A short meditation that asks you to connect to the wisdom and resilience of the heart space. Start by breathing into the heart and thinking of all those people and places you love; expand your awareness and envision the farther-reaching environments and individuals with who you share space. This meditation taps into the expansiveness of the heart to bring more awareness to the breath, how you feel, and how you relate to the environments and individuals in your life.

Style: Meditation

Duration: 16-mins

Level: Open-level

Props: none

Focus: Visualization and breath

Location: Lila Familia Production Studio, Vancouver, BC

Bring your awareness to your heart center and think of all the people who reside in your heart; teachers, friends, loved ones, children, anyone who you hold dear in your heart. Consider how these people support you and how they nourish and stimulate the relationship.

Expand your awareness to include the room around you, the space that you embody, and the people, animals, or plants who share the space with you. Keep expanding your awareness so that it includes the neighborhood you live in and the communities you’re involved in. Keep breathing from your heart and expanding your awareness to touch the closest spaces to you and moving outwards to include farther-reaching places and people.

As you bring yourself back into the room that you’re sitting in, ask yourself, how does this space I’m in make me feel? Explore how you feel in each moment, examining the clothes that you wear and how they feel on your body. Examine the pose you’re in and how it makes you feel. Examine your facial expression and thoughts. Keep exploring the sensations of the body and how you feel right now.

Send your love, gratitude, and well wishes to all those people in your life who you care for; your teachers, family, and friends. Connect to your heart as you breathe into the gratitude.

Wise Heart: Anahata Chakra 

Anahata is the fourth chakra. It serves as a bridge to connect the lower chakras that relate to our tangible connection to the earth, and the upper chakras that relate to our consciousness and immaterial aspects of nature. It’s within our hearts that we create harmony and balance our internal and external worlds. The heart is where we discover a state of ease, compassion, and serenity. The themes of the fourth chakra themes include love, forgiveness, sadness, and grief.

The element for Anahata is air. Our breath is our life force, our vitality, and one of the key indicators of how we’re feeling emotionally. Tightness or shortness of breath is a sign of stress or can indicate we are holding pain in our chests. When our breath is smooth, slow, and deep, we are in a state of ease. When we are at ease, we can interact with our environment and other people with more integrity.