Activate your Love Connection now: The Heart Anchor
Healing the Addicted Heart is about Addictions, Big and small, and the potential that we all have for transformation through healing from them with energy therapy.
As you take your own, unique journey through the 5 Stages – whichever Stage you are about to explore – you will need some essential equipment with you: your Heart anchor, and the tapping points.
About ‘anchoring’
Anchoring is an NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) term and it is a highly effective way to associate a particular feeling or emotion with a physical touch on a particular part of the body such as the back of the hand or knee. For instance someone can quickly develop the ability to feel confident when they touch that place. It is based on simple conditioning through repetition – the classic example on which this work is based is the experiment with Pavlov’s Dogs. A bell was rung just before the dogs were fed, and after a while the dogs would start to salivate as soon as they heard the bell, regardless of whether they were fed or not. You are going to be using the same principles to establish your Heart Anchor by connecting body (energy points) to positive emotion to metaphysical reality (Love)!
The practical purpose of the Heart Anchor:
Training the brain in the art of ecstasy and transcendence
On one level – that is the level of physical brain function – the Heart Anchor is very practical. You begin simply by touching the points and noticing any pleasant feelings that generates – however vaguely. Then the next step is to deliberately anchor on to that, by continuing to hold the points, the good feelings from any positive memory.
I believe it is absolutely essential to develop this ability, to train our brains’ capacity for happiness and good feelings! The brain is literally divided into two hemispheres (mirroring Love and Fear) and the left frontal cortex processes positive feelings and experiences which we move towards; and the right frontal cortex processes negative experiences and all that we wish to move away from. This means that positive choices, evaluation of what we want and establishing what we value are processed in an entirely different place from what we do not want or want to avoid. This means that when you are stuck in the state of the addicted heart you are almost entirely focused on what you do not want, which will only bring you more of the same.
Conversely, developing your Heart Anchor will increase the capacity of the left frontal lobe and reawaken choice. It is also fun to do. With practice you will find you can access deep states of happiness, even ecstasy! In the state of the addicted heart this brain function is all but shut down. You can easily continue to value the valueless – it simply seems as if that is all there is.
Keep in mind that this brain training must be valued in its own right, not just as something to compete with the old problem state. For now think of this as a completely separate area of the brain that needs to be attended to and developed and which quickly responds by feeling good. How cool is that!
Your Heart Anchor will grow over time – the more you use it the more it will increase. You can begin right away now.
The metaphysical purpose of the Heart Anchor
The Heart Anchor actually creates a bridge between the metaphysical and the physical, the abstract and the practical. You are learning to play with your own neurology so that you may come to open your heart, remembering Love. In this way your body is becoming a means for communication rather than separation. It will support you in strengthening your conscious connection between yourself and Love, which is your true power. It only takes a minute or less to do, and when you have done it a few times you will start to feel a positive surge of feeling as soon as you put your hand to your heart, and after a while just by thinking of it.
The purpose is to re-Mind ourselves of who we really are – Love – completely unchanged by anything that was ever said or thought or done, by us…or to us.
It is important to emphasise that this work with the heart is not just a metaphor. Fascinating research coming out of The Heartmath Institute and from others in the new field of neuro-cardiology is showing how the heart mediates between external perception of reality and our inner, physiological and emotional experience. It has constant dialogue with the emotional brain and influences every organ and system in the body. It can do this with Love or with fear.
As we make peace with our thoughts the heart’s rhythm moves from ‘chaos’ to ‘coherence’. Using the Heart Anchor to set our intention for love no matter what, to re-mind ourselves of our truth, is not just a nice idea. It has actual physiological consequences.
Activating your Heart Anchor
No matter where you are starting from, your Heart Anchor is one important way that you can develop a conscious and felt-sense of your own connection to Love. Here’s how to do it:
First, try out the energy points of the Heart Anchor without any particular expectation about what you will experience.
- Put one hand on the centre of your chest (or heart chakra area) and gently rub. This is the heart point and it is connected to an invisible network of energy channels that spread out and open up the lungs and chest area.
- Then place your other hand at the back of your head at the base of the skull, where you would cradle a baby’s head, and rub both points lightly at the same time. There is literally and energetically a pathway here that runs from the heart to the emotional brain.
- Sense that communication pathway and then sense its energy going beyond the constraints of your physical body. You may or may not notice tingling, energy moving or some other shift in your physiology, as you touch these points. Either way is fine. Your job is simply to notice, without judgement or labelling good, bad or anything else.
Once you have ‘tested’ the Heart Anchor points you are ready to continue to the next step.
- Close your eyes and go into the Heart Anchor pose.
- Rub both points lightly at the same time.
