By Jackie Jackson
July 9, 2024
Did you know that you can investigate your mind-body connection with breathing and chakra yoga poses to engage with a specific chakra, or energy center? As you open your chest and heart you might even experience a surge of the subtle life-force energy moving in and out of the heart. It might even create a feeling of joy, compassion, and bliss. In working to heal this area of the body both physically and energetically, you heal. You learn that love does not have to hurt and you regain compassion for yourself as well as others.
Over time, tightly closed hearts can open again and wide-open hearts can learn self-protection. Rather than looking for the one right way, you weave a middle way between extremes. Since the heart chakra’s basic concerns are love, compassion, and acceptance, trust issues of overwhelming rejection and betrayal take a toll on the human heart and intimate relationships. There could be a tendency towards isolation, emotional coldness, emotional reactivity, difficulty with forgiveness, fear of abandonment, or being loved.
Heart Chakra Case Study: Increasing Your Life Force for Healing
Breath is vital to the heart chakra, as well as life. Without breath life is impossible. The heart is the most important organ in the human body, second only to the brain. It is in charge of distributing nutrients and oxygen throughout the body. You are dead if it stops pumping blood. The energy surrounding the heart is crucial because of its significance and value. Breath and your heart chakra merge in Ayurveda, the age-old Science of Life. It is said that physical manifestations of lung deficiencies, such as asthma, allergies, coughing, bronchitis, or other respiratory/pulmonary issues, can be made worse by an imbalance in your heart chakra.
To be clear, these, along with many more, are legitimate medical problems. Of course! This is not meant to imply that someone is fabricating symptoms. Not at all. It is meant to refocus your attention on raising knowledge of complimentary techniques. Plus, research shows that these actual medical disorders can also be treated energetically and consciously but this should not be used in place of medical attention.
If you are like me and have breathing issues, you are all too aware that respiratory problems and shortness of breath can be frightening and feel like impending doom. It has happened to me during severe colds. This triggers your excite response or sympathetic nervous system. Naturally, being able to inhale deeply makes it simpler to feel more at ease and tranquil. The air element of the heart chakra revolves around breathing.
My friend Frank, who was prone to pneumonia. Although athletic, he was very familiar with the kind of dread that comes with breathing issues. When breathing became a major problem during one episode, he discovered that diaphragmatic breathing prevented the problem from going into pneumonia. He demonstrated for me how, similar to what we do in yoga class, he would put his hands under his ribs and inflate them. This case study may serve as a composite in support of this pranayama and a testament of what myself, Frank, and others with breathing issues, have found to be helpful in dealing with it.
Daily deep breathing exercises may also assist in clearing any blocked emotions and feelings, as well as increase your life force energy, plus oxygenate your cells and support all the systems of your body. Calm is restored when the prana in your heart chakra moves. Aim for complete circulation of the breath down to your tailbone.
Many only get fresh oxygen up to the base of the chest's heart chakra, where the diaphragm instantly blocks it. Chest breathing is the term for this shorter breath, which is more likely to cause a physiological stress reaction. Breathing solely into your chest prevents oxygen from freely flowing throughout your body, which leads to an imbalance in many bodily systems, including the other chakras. Deep breathing does the opposite.
Yogic texts cite that conscious deep breathing, known as Pranayama or breath extension, also disperses and integrates spiritual understanding of love, compassion, and connection to everything you encounter. Air, like love, is within and all around us. You can embody this element by keeping your heart center open and your love free-flowing. The Anahata Chakra color of green represents transformation and love. I call it expansive, healing energy. If you are visual, you may want to see a beautiful green hue entering your heart with your inbreath using the diaphragmatic breath technique below to help your lungs fill more efficiently and exhale slowly.
Try these Heart Chakra Affirmations to continue your exploration:
"I am open to give and receive unconditional love to myself and others."
"I forgive myself and others."
"I radiate love like a bonfire."
"I feel connected to all that is."
May you find love, compassion, and acceptance for yourself in this process.
Namaste, Jackie
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