’ to give support. The arms and hands are an extension of the heart and we can express our heart-felt feelings towards another with just a gentle touch. We use our arms to hug and embrace, bringing ourselves together heart-to-heart.

When this center is out of balance, our bodies express their dis-ease with cardio-vascular problems (losing heart, hardening of the heart), disease of the immune system which include HIV, cancer, and ME (feeling fearful and unprotected), and allergies and hypersensitivity (feeling oversensitive and there lacking in courage).

Giving yourself some time – to relax, to meditate or just to sit – allows your system to move out of ‘red alert’. Your body, mind and soul receiving the message that you value yourself enough to disengage from the frantic whirl of daily life to pay attention to your own needs. This is loving yourself. Don’t do anything, just sit there! And while you are sitting there, perhaps you would like to ask your heart the following questions….

Questions for the heart

Think of someone you love or have loved… how would you describe the quality of your love for them? How does it FEEL?

Experience the feelings that come with the image What do you expect from them?

Are you able to tell someone you love them without being certain of their response?

Bring up an image of someone you do not like… can you see with the eye of your heart what it is they are here to teach you?

Is there someone, or some situation you would like to forgive and release?

What are your feelings about yourself? Are they judgements?

What makes your heart sing?

Take time to really think about each question, and write your responses, from the heart, in your journal.

Using your breathing to focus on the Heart Chakra, make this affirmation:

I feel compassion for myself and for all living beings. I am filled with Love.

The herbs that are associated with this Chakra are: Rose, Bergamot, Palamrose.

Crystals that are associated with this Chakra are: Jade, Aventurine, Moss Agate.

If you are ready to go a bit deeper into chakra work then here is the link to grab your meditation. There are obviously 7 to choose from or you can get all seven. the choice is yours.