Time to Get Your Heart On

Let's talk about your heart chakra.  Wait, wait, wait, no, let's just talk about your heart first.  The physical thing that pumps blood for you.  How does it do that?  It's electric!  It's using an electrical timing system to know when to contract and release and which way to go.  The heart's electromagnetic field (EMF) is five thousand times stronger than that of the brain (also electric).  While we're comparing it to the brain, consider also that the 60 - 65% of the heart's cells are neural, just like the cells of the brain.  The heart and brain are in constant communication, in fact, studies have shown that incoming information is received first by the heart, parsed there, then sent up to the brain.  The heart is also an endocrine gland, producing at least 5 major hormones in the body.  In the developing fetus, the heart is active before the brain.  It's been shown that in meditations focused on the heart (so, not transcendental), the heart can be made to glow, yes, actually give off light.  I mean, we all give off light anyway, but this is visible light at a rate of one hundred thousand photons per second.  That's the heart.  What a glory hound. 

Your heart chakra does not reside within your heart, but rather is superimposed above the area of the heart in the body.  The staggering body of symbolism involving the heart is literally mind-numbing (perhaps because the brain is a wee bit jealous), and all of it is derived from hunches that have since turned out to be facts.  It's the center of love.  The cells of your heart are so tightly organized that an overall ethos, if you will, is far easier to achieve in this area than any other.  Feeling furious?  Yeah, the heart started it.  Falling in love?  Thanks, heart!  So, small wonder that the heart chakra is associated with healing.  This chakra is bright green (with a pink center - it's preppy!), and when it's open and spinning at a happy rate (above 500 on Dr. Hawkins' Map of Consciousness scale, but that's another post), your body is able to function as the powerful, astonishing healing machine it's built to be. 

What does love have to do with healing and immunity?  Only everything.  Time to site musicians again.  The Talking Heads speak the truth - we are creatures of love.  Love brings us here, love sustains us and love heals us.  The most important source of this love you require comes from your very own heart.  Our purest state is that of love, so things like stress and emotional dissonance are at odds with who we really are, and if we can't work that out, we become sick or die.  Hamlet contemplating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, wondering if death might be better, is a man whose heart chakra is closed and hermetically sealed.  What would have healed him of his deep state of depression?  Love.  Forgiveness.  No small feat, forgiving an uncle guilty of patricide and a mother too blind to see the truth, but doable, though doubtless it would take more than 5 acts and be pretty tough to watch.  Still, the curtain would not fall on a stage littered with dead bodies, probably. 

Want to open your heart chakra?  Spend some time thinking of the beings that make you smile - people, pets, meerkats at the zoo, that sort of thing.  Spend some time listing anything at all that makes you feel just a wee bit lighter inside.  The light feeling is the dark cloud lifting, truly!  I'll start you off - a nice cup o' joe on a leisurely morning, a smile from a baby in the line in front of you, the intently interested head cock of the dog who thinks a trip to the park might be imminent, plenty of food to eat, new shoes, a cooling downpour on an exceptionally muggy day...OK you take over now.  Go.