What is it?

In the last few decades, Chakras have become a part of popular culture. Many people reference the colors, imagery, and feelings related to these energy hubs in their daily lives. There are seven chakras in the human body, and five more outside, making up the 12 major chakras. There are more, but that’s a lesson for a much later date.
The 4th Chakra is the Heart Chakra and is naturally associated with air (lungs in your chest). It is located in the center of the chest and allows us to feel deeply connected with others. A finely tuned Heart Chakra allows us to appreciate the harmonious exchange of energy with all that is around us, as well as the beauty and wonder of life.
The Heart Chakra is associated with:

• Our feelings for ourselves and others
• How we relate with and to others
• Our levels of compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and acceptance

Visibility

The Heart Chakra, in my opinion, is a projection of how we want to be seen in the world. We crave love and attention, yes, even those of you who are hermits crave love. 

There’s a phrase, that I feel speaks directly to the heart chakra, many of you may have been told you wear them…rose-colored glasses. I have a pair! I used to have several, but I allowed someone to convince me they were silly once, so I tossed them. In my path to healing, I recognized I needed to pick them back up. See, we all need rose-colored glasses. Not because we want to be like an ostrich and bury our heads in the sand, but because we want to see all the beauty the world has to offer. Sometimes, we need the “rose” to filter out the bad things happening. Not to deny they exist, but to keep them from overwhelming our fragile egos and shaking our steady grounding. 

One of my favorite people in the universe, my sister-in-law, looks for hearts everywhere she goes. She posts photos of hearts made out of oil spills on the driveway, or a random leaf she finds. They are never created by her, merely discovered. Personally, I believe she manifests them. But that’s another topic for another day.

What if we each took the next seven days (a whole week) to tune into our hearts? What do you think you will see, hear, feel, smell, and maybe even taste? Are you in tune with that feeling? 

We discussed in Strengthening the Root Chakra, that Earth has chakras too. First, let me just mention that Earth is the word heart with the letters rearranged.

That’s not coincidental friends. The energies from the Earth’s Heart Chakra influence our overall feeling of love for and in the Universe. Earth’s Heart Chakra is found at Glastonbury/Shaftesbury/Stonehenge. Check out this

map! I may be trying too hard, but I swear I see a heart. Maybe back in the day, before modern roads, the old dirt roads were in the shape of a heart.

Unbalanced

So how will I know it’s my heart chakra that is unbalanced and not my Solar Plexus chakra or one of the other chakras? You can take a short quiz here.

The most obvious sign the Heart Chakra is blocked is an overall inability to play well with others. Someone may need constant feedback/reinforcement or even become reclusive due to fear of intimacy. Someone might be overly defensive, jealous, or blame others. They may also have difficulty showing or giving forgiveness.  

Plants show an imbalance in their Heart Chakra when they begin to lose their beautiful green color. 

Even Earth is showing an imbalance in her Heart Chakra. We are so busy loving the wrong things that road construction/expansion threatens Stonehenge as it stands today. Just do a little Google search and follow the debates. It’s disheartening.

Balancing

How can we begin to balance out all of this imbalance? 

As humans, we have many different ways to heal our own chakras, especially the heart chakra. 

Affirmations

One way to work on balancing out energy in the body is through affirmations. For the Heart Chakra, we want affirmations that address the challenges for the chakra itself:

• I will be gracious, and inclusive and let others have their own ideas.
• I will cooperate and prioritize relationships.
• I will please myself because I matter.
• I understand everyone is doing the best they can with what they have at the time.
• I enjoy being with my friends and loved ones.
• I forgive myself and others.

Activities

In addition to affirmations, other physical activities will support balancing our Heart Chakra. These include but are not exclusive to:

• Use breathing exercises to help engage your Heart Chakra.
• Spend three minutes each day appreciating something because it is beautiful. This can be nature, music, a touching moment, a commercial, anything. 
• Show yourself some love through self-care. Take a bath, do a meditation or even practice yoga. 
• Practice giving yourself grace.

Balancing the Heart Chakra enables us to transition and work on another chakra, and the Crown Chakra is a logical next step. More on that in another article. 

Sometimes, it helps to balance our chakras in pairs. The chakra most often paired with the Heart Chakra, for healing purposes, is the Root Chakra. The feeling of security that a properly balanced Root chakra provides reflects on the generosity and compassion that you feel when the Heart chakra is properly aligned.

As mentioned in Strengthening the Root Chakra, it is believed that the Root Chakra and Crown Chakra act in a yin/yang-type manner. The Root chakra is about individual physical existence in this time and place. The Crown Chakra is our connection to higher consciousness. The Heart Chakra is the balance between the two. What a beautiful trio. 

Once our Heart Chakra is balanced, we can begin strengthening it. This can be done through activities such as: 

• Agree to disagree. We need multiple perspectives in our lives, even the ones we disagree with.
• Use journaling to strengthen your voice. Reading it out loud will help you hear your feelings.
• Find someone whom you can talk to without watching your words. We need to get the negative thoughts out and cultivate the positive.
• Speak from your heart and practice saying, “I feel…”
• Meditate. Concentrating on breath supports your body’s cells.

Impact

Imagine a world where everyone’s Heart Chakra was open and balanced. 

WE ARE LOVED.

What does that…

…look like?

…sound like?

…feel like?

…smell like?

…taste like?

What would the surface of the Earth look like if its Heart Chakra was balanced? 

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