Chakras are our energy centres, they regulate our emotions, immune system and organ functions. You have 7 chakras located from the base of your spine to the crown of your head and each one has it's own function and purpose. They each have their corresponding colour and vibrational frequency. Our chakras can become unbalanced, unaligned or blocked due our actions, words and experiences. When this happens it can have a negative effect so it is important to be in tune with your chakras and know when there is a problem. If you are experiencing negative thoughts, emotions or events it could be that one of your chakras needs some attention.
**The 7 chakras are: ** The Root Chakra- Grounding The Sacral Chakra- Creativity The Solar Plexus Chakra- Self confidence The Heart Chakra- Love The Throat Chakra- Truth The Third Eye Chakra- Intuition The Crown Chakra- Spiritual connection
Today I want to talk specifically about the heart chakra and how it effects our lives, bodies and emotional and spiritual state. We are going to look at what the heart chakra is, how to unblock the heart chakra and heart chakra affirmations.
What Is The Heart Chakra?
The heart chakra (or Anahata in Sanskrit) is located in the centre of your chest. Its corresponding colour is green, it is the 4th chakra from the bottom of the spine, its known for being the bridge between the upper and lower chakras and at the surface level it is the chakra of love and healing. When your heart chakra is open you may feel connected and compassionate, an ability to empathise and forgive but also a great sense of self love and awareness. If this chakra is blocked you may feel excess jealousy, feeling closed off from others, being either too withdrawn or too needy. The heart chakra is related to the air element so breathwork is very important with the heart chakra, especially since your lungs and heart are interdependent with your heart chakra.
Your heart chakra is also related to your ability to love, an appreciation of beauty, deepening relationships and even your link to spiritual and earthly aspirations, Your heart chakra is not just for romantic relationships but is linked to those around you, your friendships your relationship with yourself, your ego and your ability to live a fulfilled life.
What Happens When Our Heart Chakra Is Blocked?
In the previous section we touched on how it feels and what you might experience when your heart chakra is blocked but I would like to go into a bit more detail. If your heart chakra is blocked or imbalanced then you might experience negative emotions such as:
Jealousy: Excessive jealousy is different to healthy competitiveness and can certainly cause problems in a relationship. Co-dependency: Otherwise known as "relationship addiction", this is when you are unable to feel happy or whole on your own. Isolation: The extreme opposite of co-dependency. You become reclusive and do not want to spend time with others
. Victimization: You create your own situations where you are the victim or you put yourself out of your way too often and allow yourself to be used. Being closed and shutting people out: Never allowing people to get close and experience the real you. Never sharing your true thoughts and feelings with anyone and keeping them at arms length. Holding grudges: This is an inability to forgive. This is not only harmful to the person you hold the grudge against but is extremely harmful to your own peace. Being anti-social: Never speaking to anyone and completely avoiding social situations.
But your heart chakra does not just affect you emotionally, it can also affect you physically. This can show up in the form of: Circulatory issues Bronchitis Heart disease Other respiratory and heart related ailments
A blocked or unbalanced heart chakra is no joke, it does not just hurt you it can also be very harmful to those around you if not addressed. In the next section we will look at ways of getting the heart chakra unblocked and back in balance using crystals, essential oils, meditations, heart chakra affirmations, breathwork and yoga.
How To Unblock And Rebalance Our Heart Chakra
Now that we know the signs of a blocked heart chakra and how important it is to find balance we can look into ways of fixing the problem-
- Crystals: Crystals have metaphysical properties and carry and absorb energies to help us in life. They can help us both spiritually and physically. You can use crystals to unblock your heart chakra. The crystals that correspond are: rose quartz, emerald, green jasper, rhodochrosite, malachite, green aventurine, green jade and amazonite. To unblock the heart chakra with these crystals you first need to program the crystal by asking it to help you to unblock and rebalance the heart chakra, then meditate with the crystal in your hands in prayer position. You can also wear the crystal or keep it on your person.
- Meditation: Meditation helps us to focus our energy inward and use it as we need. Use a guided meditation to focus energy on your heart chakra and work on opening it up. Even a 10 minute meditation can work wonders.
- Breathwork: We mentioned earlier how the heart chakra is strongly linked to the breathe and here is how you can utilise that. Using big, deep breath, breathe into your heart space and imagine your heart chakra getting bigger with each breath and glowing green. Imagine your chakra spinning faster as you do so and if you feel you are holding anything negative, allow yourself to breath it out.
- Yoga: Yoga is often referred to as movement medicine and for aligning and unblocking chakras that certainly rings true. Yoga for unblocking the heart chakra would be anything that opens your chest or strengthens your shoulders. The best poses for this would be: cobra, upward facing dog, warrior one with heart opening variation, reverse plank and cat/cow pose.
- Essential Oils: Essential oils stimulate and restore, this process can be useful when aligning chakras. Burning or wearing essential oils related to the heat chakra help to create balance and bring energy. Such oils would be: rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, sandalwood.
- Heart Chakra Affirmations: Affirmations are a way of reprogramming how we speak to ourselves and a great way to balance your heart chakra is through heart chakra affirmations. You can do this before or after a meditation, as part of your meditation, in your head, into a mirror or just into the air, whatever resonates with you and feels right. There is no wrong way to use affirmations, as long as the words are positive and you understand the meaning. We will look into further details about this in the next section as well as some great suggestions for affirmations you can use yourself.
Heart Chakra Affirmations
Our thoughts, words and emotions create our reality and affirmations change the words we say to ourselves with in turn helps to change our thoughts and emotions. If you can speak something into reality then you can speak your heart chakra into balance and remove blockages. Affirmations help us to heal, process and re programme our thoughts but what sort of affirmations would be helpful for your heart chakra? You would be wanting to use affirmations related to self love, gratitude, acceptance, forgiveness and openness.
Here are 5 examples of my favourite heart chakra affirmations:
"I am safe to love and be loved"
"I am worthy and worth it"
"I am open to giving and receiving love"
"I give love and love comes back to me"
"I am willing to love life and let life love me"
Further Chakra Work
As you can see the heart chakra is so important for our quality of life and emotional intelligence. I think we could all use a little extra compassion and forgiveness at times but if you feel that it is a common problem for you it may be time to look inward and use some of the suggestions above. Of course if the issues you are currently facing do not align with any of the above it could just be one of the other chakras that need unblocking. Alternatively, when another chakra is blocked it can cause the other chakras to become unbalanced so if you find the steps above do not help, it could be a case of working out which of your chakras is currently misaligned or blocked. Looking inward and finding out which chakra needs a little extra love can be an incredible experience. It can really show which parts of yourself you have been neglecting and allow you to discover parts of your being you either did not know existed or that you have subconsciously suppressed.
My favourite way of balancing chakras is to combined all of the above. I start with yoga, incorporating chakra opening moves, then move onto a guided meditation, sometimes I will do a full chakra realignment meditation or sometimes just specific to my chakra. While meditating I hold a crystal that I feel helps with the corresponding chakra. Of course I use breath work through the entire yoga and meditation practice. I will also burn essential oils throughout my practice. As for affirmations, I do daily affirmations twice a day incorporating new affirmations however I see fit.
