Writers' Hands: Heart Chakra Intention and Health

Twice a week I lead a meditation group, and last week we focused on our Heart Chakra, Anahata in Sanscrit.  Visualize chakras as whirling eddies of energy traveling from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. The seven main Chakras, are the main wheels/chakras of energy  nourishing, energizing, and expressing our intentions throughout our bodies and into the world around us.   The Anahata Chakra is centered in the heart,  and influences and energizes the lungs, shoulders, arms, and hands.  The palms of the hands directly connect to the energy of the heart. For those of us whose hands are our tools, we often experience a great deal of pain due to the abuse our hands take.  When I realized how closely linked our hands are to our hearts, I was stunned.  

It's not like I hadn't "known" this before; it's that I hadn't connected my physical discomfort and pain from nerve damage with my heart chakra before in quite the same way I did when I considered the pain wholistically.  Anahata is centered right behind the heart, and is considered to be the door to Divine Love and Grace.  Anahata means “unstruck, ”“ unhurt,” or “unbeaten” (as a musical instrument is unstruck, not hit violently).  

The metaphysical meaning of the heart chakra is connected to the power and focus of our intention. We use the heart to express that which we love, desire, and put our energy into. “I gave it my heart,” or “I took it to heart,” or “I want it with all my heart.”

The skeletal structure of our bodies is connected directly to our First Chakra, Muladhara (security, survival, and physical needs). Most of us use our hands to meet our first Chakra needs. When our heart chakra is out of balance, it indicates that we may be abusing our hands in order to meet our survival needs; we may have lost our connection with our desire and love for writing. When we abuse our hands through overuse,  we tend to experience shoulder, neck, arm, and hand problems, as well as  heart chakra imbalances.  The heart chakra energizes the Thymus Gland, the lungs, as well as all the muscles, joints, organs, and the skeletal system of the cardio-thoracic cavity, the neck, shoulder, arms and hands.  

Our hands, the writer's tools, are highly sensitized and are capable of creating, expressing love and tenderness, nursing, healing, and productivity.
Think of all the ways you use your hands.  Imagine holding, caressing, or touching someone you love: your baby, your lover, your parent, a friend, an animal you care for.  Think of all the ways you use your hands to express love. Then bring to mind the ways you use your hands that cause you pain.  While we use our hands to express love, tenderness, and compassion, we can also use our hands to cause pain and create distance. We also express ourselves with our hands, consciously and unconsciously.

When I sit in a spiritual counseling session with a client, I often observe their hands and arms, as this often tells me more about how they are feeling than what they are saying.  When we hold ourselves tightly, crossing our arms, we  exhibit a need to protect ourselves (often this is a sign that someone feels threatened or unsafe). If a person is wringing or clenching their hands, this gives me an indication that they are uneasy, tense, anxious, or  blocked.  Hands express a great deal, and we often use our hands quite unconsciously.  When teaching, counseling, or guiding meditations, I observe what I do with my hands as well.  When I first began taking daily, meditative walks, I  noticed myself clenching and tightening up my fists. As I began to pay more attention, I became  conscious of how I held my hands, and began to focus on releasing my hands, allowing energy to flow more freely, and for me to release, through my hands, stress, anxiety, and fears that I was holding in my hands. This actually creates a release of energy and a reduction in the feeling of stress. Sometimes, by paying attention, a thought or image will be attached to the clenching, and I can then allow that to float into my consciousness where I can notice what may be bothering or calling for my attention.  Then I can release it. It's as if a picture arises up front of me (in the form of a memory, thought, word, or idea), and then I can let it go...float away to be recalled if need, but no longer repressed or laying just below my awareness. This is what meditation helps us do. By learning to focus our attention and then consciously choose what to do with a thought, we become free to release, defer, or act upon it. A simple thing like noticing our hands and the energy in our hands, helps us maintain an awareness of how we are using our energy and how we are treating our bodies. It also enables us to be more intentional with how we treat our hands--the tools of our trade.

When we learn to tune into different parts of our bodies, we develop the ability to notice how one part of our body is connected to the other.  When our heart chakra is out of balance, we tend to overdo, overwork, and abuse our hands. As with other aspects of our healthy, when we abuse or neglect our health, we experience illness or pain. When I a young woman, I wouldn’t pay attention to my body until I got ill or I felt pain.  I have made a conscientious effort to learn as much about my body, mind, spirit, emotion, and psychological health over the last 30 or so years, as I understood that at the point of pain or illness, I had already pushed beyond my limits in a way that was not healthy.  

