The fourth chakra is Anahata. It divides the body into the lower, more primitive forms of consciousness, and the upper, spiritual consciousness. This chakra is the integrator of the chakra system.
What is a Chakra?
A chakra is a subtle body energy center. In the physical body, they are bundles of nerve ganglia that connect to certain areas in your body. They are said to rule our behaviors and emotions. The word chakra means “wheel” or “disc”. There are many chakras in the body but there are seven main chakras. Six sit in front of the spine starting at the base up to the mid brain with the seventh above the crown of the head.
Chakras can get blocked due to childhood traumas, the belief systems you grew up in, as well as physical and emotional injuries. When a chakra is blocked, energy cannot flow properly in the body. When your energy can flow freely through the chakras, they can be used as a road map to reconnect with yourself and to the piece of the divine inside you.
As you move up from the third Chakra, Manipura, to the fourth, Anahata, you gain awareness. This awareness comes from repetitive patterns in your life experiences and learning from your mistakes. You also move from “doing” in the fiery Manipura Chakra to a state of “being” in Anahata. In Anahata chakra, you see the world as being united through relationships that are powered by love.
Anahata Chakra
Anahata Chakra is the energy center of love and relationships. Not just romantic love and relationships, but also the love and relation that we have to friends, family, the world at large, and to ourselves. It is in this chakra we use our heart to make decisions.
Anahata means “unstruck sound”, “unhurt”, or “unbeaten”. The seed sound is Yam.
According to Anodea Judith, somatic therapist and chakra expert, the activation for this chakra occurs between the ages of 4-7.
The Heart Chakra is yin or feminine energy. Both masculine and feminine energy live inside of you, regardless of gender. Divine feminine energy is about just being and allowing instead of doing or forcing. The element associated with the fourth chakra is air. Air is associated with openness, freshness, spaciousness, and freedom. It also represents the breath. You can use your breath to move your prana, or life force or energy.
Anahata in the Body
It is often referred to as the heart chakra due to its location in the heart region. It is aligned with sushumna nadi, which is the source of sound. The collection of nerve ganglia that physically relates to this chakra is located at the base of the heart called the cardia plexus. The cardia plexus branches from the vagus nerve and several sympathetic nerve trunks. The vagus nerve extends from the brain stem to the abdomen and controls parasympathetic nervous functions. These include digestion, heart rate, and breathing. As such, this chakra manages the heart, circulatory systems, blood, lungs, ribs, breasts, shoulders, arms, hands, and along with other chakras, the diaphragm and esophagus.
The heart chakra’s sense organ is touch. Think how you use your arms to hug and hands to touch to show love, affection, and comfort.
Heart Chakra Symbol
The symbol for this chakra is a 12 petaled lotus flower. Two overlapping intersecting triangles create a hexagram. This contains the symbol of unification of masculine and feminine energies called shaktona. The upward facing triangle represents matter moving up to meet spirit and the downward facing triangle represents spirit moving down into the body. The hexagram represents Purusha, the supreme being, and Prakriti, the mother of matter. The six points of the hexagram are said to be related to the other 6 main chakras that integrate in the heart chakra.
Integrator of the Chakra System
In the fourth chakra, the lower 3 chakras integrate with the upper 3 chakras. The lower chakras help you have more self-awareness and security. Your energy continues to move up to Anahata chakra. The heart chakra unites masculine and feminine energy, spirit and matter, and heaven and earth. It is here you can learn to make decisions from an empowered, spiritual position instead of a reactive place based on needs and wants.
When you work with this energy center, you can learn to love and accept yourself. Then when the heart is in balance, the fourth chakra moves your energy up through the chakra system toward self-mastery and enlightenment into the more subtle energy centers of the upper chakras.
Connecting in Your Heart Center
When your heart chakra is open and balanced, you understand the balance of loving yourself but also how to love others. You realize you are an individual but also part of a community. You see human connectiveness instead of separateness. And that you need that connection as part of being a spirit living a human experience. This reminder that we are all connected is what allows us to have acceptance and compassion.
