What is the Heart Chakra?

Chakras

Oct 13

The Root Chakra helps us to feel safe. When we feel safe enough, we can feel and flow with our Sacral Chakra. Our Sacral Chakra opens us up to feeling emotions and desire, which we work to take action on, and achieve with our Solar Plexus. Our Solar Plexus Chakra helps us to separate ourselves enough from others, so that we can be individuals. But after those tasks have been worked through, we reach outward to others in love. This is the Heart Chakra. It is no accident that it also includes our arms which help us to literally reach out and connect with others. As the center chakra, the Heart chakra is about balance. Through love, we open ourselves up to higher levels of consciousness. Love is a high vibration and healing energy. As souls, we are comprised of Divine Love. Love is our essence. It is inside us. Love is the magnet that binds the universe together.

Being a human creates the illusion of separation, and causes us to believe that love is limited and external. Whenever we are heart broken by someone else, it is actually a result of a lack of self-love. We want an external love to fill us up, because without it, our hearts feel empty. There is no actual lack of love inside of us, since our essence is love. But we are cut off from that knowing and that access, because of the blinders of the human condition. So to love ourselves, is to simply tap into our most natural state. When we truly love ourselves, then nobody can ever make us feel empty or not good enough.

A Balanced Heart Chakra

A balanced heart chakra is displayed though compassion, empathy, self-love, and reciprocity in relationships. An unbalanced Heart Chakra is displayed through a fear of intimacy in relationships, lack of empathy, antisocial behavior, intolerance, and isolation. It can also appear as being codependent, jealous, or overly sacrificing. When we are experiencing a physical sensation of a broken heart, we very literally are experiencing the unbalanced energy of the heart chakra. When our heart is heavy with grief, we sometimes feel like we can’t even breathe.

Forgiveness as a Healing Practice

Forgiveness is about shifting your own energy within your Heart Chakra. Your ability to forgive, has nothing to do with the other person. You can forgive someone at an energetic level, but still maintain a boundary protecting you from interacting with them ever again. To forgive, is to release the emotional energy of that situation from your Heart Chakra, which will leave you feeling lighter. Forgiveness involves gaining insight on why what happened, happened. It is about seeing that everyone makes mistakes, we are all human. It is about having compassion for the imperfections of humanity. We can’t expect a person to act in a way that is essentially different from their current nature. For example, you can’t expect a person who doesn’t love themselves, to love you. You can’t expect a person who isn’t honest with themselves, to be honest with you. It may feel impossible to forgive an abuser. But by not forgiving them, you are holding onto that negative energy. They may have abused you, but you don’t need to carry it around with you for the rest of your life. You don’t deserve that. Forgiveness allows you to come to peace with the situation, but also make changes in your life to protect you from enduring future heartache.

Gratitude as a Healing Practice

Gratitude amplifies love. Simply thinking thoughts of gratitude opens the heart chakra. Gratitude is a perspective that transforms us. It is the ultimate remedy. It transforms anger and pain into love and peace. It transforms the every day occurrence into a miracle. It transforms us into the highest version of ourselves. Tune into gratitude every single day, multiple times a day.

There is always something to be thankful for even in the darkest times. Power is in actually finding a way to be thankful for the worst of things that have happened to us. Finding gratitude in the darkest of moments is the most transformative and heart opening thing that we can do for our souls. It completely changes our lens, and raises our vibration. Gratitude helps us dig ourselves out. This isn’t to say that we should bypass the darkness of pain and suffering. But when you are ready to find your way out, it will be gratitude that will light up your path. When we are deep in grief after the loss of a loved one, sometimes it seems like the only way out is finding the gratitude in the joyful moments that did happen. Cherish those moments with gratitude. Gratitude amplifies love and transforms darkness to light.

Finding Our Self-Love

To love ourselves, is to forgive ourselves. Forgive every version of yourself that has ever existed. You are not who you were then. Just as there is value in forgiving others, there is even more value in forgiving ourselves. We can’t hold onto the past, if we want to move forward and evolve. To grow, we must let go. Forgive yourself deeply and truly. In order to cultivate self-love we must forgive ourselves for our past.

To love ourselves, is also to have gratitude for ourselves. In the same way a mother may delight in her children, find ways to delight in yourself. Have gratitude for your quirks, the ways you have overcome obstacles, who you have become, and who you are working to be.

Many of us were taught that self-love is selfish. Many women especially, have been programmed to feel shameful for filling up their cup first. But if we tune into our own needs first, then we feel energetic and full. This way when we give, we can give from a higher vibration and can do so without resentment or a sense of depletion. If you want your kids to love themselves, they need to see you loving yourself.

We can heal our own heart by cultivating a loving relationship with ourselves. We can do this by making space to enjoy our own energy, by speaking to ourselves with love, and by taking a perspective of compassion for ourselves. We can fill ourselves with love as long as we are willing to receive from ourselves. We can learn to love ourselves from the inside out, instead of expecting love to only be given to us externally. We can love ourselves, and by doing so we are wholly responsible for the balance of our Heart Chakra.

Healthy Heart Chakra Flow

Living life with an understanding of why the Heart Chakra may become unbalanced, may help you to monitor your own Heart Chakra. You can make intentional choices regarding your life to bring the Heart Chakra into balance. The most important themes in our daily lives in terms of the Heart Chakra are reciprocity in relationships and self-love. A conscious connection with the breath is helpful. The in and out of air through our lungs, mimics the give and take of relationships and also nourishes our body and soul with love. Shadow work and inner child work help us to love all the parts of ourselves. Energy Healing such and sound healing or Reiki healing can give your Heart Chakra a boost, working through any blocks and restoring its balance.

If you would like to know more about your unique energy flow, and bring your chakras into balance, book a Reiki Session with me. I include a chakra consult with each Reiki Session. I can tell you about your chakra flow and how you can make choices in your daily life to maintain energetic balance. I also offer Energy Coaching Sessions to help you continue make choices to bring your chakras into balance over time, assisting you to find a place of overall health and wellbeing. Sound baths are helpful in releasing excess energy in the Heart Chakra and bringing in a sense of balanced flow to your energy system. Shadow work sessions with me are intuitively guided so that we can identify the shadow parts of you that would benefit from being processed, and you are given support in the process of understanding them and integrating them. This opens up more space for deep self-love. Lastly, you may be carrying grief and heartache with you from a past life which may be impacting your Heart Chakra. Akashic Record Readings are helpful in diving into these wounds, bringing them to light so that you can be aware of patterns that may be perpetuating the pain. This allows you to consciously make choices to transmute their energy. My practice takes a multimodal approach to energy, and I would love to support you in the way the most resonates with your soul.

Heart Chakra Affirmations (Heart Chakra Mantras)

I am love.

I feel love.

I deserve love.

I radiate and receive love.

My relationships are reciprocal.