Our Healing Heart
Source: Christiane Northrup
The Heart Chakra (our 4th Chakra), is located in the center of the chest. It is the axis or center of the Chakra system. Each chakra is associated with a gland in the endocrine system. The thymus gland, located under your sternum, is the main organ in our immune system. It produces the body’s natural killer cells. The Indian Sanskrit word for the Heart Chakra is “anahata” which means unbound. We are “unbound” when we are free from the material measures of success, e.g., money, cars, fame.
We experience joy and peace when we come from this heart center. We share and experience Universal Divine Love through this chakra. This is love for creation, not object-focused love; nor is it dependent upon another for its existence. It is impersonal pure love for life. Accepting others for “who they are”. Realizing that there is divinity in all of us. We are all one. Love truly does conquer all. It is the energy of Divine Light. Healers operate out of their Heart Chakras and heal with love. We all have the power to heal within us, if we only open our hearts and send loving energy to those around us.
All physical ailments have emotional, mental and/or spiritual roots. The Heart Chakra cannot digest emotional energies. That is the job of the 2nd Chakra located in your lower abdomen. Heartache represents things we’ve literally taken to heart. It’s important to not take what others do or say personally. Everyone is on their own path. Whatever others do is a result of their own growth and has nothing to do with you. Some of us are afraid of love and block it from our lives. This is a fear of the Divine within you, since you and the Divine are love. When you guard against feeling loved or loving, you are literally guarding against being yourself. You disconnect from your spiritual gifts.
It’s important to recognize past traumas stuck in your heart and release them. Focus on sending the emotions in your heart down to your lower abdomen where emotional energies are digested. Dis-eases manifesting physically around the Heart Chakra would be heart diseases, breast cancer, other cancers (thymus gland), AIDS, lupus, all autoimmune diseases, shoulder and upper back pain, circulatory problems, lung ailments, asthma and heart burn.
The Heart Chakra is related to our capacity to express ourselves emotionally. When we express ourselves emotionally, we need a balance between anger and love. We need to be able to nurture others but also allow ourselves to be nurtured. If you have had an inability to give or receive love from self or others, you probably have an imbalanced Heart Chakra. A balanced 4th Chakra allows us to be intimate with ourself and others. It integrates the masculine and feminine within us. We know who we are, and we accept ourselves.
Egotism can create terrible imbalances in the 4th Chakra. When we love others conditionally, it can lead to feelings of resentment causing a literal feeling of heartbreak. We need to stop falling in love and become love itself. Another negative expression in this chakra is infatuation with the self or inability to show compassion for oneself.
The 2nd and 4th Chakras have a unique interrelationship. The uterus is called the low heart while the heart in the chest is the high heart. If the low heart is blocked through rape, incest, abuse or shame she cannot truly open her high heart. Women also tend to shut down their low hearts or their sexuality because we’re taught that nice girls aren’t sexual.
Energy dysfunctions arise when one is confused about how to use both their loving (4th) and her creative (2nd) energies. Patients with malignant tumors in the breast have different personality patterns from those with cancer of the cervix. Patients with cervical cancer had lost their fathers due to death or desertion during their early years (2nd Chakra related). In contrast, breast cancer patients had homes where their father was emotionally distant.
Witness and acknowledge 2nd Chakra wounds and see how they affect our 4th Chakra. Heart disease is the most frequent cause of death in women over the age of 50. Heart attacks in women are twice as deadly as in men. One in two women will eventually die of coronary artery disease or stroke. Only one woman in 25 will die of breast cancer. We need to love more fully, unconditionally without judgements or expectations. Below is an exercise to help you connect to your heart.
CONNECTING OUR HEART TO OUR THIRD EYE (6TH CHAKRA)
This exercise allows you to install fibers of light along the scalp that relay information from the third eye to the visual cortex, where it can be decoded and displayed in vibrant color. We add to that the information coming from the Heart or 4th Chakra. By connecting the heart and the third eye to the visual cortex, we can see with the eyes of the mind and the heart. The task is getting a “cable” from these chakras to the screening room in the back of the head. You may start “seeing” immediately or it may take a couple months of practice. Practice seeing the energy field around plants and animals. Notice filaments that extend from a pet to its owner.
Step 1: Take several deep breaths with your eyes closed.
Step 2: Now rotate your eyes with your eyelids shut, to clear the perceptual screen. Move them from left to right and back, then top to bottom and back. Now rotate your eyes in a big circle.
Step 3: Now bring your hands together in prayer pose. The meridians pass through the hands and fingertips. When we bring our hands together in a prayer pose, we balance the energies that are flowing between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Step 4: Separate your hands and shake them vigorously from side to side for about 30 seconds. Allow them to become limp.
Step 5: Bring your hands together again in prayer pose. Gradually separate your palms, keeping your fingertips together. Be aware of the feelign in your hands. Do they feel cool? Warm? Do you sense a slight electrical sensation between your palms?
Step 6: Separate your palms slowly, remaining aware of your fingertips. Do you feel tingling in the pads at the tips of your fingers? See how far you can separate your fingers and still maintain that tingling or electrical sensation. Imagine that you can sense the energy threads that connect your fingertips to each other.
Step 7: Now with the fingertips of both hands tap the center of your chest at the level of your Heart Chakra. Now tap the outline of an imaginary necklace of light going from your Heart Chakra to the back of your skull, to the visual cortex. Repeat this movement slowly and mindfully three or four times.
Step 8: Now tap on your 6th Chakra at the brow. Tap an imaginary band from your forehead to the base of your skull in the back of the head. Follow a line just above each ear. Repeat several times.
Step 9: Now tap once again on your 6th Chakra and follow a band along the top of your head, tapping with both hands. Imagine that you are placing a crown of light over your head.
Step 10: Visualize energy running through this necklace and crown of light. Imagine it slowly streaming then picking up speed and intensity until the entire network is pulsing with light.