This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.
For example, the heart (fourth) Chakra rules Emotional Power. The heart relates to how your protagonist shows love, forgiveness, compassion, and trust. The Solar Plexus Chakra says I LOVE.
By considering how your characters connect to their compassion—or not—will give you clues about how they will respond and react to all situations and scenarios in your story, and especially those that hold big emotional impact.
Below is a brief explanation of the Heart Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.
Fourth Chakra – Heart Chakra
Location
Chest
This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.
Primary strengths
Courage to take emotional risks (to trust, love, and feel loved), power to heal (oneself and others), ability to be inclusive and take responsibility for one’s life
This is about how your character responds to situations that require forgiveness, understanding, and empathy.
Primary fears and fearful expressions
Loneliness, commitment, withholding, jealousy/bitterness, anger/hatred, judgmental/critical
This is where you’re able to start seeing your character get in their own way, whether through self-doubt or self-loathing, or through their lack of willingness to forgive, and even experience/express self-love and self-forgiveness.
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Writing exercise
Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Heart Chakra as they relate to all your characters.
Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible.
Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters.
Example: Your protagonist has just learned about a betrayal by someone they know. This betrayal could have been intentional (a shop owner whose employee stole cash from the register) or unintentional (a shop owner whose employee who forgot to lock up at the end of the day because they had an emergency at home, and the shop is robbed and vandalized).
Both are betrayals of a sort.
Depending on who the shop owner is and depending on their degree of emotional intelligence (the condition of their heart chakra), their reactions and responses to both situations will vary.
Questions to begin your exercise:
• Establish your character’s level of compassion, forgiveness, and self-love. What would their immediate response be?
• Do they take time to sit with what happened, or do they respond immediately?
• Do they stand by their response (immediate or delayed), or do they regret it?
• How does their emotional responses, actions, and their feelings about those actions inform the story’s trajectory and drive it forward?
Let me know what you discover in the comments.
As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…
Happy writing!
Johnnie
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