The HEART Chakra Overview
Illustration by Cloudy Thurstag
HEART CHAKRA
Anahata
Overview
Location: is located at the centre of the chest.
Colour: Green
Season: Spring
Sense: Touch
Element: Air
Body parts: Lungs, heart, thymus gland and breasts.
Description
The embodiment of Love
The fourth chakra, also referred to as the heart chakra, is at the centre of the seven chakras with three below and three above. This is the area where physical energies from the three lower chakras meet with the spiritual energies of the three chakras above the heart. This is where the physical stability you’ve created for yourself, along with your creativity and energy collide with your goals, visualisations and authenticity of the chakras above the heart chakra – allowing you to express your true hearts desire and live a life with love, empathy, forgiveness and gratitude every day.
The heart chakra not only governs our ability to give and receive love to and from others, but also our ability to fully love ourselves. When we are stuck here, we may find we carry a lot of negative internal dialogue about not being worthy of love, or of not being enough. Our ability to love ourselves first is essential, or our relationships may develop into a state of co-dependency rather than true communion. In balance, we are confident and forgiving, and we practice and value compassion and kindness to self and others.
Overstimulation here could lead to issues relating to extreme empathy. This is when we absorb so much of what others feel that our own emotional boundaries aren’t respected.
The Persona
The heart chakra is connected to healing and loving on all levels (emotional, mental, physical), while having the ability to properly process your emotions. When your heart chakra is open, you are flowing with love and compassion, you are quick to forgive, and you accept others and yourself. You can easily maintain intimate relationships but also have healthy personal boundaries. You are trusting, forgiving, non-judgmental, kind, and often radiate a peace and calmness.
You have a strong connection with nature, you’re reliable, people find themselves opening up to you, and you feel a sincere gratitude for everything that enters your life – even the challenging things. It is here that your energy begins to shift toward the spirit realm. Opening this chakra awakens you to the universal love surrounding and filling you.
A closed heart chakra can give way to grief, anger, jealousy, fear of betrayal, and hatred toward yourself and others. If you regularly experience problematic or draining relationships, or find you have a difficult time connecting to people in a meaningful way, then it’s possible that your heart chakra is out of balance.
Other signs of imbalance include shyness, lack of empathy, co-dependency, needing validation for fulfilment, jealousy, judgement, low self-esteem, being critical or controlling, suspiciousness, feeling possessive, being afraid to let go of emotional hurt, defensiveness, and distrust.
Food
Green foods: broccoli, green herbs, asparagus, courgette, cucumber, lettuce, edamame, peas and green beans.
Offering your body the most potent phyto-nutrient dense foods such as: spirulina, moringa, wheatgrass and barley grass.
Leafy-green vegetables: kale, spinach, chard, and rocket.
Healthy fats – avocado, nuts and seeds.
Preparation methods such as juicing and smoothies for quick absorption of nutrients.
Food made with love – meals made for sharing such as mezze, tapas or antipasti.
Avoid stimulating foods such as caffeine and refined sugars
Balancing Activity
Cultivate gratitude
Write down all the things you are grateful for today. Start with the simplest things such as the your lungs for allowing you to breath, for your heart allowing you to pump blood around your body, for the sun rising in the morning and the life you were gifted by your mother and father conceiving you and bringing you into this life. Then start to add other things you are grateful for around these. Include people and anything material that enables you to live your life everyday.
Affirmation
‘I allow love to fill me up and guide me in all my actions. I am love, I embody love and see it all around me’