The emotional heart?

I was looking at a web site where there are acupressure points for chakras. And the one which I was specifically looking at, was apparently for the emotional heart.

what is the emotional heart?

Apparently, this person believes that the heart chakra, Anahata chakra, is the emotional heart. For the accupressure points were to do with this. I can see why many would believe that this is correct. After all, the heart chakra is about love, and love is an emotion. Right?

(chuckle)

I can vividly, remembering the emotion which I felt was love. I was so earnest about it all, and I'm sure that many of you are too. I found in my spiritual journey, that love is not something just for your loved ones - friends and family, but is something far more embracing than that. 

Definitely.

but what is our emotional heart, then?

What is actually our "emotional heart", broadly speaking, is our gut. Physiologically, it has an enormous nervous system (enteric nervous system = ENS) which is like it's own brain, really. The brain and mind of our gut. And this works hand in hand with our central nervous system (CNS). The CNS goes up inside our spine and into our brain.

So, it's two of our brains working together, with each other, regulating our body in so many ways. The CNS has like reflex and command centres. Our ENS helps control our motor functions, which is movement. It also modulates immune function. Honestly, it does so much more but this is a good start. 

Each of these two nervous systems have "mind" working in tandem with the brain aspect. The physical and non-physical aspects of the systems. 

In Maori spirituality, this goes one step further. The ENS is known as our emotional heart. It sends messages through our body in relation to our emotions. 

Messages are generally relayed throughout our body/brains via our nervous systems. 

How do we know these messages? Well, many of them are silent. For example, the ENS has a lot to do with blood flow. I developed a decades long problem with anemia. Now I obviously was prone to it, but it became a big issue when I was living in an ashram, and my gut was burning and sore most of the time. It was not a good culture for many of us there. Anyway, to continue, these reactions - sore gut and anemia continued for many years. One of the problems manifested as my stomach organ not picking up the iron in my food, tablets, iron drinks - whatever. My wonderful doctor put this together and taught me how to correct it. 

And how could my stomach have done this? It was through incredible prolonged stress and my gut, in it's own way, trying to communicate with me. To let me know to flee from the stress, which was seldom possible (damn you destiny!), instead of always trying to deal with it and slowly dying, close to death more than once, as a result.

Ah yes. The loving emotional heart. It communicates with us. But, sometimes we are in situations where we just have to cope. Othertimes it's saying: go!! flee!! When we are happy (emotions again), our digestive system is happy too, and everything works well.

a big, ginormous caveat

Now, just so you know, not all disorders of the gut, and this is all digestion, bowels etc, are from within oneself. Sometimes it's tendencies carried down through the DNA, sometimes it's just part of our own journey in a lifetime (see my previous post). I mention this most firmly as there really is far too much emotion-shaming in the spiritual systems. Which, to me, shows just how much these offenders do not know. 

emotions are so important

They are one of the major tools for living our life. For traversing each lifetime. They are learning tools. And other things, too, but especially emotions communicate to us and we learn a lot about life, just by listening to our feelings.

How we manage our emotions, express them, teaches our children too. For good or otherwise.

There is a lot more to do with the emotional heart. On physical, mental, emotional, energy, and spiritual, levels. 

But, hey, this is a good start.

What are your feelings about this? Do you have a different opinion? 

** link here about our different hearts and minds

 ** link here about emotions and prana (life-force)