Stillness 8-9: Your beautiful heart chakra, located in the middle of your chest area, is the bridge between spirit and body. Its color is emerald green, its nature is courage. Its Sanskrit name is anahata, meaning unhurt, unstruck. In yoga it’s where your Atman, or higher Self, resides. It’s your realm of balance, calm, serenity. It rules things like compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, self-realization, gratitude, trust.
Oh, and love.
Your heart chakra is aligned with your lungs, breasts, arms, heart, and thymus. Many people don’t know much about the thymus, so I’m going to tell you a little about it:
Your thymus sits between your heart and sternum and is part of your lymphatic system. Physiologically, its main purpose is to build your immune response by producing T-leukocytes, which distinguish and fend off invading pathogens. Your thymus thrives during childhood, when it generously supplies your physical body with all the T-cells you’ll need for the rest of your life. By the time your teens are over, it has begun to disintegrate and is eventually absorbed into the surrounding tissue of your chest.
If you’ve had any sort of childhood or adolescent trauma, it’s as though your thymus was hurt or struck. The wounds may show up as grief, jealousy, fear of abandonment, anger, bitterness, depression, suffocation, overwhelm. Physical manifestations may show up in the heart, circulation, and lungs. When your thymus holds onto painful memories, you may feel blocked from getting in touch with your ascended heart—your higher self. But when your heart chakra is in balance all that feels healed.
There are many ways to heal past wounds that may be affecting your heart chakra, including therapy, breath work, and energy healing. But one of the best self-healing methods is vibration and sound. Your sternum operates as a lovely soundboard, and when you sing the notes resonate and you feel them through and through.
So sing and listen and feel the vibration in your chest area. Music shakes open any stuck emotions and can make you weep or dance. You can feel it in the core of your being. Your song will vibrate you gently back to your healthy sense of serenity and calm.
Oh, and pure, sweet, unconditional love, for others, for your song, and for yourself.