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Grief: The Shadow Side of the Heart Chakra

October 9, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 4 Comments

Love asks us to open to grief

by Kara-Leah Grant It's all good and well to do these wonderful heart-opening or heart-balancing yoga practices, but without a proper understanding of all aspects of the heart chakra, we can easily hit a wall of resistance that stops our practice cold. The heart chakra is about our ability to love - which requires that we open to the possibility of grief, sorrow and disappointment as well as the wonderful sensations of love, joy, fulfilment and compassion. Working with this kriya meant I was … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energetic Practices, Home Yoga Practice, Practices Tagged With: anahata chakra, grief, Heart CHakra, kryia, kundalini yoga, relationships, samskara, The Heart

What Does it Mean to Open Your Heart Chakra?

September 5, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 12 Comments

by Kara-Leah Grant It's Day 17 of my forty days of a heart-opening kriya (see below for PDF of this kriya). Every day I hit the mat and do seven postures in a specific order. Often I do other asana, pranayama and meditation as well. But no matter what, there is always the consistency of the heart-opening kriya to anchor me in my home yoga practice. So, is it working? Is this yoga practice opening my heart chakra? Before I answer that, I want to take a step back and define what that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energetic Practices, Home Yoga Practice, Practices Tagged With: anahata chakra, balance, closing, Heart CHakra, opening

How to Open Your Heart Chakra in One Simple Step

August 21, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 10 Comments

Heart-Opening Kriya, posture one.

by Kara-Leah Grant, avid promotor of home yoga practice. It'll change your world (because you are your world). So my gorgeous and most-wonderful man left on Thursday for six weeks. And on Friday I had a brilliant idea. Six weeks! 42 days! I'll do a specific Forty Days of Yoga practice while he's away! Perfect! Now what will I do... how about one of my old favourites, a Heart-Opening Kriya (see below for a PDF of this kriya) I learned many moons ago? Nothing like a little … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energetic Practices, Home Yoga Practice, Practices Tagged With: anahata chakra, forty days of yoga, Heart CHakra, heart opening, kriya

Dumped by my Guru

April 6, 2012 by Guest Author 10 Comments

Divorced by my guru

by columnist Gabrielle Harris, The Suburban Yogini My freefall descent happened 6 months ago. It wasn’t gentle zen-like parachute descent, but the type of ungraceful fall where not only was I kicking and screaming, but all the office workers in the building I was sailing by were laughing and poking faces at me. My lesson on non-attachment had publicly arrived. It happened on my level 3 teacher training. I had travelled to Australia to be with the teacher I was attached to. He made me … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Going to Class, Teaching Insights Tagged With: abhinvesa, amsita, anahata chakra, dvesa, finding a teacher, guru, klesha, leaving your teacher, Mark Nepo, non attachment, raga, tapas, Teacher training, The Book of Awakenings

Practices for the Heart Chakra, Part 2

January 3, 2011 by Jessica Powers 1 Comment

Heart Chakra

Embodying the Heart In Part One, The Meaning of Anahata, I wrote about the energy of the heart center, the compassion and love that it exemplifies and gave simple breath-focused meditation exercises to help you turn towards the sweetness within.  Here in Part Two, I’d like to offer a few body practices to further your journey toward Anahata. That backbending postures open the heart is a familiar concept to most yogis.  Physically a backbend straightens the thoracic spine, it does not move … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Physical Practices Tagged With: anahata chakra, back bends, heart opening

Practices for the Heart Chakra, Part 1

December 15, 2010 by Jessica Powers Leave a Comment

Wheel pose - contract that anus!

  Regular contributor Jessica Powers looks at ways to open the heart - crucial if we're going to shift out of mind consciousness and into heart consciousness. The Meaning of Anahata The Sanskrit name for our energetic heart center is Anahata, ‘the unstruck sound’. While that at first seems to be a Zen koan, in actuality it speaks of the vibrational basis of the Universe and the place within each of us that resonates with it: beginningless, endless, eternal. Anahata refers … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Physical Practices Tagged With: anahata chakra, chakra, heart opening, loving-kindness

Bhakti Yoga & Kirtan – it’s How Yogis get High

December 21, 2008 by Kara-Leah Grant 9 Comments

Kirtan

by Kara-Leah The mission of this website is to get everybody in New Zealand doing yoga - but it's really important to remember that yoga is not just about the physical postures called asana. One of the lesser known and yet perhaps most powerful forms of yoga is Bhakti Yoga. This is the yoga of devotion and is often practiced via kirtan - or chants. Take a moment to think of your favourite music right now, and how it makes you feel when you sing it - when you lose yourself and get right into the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Kirtan, Musings from the Mat, Practices, Yoga Styles Tagged With: anahata chakra, bhakti, kirtan

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