If you are familiar with chakras, then you can tell from my logo that I love chakras. The rainbow-colored spheres within my logo are representative of the chakra system within the body.
If you are unfamiliar, here’s a quick lesson: There are seven energy centers called chakras (literally “wheels”) that store energy/life force/prana. They are along the spinal column and correlate to major nerve ganglia branching forth from the spinal column. Each has a different relationship to a gland in the body’s endocrine system. Each stimulates different organs and systems in the body. Hatha Yoga activates these energy centers releasing the energy that flows through the spine. Yoga helps these energy centers/nerve bundles to function correctly clearing blocks that may be there. Each chakra also is associated with a mental/emotional focus. In each newsletter I’ll highlight how you can work with a particular chakra to correspond with the season. With this newsletter, I’m adding dosha/body type to the Chakrascope. If you’re interested in learning more about how to stoke your Inner Resilience, see my workshop of the same name. And if you want to figure out what dosha type you might be, click here.
The yoga pose I highlighted when this section first appeared in my January 2012 newsletter was on bridge pose which stimulates the heart chakra. January is a time of new beginnings as we listen to our heart. February focuses on Valentines day with a different “heart” focus. We look at the past year and asses where we’ve been and decide where we want to go. Our “resolutions” may or may not get us there, but it’s in our effort to shine our best selves forward that we create “new paths for energy to flow”. Shining our best selves forward is heart chakra territory.
Bridge the wisdom gained from past experience with an openness to learn something new. Moments of effort accumulate, creating new paths for energy to flow.” Setu Bandha Sarvangasana / Bridge Pose card from Yoga Path Cards by Susan Woldman.
The Institute of HeartMath tell us that the heart affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, and personal effectiveness. (See their homepage for free resources!)
When you “put your heart into it”, and head and heart are aligned, nothing can stop you. A strong heart chakra will fuel your success. Whether you are reassessing your resolutions, or better still, your intentions, your heart knows what you need. Connecting to your “heart’s desire” becomes more important as we journey through life. If you aren’t taking time to shine, you are merely existing.
“It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.” ~ Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis.
A strong heart chakra means we are able to freely give and receive love. The more heart-to-heart connections you have, the brighter your world!
What makes your heart sing? Love yourself enough to find out what that is. The world is waiting for it. If you already know, great! Do more of that! If you can’t right now, for whatever reason, use your heart’s desire to support you until you can. Set a date and time when you will dedicate yourself to your heart’s desire, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Then look forward to it whenever you can. Looking forward to something—anything—that makes you smile will bring joy to all of your moments.
Don’t worry if you are still discovering what makes your heart sing! That’s life! It’s all about discovering “your sense of personal significance”!
“Vision emerges from goals, and these goals change, especially if you are in the midst of a transition. The clearer you can be about what you want, even if it changes a million times, and the less you leave to stumbling along with chance, the more fulfilled you are likely to become. Your brain likes it better that way and cooperates much more.
The bottom line is simply this. You are made to know a sense of personal significance that emerges from the way you make meaning in your life, all of your life. There is always vision for you if you will cooperate with life and not give up living it fully, high in the UpSpiral.”
From “Totally Unique Thoughts from the Universe”:
“You don’t even have to know what you want. I’ll take care of that.
Just enjoy that you received another day, and the 10,000 miracles within it.
It’s on me,
The Universe”
“Your goal is to LIVE YOUR DAY 5 TIMES AS POSITIVE AS IT IS NEGATIVE. That unleashes the genius in you and you begin to discover the zone of the ‘super you’. You dream of it. Why not do it?
Find your good and increase it by putting your energy there. Spend as little time as possible correcting weaknesses. They’ll self-correct as you increase your good.” Applied Neuroscience Institute
Now there’s a thought. “Spend as little time as possible correcting weaknesses.” Isn’t that a relief?! What if we all quit focusing on our weaknesses, and only focused on what makes us happy—on our good? I think we are all way to good at beating ourselves up, aren’t we? Let’s stop the madness! Our heart chakra grows with self-love.