It’s a process, and some days and some times I do better than at other times.  However, as I have made some major changes in my life, and as I am moving into a very productive period of time, it feels even more important than ever to do what I can to protect, guard, nurture, and heal my tools; especially my hands. This is by no means an attempt to disregard all other elements of my physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological health, for I believe that everything is interconnected. What I am focusing on is the pain  in my hands that is signaling me for attention. And I now have become more aware of the more far-reaching implications of not responding to the signals my body is sending me.

If you are a writer, then you are aware that writing is all about using your hands. I’ve attempted to give myself a break from typing by using voice-activated software, but that is not a substitute for putting pen in hand and hand to paper, or of laying my fingers across the keyboard as I am now...sending out messages in hopes of connecting to you. Writing is both a solitary, intimate experience and an intimate, connecting experience of writer to reader.  We all write to express something we feel is important, beautiful, powerful, meaningful or entertaining for someone else to read and connect to.  It flows through our fingers from our imaginations, brains, hearts, experiences, dreams, memories, and observations.  Writing flows from our love of expressing ourselves in the written word, and it is a product of our hearts. 

In Flight                                                                                            Catherine Al-Meten

Our hands are highly sensitized, and contain within them, energy connections to all other parts of the body. If you have ever used reflexology, acupuncture, or acupressure, you may be aware of some of the connections. We may understand the physical connections, but we want to pay attention to the connection between our intentions, desires, and our hands as expressed and energized through the heart chakra. 

Because we love the written word and love using it to express ourselves, we writers often find ourselves using our writing to procure those First Chakra needs for security and survival.  Because of the way our hands are physically structured, we can only use them for survival and security needs for a short time. Long term use results in abuse from overuse. I recall Dr. Taylor Rabbetz, chiropractor and sports medicine specialist,  describing how people were coming to him repeatedly expecting to have their pain relieved but refusing to understand that not only would the pain be relieved for only a short time but also that by spending far too many hours, pushing deadlines or overdoing their use of their hands, wrists, arms, backs and shoulders (not to mention their brains and hours of their lives) they would inevitably cause themselves long-term, irreversible damage.  He warned me at the time, that no amount of exercise or rehabilitation could counteract pushing a body beyond its limits.  

Whenever we do our work, regardless of what type of work we do, for the sole purpose of producing income, we do so at the peril of our own health, longevity, and overall wellbeing and happiness.  We must find ways to support, nurture, and maintain ourselves energetically.   Most of us know that our diet, habits, patterns of behavior, and relationships can play havoc on our creativity if any or all of them are out of balance. What we may want to consider, is that our real security and indeed survival is inherently linked to inner health, harmony, and wholeness. 

Our hands are connected to our hearts, and any unresolved pain, issues, or grief that we may consciously or unconsciously stored there, could be screaming through the pain in our hands, to pay attention to and resolve whatever has been left unattended. The heart chakra also has an impact on the Thymus Glad; the gland that controls and regulates our immune system. When we hold sorrow, anger, loss, or unfulfilled intentions and desires within our heart chakra, and throw ourselves into our work, using the rationale we all recognize: “But I have to get this job done,” “I can’t possibly quit my job or not do this work,” or “I’m the only one who can do this,” or “My family is counting on me; if I don’t do this, we don’t eat.”  We believe this is true, and often push ourselves over the cliff doing so. I feel fortunate that I had two different people, both strangers who knew very little about me, tell me some months ago that I was on the path to disaster with the lifestyle I was living.  One quite bluntly told me, “You’ll either get too sick to work anymore, or you’ll have an accident from being so exhausted.” It’s not like I hadn’t had a few warnings already (broken ankle, followed by a broken leg, followed by another fall--all in the space of 3 years).  The call to halt in my tracks was related to a previously undiagnosed condition related to both low thyroid and high potassium (a dangerous combination).  I didn’t even feel sick; I just felt exhausted and unable to see going one step further. So I fell over vacation, and went to see the doctor because my leg still hurt, was swollen, and I was afraid I’d broken it.  What she said was that I hadn’t given myself time to heal, and then she discovered the other problems, which both required lots of rest, reduction of stress, a complete change of diet (the healthy dietary regime I had been on was great for almost everyone, but for someone like me). I was ordered to stop, RICE (raise, ice, compress, and elevate that leg; not possible if I'm driving 20 hours a week), begin making some changes to reduce stress, change my diet (which meant I had to be eating 5-6 times a  day),  and rest, rest, rest.  I did all that, and began to feel  much better, but I continued putting myself on a strict writing schedule (thrilled as I was to finally have more time), and that’s when I realized I had not really addressed the problem completely. 

