Laurin: [00:00:00] Because whatever that block is that we need to hear gets cleared in that process of bringing it up to the heart chakra where we can now acknowledge it, process it, and let it go. And that's a lot of what I do in my healing sessions is to help those kinds of blocks move.
Hello friends, and welcome back to Curiously Wise. I'm Laurin Wittig. I am your host. And for me right now it's that week between Christmas and New Year's and this will come out originally in mid-January. So, I'm kind of thinking about how I want to intention at the beginning of 2023 for myself, and I thought I would share this with you because this is something that comes out for me in meditation.
And it also is an aspect of energy work that is pivotal to any kind of energy [00:01:00] healing practice that I might bring to a client or to a group session. So, what I wanna talk about is the amazing, powerful energy of the heart chakra. Some people will call it the heart center. Now, this is not your physical heart.
That's a little more to the left. It's right in the center of your chest. And it's where we will find ourselves putting our hand over our chest or on our chest when we're touched by something or when we feel like we need to protect ourselves from emotions. So that's the heart chakra. And if you wanna know a little bit about the heart chakra, the color associated with it is green and the sound.
I never remember the sounds. I think it's yam. I was doing a little research this morning. It is the 1, 2, 3, fourth chakra. I have to count it up from the root chakra every single time. It's the fourth chakra. It's for the way I understand the chakra systems. It is the first, if you're counting from [00:02:00] the root, the bottom chakra it is the first one that is really in the consciousness of our day-to-day lives.
Meaning that we can consciously connect with it. We can consciously receive information from it. And if you think about emotions, we get a lot of that, that hit from here. Especially the higher vibration emotions come from the heart. So, anything below the diaphragm, so starting with the solar plexus is considered subconscious.
And so, one of the things I do a lot with my healing clients is I connect or I make sure that the heart chakra and the solar plexus have good communication with each other so that the subconscious can come up into our consciousness, which is what we're trying to do when we work with healing, is to bring these things that are subconsciously impacting us typically in a, a not so fun way.
And bring it up into our consciousness so that we can then talk about it, we can express it, we can get it out of our body. And that will allow healing to happen. [00:03:00] Because whatever that block is that we need to hear gets cleared in that process of bringing it up to the heart chakra where we can now acknowledge it, process it, and let it go.
And that's a lot of what I do in my healing sessions is to help those kinds of blocks move. So, the heart chakra is really important in terms of healing and in terms of being able to understand what's going on with yourself subconsciously. And that's where we tend to store a lot of things we don't wanna deal with.
But heart chakra is also a place where you can really gift yourself and others with compassion, with unconditional love. And I know that those words can be really hard to embrace. There's certainly a lot of people that I find it really difficult. Not in my personal life, but in the broader picture that I find it really difficult to feel compassion for.
But when I can, when I can really step into my heart center [00:04:00] and allow it to be open without judgment, then I can find it in my intellect first, to sort of back away from whatever it is that I'm finding it hard to be compassionate about or to even understand and to allow myself a bit of a wider view.
That wider view allows me to see deeper into whatever the thing is that's bothering me and then begin to get curious about that wider view. What else could be going on here other than just the surface that's irritating me or impacting me in some less than good way? And then that gives me the ability to get curious.
And curiosity, you know, this is Curiously Wise, curiosity allows us to step out of judgment because we get judgment when we are like, it's either yes or no. It's either the way I see it or the way you see it. Lack of judgment is, okay that's not the way I see it. It's not the way I'm [00:05:00] experiencing it, but maybe I'm missing something or maybe there's something else there that would be of, of use to me in some way, even if it's just to try to understand somebody that I don't understand.
Or it might be a, a lesson that I really need to learn from myself or a perspective that I need to bring to my own consciousness, my own way of moving into the world. There's all kinds of things we can learn from others when we can step back into compassion, into curiosity. And the heart chakra is a beautiful place to assist us with that.
So, one of the things that you'll hear people talking about with chakras and many other things is, is awakening, opening, activating those kinds of words. One of the things that I have worked on a lot over the years, not consciously at first, but definitely consciously now, is activating my heart chakra.
I've been on a journey for quite a while to learn how to do this. [00:06:00] And it's more of a feeling for me, which always makes it harder for me to, to share it with other people. But this idea that if I can allow this energy in that's in the center of my chest, if I can imagine it as a ball of energy. Let's start there.
Let's imagine it as a ball of energy. It can be as smaller, as big as you like. I usually see it as green, but you don't have to. You can see it whatever color comes to you or no color at all. Maybe you experience it as a sound vibration. But just imagine that right in the center of your body. So behind where you would put your hand on your chest.
