harmony
Sun Salutation For Opening Your Heart Chakra
Many people have an energy blockage or imbalance with their heart chakra, because this is where we hold our emotional wounds.
The heart chakra is where we hold on to every insult or criticism from our childhood. The unbalanced heart chakra can store the energy of every rejection, anxious moment, humiliation, and fear from our teen years, as well as every break-up and every disappointment in our lifetime.
Heartbreak is a very real phenomenon. For example, sometimes when the life partner of an elderly person passes away, they will also pass from a heart attack soon after. It is tragic evidence of a disconnection of the life-long energy bond between two hearts.
Blockage in the heart chakra can also cause various health problems, including heart palpitations, irregular heartbeat, breathing problems, and problems with the thyroid, back, neck and shoulders.
The sun salutation is a choreographed set of yoga exercises that can be used to open the heart chakra and move energy throughout the entire body. Lifting your heart chakra pulls energy into the center.
Stand with your feet roughly one foot part, feet parallel. Tighten your buttocks and push your pelvis forward. Contract your abdominal muscles.
Reach your arms out to the side and slowly move them upward, as if you re scooping energy upward. Keep the arms perfectly straight, with elbows locked.
Bring your hands over your head into a prayer position, with the arms as straight as you can get them. Visualize that energy you scooped up pulsing between your hands. Then, keeping the hands connected in prayer, bring your hands down to your heart and feel that energy you ‘captured’ filling your heart chakra. Do this over and over as many times as you want.
The Stages Of True Love
When we fall in love with a potential life partner, we need to understand the lessons and challenges it may bring. Couples grow further with each of these organic stages, and we can learn much about ourselves, as well as our beloved’s life, needs, wants, wishes, goals, and desires.
Those who do not make it through the initial stages will not stay together for very long, and if they do it may become a very toxic relationship situation. Meeting someone is only the first step of the journey. For lasting happiness and fulfillment, we must complete all the stages successfully.
The Matching Stage
Take a moment to feel each one of these checklist items and apply it honestly to your current relationship situation:
1: Attracted to what your eyes see.
2: Appearance, feeling comfortable with their way of dressing
3: Mannerisms, how they hold and present themselves.
4: Voice. Their voice sound has a comforting feeling.
5: Speech. The words they use resonate with your communication style.
6: Values. Does their values line up with yours in life?
7: Lifestyle. Does it blend with yours?
8: Obligations. Are they something you can accept?
9: Goals in life. Matching your goals is a must.
10. Past Experience, can you understand and let go of these.
Dealing With ‘Unawakened’ Friends And Family
Spiritual awakening is a profound shift in our perception that forever alters the way we experience life. But after we have made the shift it can be difficult to relate to less spiritually aware friends and relatives and leave one feeling lonely and deeply isolated.
The following strategies can be helpful in cultivating more harmony between yourself and ‘unconscious’ people without compromising your own energy vibration.
COMPASSION AND EMPATHY
At one time you were also not awakened. Think back to what that was like. What kind of thoughts dominated your mind? How did you feel about your life? How did you feel in general? The truth is, although you’ve gone through a spiritual awakening, you can still relate to those who have not. You have a point of reference for this.
Someone who is unconscious typically doesn’t have a pleasant inner world, because they aren’t intentionally governing it. Think back to what your life and most importantly – your relationship with yourself and your mind – looked like before your awakening. What did your own resistance look like? At some point your perspective shifted. But prior to that point – how receptive were you to changing your views and ideas? Especially when a family member came to you and said, “Hey, you’re doing it wrong.”
Put yourself in their shoes. Now that you’ve awakened you have the pleasure to start putting it to use in a way that serves the highest and best good of all. Remember that every soul is a spiritual being, and just because you have awakened to this fact, does not make you ‘better than’ anyone else. This is a trap that the ego likes to throw up early, and often along the spiritual path.
The ego is something we must constantly be mindful of. You are not more spiritual because you are vegan, or because you meditate, or because you do Yoga. If you are living in judgment of others through these practices, you are trapped in ego. Be mindful of yourself and come back to a state of compassion and empathy. Allow people to awaken in their own time.
Balancing Sun And Moon Energies
The Sun and Moon have very different metaphysical energies and we are strongly affected by both. For example, a circumstance or event that might make you sad during the day, may completely wipe you out emotionally at night. This is because our hormones shift at night.
I worked for many years teaching prenatal Yoga and helping expectant moms. Their emotions typically ran very high at night. Their concerns about labor was latent in their thoughts during the day, but at night they would sometimes become terrified. Most women also go into labor at night and give birth during the day.
Things become surreal at night. I believe our hormones, the Moon’s energy, and a lessened ability to see in the darkness all greatly affect us.
At night, the right side of the brain is dominant. This is our spiritual, intuitive, subconscious, feminine side. During the day, the left hemisphere of the brain is dominant. This is our practical, thinking, productive physical, masculine side.
