Week Four of our Chakra Cleanse

This week on our 8 week Kundalini Yoga & Meditation Chakra Cleanse we move upwards to our Fourth Chakra, our Heart Chakra or Anahata.

As you read the information below, begin to connect to how your Heart Chakra may be manifesting in your life. Perhaps you feel quite in balance and strong in some of the areas mentioned. Maybe you feel you need a little balance and strengthening. Whatever comes up for you, bring it along to class to consciously work through your Heart Chakra to cleanse and bring balance to these areas of your life. 

Integration, Balance, Self-Love, Devotion
Element: Air
Location: Middle of the chest on the breast bone at the level of the nipples
Organ/Gland: Heart, lungs, thymus gland.
Qualities: Compassion; kindness; forgiveness; service; love. Recognising and understanding these qualities in others. Sacred transformation. Awakening to spiritual awareness
Shadow: Grief. Attachment. Closed to surroundings. Easily hurt. Dependent on love and affection from others. Fear of rejection. Helper syndrome. Heartlessness. Heart problems; lung problems; blood pressure problems

HEART CHAKRA CONNECTION

The Heart Chakra is at the centre of all the other chakras. It is the Balance Point in between the lower chakras and the upper chakras. It has both qualities, the Intuitive Wise qualities of the Upper Chakras and the Grounded Aliveness of the lower Chakras. 

It is the connection point between;

• mind & body
• personality self & soul self
• giving & receiving
• inner and outer worlds
• physical & non-physical reality

At the Heart Chakra is the balance point between the other chakras to open this chakra we need to;

• release blockages in the lower chakras (which we have done in our Kundalini Yoga & Meditation classes thus far)
• create inner calm in our upper chakras which protect us from worldy pressures making it safe for us to live in the world (which we will be doing in the upcoming weeks of practice together)
• and cultivate upward and downward flow in our spine (which all of our Kundalini Yoga & Meditation practice supports us to do)

OUR HEART CHAKRA OPEN & CLOSED

When our Heart Chakra is open and flowing it creates harmony within us as it has both clarity and feeling. We feel connection to each other and to the Infinite. We experience integration of the mind, body and spirit supporting our state of wholeness, peace and love. 

Love is a peaceful state of deep inner presence that grows from acceptance, inclusion and allowing. It is inner harmony arising from a lack of judgement over ourselves, others or our circumstances. It is a state of complete flow with life and all that is. 

When our Heart Chakra is not open we define love from our 2nd Chakra our Sacral Chakra. We try to get our Sacral Chakra's needs met which are conditional and emotional interactions. We look outside ourselves for acceptance and love. Rather than going deep within and fulfilling our own needs and desires and accessing a connection with the Devine, we project these upon others and think that the pain we are experiencing is outside ourselves and being done "to us" rather than coming from us. 

As with all of the Chakras, we need our whole Chakra system to be in balance to help support the whole system. Relating to the heart we can use the fire of anger in the 3rd Chakra (Navel Chakra) to take action for ourselves we can use the Third Eye's intuition to witness our attachments and know how we may be impeding true, allowing love and we can use our balanced 2nd Chakra (Sacral Chakra) to let go, to relax and release our neediness and addictive behaviours within our relationships with others. 

We can give up the temporary comfort of relying on others to compensate and cover up our own insecurities and neediness. 

SELF LOVE & DEVOTION

To heal and open our Heart Chakra we must also have Self-Love and Devotion to the Devine. Only through self acceptance, self kindness and self compassion can we then truly love another. We must take away all judgement of ourselves and our experiences, choices, actions and emotions before we can do the same for another. Those things within us that we can't love. Those traits we reject about ourselves. Those choices and actions that we judge ourselves for, we will also judge in another. We will never love anyone exactly how they are if we can't love ourselves exactly as we are. 

Self Love also brings us into alignment with the love of the Devine. There is no judgement in the Universe only acceptance of what is and a realignment with balance. When we begin to experience ourselves and others as the Devine experiences us, accepting fully however we show up in the present moment "our oneness with the Devine gives us independence in relationships, non-attachement in circumstances and opens our hear tot both give and receive" (Your Life is in Your Chakras, Guru Rattana Ph.D).