- Close your eyes and focus on the physical sensations coming from the centre, your heart… radiating out into those tiny fine channels…opening the heart area…connecting heart to mind… …And, if you like, zoom in to the very heart centre, and as you do, maybe you can remember a time you felt really loving…or you were surprisingly successful at something…some pleasant memory presenting itself to you now…
Or maybe just a smile….your favourite person, pet, special place…even your favourite colour…
This begins to create a positive association (or anchor) to the energy points. This is the beginning of training the brain’s capacity for happiness and good feelings!
- Now open your eyes and come out of the pose. Take a deep breath in and out.
- Close your eyes and go back in – notice how quickly those feelings come back. Let any pictures fade now so you are focusing entirely on the feeling response as you lightly rub the points.
o How does it feel?
o Where is the feeling?
o How does it move?
o What is the texture of the feeling? o Does it make a sound?
o What colour is it?
o What temperature?
o Where is the warmest part?
- Open your eyes and come out again. Take another deep breath in and out. Go back in for a few seconds.
From now on whenever you feel good for any reason, maybe simply seeing a lovely flower, or the sun breaking through the clouds, notice your good feelings and touch your heart anchor points – just for a moment. Very soon, you will notice a flood of good feelings when you touch the points whatever the actual circumstances you are in.
Once you have spent a bit of time strengthening your Heart Anchor, you can add it to your EFT work, as well as generally having it available as you go about your every day life.
The Tapping Points (using the Heart Point)
The other essential tool you need in your kit is the tapping points. We are going to use a short cut variation of EFT using the heart point that is the master point, or controller, of the energy meridian system. So first go into the Heart Anchor pose, briefly, placing your dominant hand at the back of the head. Next, keep your hand on the heart point, release your dominant hand and tap as follows:
Between the eyebrows
Side of the eye, on the bony bit
Under the eye, on the bony bit
Under your nose
Chin, on the fleshy bit
Collar bone, where you would knot a tie, just above your other hand on the heart point
Top of the head, where you would balance a ball!
Whenever you notice positive shifts or releasing through your breath or muscle relaxation you can take a moment to sit in the Heart Anchor pose. Doing this will strengthen its connection to Love where all power to change lies. You will be conditioning it through your intention by noticing even the smallest shift. This is because even in the tiniest change in your emotional state and physiology – in the moment you notice it you are experiencing a shift from fearmind to Love. Healing is about recovering your capacity to consistently choose Love over fear.
A note on clearing blocks to the Heart
It is perfectly normal to get ‘interfering’ thoughts and feelings – fear mind is threatened as you approach love and may show up in any of these forms, even as tension in the body. If this happens come out of the Heart Anchor pose, and:
- Simply notice and acknowledge what is happening without judgment– you may be surprised how quickly it passes through when you do this
- Voice the thoughts (out loud if possible) while tapping the points we have just gone through. Keep tapping until you notice enough of a shift to feel back to neutral.
- Go back to the Heart Anchor pose and notice what happens now.
You may need to repeat this until you consistently feel your own clear connection to heart energy.
Annie’s story:
“I really liked the idea of the Heart Anchor. Sue introduced it in a one to one session and suggested that I continue practising it on my own. At first it didn’t really feel like anything much at all, and I wasn’t sure I was thinking about the ‘right’ things or even if I had anything positive to use. But… as I said I just liked the idea of it, and found it comforting somehow. Also my thoughts just seemed to keep coming back to it. So I just decided to think about my lovely cat while touching the points – I always feel warm and fuzzy when I think about her so I suppose that must have been a good place to start.
Quite quickly I noticed I was getting the feelings just by touching the points, even when I wasn’t thinking about my cat at all. The idea that I could feel good for no particular reason at all really appealed to me! Now I started to think about what else I could add to it and I would go through my mind and remember photos that captured a particular moment in time – they were literally like snapshots of happy feelings that I could tune into and then capture in my heart as I touched the points.
Next I added colours – thinking about a deep indigo-ey blue gave me really good feelings….Two things really surprised me – the first was that once I got started it was as if part of my mind took on the job of finding things to use for my Heart Anchor and then it became really easy. The second was something that happened in the real world, as it were. I had been having problems with a certain boss at work. She used to visit our office once a week and I would have to meet with her. Basically she was a bully and I dreaded these meetings. Often I would feel anxious for 2 or 3 days before.
I decided to bring these negative and anxious feelings in to my Heart Anchor – so I just tried to think about her in the usual way but while touching the points. I did it every time the negative thoughts and feelings came for a few days. It was strange but it really did seem to change the way I felt about her and I didn’t feel nearly as anxious about the meeting coming up. The strangest thing was when I met her though… she seemed to have had a complete change of personality!! I just sat there while we had a really productive, even enjoyable, meeting! Shortly after that she left the company and I never actually saw her again.
Sue Beer