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and appreciation.” ~ Buddha
Worried that your “heart’s desire” isn’t grand enough? You are the only one who knows what makes you smile. So don’t negate the small things, like reading a book, hugging a loved one, taking a nap, or enjoying a few minutes with your favorite hot chocolate drink. Our heart’s desire doesn’t have to be defined by someone else’s definition of grandeur. It’s while you are enjoying the small things, that you discover other joys. It is in your happiest moments that you let life in. Let life in through small joys, and those small joys will multiply. It’s in the accumulation of small joys that life becomes a joy. Remember? Live your days five times as positive as it is negative! What you focus on expands. Energy follows thought. Make it heart-felt energy.
What do you believe you can’t do? Have others done it? “Realize that you have it in you to be as great as they. Realize that all that they did, all that they learned, all the skilled they acquired is stored safely away in Universal Mind and that through your subconscious mind you already have access to it.” Secret of the Ages, by Robert Collier.
Breathwork and Visualization:
Inner-Ease™ Technique†
A quick and easy-to-learn way to add ease to your life is by practicing the Inner-Ease™ Technique. It takes only a short amount of time.
- If you are stressed, acknowledge your feelings as soon as you sense that you are out of sync or engaged in common stressors such as feelings of frustration, impatience, anxiety, overload, anger, being judgmental, mental gridlock, etc.
- Take a short time-out and do Heart-Focused Breathing:
- Breathe a little slower than you normally would.
- Imagine you are breathing through your heart or chest area.
This has been shown to help create coherent wave patterns in your heart rhythm and help establish balance and calm in your mental and emotional nature while activating the affirming power of your heart.
- During Heart-Focused Breathing, imagine with each breath that you are drawing in a feeling of inner ease and infusing your mental and emotional nature with balance and self-care from your heart.
- When stressful feelings have calmed, affirm with a heartfelt commitment that you want to anchor and maintain a state of ease as you re-engage in your projects, challenges or daily interactions.
† From The State of Ease, by Doc Childre.
Affirmations:
- I love and approve of myself.
- I am loved, loving, and loveable.
- I am adequate at all times to do that which is required of me.
- I love who I am.
- I am willing to love everything about myself.
- I trust in love.
- I open my heart to love.
- I forgive myself.
- I forgive those who need forgiving for not being what I wanted them to be.
- I acknowledge my own loveliness.
- I am pure, good, and innocent.
- Love is the purpose of my life.
- Love is everywhere.
- I open myself to the healing powers of love.
- I follow the path of the heart.
Diet and the Heart Chakra:
- Leafy vegetables: spinach, kale, dandelion greens, etc.
- Air vegetables (the heart chakra is associated with the “air” element): broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, squash, etc.
- Liquids: green teas
- Spices: basil, sage, thyme, cilantro, parsley
Source: http://healing.about.com/od/spiritualdiets/a/chakrafoods.htm
Aromatherapy and the Heart Chakra:
Geranium, Jasmine, Lavender, Orange, Rose, Sandalwood, Tangerine, Ylang Ylang, among others.
If aromatherapy interests you, I use Young Living Essential Oils™ which are therapeutic, food-grade oils. Please inquire if you are interested in purchasing a favorite scent and I can add your request to my personal monthly order. Essential oils raise the vibrational frequency of the body. When the vibrational frequency of the body drops, we become more receptive to ill health: http://justalist.blogspot.com/2008/03/vibrational-frequency-list.html. Therapeutic-grade essential oils are great to have in your arsenal of health promoting natural products.
Gem therapy and the Heart Chakra:
Gemstones amplify the energy when placed in contact with your chakras. For those of you unsure on this subject, consider that it’s scientifically proven that everything is energy. Nothing is really solid. Why wouldn’t the energy of a stone work effectively with the energy in our bodies just as some research speculates that the energy of computers, cell phones, and microwaves may affect our bodies? At the very least, I find that holding a favorite stone is like a talisman for me, or a “worry stone”. As my favorite author, Wayne Dyer, likes to say, “If it’s a placebo effect, I’ll take two”.