UNDERDEVELOPED, UNBALANCED & UNALIGNED

Like most people, you grew up with conditional love, which meant that you had to compromise yourself in an attempt to try to get love, recognition, validation and needs met. You were exploited to meet others' needs and rightfully felt deprived, used and rejected. 

• Feel unloved and uncared for and build your life so you don't have to be alone or abandoned or you isolate yourself so you can't be hurt again;
• Alienate yourself and feel undeserving of being loved;
• Evaluate yourself and define your identity according to the outcome of your actions;
• Hypersensitivity to criticism or rejection;
• Strongly attached to systems or structures to find stability;
• Drain yourself for others to get recognition, attention and love;
• Feel and create separateness and do not allow love in because you don't trust others and question their sincerity;
• Opinionated to cover up doubt and shame, critical, judgemental and blaming.

DEVELOPED, BALANCED, ALIGNED

• Unconditional love for self and others, no expectations or requirements to accept and respect others and self;
• Able to observe situations and accept them without judgement, just for the way they are;
• Acceptance and understanding of your place in the grander scheme of things aware that experiences teach and expand you;
• Experiences deep peace;
• Radiating with harmony, self love and love of the Devine;
• Feel stable and surrendered;
• Calmness within the chaos of life;
• Experience true freedom as life unfolds;
• Clarity seeing above duality and struggle;
• Committed to the highest good and grand plan and to your own growth and destiny;
• Experience the unity and purposefulness in all interactions and relationships seeing the bigger picture of interrelatedness and interdependence;
• Openness to receive, experiencing a prosperity consciousness;
• Experience sacredness and unity of all things and beings;
• Experience the energy of love that permeates all life;
• Use the power of love for self-transformation and healing;
• Live in harmony with environment and circumstances;
• Honour the laws and intent of the cosmos;
• Live in grace, gratitude, going with the flow of life, achieving balance and harmony;
• Devote your life being a servant of Higher Love being a resource for the Universe;
• Realise we are all doing the best we can with what we have and responding to situations without drama.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO BRING BALANCE

• Come to class this week! It doesn't matter if you've missed previous weeks of our Chakra Cleanse, if any of the above speaks to you, come along to class. You can pop in casually from now on for $20 for the Yoga or $15 for the Meditation;
• Breath of Fire;
• Correct Posture;
• Spinal Twists;
• All exercises with arms out to the sides;
• Ego Eradicator - arms out to the sides up 60 degrees with Breath of Fire;
• All Kundalini Yoga & Meditation sets as they teach you how to allow all states of being through your body and experience deep allowing and self-love.

AFFIRMATIONS

Try one of these affirmations for the week. Write it on a sticky note and stick it up in your bathroom or somewhere where you will see it daily. 

I follow my heart and love myself.
My heart is my soul guide and decision maker.
I am connected to the source of divine power, and I surrender to Higher Love.
Divine Love heals me and all those I touch.

Most of the information in this blog has come from the FANTASTIC book Your Life is in Your Chakras by Guru Rattana Ph.D. who is an internationally recognised Kundalini Yoga & Meditation Teacher.

THIS WEEK'S CLASS TIMES TO CHOOSE FROM

As I mentioned above, even if you have missed our First Week of the Chakra Cleanse you can still come along to class on a Casual Basis. Just send me a quick email so that I can save you a mat mish@meditationwithmish.com.

Mondays 6.00 - 7.00pm Yoga
Tuesdays 7.00 - 8.00am Meditation
Wednesdays 6.00 - 7.00pm Meditation
Wednesdays 7.30 - 9.00pm Yoga
Thursdays 9.30am - 11.00am Yoga
Saturdays 8.30am - 10.00am Yoga 

i'm excited about this week's class, bringing more flow and acceptance into our lives and unconditional self-love. 

this is definitely a pertinent week for me as my personal circumstances are changing, i am having to practice surrender and non-judgement in my life, trusting in the grander divine plan for me and my life. 

oh and here's a picture of me that i posted on instagram after practicing this week's kriya with hope that i sustain this energy throughout the week ;-)