Chakra WISDOM: Your Anahata Chakra

The WISDOM podcast  Season 2  Episode 78

 

Welcome back to this sacred journey into the chakras.

The chakra system originated in India between 1500 and 500 BC – more than four thousand years ago in the ancient literature of the Vedas. Evidence of the chakras, is also found in the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and perhaps most thoroughly in the sixteenth century by an Indian yogi in a text called the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana.

 

The chakra system was taught orally by the Indo-Eurpoean people (also called the Aryan people). It was traditionally considered an Eastern philosophy until New Age authors, like Anodea Judith and others, resonated with this wisdom and began writing about the chakras.  

 

If you’ve been joining me in this series, I hope that you’ve allowed yourself to explore the wisdom of these ancient energy centers; these spinning sacred wheels of life. They are believed to hold energetic space within us; and which link areas of the body and psyche with associated metaphysical realms.

 

Within each episode in this series, I describe how each chakra affects our psychology, and our emotions and behaviours as human beings. Based on the teachings of this ancient wisdom and the modern day authors who bring this wisdom to life, I share it because it is yet another important way to understand the self; your patterns and behaviours; and how you may help yourself unblock and balance the flow of energy that moves through you. You also begin to draw insights and a helpful perspective from the ancient wisdom of the chakras, including what limiting thoughts and beliefs hold you back from living the full expression of life.

 

Perhaps, most important still, my hope is to give you additional resources and another source of self-healing; for finding and thriving ‘in balance’, and for helping to effect the change you seek – within yourself and of your life.

 

As I share with you the teachings of your fourth chakra, I reference and take direct quotes from Anodea Judith’s book: Eastern Body Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self and the work of Carolyn Myss and her book: Anatomy of the Spirit. The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. I’ll link up their work here in the description; as both are esteemed experts in this field, and these are great reads if you wish to learn more.

 

A chakra is a center of organization that receives, assimilates, and expresses life force energy. Based on their location in the body the chakras have become associated with various states of consciousness, archetypal elements, and philosophical constructs. The lower chakras, for example which are physically closer to the earth, are related to the more practical matters of our lives – survival, movement, action. They are ruled by physical and social law. The upper chakras represent mental realms and work on a symbolic level through words, images, and concepts. Each of the seven chakras from the base of the spine to the crown of the head, represents a major area of human psychological health.

 

Here we dive into your Anahata, your heart center. Since the heart chakra is the middle point in a system of seven centers, balance, together with love and relationship) are the essential principles at this level of integration. This implies both internal balance between various aspects of ourselves (mind and body, persona and shadow, masculine and feminine), as well as between ourselves and the world around us (for example: work and play, giving and receiving, socializing and being alone).

 

It is important to continue to find and live in equilibrium, for without balance within ourselves it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve healthy and long-lasting love relationships. The basic right of the heart chakra is to love and to be loved.

 

Be sure to take part in the guided meditation that closes out this episode.  It is a beautiful experience in balancing the beautiful sacred energy o