When you work on the chakras that are closed or weak, you'll be directly influencing that particular area of your life, for example your career, finances, sex life, self-esteem and so on.

Are your finances in trouble? Are you feeling insecure? Do you need to perform better at work and get that raise or promotion? Strengthen your Root or 1st Chakra.

Do you want to spice up your sex life or feel more passionate and creative? Unblock your Sacral or 2nd Chakra.

Want to feel more self-confident and powerful in achieving your goals? Strengthen your Solar Plexus or 3rd Chakra.

Want to feel more love, be able to forgive past grievances, and connect better with your spouse, kids, friends and co-workers? Work on your 4th or Heart Chakra.

Afraid of public speaking? Want to be able to express your truth and be understood. Balance your 5th or Throat Chakra.

Want more inspiration on which path you should take in life? Want to increase your intuition and psychic abilities? Open your 6th or Third Eye Chakra.

Want to feel at one with all there is? More peace, harmony and connection to spirit? Work on your 7th or Crown Chakra.

Scan my previous posts for details on working on each chakra or listen to my Chakra Meditations to balance all 7 chakras and see your life take off!
Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries
www.thechakras.org

All healers work their magic through the power of love. And we can all heal ourselves – by releasing the tension that stops our healing energy from flowing. How? Through love. Open your heart chakra, and feel the love and compassion flow through yourself and out to the world.

The 4th or Heart Chakra is located at your heart center. It represents selfless love, kindness, compassion, and is where we store emotional experiences.

Signs of an unbalanced Heart Chakra include anger, insensitivity, depression, grief, despair, jealousy and sadness. When this chakra is balanced, we are able to give and receive love, be compassionate and feel true connection with others. We can enjoy our feelings. This is also where we begin to experience the power of pray and meditation, which emanate from this center.

YOGA POSES FOR THE HEART CHAKRA
The Spinal Twist opens and expands the heart center. The Head of Cow, where you reach your arms behind you to meet in the middle of your back, also opens the chest and relieves tension in the back and shoulders.

MEDITATION ON THE HEART CHAKRA
Feel the yellow sacral chakra light from the navel area travel up to the center of your chest, turning into a bright green, as it enters the home of the heart chakra. Breathe in and out the beautiful emerald green mist surrounding you with love, joy and compassion for yourself and others. Feel any tension blocking the flow of this love. Any anger is passed. Any fear is in the future. Heal these emotions in the now. When you let go of negative emotions, you’ll relax the tension they create and feel your true essence of love and healing power flow. Send forgiveness to those who may have caused pain, wrapping them in the bright green light, cleansing and healing the situation. Release yourself and them from any negative connections, only keeping the good. Now, wrap yourself and your whole life experience in healing green light.

Several of the characters in The Chakra Diaries learn forgiveness in the course of chakra balancing, and their lives are freed from the restraints of negativity. They are free to love and be loved, to spread their love to the world. Read more in The Chakra Diaries ~ on special sale now at Amazon.com.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

Letting go of negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs can be life changing, and The Sedona Method® has been recognized worldwide as one of the simplest and fastest ways to do so. My good friend, Nicole Lawrence, recently introduced me to its methods of actually letting the feelings come up, and verbally agreeing to let them go, in the present moment, NOW. Instructing your body to release the stress and tension associated with a "feeling" works much more quickly than mentally trying to deal with your emotions - you'll just keep rationalizing your anger or fear.

To watch a great introduction to the method, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpoTppJFULU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Link to see the movie online or purchase the DVD:http://www.lettinggo.tv/

I find this method works well with balancing the heart chakra, letting go of negative emotions and beliefs, and opening to love and compassion.
Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries
http://www.thechakras.org

Relationship experts and Huna philosophers all think blame and criticism is the #1 reason why relationships fail. Most couples split up, family members stop talking or business partnerships fail because one or both of the parties gets tired of being blamed or criticized.

What is the best and quickest way to stop it?

When you're blaming someone, what you're really doing is pointing the finger at them and saying "Hah! It's your fault. You're wrong." Then, that person typically comes back and says, "No, it's your fault..." and this can go on in an endless loop.

