Compassion
The capacity to feel another person's suffering as if it were partially yours, without losing your own ground.
CHAKRA 4 · Heart chakra
Anahata अनाहत
Bija · Yam12 petalsAir (Vayu)
"Anahata" means "unstruck" - the sound that arises without two things hitting each other. The heart is where the felt unity behind apparent twoness becomes accessible.
Location
Chest, at the level of the physical heart
Presiding deity
Ishana Rudra and Kakini Shakti
Element / sense
Air (Vayu) · Touch
Body / gland
Heart, lungs, thymus, arms · Thymus
Emotion
Love and acceptance when balanced; grief when blocked
Planet · day
Venus / Moon · Monday
Introduction
Anahata sits at the heart and is the bridge between the lower three chakras (the body, the emotions, the will) and the upper three (speech, insight, transcendence). It is the meeting place. Whatever does not pass through here cannot rise; whatever the upper chakras do not connect to here cannot become wisdom.
The name itself is striking. "Anahata" means "unstruck sound" - the sound that arises without two objects colliding to produce it. Ordinary sound requires hammer and bell. The heart, when the chakra is open, hears the constant background hum of being itself, with no cause.
A modern person carries enormous accumulated grief in this chakra - losses we have not properly mourned, slights we have not fully forgiven, intimacies we have not fully accepted. Most heart-chakra practice in the contemporary West (and increasingly the East) is, before anything else, the slow work of letting that backlog out.
What this chakra governs
Love that endures
Not only the high of new love but the steady warmth of long marriage, the love of a parent for a difficult child, the love of a teacher for a slow student.
Forgiveness
The willingness to release a grudge - not because the other person was right, but because carrying it is more expensive than putting it down.
Connection
The felt experience of "we" - with family, community, all beings. The opposite of the loneliness epidemic.
Signs of imbalance
When it is excessive
- Sentimental over-giving until you collapse
- Dependent / co-dependent relationships
- Jealousy
- Living through other people's lives
When it is deficient
- Bitterness, cynicism
- Closed body language - collapsed chest, hunched shoulders
- Difficulty receiving care
- Loneliness even in company
Signs that it is opening
- A warm, slightly expansive feeling in the chest at unexpected moments
- Spontaneous tears at beauty (a song, a child, a sunset)
- Old grudges loosen
- You can hold someone's pain without trying to fix it
A meditation practice
- Sit comfortably. Place your right hand over your heart, your left hand over your right.
- Breathe slowly into the chest so the hands rise and fall.
- Mentally chant Yam on each exhale.
- Visualise a green twelve-petalled lotus, perhaps with a six-pointed star at its centre - the traditional symbol of Anahata, two interlocking triangles.
- After a few minutes, bring to mind one person you love, then one person you have struggled with. Send each the same wish: "May you be at peace."
Pranayama: Anuloma viloma - alternate nostril breathing. Balances Ida and Pingala, the lunar and solar channels that meet at the heart.
Recommended asanas
Bhujangasana
Cobra pose
Ustrasana
Camel pose
Matsyasana
Fish pose
Anjali Mudra
Hands at the heart in prayer
Setu Bandha
Bridge pose
Daily-life applications
Practice loving-kindness (metta)
For five minutes a day, silently send well-wishes - first to yourself, then to a loved one, then to a neutral person, then to a difficult person, then to all beings. Modern psychology calls this LKM and finds measurable effects on cardiac coherence.
Hug for at least 20 seconds
Below 20 seconds you barely register; above 20 seconds the body releases oxytocin. Anahata is responsive to actual touch.
Open the chest physically
Sit upright. Sleep on your back not curled. Carry less in your hands. Let the sternum face the world.
Listen without preparing your reply
The single most direct heart-chakra practice in conversation. Most listening is rehearsal.
Sing once a day
Singing - even just in the shower - vibrates the chest and breaks open held-in feeling.
Further study
- Sat-Chakra-Nirupana - verses on the heart chakra
- James R. Doty · "Into the Magic Shop" - neuroscience of compassion
- Pema Chödrön · "When Things Fall Apart" - Buddhist heart practice
- Stephen Levine · "A Year to Live" - radical Anahata work on accepting mortality