Opening Up the Heart Chakra
Whoo-whee! I just got back from a four-day silent retreat at Seventh Chakra Institute of Spiritual Sciences. That was hard, but rewarding work as self reflection and connecting with the journey of our soul can be. One of the things that I witnessed was how profound the impact was for many of the individuals, my fellow participants, to sit in silence and meet their soul. There are layers: There’s the effort, followed by suffering, meeting the disillusionment of our lives, hopefully moving into surrender(ing) to the soul and the divine and then BLISS/JOY. Oh, these things did not happen just in the four days, but that is the goal. What Priya and Peter intended with this retreat was to introduce us to ourselves and give us tools for continuing the connection and work after we leave. Many of the people met disillusionment and probably stayed there for a while and will stay there for a while because that part is really hard. Disillusionment and suffering sort of toggle between each other. It’s hard to shed the layers of programming that we all grew up with.
A lot of the tools shared were about opening up the heart chakra and being mindful of keeping it open. I distinctly remember Peter describing the trio of our soul as intuition coming from the navel point, the heart informs our passion and the head is the action that drives our passion into purpose. How many of us actually live in our passion? Or do most people just toil away their years waiting for retirement to actually then do something fun, meaningful, purposeful. Let’s not do that. Let’s not wait.
I invite you to ponder what is your passion? And are you living it? Have you found your purpose in this life? There’s always time to dive in no matter the age.
What this experience fortified in me was how important the work of Perfect Child is. Here I was in a room full of 40-50 year olds crying over days because they are meeting their soul selves for the first time because our culture removes us from ourselves, gets us into the rat race by “preschool” so all we know growing up is that “reaching for the future” mentality that is oftentimes based in fear. Fear of not being enough, fear of not doing enough, fear of not getting a “good” job, fear of not making money. How about starting with “I am here and I am good enough. Whatever I do that lights me up will sustain me 100%.”
Perfect Child exists so that we can remember our divinity and raise our children so that they never lose themselves in the rat race which is not reality. Keep their heart chakras open. Let them live in their passion. What brings them joy? Let them do that. What brings you joy? Do that! Even if it’s just for an hour a day.
What’s a tool to open up the heart chakra and meet our soul? Meditation is one tool. Another physical activity is sitting in easy pose (criss cross apple sauce), place your hands on your shoulders four fingers in the front and thumb in back, elbows out and parallel to the floor. Now, in this position, twist your torso, first to the left breathing in, then to the right breathing out. Try to synchronize the motion to the breath. Do this for one minute. Then move to sitting on your heels, kneeling position and do the same motion with the hands on shoulders, twisting the torso for one minute. This will help you to be mindful of keeping your heart chakra open throughout the day.
A third tool that I highly recommend is Priya’s Practical SpiritualitySeries over a course of 13 weeks. Do this! It can fast track you to BLISS/JOY.
* The print above is an artwork by KC Tebbutt. We bought his Dan Tien artwork when we were in New Mexico and he gifted us with the Heart Chakra print. I’m sharing it here with you all as I find it to be a wonderful tool for meditation. I love staring into it.