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Practiced daily, this basic activation exercise enables you to gradually shift the center of your being to your heart. The ideal is to start your day with it, but you can do it at any other time, including just before going to sleep.
To avoid your mind intruding during the exercise, allow yourself to follow the guidance in an effortless and gentle way, without trying to do it “perfectly.” It is the general response of your being to this ongoing activation that really matters.
To begin with, follow the activation while reading the instructions. After a few times, when you feel confident enough, you can activate your heart with closed eyes.
Position
Sit comfortably, but do not slouch. Keep your chest wide open, not rigidly but in a relaxed manner. It is important not to close or lock the chest; people often tend to let their shoulders lean too far forward. Instead, allow the shoulders to fall gently backward, so that you can feel your entire chest area open and spacious, as if you were presenting it to the world.
You may feel that widening the chest releases a new energy stream, which might even flow upward to the throat area. This is both perfectly natural and welcome. Make sure your fingers remain loose and that the palms of your hands are open, so that you give and receive in an endless flow of interaction.
Step One: Sink into your chest
Take a deep breath and then breathe slowly and deeply, relaxing your body with every breath you take. In this activation, you will learn how to sink into the chest area. This shift of your awareness, being, and identity to the chest should be physical, not just metaphorical.
We are used to having the center of our being in the head area. This makes sense: our eyes, ears, mouth, and brain are located there, which means that the head is the place from which we look, hear, speak, and perceive. On the other hand, feel how overloaded this area is, unnaturally full of overthinking and overjudging. This is the result of being too oriented in the head.
With the help of breathing, visualizing, intention, and feeling, feel how you are slowly and gently sinking with your very sense of “I” into the chest area. It is as if you are actually moving all the overactive energy in the head to the chest. Breathe gently into the chest area while feeling more and more that this is where “you” are.
From your new location in the chest, the brain, eyes, ears, and mouth are mere tools rather than who you are. You can always use your head, but you are not your head. Feel how you place your sense of “I am” in the chest, deciding that this is where you are going to meet everything in your life. It is from the chest that you will look at and respond to everything.
Try to feel how your central vision—like a pair of hidden eyes—is located in the chest area. Through these eyes alone you actually look at the world inside you and outside you.
Imagine that you have “lost” your head—as if instead of your physical head there is now a pure space. Feel as if your “head,” your headquarters, has moved to your chest. This is not only where you look from, but also where you hear and talk.
What happens when you look out from here at everything? What are the qualities of vision and listening that belong to this area and that are different from your usual sight and hearing? Does this shift to the chest relax anything? Does it make your vision more sweet, compassionate, and forgiving?
Try to look at a particular challenge or conflict in your current life from your new “head.” How do you see this issue in your life from the perspective of your heart? How do you perceive others—perhaps those who are a part of your conflict—from this space? How do you see your life in general?
Breathe into your new center of perception. With every breath, feel how the chest expands at the expense of the head area and opens up even more. It is not a shy area to conceal and protect, it is your proudest center. How wide can you open it up? The wider it gets, the more the head area is “consumed” by it, relaxing into its new position as a servant of your heart.
Step Two: Turn your heart outward
Let go of the thought that awakening this center should be a lengthy process. Simply do it now.
Ordinarily, all the energy in the chest area turns inward in a mechanism of self-defense and self-absorption. Instead, supported by the wide-open posture of your chest, gently change the direction of the energy and feel how your chest is opening up toward the world. It unfurls and spreads like a fully open flower. It is not going to hide and rest within itself. It will not keep its energy to itself but instead is available for communication, completely released, its gaze now turned to the world.
Recognize that since this is where your true self abides, this is the place from which “you” come forward to greet the whole world. Feel what relief this new position brings, with the chest facing the world instead of collapsing into itself. With every breath, let it gently open up and come out even more. Do not think of the consequences or withhold because of emotional reactions. Simply play with it energetically and allow it to happen physically.
Step Three: Declare your heart’s intention
Make it your clear intention to remain like this even after the completion of the activation. This activation is your readiness to come out to the world, saying “yes” to your life from your innermost.
The energetic expression of saying “yes” from your innermost is sinking into your chest and opening it up from there like a flower. This immediately removes all subtle resistance and protective mechanisms and, at the same time, relaxes the overworked and ineffective mental machine.
In its role as your new head, what does your heart know today? Is there anything, even just one single thing, that it knows deeply and beyond any doubt? Declare this knowing to yourself.
Finally, take one more deep breath into the chest, and slowly and gradually come out of the meditation. As you gently open your eyes, retain the sense of an open chest and outward flow. You might feel that sometimes your mind resists allowing the sinking and opening to take place. It might try to convince you that “this isn’t the right time to open up so much,” or ask “what’s the point of doing this every day?”
Remember, the mind is like a king struggling for his dominion. Who would give away their kingdom so readily? Make sure your activation exercise does not turn into a battle with the mind. Since one of the heart’s powers is its ability to be all-containing, it never really needs to fight. Simply relax and place yourself where you are most reasonably meant to be.
Seeing from the Heart: It's Magic!
Practicing this activation exercise daily will eventually allow it to become a natural energetic impulse. At first, your heart will tend to resume its habitual position and direction, and your mind will quickly take over your being once more. With time, however, this exercise will make residing in your brain as your “home” feel very unnatural. You will feel the over-activity in your head reducing in intensity, and order in your kingdom will be established; the false king will become an effective servant once again and the rightful king will fulfill its birthright.
You can activate your heart at any given moment, including when you are not practicing the exercise. When you regard something, whether internally or externally, or when you need to make a decision, whether great or small, remember to first let your being sink into your chest, dissolving the thinking mind with all its contradictions, and see what happens when you look at it from your new center.
Another way to allow the heart’s magic to take effect swiftly in your daily life is by pushing the energy from the center of the chest outward more and more. Your emotional and mental states will soon follow this shift in direction.
Basic Heart Activation:
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Heart Gym Exercise:
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Article reprinted with permission of the publisher, EarthDancer,
an imprint of Inner Traditions. www.innertraditions.com.
English edition ©2018 by Earthdancer. All Rights Reserved.
Article Source
Unlocking the 7 Secret Powers of the Heart: A Practical Guide to Living in Trust and Love
by Shai Tubali
An invitation to discover and develop your heart powers and tap into heart energy • Features accessible yet profound wisdom about the power of the heart and approaches for tapping into heart energy • Reveals that the heart, often perceived as our most vulnerable and fragile place, is in fact the source of our greatest potential • Supports individual heart-work by offering simple and practical exercises, meditations, and visualizations proven effective through many years of practice.
Click here for more info and/or to order this book. Also available in a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Shai Tubali, chakra expert, spiritual teacher, authority in the field of Kundalini and the subtle body system, lives in Berlin where he runs a school for spiritual development and holds seminars, trainings, satsangs, and retreats. Since 2000 he has worked with people from around the world, accompanying them on their spiritual path. He has written 20 books on spirituality and self-development, including Wake Up, World, a bestseller in Israel, and The Seven Wisdoms of Life, winner of the USA Best Books Award and finalist for the Book of the Year Award. Visit his website at https://shaitubali.com
