This week we will focus on the fourth chakra as part of our continuation in the Chakra Exploration Series on the Snow Wellness podcast, which you can stream for free here.
The fourth chakra, or heart chakra, deals mainly with love, and how that expresses into the world as compassion. Much like your own human heart is, within your body, it is the center or the balance point of the chakra system, and the chakra that represents unity and connection to source.
When I was training to become a licensed yoga teacher, I came away with a particularly helpful way of picturing the heart chakra in relation to the other chakras. As we’ve covered before in this series, the root chakra is focused on keeping us grounded, and as such, is the connection to what we perceive as “below”—the earth beneath our feet, the literal ground, and our connection to physical place, to nature itself. On the flip side, we have our crown chakra, the seventh and last of the chakras, which we will delve more deeply into in our coming weeks together. The crown chakra represents our ability to access higher states of consciousness, and, in essence, is the connection to all that we perceive as “the above”—the heavens, or abstract, philosophical ideas, different planes of reality, all that.
But right in the center of both the chakra system and our physical bodies is the heart, which acts as a kind of junction box where all the chakras connect. When you picture the heart chakra, you can visualize a figure eight, with the crown chakra at one outer edge, the root chakra at the other, and the heart chakra right at the center of the nexus, involved in every aspect of the overall system.
It’s no wonder the heart chakra represents unity and connection—it sits three inches above the sternum, and is literally at the crossroads of all the other chakras. It unifies our being.
In Sanskrit, the name for the heart chakra is “Anahata,” which means “unhurt, unstruck, and unbeaten”—a good name for the chakra whose function is love and whose action is compassion. The heart chakra deals with the endocrine gland, which is the parathyroid, and the physical connectivity of this chakra, unsurprisingly, is to the physical heart. But, of course, as the chakra most concerned with connection, it would be wrong to say that it only dealt with the heart—the fourth chakra also works through your arms and hands as the extension of your heart.
The color of the fourth chakra is green, and fittingly, the essential oil related to this chakra is dill. The stone is tourmaline, which can also be green. The Hindu deity of the fourth chakra is Krishna, and the sound is LAM. If you pull tarot, the card most associated with the heart chakra is The Lover’s card. It is one of the major arcana and represents choice.
The angel or western entity associated with the fourth chakra, aptly, is Christ, known across religious belief for his compassion and empathy.
Another word associated with this chakra is humility. Humility is neutral. Nothing can touch you in polarity. It is not giving up or giving in—it is giving over to Source. Mother Teresa, someone undoubtedly in touch with her fourth chakra, once said, “If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”
When we pass out of this life, we pass through our heart chakra to our next dimensional reality that matches our development.
Although the heart chakra is green, it could also be thought of as white, because all of the other chakra colors merge into the heart center to create white light,
I use the word love to describe what we think of as universal unity, neutral in its polarity, the oneness of all that is, that which we truly are.
If it makes more sense to you, you could think of this unity as gravity – an invisible force that holds the universe together. The way gravity effortlessly and inevitably connects us all is why it matches with the heart chakra.
We are love. It is our duty to give and receive love.
People who communicate from their heart are calm, and project that love from a space of non-judgment. If you want to tap into your fourth chakra, I recommend the cobra yoga pose or conducting a loving-kindness meditation. If you need assistance, I lead us through such a meditation in this week’s episode of the podcast.
Do not underestimate the power of quiet, confident compassion. Especially in a world that seems ever less intrapersonally connected, even as we become more and more technologically connected, it is important to be a presence of love, to act from your fourth chakra, to share your heart with the world.
If you still feel disconnected and apathetic after meditation, please do not hesitate to reach out. We can work together to engage your heart chakra, which in turn will help engage the entire chakra system.
