January 15, 2015 By Admin

Anahata – Heart Chakra

Anahata – Heart Chakra Meditation Practice

Rumi noted that to reach the sky we must use our hearts.

The Heart Chakra is a very popular focus of meditation practice. Here we will simply review some characteristics and then move on to a meditation practice.

Specific characteristics: Green color, YAM sound (say at least three times with a soft A), sense of touch, located in center of chest (cardiac plexus and thyme area), and malachite or emerald stone.

Functional characteristics: Respiration, circulation, immune system, and life itself.

Emotional characteristics: openness, unconditional love, duty, devotion, peace, harmony, awakened compassion, and emotional consciousness.

Now for the meditation practice.

Just rest in meditation on the breath just as it is now – just be aware. In and out. In and out.
Now gently bring full attention to the feelings of a deeper, slower, more complete breath. In and out. In and out.
Pay full attention to your heart chakra area, and bring full attention to it. If you wish, you may place both hands over your heart area.
Breathe in green energy very slowly and deeply, and say YAM to yourself at least three times. Say it slowly.
Go deeper with your emotional consciousness into your heart area. Appreciate it! Appreciate it!
Use your imagination and breathe in the feelings of inner peace and harmony. In and out. In and out.
Awaken your deeper emotional consciousness, and feel the sense of unconditional love for yourself and others. In and out. In and out.
Now simply rest with yourself. Hold yourself emotionally in this unconditional love and inner peace.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW for the PDFWorksheet

Anahata The Heart Chakra Practice

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

Expanded Lectio Divina for Self-Development In this post I will provide an expanded version of this process by combining information from Origen, the Carthusian Monk Guigo II, and Augustine of Hippo. The presented process of 12 steps may be used to enhance internalization of sacred writing and/or to support internal healing of the participants. […]

Mindful Movement as Part of Practice Mindful movement is an accepted part of regular practice. Such practices as walking meditation, more vigorous yoga asanas, qi gong, and tail chi are all part of this respected mindfulness tradition. Here I will introduce you to a very simple pre-meditation movement sequence. Hope you practice it very soon. […]

Beyond MBSR – Quick Start Skills Self-calming for counselors and other helpers is one of the most important survival practices to master. Self-calming consists a set of basic mindfulness skills, all of which must be practiced regularly to achieve desired emotion-regulation effects. The utility of these skills is well established in clinical research, and not […]

Mindfulness On Loss, Grief and Mourning Mindfulness about personal loss, grief, and mourning may encompass many things. Here I will focus on the process and what people can do to better handle their suffering and pain. One way to look at it is through the lens of radical acceptance; another is via the reality of […]

Effective Clinical Supervision Perhaps other than the mental health status of the therapist and her/his ethical clinical skills, there is no more important variable in successful clinical work than effective CLINICAL supervision. I emphasize “clinical’ because in today’s bureaucratic systems, so much supervision tends to be about required procedures like utilization level, reporting requirements, and documentation for services […]

Concentration, Contentment, and Loving Kindness I have written various entries on concentration meditations in prior posts. Yes, concentration meditation is beyond pure mindfulness meditation. Here I will present briefly two other forms of meditation that are quite intentional and also beyond mindfulness: contentment and loving kindness meditations. Let’s begin with intentional meditation of contentment. Contentment […]

Essential Knowledge for Clinical Supervisors This post will include information and skills dealing with research on role induction practices, quality of clinical supervision, psychodynamics of alliance, and progress measurement. Since the information and skills for all these topics is complex, I will do my best to keep it as clear as possible. This information aims […]

Strategies to Cool Your Hot Emotions: Using Mind and Body First, let me note that one of the best sets of mind-body approaches to cooling down hot emotional reactions can be found in the various emotion regulation skills and practices in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (created by Marsha M. Lineman, a practicing Buddhist). These skills may […]

Liberate Yourself with Spiritual Energy Cultivating authentic inner and outer peace is the only way to a happy and good future. Learn to use your spiritual higher self to let go of self-centerednesss, greed, and entitlement. Work to free yourself from the endless grasping for material “things.” Does it really matter what kind of car […]

Consciousness of Your Emotions Besides common scientific reflections on human emotions – that is neuro-chemical-electrical cellular impulses in response to sensory inputs – our emotional response system includes you and your innermost emotional reactions to both internal and external stimuli (people, places, things, memories, experiences, phenomena). Your mental state in response to sensory contact with […]

Using Your Compassionate Mind in Psychotherapy For you to become a more compassionate therapist, follow the details noted below. These preconditions, skills, and practices are required as a baseline for compassionate practice. You need the ability to access calmness in an environment of emotional suffering, chaos, or conflict. Most people do this by breathing in […]

Behaviors People Display When in Groups After more than 35 years of facilitating hundreds of classes, workshops, family therapy sessions, group therapy sessions, and work project groups it has become clear that we do some strange things when we participate in groups. It appears to me that many of these in-group functions serve both ego […]

Risks and Solutions for Compassion Fatigue Perhaps nothing more than compassion fatigue causes more helpers to prematurely exit their fields. First responders are generally seen as the most at risk for compassion fatigue (and possibly PTSD), followed by emergency room medical staff. A third group, medical and clinical staff working with high risk terminally-prone patients is […]

Meditations and Mantra: Try Them Out in Your Practice There are many forms of meditation. In most cases, the common meditation forms fall into one of two categories: Mindfulness and Insight. There are also demanding concentration meditations, chakra meditations, and mantra meditations. Here we’ll deal only with the two forms noted above and the use […]

Henry David Thoreau & Walking Meditation Henry David Thoreau is, perhaps, the most individualistic of the American Transcendentalists. He asked us to consider what we have learned that is useful as we travel our own “stream of life.” He cautions us not to regret when we die that we “had not lived.” He advised us to […]

Finding Your Seat with Your Demons and Dragons: Resolutions You may think the creation of the Gestalt-like therapy activity of sitting in different chairs and acting “as if” the you in that personality-chair is the source of your responses is a relatively new psychotherapy intervention. However, some roots of this process may go back as […]

Loving Kindness Meditation – More Thoughts Some less experienced meditators complain about how easily the mind’s wandering thoughts distract them from paying attention and deepening concentration. This is a very common problem in meditation practice, and not always just for novices. Here is a solution for you to try. In Loving Kindness Meditation, you focus […]

Counseling/Psychotherapy with Self-Compassion Please begin by ending all conversations, and PLEASE shut-off your phones and/or laptops. Simply be for a moment in the quietude of your inner self. Please close your eyes if you wish to do so. Contemplate the sacred nature of your profession – saving lives, reducing suffering, being a constant object, practicing […]

My third posting on self-medication- Comes from the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont. Now we will turn our attention to how people become habituated to self-medication to obtain brief moments of joy and/or to avoid emotional suffering. Recall that self-medication becomes a habit (dopamine released in reward centers of the […]

COVID-19 Brings Higher Stress and Emotion Dysregulation The Book of Job notes “Man is born unto troubles as the sparks fly upward.” Current stress surveys indicate Americans are stressed out due to COVID-19 concerns, work stress (money needs), imbalance in life-work experience, and lack of support (social, emotional, financial). The 2020 American Psychological Association national survey […]