And it might even help to close your eyes while you do this. I often, when I'm visualizing something, I have to close my eyes because I'm very visually distracted. I've learned over the years that I work best with my eyes closed. And I often even do this when I'm working with healing clients.
I'll have my eyes closed while I'm working with them so that I can really tune in to the energy that I'm, I'm trying to focus on. So, I invite you if you're not driving to close your eyes for a moment. Visualize [00:07:00] this ball of energy, however you wanna see it. Light, sound. You can visualize it like a ball of water spinning how, whatever works for you.
It doesn't have to be specific to anybody else, but for me, I see it as light. Now imagine that you kind of flick your finger across that ball and get it spinning and it doesn't matter if it's spinning clockwise or counterclockwise or top to bottom or you know, it doesn't matter.
And just allow that sensation and imagine. Use your imagination if you need to. Imagine that ball in there, however you've seen it. Imagine you've flicked it with your finger and it's spinning in whatever direction it wants to go. And imagine that you can experience the sensation of that movement.
Okay? And now take a big breath. And the next time you breathe in, I want you to breathe in and imagine, we're gonna use imagination a lot. Imagine that that breath goes right down into that ball of [00:08:00] spinning energy and expands it a bit, kinda like blowing up a balloon. In fact, exactly like blowing up a balloon because breath is energy.
Some people will call it Prana or refer to the breath as activating Prana. So, we're gonna take one more deep breath this time we're gonna breathe it into that ball of energy that we're imagining in the center of our chest and allow it to expand that ball just a little bit. Doesn't have to be a lot.
And then imagine if you need to, what that feels. So, let's do that and then I'll tell you how it feels to me when I do this. So, we're gonna breathe in into that energy ball. You can kind of hold it there for a second. Imagine that ball just increasing however much you want it to, and as you blow out, it doesn't decrease. It just stays there.
And now make sure it's still spinning. If you need to flick it with your finger again, do that. And I want you to breathe again and let it expand one more time. [00:09:00] Okay. Just one more time. It can be a tiniest little bit. Doesn't matter. Just imagine, use your imagination. Breathe in, into that ball of energy. Let it expand, hold it there for a moment, and then let the breath go out, but the energy doesn't decrease.
Okay? We have to breathe out. The energy doesn't have to leave us. And again, make sure it's still spinning. Maybe it's changed colors, maybe if it's music, it's changed the frequency or a volume even. If it's water, maybe it's just, you know, accumulated more, whatever works for you to visualize this is perfect. Okay?
Don't worry about the details of it. Just use your imagination. Now for me, as I do what we're doing right now, which is opening the heart chakra, expanding the heart chakra, I don't go through that visualization. In fact, I gesturing that visualization up. So, I'm gonna be using that with clients now.
But for me it's [00:10:00] more a feeling, almost like a flower opening up. So, some people will describe the energy here, depending on the modalities that you work with as a, a lotus flower. And so, the lotus flower's beautiful cuz it comes up from the subconscious, the, the depths of the water that it's growing in, and the flower bud comes all the way to the top and then it expands into these many petaled flowers and kind of floats on the water beautifully.
I can describe this very carefully because we go to a lake in Maine almost every summer, and I've seen this happen with the water lily. So, it's just this beautiful unfolding flower. So that's how it feels to me. It feels like it's, it's more like it's unfolding rather than just expanding. But it is kind of an expansion.
And I can feel a lightness in my chest when I tune into this sensation. So, if you just practice that, that is activating that heart [00:11:00] energy, imagining that ball of energy and then imagining breathing in more energy into it, blowing it up like a balloon. And I will tell you, that at least at first you may accomplish that, or you may have to practice it a little while before you get any sensation, or you may not get any sensation and you just can visualize it so easily that it's, it's happening.
Everybody experiences energy differently. Once you get to where you can do that regularly and easily, it's gonna be open a lot. But we're human and we're having a human experience, and human experience isn't always happy, happy, joy, joy. It would probably be pretty boring if it was, but you know, that's, that's kind of what we all want, I think.
But it's gonna open and close and all the chakras do, they say open and close or they get wide and they get a little less expanded. And it's a constant thing. It's like breathing. It's in and out. It's open and closed. It's just going on and on and on. Now mostly they're open to some degree and active to some degree, because otherwise we would be very, and energized, if that's a word.
But one of the things that [00:12:00] I do when I'm, especially if I'm really triggered by something and I'm feeling really judgey, or I just can't see how there's any good to what's going on, cuz it's really hard to do a lot of the time, I will just put my hand on my, on my heart chakra, on my chest. and just breathe.
I'm not doing the full visualization, but breathing really does help in part because it calms your nervous system. So, whatever you're reacting to, whatever you're judging about, whatever you can't find any compassion for, that's all tightening up. It's like activating your nervous system in these difficult ways.