My hands have gotten worse, and two months ago when I began taking yoga daily and leading meditation groups twice a week, I realized I had neglected an entire part of my life and health. While I had exercised, I hadn’t addressed the need for greater balance in my life. That has required that I set boundaries, priorities, and limits for what I do, how much I do it, and what matters most.  

I realized I had been working through the pain, and that had to stop.  That, of course, was a metaphor for what work had come to mean to me. I had found meaning in my work as a means of escaping, soothing, and hiding pain--the emotional as well as the physical. Even though I “knew” better, I still refused to confront the message of the heart chakra as it began to close down. Prana, the energy that feeds the hands through and for creativity, has been in short supply as my heart chakra was indicating. The imbalances in different areas of my life (different chakras), came together in energy blocking my heart chakra, causing me to 

realize the struggle I was having trying to control my life. The more I pushed, grasped, struggled with survival issues and security needs, the weaker I became.  The solution to the imbalance came to me in  dream message--revival (bringing back to life). By connecting to my need to revitalize, revive, reenergize myself through more balanced practices, I have begun honoring my deepest desires and receiving greater harmony with a more balanced approach to life. As we live more intentionally, we also live with greater awareness of being present where we are.  

Our Fourth Chakra/Anahata is the point in our subtle energy body where we allow our physical energy and being to flow and unite with our upper; where as one writer put it, “the terrestrial meets the celestial.”  Heaven and Earth meet in the heart. When we become  rested, relaxed, nurtured, open, and clear about our true intentions and our connection with the Divine Creator and the Creator’s will and guidance of us in our lives, we then can begin addressing our own self care.

The first step seems to be about not just talking about developing a spiritual practice that includes nurturing, healing, and nourishing all parts of our being, but also requires specific attention to areas of imbalance.  According to the precepts of Distal Therapy,  “Many times a part of us out of sync energetically is brought back to balance by positively affecting the community that nurtures and supports it.  Work on and balance the farthest point of the energetic body which you can relate to the specific problem.”

As in all things worth doing, creating a more balanced way of living is a process, and it requires intention, attention, and time. We learn to heal by also learning new ways of living, thinking, and approaching  our self care. For those of us who are writers, our hands are our tools. Our work not only supports and provides for our needs, but also nourishes and sustains us  energetically, in body,  mind, and spirit. If we are using excuses and rationalizations for not addressing pain, unresolved issues pertaining to  self esteem, self worth,  health, and well being, and are clinging to, grasping onto, or hanging on for dear life to jobs, relationships, patterns of behavior, habits, or lifestyles that are no longer healthy, supportive, nurturing, or safe, we need to consider what it will take to bring about the necessary changes needed for survival.  

I recall one of my colleagues who had devoted her life to teaching. She had also neglected her health to the point of being asked by her doctor, “Why are you trying to kill yourself?”  That statement shocked her. She changed her diet, began exercising, and within a year, had lost a great deal of weight, and looked good the last time I saw her.  However, I never saw her again, because whatever motivated her to make some significant changes, didn’t motivate her enough to address some of the underlying causes of her great unhappiness and unwillingness to take care of herself.  She went into a depression, resumed her old habits, refused to see the point in making superficial changes, and died quite suddenly within a year of the last time I saw her.

Whatever we think our life purpose is, the call of our soul, we must use what we have in the way of the gifts of this incarnation of ours--we are spiritual beings taking a physical journey.  Some of us detach from our physicality to the point that we drag our bodies around with us. Others focus almost completely on the physical, and fail to address the spiritual, emotional, psychological parts of our being. We often vacillate or get overly focused in one area at the expense of the others. The more we can develop practices, habits, routines, patterns that equate to living more balanced lives based on our true intentions and desires, the healthier, more loving, creative, and peaceful lives we can live. Seek the true desires of your heart, and trust that you are here to have your desires fulfilled. You are the caretaker of the Temple that is your Divine home. Tend the Temple that is You, and honor your place in the Divine scheme of things...live out a destiny of receptive, loving, gracious, and generous being; leave your negative robes of martyrdom, anger, fear, frustration, and shame to inhabit a character in a novel, an image in a poem, or a point of reference. Leave it out of your life as you set intentions that are life giving, affirming, and creative.