The Heart Chakra: Foods for Passion
The Anahata Chakra is situated in the center of your chest, close to the heart. Its mantra is YAM. The color that represents this chakra is green. You feed this chakra by finding your passion and following your heart: have faith, find ways to express yourself and practice appreciation, balance giving and receiving and (most importantly) give yourself permission to forgive others and yourself.
When your heart chakra is in balance you will feel a great compassion for all living creatures. You will be kind, caring, joyous and outgoing. You will feel completely at ease with yourself and the people in your life. You’ll no longer mind spending time alone, and will feel completely satisfied with “me” time.
When your heart chakra is unbalanced you will probably be very negative in your thinking, and may find it very difficult to keep a positive outlook in life. You may feel unloved, unworthy and unappreciated. This will manifest in the world around you, and will only confirm these “beliefs” about yourself. You may even have a hard time accepting love from others and feel like you just have to settle.
How to Balance Your Heart Chakra
Learn the art of mindfulness and loving kindness — the foundations for living with an open heart — in The Yogi’s Heart, a guide for opening and connecting. For it is only when you approach life from a place of openness can you embody connectedness with all things.
Recipe: Green Juice or Smoothie for Your Heart
To keep the heart chakra spinning and love emanating, here is a quick recipe you can blend or juice:
Ingredients:
- 1 cup coconut water
- 1 bunch kale (de-stemmed)
- 1 green apple (I like Granny Smith)
- A small piece of ginger
- 1 half cucumber
Directions:
Blend or juice all of the ingredients together. If you juice, use the whole cucumber. You’ll end up with a beautiful green juice or smoothie to enjoy!
Read the Other Articles in This Series:
The Root Chakra: Foods to Ground and Strengthen
About the Author
Journey Through the Chakras: Go With the Flow
The second chakra is Svadhisthana and is symbolic of water. It is associated with taking pleasure and is located in the sacrum, genitals, hips, knees and low back.
Svadhisthana represents ‘the right to feel’. If we cannot interpret how we feel then it is very difficult to know what we want.
The first chakra is about everything solid. This solidity creates foundation, which gives us the base of support to rise up from. The second chakra Svadhisthana is about water and the ability to go with the flow. The form transforms into formlessness. The principles of water are fluid, feminine, and rhythmic.
Qualities of Svadhisthana Chakra
Pleasure:
Pleasure allows us to move more deeply into the temple of the body. Pleasure allows us to expand while pain creates contraction. Our sensations are so important to the experience of pleasure. When we taste good food, or take a deep breath in the outdoors, we are opening the pleasure centers and creating an extension of the spiritual dimension. Some may argue that we need to shut off our senses in order to tune into the subtler body. However the senses are the building blocks to our emotions and feelings. Without them we become lifeless and disconnected.
Unfortunately we are often taught to beware of pleasure. We don’t easily allow our self to do what we want and instead do what we should. Eventually this can lead to resentment and frustration. Svadhisthana invites us to turn on our pleasure centers and delve into the deep recesses of the feeling body.
Emotions:
The second chakra is where the emotional center of the body lies. In a balanced state we feel emotions, but do not get overridden with them. If this second chakra is turned on too much we are overly emotional meaning our emotions begin to cloud our rational judgment. When this chakra is repressed we are shut off from our emotions and we feel very little. Repressed emotion creates tension and tension creates lethargy. We need to find the way to send the emotion out (in an appropriate way). The absence of tension creates a harmonic flow between the mind and the body. This creates an even deeper pleasure within the body, allowing deeper connection with others.
Sexuality:
Sexuality is the ultimate expression of Svadhisthana yet it can also be the reason why we have many issues with movement, sensations, pleasure, desire and emotions. In our western culture sexuality has been gravely misunderstood and mismanaged. This affects the natural flow of excitation throughout the body. Guilt is the demon of the second chakra. It halts our pleasures and self-esteem. To reclaim the second chakra is to reclaim our right to feel and our right to healthy sexuality.
Balanced Svadhisthana: Healthy boundaries, having passion in life and feeling alive, the ability to go with the flow and movements are graceful, nurturing of the self.
Excessive Svadhisthana: Change is necessary in order for the mind to stay active and alive. An excessive second chakra scatters the liberating energies too soon so it does not flow through to higher chakras. Therefore it is important to be honest with your self when exploring how much change is too much.
Depleted Svadhisthana: Fear of change, energy gets trapped in the structure of the first chakra and resists fluidity, becoming hard and stiff. Little passion and too much self-control. If we experience chronic tension in the hips, low back, and glutes try and tap into the current and flow of life.
Rituals to restore Balance: Connect with water. Take hot baths, drink more water, sit by the river or ocean. Add a flow and pulse to your regular yoga poses such as swaying and rocking the body. Change a routine (running route, clothing color, meeting place). Start with nurturing yourself and then begin to apply the principles to your relationships.
Y oga poses to restore balance:
- Sufi Grind: This deep rhythmic movement of circulating the hips, glutes and low back is wonderful to connect with Svadhisthana’s water element.
- Lunge Pose/ Anjaneyasana: Gently pressing in and out with the hip in sync with the breath.
- Pigeon Pose/ Eka Pada Rajakapotasana: Imagine the breath can reach right into the tension within the body and as you exhale carry that tension up and out.
The second chakra is the prime mover of energy. As the energy moves upwards, the soul is carried on the currents of emotions and desires toward growth. Through the solid base of our first chakra we are able to surrender to the prana and follow its natural course without losing our center.
Image Credit: Leslie Prentice
