Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Practices that help strengthen the heart chakra

Usually, if that is what you need, it is probably very difficult for you, on the mat.
I mean, if you needed to heal the heart chakra, it is likely the practices that heal, strengthen and tone this center can give you a lot of trouble initially. It takes a long and regular practice to get the heart chakra to open itself to what you intend.
I have known students who can burst out crying for no reason, and continuously cry though claim they are not sad but just feel the need for this release. This has happened with
* The wheel pose /chakrasana
* some variations of the bhujangasana/cobra and locust /salabhasana -- with the latter being really difficult for the heart-chakra affected person.
* yoga nidra -- can set off a lot of crying and healing especially some visualisations that include love as an idea

This just means you need to really continue with gritted teeth if need be with these practices. All backbends help in this direction. This may be why some people will feel very uncomfortable in backbends -- dizziness, the sense of breathlessness, actually holding the breath and/or often doing the pose structurally wrong so as to not excite the heart!

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