Heart Chakra Week 4 Recap (Days 22-28)

This bonus episode recaps Week 4 (Days 22-28) of a 49 Day Meditation Series based on the Art of Conscious Evolution Chakra deck by Kate Lemay. The theme of Week 4 is the Heart, Fourth Chakra or Anahata. Kate's 49 paintings each honor a different chakra, 7 each for the 7 main energy centers. We will be moving from root to crown, and back down again, alternating for 7 weeks. I hope you enjoy the journey and are inspired by the paintings, themes and whimsy of the incredible artist, Kate Lemay.

References:

Kate Lemay, Artist of Conscious of Evolution

https://www.katelemay.com/

Two Books by Anodea Judith: 

Wheels of Life & Eastern Body, Western Mind

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Transcript

Welcome to your Heart overview. We are in Week four of 49 Days of Meditations. And we're moving through the Art of Conscious Evolution Deck by Kate Lemay. She has 49 beautiful chakra paintings, seven in each chakra, and an accompanying deck. And we're meditating on the description of each painting for 49 days, and although we are moving through Kate's paintings in order one through 49, moving up and down the seven main energy centers of the body, each week in and of itself has a theme.

And the theme of week four is chakra number four. The heart, the Sanskrit name for the heart center is Anahata. It means unstruck. The core concepts are compassion, balance, love, truth, acceptance, breath, relationships, unity, connection, self-love, forgiveness, contentment, gratitude, equilibrium. The body scene is the heart, center of the chest, arms, hands, lungs, and across the upper back.

That is the description from Kate's book, and a lot of Kate's work is inspired by Anodea Judith, who has incredible chakra reference books, wheels of Life, and Eastern Body, Western Mind. And in chakra number four, the element is air. So it's our breath, it's our lungs, it's air. The function is love. The color is green. The seed sound is YAM, the minerals associated with the chakra are emerald, tourmaline, jade and rose quartz, and I like that she mentions animals as well, antelope, birds, and dove. 

In Eastern Body, Western Mind, it's a little bit more in depth about the psychological aspects of each chakra, and she mentions that our identity in the heart chakra, it's our social identity, how we relate to ourselves and to others. The orientation is self-acceptance and acceptance of others. The issue that we often come across in this chakra is grief. The developmental stage is four to seven years. We are forming peer and family relationships, developing our persona and I think this is such a beautiful, important one because so much of the heart has to do with our human experience, how we love and are in relationship to one another. And it is the energetic balancing chakra of the seven. So it's the middle. We're at the halfway point. So we've gone through the lower three energy centers. The heart is the center, and then the higher states of consciousness, the upper three energy centers are above the heart.

So leaning into love, into connection, but we also come across grief, forgiveness is in the heart. Gratitude is in the heart. There's just so much beauty and wisdom in all of the chakras. But if I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the heart. Maybe third eye, close second. When I think of the heart, I think of my maternal grandmother. Her birthday was on February 4th. So I think of the number four and heart. The heart is chakra number four, and her favorite color was green and she had green eyes. And my Grammy was just all love, right? So someone that I was deeply connected to and felt so much love for and from in my lifetime. So I feel super connected to her in the heart.

It's something that I'm a deeply feeling person, and I know not everybody is this way, but if you resonate as someone who feels deeply, I mean, I cry at music, happy or sad, and it's hard not to cry when someone else is crying and to really put yourself in someone else's shoes, really be able to empathize.

It can be difficult to feel deeply especially when you feel the weight of the world. And it can be hard to sit with those feelings sometimes and to know what to do and what to take action on and how to spread love in a way that feels authentic. Anodea Judith has an incredible meditation in Wheels of Life where, you could even practice it in line, you know, especially in line practicing patience, where you can imagine as if you're connecting your heart to someone else's heart and feel that connection, right? Even if they don't know you're doing it.  It's a beautiful way to send compassion to someone, especially someone that you could potentially be having difficulty with. Practicing compassion can really maybe help you lean a little bit into forgiveness and even healthy boundary setting.    

The seven main energy centers alternate between masculine and feminine. So the heart, chakra number four is a feminine chakra. It is yin, it is open. It is about receiving.  We, in week four, moved through Kate's fourth series, the Heart Series, and the paintings were Receive, Light, OM, Healing, Power, Pleasure, and Tribe. So that's what we were moving through and we were in the manifestation current so a downward flow and condensing energy.  Obviously. In all of these overviews, we could go on and on about the chakra, but I think the heart especially, so much of our lives is kind of determined by our ticker, right? How long it's gonna be allowing this blood to flow through our bodies and keep our systems going, and we just don't know how long we have in this world.

So, really honoring your heart and its messages and loving on yourself and others as much as you can. And also celebrating how far you have come, especially if you have a hard time focusing on what you have done versus what you're still looking to do. Really celebrating yourself, how far you've come, wherever you are, can be a beautiful heart-centered practice to lean into.

So let me know your thoughts on the heart, and I'm just sending you all so much love and we'll be back next week in the throat. And I'll talk to you soon. Take care.