Today we’re talking about how to open the heart chakra. You deserve a life filled with love, intimacy, and sweetness! So if your heart needs healing, your intuition has guided you to the right place. With just a couple minutes per day, these methods will bring balance and relief to your heart center.
The heart chakra has a unique and powerful role in your chakra system. It’s the 4th of the 7 chakras, making it the intersection where your physical and spiritual selves meet.
Heart Chakra Meaning
OK, so what is the heart chakra? Your energetic body is made up of seven main centers known as chakras, which means ‘wheel’ in the ancient language of Sanskrit.
Your heart chakra, or Anahata in Sanskrit, is represented by the color green in the illustration below (although it’s associated to pink as well).
All of your beliefs and experiences around love and forgiveness are held here in the heart chakra.
Heart Chakra Characteristics
Here are the basics of the heart chakra:
Sanskrit Name: Anahata
Number: 4 of 7
Color: Green, pink
Location: Center of chest
Body Parts: heart, lungs, breasts, arms, thymus, circulatory system
Themes: Love, compassion, forgiveness, romance, grief
Element: Air
Musical Note: C
Planet: Venus
Astrology: Taurus, Libra
Mantra: Yam
Symbol: Green 12-petaled lotus enveloping a six pointed star
What Blocks The Heart Chakra?
Any situation that hurts your feelings or affects someone you love will block the heart chakra. It’s a natural part of life to go through these experiences, which it’s so important to know how to clear the blockages.
It truly is your natural state to be open hearted, trusting, and loving. But experiences like these can cause your heart chakra to become blocked:
- Unprocessed grief
- Romantic breakup
- Divorcing parents
- Any experience that makes you feel abandonded
- Emotionally unavailable parents
- Being rejected by others
- Being disappointed by someone you trusted
These situations will hit your heart chakra hard. So it’s your job to practice self care, so you can process these emotions, and heal your own heart.
Blocked Heart Chakra Symptoms
When your heart chakra is blocked or out of balance, you will feel:
- emotionally guarded
- sad
- guilt
- resentment
- judgmental
- difficulty forgiving
- shame
- chronic anger (a clear sign of underlying pain)
Do You Have a Blocked Heart Chakra?
The heart chakra is all about love. So of course this includes your romantic relationships and dynamics with the people dear to your heart.
But most importantly, we need to consider self-love when healing the heart chakra.
Let’s do a little assessment to see if your heart chakra is blocked or open. Ask yourself:
- Am I grieving the lost of a loved one or end of a relationship?
- Do I have unreleased guilt?
- What heartaches need to be healed?
- Whom do I need to forgive?
- Do I forgive easily or hold onto resentment?
- Am I guarded with my heart to avoid getting hurt?
- Do I have a feeling of inner peace?
Heart Chakra Opening Benefits
Heart chakra healing can be uncomfortable, because it involves experiencing emotions that you may not want to deal with.
But this is such important work, because when your heart chakr is open, you’ll experience:
- More loving, long lasting relationships
- Freedom from past traumas
- A sense of self love + healthier self-talk
- Sweet interactions with everyone who crosses your path
- Deeper connection with the people in your life
- The ability to relate and sympathize with others
- A healthier physical body, especial in the heart, lungs, and circulation
- Greater manifesting ability
How to Open Your Heart Chakra
You deserve a peaceful heart and a life full of love. So how do you heal a blocked heart chakra? There are many way to soothe your heart center naturally. Let’s discuss!
Heart Chakra Essential Oils
This one is first because it works so fast, literally within seconds.
The amygdala is part of the brain that houses emotional trauma, and it can be stimulated through your sense of smell. So aromatherapy is one of the fastest ways to open your heart chakra.
When your heart feels tender, here are the best oils to turn to:
- Rose Absolute is a powerful heart healer. It promotes a joyful heart and is known to help reduce blood pressure
- Lime is uplifting and promotes emotional balance
- Rosewood can help ease depression
- rNeroli is especially good for sadness and grief
- Melissa heals emotional wounds and is known to calm anxiety
If you don’t have any of these on-hand and you’re looking for just one oil to start with, go with this heart chakra healing blend from Rocky Mountain Oils. It takes the guesswork right out of it.
If you don’t have any essential oils, the next best thing you can do is buy yourself flowers. Try keeping pink roses in a space where you spend the most time.
Take a deep inhale, clearing your mind as you do. You’ll be amazed at the relief it brings you in the time it takes to take a single breath.
Focus on Forgiveness
It’s totally normal to have emotional triggers. Can you think of a person or situation that still upsets you, even if the incident is far in the past?
If you take only one reminder from this article, let it be that forgiveness is an exercise in self-love.
When you hold onto anger, grief, victimization it hurts you on every level of your being. Forgiveness just means you’re exchanging your pain for inner peace. It has nothing to do with anyone else, and no one else even has to know.