The left side of the body is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain and is Sun-based, while the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere and is Moon based. The Moon exudes feminine energy. The feminine rules the right side of the brain, which is the maternal, emotional, creative, dreamy side. The Sun rules the left side of the brain, which is the paternal side which rules logic, production, protection, and work.
When you are having difficulty sleeping it is usually because the left hemisphere of the brain has kicked in when it should be inactive. This is when you start thinking about all the things you need to do the next day, or the stressful challenges you faced the day prior.
Transitioning With Grace
Autumn always awakens my awareness of transitions. Not only does the entire scenery change color, but each individual leaf on every tree is in a constant shift of shades of greens, golds, yellows, oranges, and reds. With every shifting shade and combination of them, the pattern of the palette continuously alters too.
Then, of course, there is the falling of the leaves – the gradual transition from tree to ground, from full foliage to bareness in various new measures day by day. The rise and set of the sun, and the length of the night and light incrementally inch through their own thresholds as well.
Like the changing season, life is full of transitions. From the moment the soul enters the womb, an endless sequence of them begins. The body develops in a rapid succession of changes, then carries the soul from womb to world.
In the world, the embodied soul then undergoes transition through various ages and stages, growing from infant to toddler to child to adolescent to adult, until gradually winding down to leave the body behind and proceed to the next one or world.
In between, you and I – the embodied souls – may face a multitude of additional transitions in relationships, careers, residences, levels of consciousness, and more. Such transitions – even the best of them – are not easy. They naturally incorporate intervals of instability in the liminal spaces between here and there. Transitions entail shedding, releasing, letting go of the old that was, and then birthing and rebirthing the next and new phase that will be. They empty us out and fill us up, again and again. Transitions are not easy; they may even make us feel queasy!
So, how can we move through the endless array of life’s transitions gracefully? As with all things, there are probably as many ways as there is individuality among people. What I share are simply some of the ones I have found especially helpful.
We Choose How We Wish To Cross Over
Death and crossing over is a unique process for each individual. At the time of passing, the soul may leave the body in a variety of ways. Sometimes the soul will even leave before the body fully ‘shuts down,’ eager to transition to the bliss, peace and harmony that awaits on the other side. And sometimes the human ego is not ready to embrace the transition and resists the departure. When we do not want to leave our physical body, we cause ourselves more anxiety and frustration and simply make it harder for our soul to pass into spirit. But there is no reason to resist or fear our passing. I know this for personal experience.
Some of us will also choose to pass quietly into spirit, when our loved ones are not around. My husband chose to pass this way, as I was not in the room when he secretly went. He wanted to spare me the trauma of that decisive moment and did not want me to suffer his loss any more than I needed to.
So, he went quietly to God, and I know that he is in the most beautiful place now that one could ever imagine. I know this because I have seen it myself in a near-death experience, but it wasn’t my time to go back then, and therefore I chose to come back.
But what I saw, I will never forget. Imagine a perfectly beautiful spring day, the sun shining so warmly on the most beautiful flowers that you have ever seen. We also return to spirit in a younger state, with no more aches and pains, and we always return home at the age we feel the best. Seeing my departed loved ones again was so amazing and surreal, but as much as I wanted to stay with them, I knew I had to come back to my loved ones here.
Spiritual Awakening And The Segmented Sleep Cycle
One of the most commonly experienced symptoms of spiritual awakening is frequently waking in the early hours from 3am to 5am. It’s important to rule out any medical reasons this could be happening. However, if you are in good health and you have been regularly waking up this early, then you may be experiencing this due to spiritual awakening.
You may have found by now in an online search that you are waking up at 3am because it is ‘the witching hour’. You may also have read that 3am is an auspicious time to wake, or the opposite, that it is a ‘time of dark magic.’ Or that during your spiritual awakening you may be ‘spiritually attacked’ and this is why you are waking in the wee hours. While some of this may be true for some people, I am going to have to say that it probably has nothing to do with your waking up at or around 3am.
Yes, it is a sign of awakening! And a very, very common one too. But the reason you are waking at 3am is not metaphysical; it is biological. It is biology which is influenced by your spiritual progression. But essentially it is a return to your natural state of being – your natural sleep cycle. This is called the circadian rhythm.
Most people just accept that we sleep naturally for about eight hours a night. But there is a great deal of evidence that this is not actually the natural sleep cycle for human beings. In fact, evidence suggests that prior to the industrial revolution, our sleep cycle was very different.
To demonstrate this point, we must return to the concept of awakening and what awakening really is. We call it spiritual ‘awakening’ for a reason – we are waking up. Waking up means being conscious in an otherwise largely unconscious world. During the process of awakening people often find themselves becoming very sensitive to things that never really bothered them before. This is because they are suddenly present and hyper-aware when things are out of alignment with the natural order.