Lesson 2.5: Heart Chakra - Anahata

Course Two: The Seven Chakras · Lesson 5 of 11 · 11 min read

Heart chakra — Anahata

The fourth chakra sits at the centre of the chest, and it is the middle of the seven — three below it, three above. The tradition treats that position as meaningful: this is where the body's concerns and the mind's concerns meet.

It is also the chakra with the most interesting name in the whole system, and for a course about sound it is the one worth slowing down for.

The card

As with the solar plexus, the notebook does not record a metal for this chakra.

The unstruck sound

Anahata means unstruck. Unhurt, unbeaten — all three translations sit in Sunita's notebook, and they are the same word approached from different sides.

The idea behind it is this. Every sound you have ever heard was made by two things meeting. A mallet meets bronze. Air meets a vocal cord. A stick meets a drum. Sound requires contact, and contact requires striking.

Anahata is the name for the sound that is not struck. The tone that does not need two objects to produce it, and therefore never stops, and therefore was never started.

You are a sound practitioner. Everything you do involves striking something. So it is worth sitting with the fact that the tradition put its most exalted idea about sound at the heart, and defined it as the sound your bowl cannot make.

The other translations follow from the first. If nothing struck it, nothing hurt it. The heart in this tradition is not something that has been broken and needs repairing — it is described as fundamentally unhurt, whatever has happened on top of it. That is a considerably kinder model of a person than the one most of us carry around.

Air, lungs, arms and hands

The element is air, and the body parts are heart, lungs, arms and hands.

The lungs are obvious. The arms and hands less so, until you notice what they are for — reaching, giving, holding, making. The tradition treats them as extensions of the heart rather than of the shoulders. Everything you hand to another person passes through this chakra on the way.

Which is why the function is given as three things and not one: unconditional love, art, sharing. Making things and giving things belong to the same centre as loving people.

Working with the heart

The bowl. F, 175 Hz — the middle bowl of a graded seven-bowl set, and often the one people reach for most.

The mantra. Yum — closer to yum than yoom. The tradition places it as an open, warm sound, and it is the one that carries most easily when several people chant together.

The mudra. Hridaya mudra — hridaya simply means heart. Fold the tip of the index finger down to the base of the thumb. Bring the tips of the middle and ring fingers to meet the tip of the thumb. Let the little finger stay extended. Both hands, resting on the knees or lightly at the chest.

It takes a moment to arrange the first few times. Set it up slowly rather than forcing your fingers into position — the shape should feel settled, not held together by effort.

The colour. Green, at the centre of the chest. The tradition's green is a living one — leaves rather than emerald.

The affirmation

I am willing to love everything about myself.

Read that again and notice the word willing.

The affirmation does not say I love everything about myself. That would be a claim most people cannot make honestly, and saying something untrue while a bowl sounds does not make it true — it just teaches you to say things you do not mean.

Willingness is a much smaller ask. You are not asserting that you have arrived; you are saying you are open to the possibility. This is the most carefully worded line in the entire notebook, and I would not change it.

Practice: a Wednesday heart session

Air is the element, so breath carries more weight in this session than in the previous three.

1. Sit upright with the chest open — shoulders back and down, not lifted.
2. Breathe for a minute before you touch the bowl. Slow, in through the nose, out for longer than you came in. Nothing forced.
3. Set up Hridaya mudra in both hands, resting on the knees.
4. Say the affirmation once, in your ordinary voice.
5. Play — strike and let the tone run completely out.
6. Listen right to the end of the tail, where you stop being sure whether you can still hear it. That edge is as close as a struck bowl gets to the unstruck sound.
7. Feel — the centre of the chest, and then the arms and hands.
8. Chant Yum once per strike, on the outbreath.
9. Imagine green at the centre of the chest, widening slightly with each breath.
10. Seven or eight strikes, then two minutes of silence.

Afterwards, one line. Name one thing about yourself you find hard to accept — and do not try to accept it. Just write that you are willing to. That is the whole exercise, and it follows the affirmation exactly.

Common mistakes

• Jumping straight to the heart chakra. It is the most popular of the seven and the one beginners want to start with. It works considerably better with the three below it settled first.
• Treating it as being about romance. The tradition's own list is love, art and sharing. Two of those three have nothing to do with relationships.
• Forcing gratitude or warmth. Manufactured feeling is not the practice. Willingness is.
• Breathing too hard. Air is the element, not effort. Slow and unforced.
• Rushing Hridaya mudra. Arrange it slowly. If your fingers are straining, the shape is wrong.
• Reciting the affirmation as though it were already true. The word is willing, and it is doing real work.

How do you know you got it right?

You can recite the card — Anahata, centre of the chest, air, F at 175 Hz, Yum, Hridaya, green, Wednesday, Venus — and you can explain what unstruck means to someone who has never heard the word.

That second one matters more than it looks. If you can explain anahata clearly, you understand something about this tradition that most people who own singing bowls never encounter.

Something to sit with

The tradition says the heart is unstruck — that whatever has happened to you, something underneath was never damaged by it.

You do not have to believe that. But sit for a moment with what it would mean if it were true.