Some Heart Chakra gems are:
Green aventurine, Bloodstone, Verdelite, Jade, Emerald, Moss Agate, Rose Quartz, Watermelon Tourmaline, Pink Tourmaline, Pink Calcite, Rhodochrosite, among others.
If gem therapy interests you, I highly recommend www.crystallinelight.com!
Yoga poses for the Heart Chakra:
All yoga poses essentially activate the chakras. Some yoga poses to stimulate the heart chakra include: Bridge pose (highlighted above), passive backbends as when we arch gently over a bolster, yoga mudra arms, fish pose, camel pose, among others.
The following section did not appear in this Chakrascope when it was first published. I’m expanding upon my past Charkascopes as well as creating new ones going forward!
Your dosha (constitution/body type) and the Heart Chakra:
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What is a Dosha?
The term “dosha” comes from the sister science to yoga, Ayurveda. Ayurveda means the science of life. Some say the science of self-healing.
Your dosha, or Ayurvedic body type, is associated with the elements—air, ether, fire, water, earth. Those elements combine to create three different doshas/body types. We all are made up of varying quantities of these three doshas. Most of us have a dominant dosha with another one that’s secondary and a bit of the third. The three doshas are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. From either and air comes Vata, from fire and water comes Pitta, and from water and earth comes Kapha.
Vata is associated with characteristics such as “dry, cold, rough, light, mobile/moving, irregular, sensitive, imaginative, spontaneous, resilient, talkative, and expansive/infectiously happy.” Pitta is associated with “hot, sharp, intense, impatient, intellectual, confident, outspoken/brave, ambitious, combative, jealous, spreading/fluid. Kapha is associated with “calm, wet, heavy, slow, dull, static, enduring, sympathetic, relaxed, forgiving, loving, stable, dense”.
Knowing your particular body type/constitution empowers you to know literally “what you’re made of”—what makes you tick. You know your dominant characteristics. Getting curious about what’s going on inside your body is my main theme in my yoga classes. Why not make it the main theme in your whole life? Once you know your dominant constitution, you can make choices in your lifestyle to stay in balance, to become whole. Wholeness means healing. Becoming whole means you are giving your body what it needs. You’ll know immediately what throws you off and what centers you. You can use this knowledge to get to know yourself better, to get to know yourself deeper. Looking at the characteristics associated with each dosha, keep in mind that your personal “rain barrel” is already filled with those characteristics so adding more of the same into your life will take you off balance. Your rain barrel will overflow. Adding the opposite characteristics into your daily regimen will keep you centered.
So if you’re a Vata, like me, you know that warmth, moisture and ritual/routine in all forms (be it food, clothing, or environment) will be soothing to this cold, dry, mobile body. Get the idea?
Getting back to the heart chakra
In yoga, as in Ayurveda, the heart is considered the energetic hub of the body. The heart chakra is the bridge between the bottom, more physical chakras, and the upper, more spiritual chakras. As mentioned earlier, the heart chakra element is air. The area where our heart chakra is located contains our lungs and breathing muscle, the diaphragm. Knowing that Vata is associated with the air element makes the heart chakra associated with Vata. (Vata is also associated with the throat chakra.)
Just as the heart chakra deals with compassion, the sensitive Vata responds well to compassionate natures. Surround yourself with friends who leave you feeling better vs. drained and activities that correspond to your heart’s desire as we talked about earlier.
Vata governs all movement in our bodies such as blood flow and circulation, another deep connection to the heart. As mentioned earlier, Vatas respond well to warm, moist foods and as well as ritual and routine. So planning is helpful! Routines and rituals help to ease stress. Probably Vata’s most important function is that it governs the nervous system. We all know what stress can do the heart. One of the signs of an imbalanced Vata is anxiety which can be caused by too much chaos, too much movement. Instilling slow, grounding rituals like yoga, breath practices (like the one above) and meditation will go a long way toward soothing Vata and balancing your heart chakra.