Forgiveness is personal work that you do for your own wellness. This post will help you reframe how you look at your regrets: Best Questions To Ask Yourself Everyday for Self Growth
Practice Self Love
How’s your inner monologue, your self-talk? Are you kind to yourself or harsh and judgmental? We’re usually harder on ourselves than we’d ever dare be to anyone else!
If you’re holding onto guilt or shame, take this as a sign to let yourself off the hook. Shame is the most toxic emotion you can have. It holds one of the lowest vibrations on the emotional scale and can make you physically ill when it goes unaddressed.
If you struggle with feelings of shame, these quotes will bring you comfort. Check them out and let me know if they help you: Best Brene Brown Quotes to Overcome Your Shame
Whatever you’re punishing yourself for, I promise that you’re being too hard on yourself. It’s time to forgive yourself so you can move forward on your healing journey.
To learn more about how to practice self love, read this next: How to Practice Self Love: 11 Life Changing Tips
Heart Chakra Healing Crystals
Your heart chakra responds readily to stones that are pink or green in color.
Place them around the bathroom while you’re taking a bath or under your bed so they can heal your heart wounds while you sleep. Another option is to wear crystal jewelry, like this chakra bracelet.
Here are the absolute best stones for the heart chakra: 7 Best Heart Chakra Stones for Love, Peace, + Mending
Align With Heart Chakra Healing Healing Frequency
Your can open your heart chakra through sound. Music taps into memory and can therefore help you release emotions that you’re ready to process.
The color green vibrates at the same frequency as the C note on the musical scale. You’ll be amazed how your body responds to soothing music, especially middle C.
Try these heart chakra music options:
- Listen to your favorite songs that uplift and inspire you
- Play a heart chakra singing bowl
- Listen to heart chakra healing music
Heart Chakra Healing Foods
Food is medicine for your body, and for your chakra system. So, what foods open the heart chakra?
Look for foods that are green, since that’s the color of your heart chakra. Also, any food that’s good for your physical heart will open up your Anahata.
- leafy greens
- avocados
- green juice
- olives
- rose quartz infused water
- zucchini
- foods rich in omegas
- heart chakra opening tea
Repeat Heart Chakra Opening Affirmations
Your desire to heal is the first big step of this emotional journey. Affirmations can help you speed up the healing process by raising your vibration.
Heart chakra affirmations can bring quite a bit of emotional comfort.
I put my favorite heart chakra affirmations in a list for you. I know you’ll find them helpful: 39 Heart Chakra Affirmations for Soothing and Inner Peace
You can also use your heart chakra affirmation as a journal prompt. Write about what your affirmation means to you, and how it makes you feel.
For more on heart chakra journaling, read this next: 45 Heart Chakra Journal Prompts for Love and Emotional Healing
Heart Chakra Healing Meditation
Meditation is an excellent way to heal your heart chakra. Here are some options for you to explore:
- Sit or lie quietly. Imagine your heart center glowing a bright green or pink color.
- Chant the mantra for the heart chakra, ‘yam’ aloud or in your mind. You can make your chanting practice more powerful by using green mala beads.
- Listen to a heart chakra healing meditation. I found this one on Youtube for you – let me know what you think!
Heart Chakra Healing Exercises
Yoga poses can help to open your heart center and support your healing. Any pose that allows you to stretch your chest area will help heal your heart.
Here are some of the best yoga poses to open the heart chakra:
- fish
- camel
- bridge
- cat-cow (my favorite!)
- wild thing
I found this beginner’s video on Youtube that’s specific to heart chakra healing. Leave me a comment below if you find it helpful.
What Are The Symptoms of Heart Chakra Opening?
As you work through your heart chakra opening practice, your heart center will begin to heal. Here are some signs that your heart chakra is in balance.
You’ll feel:
- compassionate
- loving
- accepting
- peaceful
- willing to forgive
- joyful
- more physical openness in your chest area
- emotional release or crying – this is a good thing so don’t hold back! Remember, what you can feel, you can heal.
Conclusion
If you’re being guided to work on your heart chakra, it’s a call to be more loving and gentle with yourself. So be patient as you move through this healing process.
But if you just set aside a few minutes a day to do one of these practices, your heart chakra will continue to open, heal, and thrive.
I’m wishing you a life filled with love, peace, and harmony – you deserve it!
XO, Andrea
PS – Going through a breakup? Read this next: 50 Break Up Journal Prompts to Mend Your Heart
Andrea Scalisi
Andrea has been practicing Astrology, Numerology, and Tarot for many years. She is a certified Aromatherapist and Reiki Master in Central NY, and also holds a Masters Degree from Syracuse University. Andrea loves helping her readers bring more spiritual self-care into their lives.
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