Despite these data however, while almost every cardiologist understands the importance of lifestyle changes (exercising, quitting smoking, and following a heart-healthy diet), very few of us address an essential component for heart health, which entails healing the emotional heart. Each of these chakras is thought to correspond loosely to a nerve network that supplies vital organs. The heart chakra, corresponding to the cardiac network, is considered to be the seat of emotions. The accumulation of guilt, shame, resentment, hatred, anger, hostility, anxiety and similar qualities results in “closing off” of the anahata, a constriction of energy flow and resulting in heartache—both emotionally as well as in the form of heart disease. An extreme example of this intimate heart-anahata connection is often referred to as “broken heart syndrome,” caused by sudden, extreme stress in the form of shock, grief, or sadness that results in a sick heart. These patients present with symptoms and signs of a typical heart attack, but have no “physical” cause (say, blocked coronary arteries) to explain them. As with all other lifestyle changes, in my experience with integrative medicine, this process takes willingness, commitment, consistent effort, and practice, and broadly involves the following: In the response, we will be transported back to the time of the original event. The next step is crucial, and involves asking, Where is it now? In the response, it becomes clear that the past does not exist any “where.” We then ask, How does it exist now? In this response, we see that it exists merely as a thought/memory. When this is clearly seen through, the issue, along with the physical feeling, the story and the label dissolves. Once we’re no longer caught up in the mind as the thought, the thought loses its power over us.