So, the breathing helps to calm, that helps you to be able to tune into your heart chakra, helps you to be able to focus it. There's a saying that I see a lot. I have no idea what the origin is, but it's where focus goes, energy flows. So, putting a hand on your chest is a way of focusing your attention.
And the visualization I just gave you this, that me using your imagination is a way of bringing attention. And attention creates activation. [00:13:00] So activation, meaning to opening, to bringing it, to energizing it. Whatever you need to do to really focus on your heart is a wonderful thing to do because it is bringing that focus and where focus goes, energy flows.
And I've added on to that over the years. I, I also like to add to that where energy flows, abundance grows, in this case, abundant heart energy and just then take a moment to allow yourself to practice feeling compassion for whatever has triggered you. It could be an irritation that's, you know, the neighbor next door, running the leaf blower three times a day.
Or it could be the news, which is a big trigger for me, and that's where I really get to practice being compassionate and being non-judgmental, which is really hard to do. And, and so, you know, it's something that we have to, we have to practice on. It's like, it's like exercising a muscle.
We have to practice focusing on our chakras and we have to [00:14:00] practice feeling compassion. We have to practice feeling non-judgment. It's really hard for most of us to do, cuz we are brought up in a society that or in a world that it's really hard not to judge against your own experience and the variety of experiences in the world of other people.
So what does compassion feel like? I'm not sure I've thought about that before, but compassion to me feels like letting go. It feels like surrendering to the moment. It feels like a release of responsibility I wanna say it.
And I, I'm not sure that's right. This is just coming to me now. But I will tell you that I think the biggest lesson for me in compassion and oh, I know what the other one is forgiveness. Yeah. Forgiveness is another big one that helps you find compassion. And that's where this story comes in.
In my mother's last three or four months of life, [00:15:00] she had dementia. She'd had it for 10 years. At that point, she was living in assisted living. It came to our attention that there was something preventing her from being able to breathe easily. And so, I ended up taking her to be seen by a doctor. And she was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer.
In many, many ways that was a gift, which I know is really strange to say, but she was so intellectual. She had been such a vibrant person. She traveled the world, her life had come down to this very small space, and she was about to be moved out from assisted living into the dementia ward, I'm, I'm drawing a blank on what they call those now, but they're same facility, but into a place where it was really for people who were deep into Alzheimer's and dementia and could no longer function in the assisted living area.
And mom was just probably gonna move there in the summer. And we were talking about this already with the facility. But that [00:16:00] she was given three to four months to live. Once the cancer was found, it was kind of a blessing cuz now we understood that there was a, a finite time. She wasn't gonna have to move into memory care.
I remembered it now, the memory care unit, she was gonna be able to stay right where she was. The facility was wonderful. The nursing staff wanted to take care of her to the end if they could. And for me it was a moment of reckoning because I had wanted my mother to change.
She was a narcissist, and I had wanted her to change into a more loving person, a person who, you know, was more nurturing to me my whole life. And with the dementia, that became less and less an option, but I hadn't quite wrapped my head around that. I, I, intellectually, I knew she was never gonna be able to change cuz she was too far into the dementia and she just didn't have the capacity to anymore.
But then knowing that she had this very short time triggered [00:17:00] me to let go of my victimhood. To forgive her for, for what she wasn't capable of doing. To own that a lot of my own misery around that had been because, I couldn't forgive her. I couldn't forgive her for not being the mother I wish she was.
And it meant that I had to really dig into my heart to, to shift this deep yearning for her to change, to recognize she wasn't going to. To know that really deeply once we got this diagnosis, and then to choose to be compassionate with her, to be gentle with her, to be soft and loving with her.
Once I did that, she got softer and loving her and that was great, if that's a word. And that was a lovely gift we gave to each other at the end, but it, I triggered it. I triggered it by really digging into my heart chakra to really opening that up, to really dropping judgment, to [00:18:00] really embracing compassion and forgiveness, to really having a, a broader and deeper understanding that if she'd done the best she could, she was who she was and she did a lot of good in the world.
And that that was the best she could do, and it was for a lot of people. It was amazing. For me, it made me stronger. That was the other thing, digging into my heart chakra, opening up that compassion, that backing up from judgment allowed me to see the benefits that I had gained from her, the lessons I had learned from her.
And she was a very strong woman. She was born in the thirties and yet she was a feminist and she was politically active and she was socially active and she worked to help women around the world have better lives. And so, there was a lot to be admired there. And she probably couldn't have done all of that stuff if she was as attached to being my mother as I wanted her to be. [00:19:00]
So, it gave me this lovely, broader view of her life and it all came from consciously choosing not to be a victim of her neglect and her the narcissism. There was a lot of gaslighting and stuff that came with that. I was able to choose consciously to forgive her for not being the person I wanted her to be and to forgive myself for holding onto that for so long. I was able to have self-compassion for myself, which allows for forgiveness and compassion for her, which allows for forgiveness.
