Tending the Chest: Tissue, Thread & Prayer

Anahata

Close your eyes. Place your hands at your Heart center — Anahata.

The name given to the place that dwells in the illustrious cave of golden-green brilliance. The dimension that links upper and lower, the place where the mind dwells. I see this place surrounded by flowers and golden threads that have lovingly stitched together heartbreak, wounds, and experience — bound with prayer, acceptance, imperfection and devotion. She reminds me that every matriarch claims her spot while swimming in the mud with the divine. It is in the early pre-dawn hours that the first glimpse of light is observed.

Surrounded by all that is held here, all that passes through here — the bearers of the holy and sacred. Be it lust, passion, nourishment, shame, fear, age — our chest houses so much. Overlaid with the lungs and nestled into the heart, it is the meeting place of all bodies: mind, body, and spirit. Their proximity to the heart center does not feel accidental. All they carry could write chapters from our own Book of Life.

Ayurveda has much to say about the health and care of chest tissue — and this has taken an important place in my daily practice. I think about it often as I stood beside my Ma while she braved a ten-year epic battle that would later take her life. It was not without a fight, and a total restructuring of how she lived it — returning to the roots of her younger life through food, meditation, western treatments and eastern understandings, and so much more. Her eyes became so clear through that process. I will never forget it.