Fourth Chakra

For those of you not familiar with the chakras, the fourth chakra is also known as you heart chakra because that is where it is located on your body (your chest).  This chakra is primarily associated with the color green but can also be associated with soft pink/rose color.  It has the element of air, the note of A and powers the arms, breasts, hands, heart, wrists, lungs, circulatory system, and shoulders.  When your heart chakra is balanced you feel safe, loved, secure, trusting, belonging, and like your basic needs are being met.  When your chakra is closed or even too open (both can happen) you feel fear, greed, insecure and isolated.  You can also have problems with arthritis, hemorrhoids, constipation, sciatica, knee problems, arthritis, and bone problems.  Why do I bring this up?  Because I had a very emotional meditation session based on the fourth chakra.

Every first Friday of the month, a local PT place has a crystal bowl meditation class.  Last month was my first time and it was a general meditation (meaning not chakra based) focusing on our intentions for the new year.  I have never participated in a crystal bowl meditation before, so the idea was exciting to me.  Besides, even though I meditate frequently and am going to school for it now, it's nice to have an hour to yourself every month to reflect.  Being in a group meditation setting has always been a powerful way for me to meditation because even though we are reflecting and balancing ourselves, you can feel the energy of everyone else in the room reaching the same goal.  If you ever get a chance to attend a group meditation of any kind, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, crystal bowl meditation is like mindful meditation (where you focus on breath) mixed with crystal bowls aka singing bowls.  Because we are made of mostly water, energy and vibrations are very important in our lives, whether we notice them or not.  Jurassic Park showed the world on how vibrations can manipulate water.  Since we are made up of so much water, the sound vibrations of the bowls have the same effect.  If you allow yourself and practice this, it is said to be very healing.  Each tone works on different parts of the body (you can look up singing bowls or even the solfeggio scale both of which I like a lot).  So, because of Valentine's day being next week, our instructor decided to work on the heart chakra.

Sometimes you have days where meditation is super chatty and you can't really concentrate.  The purpose of meditation isn't necessarily to quiet your mind, but to be non judgmental to what comes to you and when distractions do come in, you look at them at face value and quietly push them out of your brain and focus back on your breath.  By doing this, you learn to be open to anything and at the same time you learn to not be immediately reactive (which we are all guilty of).  A lot of answers can come to you this way if you focus on just being instead of forcing possibilities.  Anything forced is usually clouded, jaded and leaves you with doubt.

Sometimes you have meditations that just hit you and bring on strong emotions.  This is what happened to me on Friday.  Because of Dennis' anniversary Wednesday and because of certain stresses happening in my life at the moment, I was very much looking forward to meditation class.  I got stuck in traffic, so I missed 10 minutes of it, but I quickly settled down and found my om.  As she was saying some things about the heart chakra that really resonated with me at the moment, I got that feeling that I was exactly where I needed to be at that moment (I love it when that happens).  And, then she began to play the bowls again.  Whatever sequence she was playing just overwhelmed me with emotion.  I wasn't necessarily sad, but I couldn't help but silently cry my eyes out.  This is the third time this has happened to me during a meditation, BTW, and I believe the first time was also during a fourth chakra meditation.  Shortly there after my heart started palpitating like crazy!  Clearly I was very blocked in this area (it's been a while since I've aligned myself).  At any rate, I felt very peaceful after the meditation was over and I am happy to report that I had, for the first time in a very long time, a really good night's sleep with out any sleep aids.

So, what's my point?  I don't have one.  I just wanted to share my awesome experience from the other night while touching a tad on some meditation information.

Much love and light~

Tammy