To radically shift out of a blaming consciousness in 1 minute or less, try this tip from Gay & Katie Hendricks:

When you catch yourself starting to blame or you're having critical thoughts about your partner or colleague, make a pleasant "Hmmm...." sound. And what this does is it shifts you out of your "critical" brain into your "wonder" brain.

So, you can say to yourself, "Hmmm... I wonder what I could learn from this." Or "Hmmm... I wonder how I'm contributing to this situation."

When you do this from a place of sincere wonder, then an immediate change takes place in your connection with the person you were previously blaming or criticizing.

Try this the next time you have a critical thought, and watch real miracles open up in your relationships! And of course, work on keeping your heart chakra open to love and compassion - listen to my free Chakra Meditation at www.thechakras.org.
Namaste! Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

"Through love all pain will turn to medicine." ~ Rumi

All healers work their magic through the power of love. And we can all heal ourselves - by releasing the tension that stops our healing energy from flowing. How? Through love. Open your heart chakra, and feel the love and compassion flow through yourself and out to the world.

The 4th or Heart Chakra is located at your heart center. It represents selfless love, kindness, compassion, and is where we store emotional experiences.

Signs of an unbalanced Heart Chakra include anger, insensitivity, depression, grief, despair, jealousy and sadness. When this chakra is balanced, we are able to give and receive love, be compassionate and feel true connection with others. We can enjoy our feelings. This is also where we begin to experience the power of pray and meditation, which emanate from this center.

YOGA POSES FOR THE HEART CHAKRA
The Spinal Twist opens and expands the heart center. The Head of Cow, where you reach your arms behind you to meet in the middle of your back, also opens the chest and relieves tension in the back and shoulders.

MEDITATION ON THE HEART CHAKRA
Feel the yellow sacral chakra light from the navel area travel up to the center of your chest, turning into a bright green, as it enters the home of the heart chakra. Breathe in and out the beautiful emerald green mist surrounding you with love, joy and compassion for yourself and others. Feel any tension blocking the flow of this love. Any anger is passed. Any fear is in the future. Heal these emotions in the now. When you let go of negative emotions, you'll relax the tension they create and feel your true essence of love and healing power flow. Send forgiveness to those who may have caused pain, wrapping them in the bright green light, cleansing and healing the situation. Release yourself and them from any negative connections, only keeping the good. Now, wrap yourself and your whole life experience in healing green light.

Several of the characters in The Chakra Diaries learn forgiveness in the course of chakra balancing, and their lives are freed from the restraints of negativity. They are free to love and be loved, to spread their love to the world. Read more in The Chakra Diaries ~ on special sale now at Amazon.com.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

I've been reading quite a few comments and articles about a broken government, a broken economy and a broken eco-system. What are the underlying catalysts behind what is broken in our world? Scientists at the Institute of HeartMath point to imbalanced heart patterns. Which, of course, led me to believe that the entire world needs to balance their heart chakras, to bring out their innate love and compassion.

A Hopi prophecy spoke of a world out of balance, that could be healed by healing our hearts and the collective heart of the people on earth.

HeartMath.org describes a simple heart coherence exercise: First, focus attention on the area of your heart. Then, breathe deeply into that area. Maintain your heart focus and heart breathing for several minutes. Then activate a feeling of gratitude and allow yourself to fully experience it.

By keeping our heart chakras in balance, we can stay true to our hearts and ensure that our hearts and our world are never broken again. For a full chakra meditation, please practice the free one on my Meditation page at The Chakras.org.
Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

Becca, with our country waging war in 3 countries right now, how can I maintain hope that our world will ever be a peaceful one? Is meditation enough?
Aghast in Alabama

Dear Aghast,
The advice to shut off the news is a good one I've heard many times. If you want to maintain hope, meditation is a good way to get in touch with your own compassionate nature. Please listen to my Chakra Meditations, especially for the Heart Chakra, to know that love and compassion do exist. If they exist in you, as we are all connected, they can exist throughout the world.