When you give a hug or place an arm around someone in comfort, that is energy. When you reach out or pay someone a compliment, that is energy. This same energy will come back to you. When it comes back to you, receive it fully and allow yourself to take in all that high vibration energy.
Soften Your Heart To Open Up
The heart chakra can open when you allow yourself to soften and expand. You can store past hurt, rejection, and loss in your physical body. This can lead to tightening in the chest, shoulder, and back to protect your heart chakra. The tightness can make breathing difficult. You can soften your body with asana, or physical yoga, or use your breath to expand the lungs and ribs to create more space. Making more space allows you to have more breath in the body. Using diaphragmatic, belly breaths trigger the vagus nerve and puts you into your rest and digest part of the nervous system.
You can also soften your judgements and cynicism by using compassion and acceptance. You can recognize your own struggles in someone else and give them the kindness that you received or wish you had received. In this chakra, you move beyond your own limiting ego and have a larger sense of others and the world. You surrender to the idea of something bigger than you.
Sometimes you will just need a little breathing room to allow softening to take place. You can create your own space by setting yourself up with some free time, relaxing, or finding a quiet space to just be.
Deficiency in Anahata
Deficiency in the heart chakra looks like someone being closed down or in self-protection mode. They are afraid to trust and open up. They can be judgmental and critical.
Excess in Anahata
People who are in excess in the fourth chakra are often self-centered. They need a lot of attention. They can also be codependent because they attach very easily.
Blocks in Anahata
Blocks in the heart chakra are created when people can desire love but also fear it at the same time. This is due to past relationships and traumas. They feel uncentered and lost. In the body, it can lead to feeling pressure on the chest. Physically the shoulders can round forward for protection of the heart center or collapsing because there is a lack of energy in that chakra. The opposite can also be true. People can have a rigid, puffed-up chest that makes it harder to breathe and relax.
Healing the lower chakras allows the heart chakra to open and soften. According to Anodea Judith, a midlife crisis can reveal old childhood wounds which can lead to the development of the fourth chakra during the adult individuation process at midlife. She says, as adults we need to “reunite the persona with the rejected shadow for the purpose of balance and wholeness.”
Balance in Anahata
When you are balanced in Anahata Chakra, you have a sense of wholeness, compassion, empathy, friendliness, motivation, acceptance, and forgiveness. You can love yourself unconditionally and accept your faults. You can want to do better in your life but you aren’t attached to the outcome. It is about enjoying the journey instead of being fixated with the result and binding your worth to it.
Learning to love yourself and to meet your own needs allows you to be in balance in relation to others. What you give out, you receive back. And the more generous you are, the more the heart will open. Just be careful to not give too much when your energy is depleted. Remember, it’s a balance of giving and receiving.
When you find your center, you are in alignment with sushumna. This center column of energy gives each of your chakras charge. If you are out of balance with yourself, your chakras move out of alignment. Only you can put them back.
On the Mat
You can use yoga to open the chest and upper back. Poses like lateral bends, forward folds, yoga mudra with a warrior posture, camel, fish, wheel, bow, eagle arms to open the back body, thread the needle, etc…think of postures for opening the back body, side ribs, and the heart. These postures can help open the body up for more space to allow more room for breath and to take away the rigidity.
As you move through your physical practice, you can also play with finding softness in the face, eyes, shoulders, and heart in a pose. Sometimes during your physical practice you may feel vulnerable in a heart opener like fish so think about giving yourself some compassion and grace.
Pranayama
The heart chakra element is air so use the breath, or pranayama, to help open this chakra. When you control the breath, you control the mind. Your breath is the gateway between the mind and the body. Breath can be used to expand consciousness and purify the body. Pranayama can be used to access your emotions and release stored grief and unresolved feelings.
As you practice deep, slow breathing, think about allowing yourself to surrender and just be in the present moment. With each breath, the body becomes softer, lighter, and more free.
Much love & health,
Carrie
Resources:
Judith, A. (1996). Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self.
Dale, C. (2021). Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Chakra: Your Definitive Source of Energy Center Knowledge for Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Evolution. Seventh Printing.
Judith, A. (2020). Chakra Yoga. Seventh Printing.
Judith, A. (2022). Wheels of Life. Llewellyn Worldwide.