And to begin to see a broader view of our relationship and particularly of her. And so, this is the power of the heart chakra. It changed our whole relationship. I was pushed to it. I was resistant to it, but that cancer diagnosis was a kick in my butt [00:20:00] to, to do the work that I needed to do before she left.
That's the power of the heart chakra, the power of unconditional love, of wider perspectives of healing, a lot of healing. I've healed so much in those last few months of my mom's life, and I'm really grateful for that because I have really stepped into, I'm more compassionate, less judgmental. I can't say I'm not judgmental because I am, I'm human, but I'm able to, to see it in myself now and choose to wallow in it or to step back, take a breath.
And try to sink into that heart chakra energy to see, to find some compassion to try so that I can see the broader picture, so that I can let go of judgment [00:21:00] and as with my mother to see what good is coming out of anything. And that is a huge gift to all of us if we can get there because it does help to be optimistic.
It helps me to be optimistic when I can see that the chaos that's going on in the world is breaking down old systems and making room for something new to be birthed. I can be really optimistic as opposed to just being down in, in some of the more visceral chakra centers and just reacting in a, in a resistant way.
In a, how could they weigh in a, the world is going to hell in hand basket way. And that changes my whole vibration of my whole body. But it's all comes from the heart, from the heart chakra. So, this is a gift you can give yourself. Here at the beginning of 2023. I'm sure we have a lot more chaos ahead of us.
I think we probably always have chaos ahead of us. We just don't know it's coming until it gets here.
Use your imagination to [00:22:00] visualize your heart chakra. Use that visualization I gave to you and you can go back and listen to it here about how to visualize that, how to bring your focus to your heart chakra and how to grow it energetically with your breath. And then how to continue to focus on it more and more and more so that where focus goes, energy flows.
So the more you focus on your heart chakra, the more energy will flow there. You may not even be aware of the changes that are happening, but they will be, I promise you, and then you can start really noticing where you're judging things or someone. Or some event. Or some, irritation and allow yourself to sink into that heart energy and that will help open you up to finding maybe what the good piece of this is.
What am I learning from it? What's in this for me? That's another thing I like to ask, and that's where the heart chakra is really good at helping you see those things. [00:23:00]
The ultimate gift of sinking into your heart chakra and being able to go through this compassion releasing judgment, releasing control, releasing all kinds of things, but that self-compassion and compassion for others. Self-love and love for others. Letting go of the judgment. Those are the biggies.
And if you can get to that, then that begins to affect your entire energy system because the heart is connected to all the rest of your chakras that run from, basically from your tailbone and the crown of your head. And those are the major energy systems, and they affect the entire electrical system, energy system, emotional systems of your body.
So, what a gift to yourself in 2023 to learn how to activate your heart chakra and bring that compassion, forgiveness, and lack of judgment into the world. It won't be perfect. But every step in that [00:24:00] direction is going to make you happier. It's going to make those around you happier. It's going to bring a higher vibration to everything that you come into contact with, and that's a gift that you give to others.
I've learned some things from doing this. And I appreciate you being here so that I have the opportunity to think out loud and figure out how to help others experience the really beautiful, restful bliss that can come when you activate your heart chakra. I will see you next Tuesday with a guest, and every Tuesday we're gonna be bringing out new episodes here on Curiously Wise.
And starting in probably February of 2023, we're gonna be launching our YouTube channel. Finally, we're getting to it. And we'll be bringing those out probably in batches cuz I have almost a whole year's worth of guests that I [00:25:00] want to bring to YouTube. And so that is something that I'm really looking forward to in the new year.
And I hope that you will check that out too. So I wanna wish you a happy and heart filled 2023 and I'll see you next time. Stay curious.
Thank you so much for joining us today on Curiously Wise. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future fabulous conversations. And if you had any ahas, please share them in a review on Apple Podcasts so we can continue to pay forward the unique wisdom we all have.
If you want to know more about me or my intuitive energy healing practice Heartlight Wellness, please head over to my website. www.heartlightjoy.com.
Curiously Wise is a team effort. I am grateful for the skill and enthusiasm. Arlene Membrot, our producer, and Sam Wittig, our audio engineer, bring to this collaboration. Our music is Where the Light Is by Lemon Music Studio.
I'm Laurin Wittig. Please join me again next week. For another episode of Curiously Wise. From my heart to yours, may your life be filled with love, light, joy, and of course, curiosity.