I recently read "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," and I can't recommend it enough to brighten your spirit. Despite the horrors of WWII related in the book, I was left with a smile and grateful tears that such brave, loving people could populate our world. In fact, I laughed out loud so many times, my neighbors wondered if I was doing another Laughter Yoga workshop.

Stay hopeful!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries

We're all unnerved by the terrible tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In addition to opening our heart chakras with love and compassion, to send healing energy and donations to the site of disaster, I want to offer these wise words from Yoga Dancer, Marya Mann...

"I see in the ghastly news mounting a chance to remember the excellence in everyday goodness too: every shattering experience challenges us to center in our hearts, align in the spine, go with the flow, reach out to help others, sharpen our wits, and learn from water's movement how to swim with changing life. Soothe yourself first, breathe, stand tall, don’t go running door-to-door with your tears; gather yourself and when you can be part of the solution, move with all your mana, forward.

Evolving nature is reaching into each of us to sense and feel the world as it is. With her enormous range of fluidity, nature asks us to love the world, worship the ground we walk on and the air we breathe, and align with the highest good for all. Be superfluid, like the churning black holes where stars emerge and universes come and go in an instant.

The earth is shaking with vibrant and vibrational intensity – even when we don’t feel it, like the stars during daytime, unseen, but everywhere around us, we are being rocked as babies in a cradle, awakened into our most noble and true nature. If we remain centered in our hearts, firm in our radical trust, and superfluid, we can see with the gentle eyes of compassion and work our sturdy, graceful hands for nursing, leading, helping and nourishing. There is a quality of motion that is you and not you, a quantum m’ocean, where we feel the patterns, rhythms and superfluid song – the uni-verse – that connects everything."

Valentine's Day is the perfect excuse for indulging in scrumptious chocolate, and also the time to ponder if your heart chakra is open to love.

As you meditate on your heart chakra while slowly chewing high-quality, dark chocolate, the flavanols in the cocoa and chocolate will serve as antioxidants and have other positive effects, such as lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow to the brain and heart, making blood platelets less sticky and able to clot, and lowering cholesterol. Chocolate will also improve your mood.

Valentine's Day is also the perfect time to open your heart chakra to love...
Try this Heart Chakra Meditation and download my complete "Chakra Meditations from The Chakra Diaries" on the Meditations page of TheChakras.org.

Heart Chakra Meditation:
Breathe in and out a beautiful emerald green into the center of your chest, the home of the heart chakra, with love, joy and compassion for other people and yourself. Feel any tension blocking the flow here, shutting off or shutting out love. Any anger or fear is past, it can be healed. When you let it go, you’ll feel your true essence of love and joy. To send forgiveness, wrap those people who have caused you pain in the bright green light, cleansing and healing the situation. Release yourself and them from any negative connections, only keeping the good. Let go of anger to have space for love to grow. Now, with love and compassion, wrap yourself and your whole life experience in healing green light.

Here's to love!
Becca

To be physically strong, capable of giving and receiving love and to be poised to develop spiritually, our Heart Chakras must be nourished and stroked – literally paid attention to like the plaintive cry of your child or the insistent mewing of your cat.

So, just as Barry, one of the characters in The Chakra Diaries did, we can start by surrounding that person in the mirror with green light, color therapy for the Heart Chakra. Like a rags-to-riches infomercial, results may vary, but just give it a try.

Another technique to boost your feelings of self-love is to re-visit those times in your childhood when you felt most loved, appreciated and supported and transport those feelings to the present, to right now! You CAN revel in those feelings again and carry them with you regardless of which purse you are packing. Feel them pump you up when you are down. Tweak and tune them, brand them as your own.

Now that we have you started on your merry way, how about some loving first aid for the other people in your life…

When someone else in your life is sad, try this warm and fuzzy exercise. Sit next to them and caress the tips of their hands. Notice the feelings that pop into your head. Stroke the back of their hand and then the palm. Which touch does your friend or lover respond most to?

When you have reached an end, shake off any unhappy energy toward the ground and ask your friend to repeat the process with you as the recipient.

Tomorrow, we will learn about ways to feed our heart when we are alone – sorry, no chocolate involved in this one.
Namaste! Becca