Healing Your Heart Chakra

The heart chakra is a significant part of your emotional experience. Issues with the heart chakra can affect you mentally and existentially. Focusing on your heart chakra will keep you more connected to people and life, enhancing your quality of life.

Read on to find out:

  • What the heart chakra controls
  • Signs of an imbalanced chakra
  • Practices to rebalance or open your heart chakra

What Does the Heart Chakra Control?

The dynamic heart chakra is not located exactly where you think it would be. Rather, it is near the center of your chest and is heavily influenced by the element of air.

The heart chakra is a power center because just like your physical heart, it controls multiple aspects of your life and is responsible for the fundamental parts of human life.

The heart chakra’s power is important to harness because relationships with others begin very early on in life. This does not just mean it is responsible for romantic relationships. The heart chakra affects all relationships, including familial, platonic, and your relationship with yourself.

Due to the constant presence of relationships, the heart chakra is prone to be altered through a lifetime. These alterations may be good or bad. For example, a breakup or trauma may cause you to numb or close your heart chakra. Likewise, caring for a demanding partner can cause you to open your heart chakra too much, leaving you vulnerable and therefore open to manipulation.

Like many behaviors, there is power in repetition. Once you manifest a certain reaction to relationships, it becomes an inherent part of your heart chakra. If you are not aware of how you handle relationships, you can begin negatively shaping your heart chakra, and it will affect your future relationships greatly.

Relationships are a fundamental part of human existence, so your heart chakra is a key player in your emotions and mentality.

Do You Have an Imbalanced Chakra?

An imbalanced heart chakra may not always be easy to spot. Since the chakra is responsible for all kinds of relationships, you may habitually begin treating people a certain way and consider it a part of your personality.

The heart chakra affects your relationship with yourself and therefore can fuel your ego, leaving you in a harmful cycle of being stubborn and not wanting to confront your deficiencies in relationships. This cycle may not immediately seem harmful because your chakra is shifted towards yourself, feeding into your ego and taking away from your ability to be compassionate and considerate of others.

The most telltale signs of an imbalanced heart chakra are being defensive of yourself and your choices despite criticism, fearing intimacy, craving attention, and being antisocial. There are also physical manifestations of this, such as lung and cardiac issues. This is due to the proximity of the heart chakra to these vital systems.

Repetitive, harmful behaviors are what affect the heart chakra the most. A chronic problem will anchor itself in the heart chakra and therefore become a part of all your relationships.

As discussed before, an imbalanced chakra does not manifest itself in the same way in everyone. For people who have numbed their heart chakra, they may lack empathy and become selfish. On the other side of this imbalance, however, is a tendency to let down boundaries and overextend yourself, altering the value of your relationships and draining your energy.

Either way, a heart chakra imbalance is detrimental to you and those you surround yourself with.

Healing Your Heart Chakra

Just like there is power in repeating negative behaviors, there is power in practicing newer, healthy behaviors. The state of your heart chakra is in your hands, and shifting your mentality and behaviors can actively begin reshaping and undoing any imbalances in your heart chakra.

The most important part of heart chakra healing is being forgiven towards yourself and others. Your relationships are a significant part of your life and it could be difficult to confront that you have been approaching them in harmful ways. By crossing that line and acknowledging you may have had an imbalance, you are already fostering healthier behaviors.

If it has not become obvious already, the most effective part of heart chakra healing is opening yourself up to the possibility of change. Your heart chakra is a central part of your energy system, so rebalancing it can seem difficult and painful. Take solace in the fact that every little change you make is steering you in the right direction. One healthy behavior will make it easier to adopt another, and soon you will find yourself more open to healthy relationships.

The color of your heart chakra is green. This means that the stones best for your healing are green stones like jade, green calcite, and green aventurine. It is believed that higher energy in your heart chakra is associated with the color pink, so rose quartz will also help with your healing.

Yoga and meditation, in general, are good ways to foster mindfulness and healing. Focusing on your energy and the green energy radiating through you will help your heart chakra and can also maintain your other chakras. While meditating, thinking about your love for others and the beauty around you will enhance your experience.

Yoga poses that open up the heart will specifically aid in your healing. These include poses that open up your shoulders and chests like the cobra, the cobra, and the upward-facing dog.

Finally, being grateful and acknowledging dynamics in relationships will heal your heart chakra. This may sound repetitive and seem like it applies to balance in many parts of your life--and it is. Sometimes the most effective ways of healing involve a general sense of love and compassion that can be maintained through self-love and gratitude.