The Bridge Between Heart and Expression
Healing Through the Heart and Throat Chakras by Billie Atherstone

Exploring the Fourth & Fifth Chakras — Anāhata & Viśuddha

The chakras offer a profound roadmap for understanding the human experience — a map of energy, consciousness, and embodiment that guides us toward balance and wholeness. We can consciously work with a single chakra, or a combination of them, to meet the invitations and challenges of life.

This week, we explore the bridge between the lower and upper chakras — the realm of the heart and throat, where material and spiritual worlds meet. Here, our emotional and physical well-being intertwine, helping us transform feeling into expression, and vulnerability into authenticity.

Understanding the Heart Chakra (Anāhata)

Sanskrit Name: Anāhata — “unstruck sound”
Element: Air
Colour: Green — balance, compassion, renewal
Location: Centre of the chest
Governs: Heart, lungs, thymus, upper back, arms, hands
Developmental Stage: Ages 4–7 — forming the right to love and be loved
Seed Sound: YAM
Themes: Love, compassion, connection, forgiveness, balance

When the heart chakra is balanced, we feel harmonious, connected, and open to giving and receiving love. When imbalanced, we may feel grief, loneliness, jealousy, fear of intimacy, or difficulty trusting care.

The Wisdom of Anāhata

At the heart centre, we integrate the lessons of the lower chakras — survival, desire, power — and transform them into love, compassion, and connection.

The heart teaches us balance:
• between caring for others and caring for ourselves
• between independence and interdependence
• between giving and receiving

This transformation is carried by Prāna Vāyu, the upward-moving current of breath and emotional expansion. When prāna flows freely, we feel uplifted, alive, and connected to our innate joy.

The Throat Chakra (Viśuddha)

Coupled with the heart is the Viśuddha Chakra, the centre of truth, communication, and creative expression.

Once emotion has moved through and softened in the heart, the throat gives it voice — with clarity, honesty, and authenticity. Creativity flows naturally here, not only through music or art, but through everyday acts of expression: speaking truth, saying no, asking for what we need, sharing our inner world.

Expression becomes liberation. Creativity becomes self-trust in action.

The Practice of Self-Compassion

Anāhata heals through tenderness, patience, and compassion toward the self.

So often we long for someone else — a partner, a friend, a parent — to offer us the care we missed. But a profound part of healing is learning to become the caregiver we’ve always needed. To mother, father, and hold ourselves with presence and love.

There is real autonomy in knowing we have our own back — that we can create boundaries to protect our energy while staying receptive to love, care, and support. When giving and receiving coexist in harmony, the heart chakra opens.

What Self-Care Really Is

Self-care evolves as we do. It’s less about what we do and more about how and when we choose to tend to ourselves.

Rest, solitude, laughter, movement, nature, boundaries, a difficult conversation — these aren’t the practices themselves, but the expressions of self-care.

True self-care is self-compassion in action:
• noticing what we need
• honouring those needs without judgment
• having the courage to meet them
• asking for help when necessary

It’s not a checklist, but a lifelong relationship with ourselves. And even the smallest act done with intention can shift the heart.

Heart & Throat in Yoga Practice

In the body, these chakras awaken through:
• heart and throat openers
• expansive arm movements and angles
• gentle backbends
• shoulder stretches
• breathwork that directs prāṇa to the chest

Asanas such as Ustrāsana (Camel Pose), Bhujangāsana (Cobra), and Setu Bandhāsana (Bridge Pose) open the chest and lungs, stimulating Prāna Vāyu and softening the armour around the heart.

These postures are powerful — but can also be emotionally confronting. They expose the front body, our most vulnerable space. To physically open the heart is to risk being seen.

This is why we move slowly, with compassion and breath, allowing the body to open at its own pace.

Heart and throat mantras such as Yam, Ham, Humee Hum Brahm Hum, Chattr Chakkr Vartee, and Sat Naam vibrate through these centres, awakening courage, expression, and resonance.

As the lower chakras strengthen, we become steady and rooted. From this stability, we can walk tall — heart open, shoulders soft, confident in our centre.

Trauma & Healing the Heart

When wounded, the heart chakra may express itself through:
• fear of rejection
• emotional withdrawal
• over-dependency
• difficulty giving or receiving affection
• distrust
• a tough exterior covering deep vulnerability

We may also feel physical symptoms: tension in the chest, shallow breathing, palpitations, asthma-like constriction, or poor circulation.

Trauma-informed yoga and meditation gently rebuild safety within the body. By befriending sensation and allowing emotion to move, we begin to soften the protective layers around the heart.

Healing often includes being supported by a therapist or guide who offers non-judgment, care, and compassion — helping us experience what safe connection feels like, so we can eventually hold ourselves that way too.

Affirmation for the Week

I hold myself with compassion. I open my heart and express my truth. I am safe to love and be loved.

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Nourish Your Chakras & Keep the Momentum Going

Looking after your energy centers doesn’t have to stop with this blog — there are so many ways to continue your Spring Chakra Awakening journey:

  • Begin Your Practice: Try our Introductory Pass – 20 Days for $79 and explore classes designed to open, balance, and energize your chakras.

  • Commit to Your Wellbeing: Become a member and enjoy unlimited access to our classes, workshops, and ongoing chakra-focused practices.

  • Move & Connect: Book a class this week to continue nurturing your practice.

  • Restore & Support: Book a treatment with our expert practitioners — acupuncture, massage, energy healing, or holistic bodywork — to nurture and harmonize your energy centers.

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