Self Respect- The Fourth Chakra

 i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)…
 
I am touched by your kindness. 
I feel your love. 
My heart sings when you are near me. 
I hold you in my heart, even when you are not there. 
Love is forgiveness. 
Love is patience. 
Love is caring, even when it’s hard. 
Love is Everything.
 
I left my family’s home when I was seventeen, before graduating high school.  It was at that time that I truly learned how to care for myself.  For the first time, I felt free and I took my freedom and self care seriously.  From then on, I made my own meals from scratch every day, chose real, unprocessed food and even grew an organic garden - all habits I have continued to this day.  I meditate, spend time outside every day in movement I enjoy and I teach Yoga.  I do my best to stay healthy because self care is where health begins.  Caring for oneself allows us to care for others in authentic ways.  Self care is where the Fourth Chakra, underneath the sternum, lives.  It’s Heart energy is about Self Care and its color is green…
 
 i am never without it…
 
I am never without your heart. The energy of the Fourth Chakra, under the sternum in the chest, holds this love.  It is universal, immeasurable, comforting, huge.  It goes beyond the physical heart “pump”, the shoulders and arms, the thymus gland, the ribs, the lungs and diaphragm that encompass the Fourth Chakra energy.  Love is Everything; it can’t be measured.  Its energy pushes outside of the chest that houses it.
 
Thomas Cowan, M.D., has written a book called, “Human Heart, Cosmic Heart:  A doctor’s quest to Understand, Treat and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease.  In this study of the heart’s physical job, he challenges the idea of the heart as a pump and questions whether this is actually possible.  Can an organ, the size of a closed fist pump gallons of blood through the body while pushing up against the pressure of thousands of narrow arteries and the forces of gravity?  If you really think about it, I believe, as he does, that we’ve gotten it wrong for a long time. 
 
So how does it work?  The heart muscle does “pump”, squeezing blood in and out of its own vessels, but it’s actually the contraction of the muscles of the calves, along with the arrangement of yards and yards of tiny arterioles squeezed together that move blood around the body.  It’s the cooperation and coordination of the entire circulatory system, along with the skeletal muscles of the lower legs - not the heart muscle by itself - that moves blood around.
 
anywhere  i go you go, my dear; and, whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
 
In our sedentary culture, where we sit at desks for hours at a time not allowing the calf muscles to contract as often as they should, blood pools in the ankles instead of moving through the body.  This is why it is essential to move, not just that hour at the gym, but frequently.  Stand, sit, get a treadmill desk to make sure the blood in your lower body doesn’t  stagnate.
 
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
 
My heart aches for you.
I am heart broken.
My heart is crushed.
His heart failed.
 
The energy of the Fourth Chakra holds grief and anger, loneliness and commitment, forgiveness and compassion…Such a big job - no wonder our chests swell with pride, or feel like they’re going to explode with emotion.
 
There are many ways to heal, just as there are many ways to love. Healing is felt, not so much on physical levels, but as unseen energy.  We don’t see the love we have for a beloved friend in the same way we see a cut heal.  The energy of Love can be more powerful than a solid object.
 
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
 
Several years ago, I was in a bad automobile accident - a prelude to a year of broken bones.  As I drove the curves of Mulholland Highway on a rainy day, my SUV slid through some mud, spun around, crossed the highway and hit the embankment on the other side of the road.  The car had no airbags to soften the blow of my ribs against the steering wheel.  The blow was so powerful that it cracked my sternum and several ribs.  For months afterward, I slept on my back with a pillow on my chest.  The only way I could get out of bed was to clutch the pillow against me and turn on my side.  My ribcage was so fragile that I couldn’t lift anything that needed to be put on a shelf.
 
Of course, it took months for me to work again and gave me a deep understanding of the architecture of the rib cage, how it houses the circulatory system and protects it from outside damage.  Even a slight fracture of one of the ribs can be felt through the whole structure and a fracture of the sternum, where most of the ribs attach, can be felt for a lifetime.
 
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
 
Sometimes, on an ordinary day, standing at the kitchen sink making dinner or washing dishes, I feel a sensation in my chest.  It’s an alert of changing weather, really.  I once thought it might be a “heart attack”, but then a flood of memories return to that moment of the car spinning, losing control on a rainy day and my thoughts stopping in thin air.  There it is, the crack in my sternum that separates when the weather changes, warning me of impending rain.  Deeper than that, much deeper is the hole in my heart that has never healed.  The hole is my heart.  The hole is  the Fourth Chakra.
 
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
 
E.E. Cummings