Anāhata Cakra

The fourth cakra, located at the centre of the chest. Anāhata means “unstruck”: the sound that arises without anything producing it. It is the point of balance between the three lower cakras (matter, water, fire) and the three upper ones (ether, mind, consciousness).

Associated with the air element (vāyu), the sense of touch and the seed syllable YAṂ. Its yantra is a twelve-petalled lotus with two interlocking triangles —the intersection of ascending and descending.

The name is not incidental. Anāhata is the seat of nāda —the inner sound the yogī perceives when the senses withdraw and the mind stills. The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā devotes an entire section to nāda yoga (4.65-102), describing how meditation on the internal sound progressively leads to samādhi. That sound is heard here, in the space of the heart (hṛdaya ākāśa).

In the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali does not name anāhata explicitly, but meditation on the heart (hṛdaye citta saṃvit, 3.34) points to this same centre as a source of self-knowledge.

Anāhata is the cakra where practice stops being effort and becomes listening.