How the Heart Chakra Can Influence Your Ability to Show Love and Compassion

Love.

It makes the world go ‘round.

We make movies about it. We write songs about it. Some of us plan our whole lives around it.

Arguably, it’s the most important thing.

To be able to love ourselves and others is what creates a beautiful and fulfilling life.

Without it — the world feels cold, lonely, and cynical, right?

The energy of love is powerful. Magical even. 

To create a space within yourself that embodies this love, healing, compassion, and joy?

Well, that’s worth everything. 

And I’m going to tell you how you can do it.

What is the Heart Chakra Responsible For: Meaning and Significance

Color: Green

Element: Air

The heart chakra is positioned at the center of the chest within the heart space. This chakra is the meeting place between the three chakras below and the three above it — the space where the physical and spiritual elements meet. Its main characteristics are love, compassion, self-acceptance, empathy, relationships, and forgiveness.

The heart chakra is also known as Anahata  — which translates to “unstruck”, “unbeaten”, or “unhurt” in Sanskrit. It’s the energy center where love and compassion live and the link to our Higher Selves.

Anahata means that even though you may have had past experiences that hurt you — underneath this hurt, rests a pure and deeply loving space where none of this pain exists. The strength of this chakra gives you resilience and strength to draw upon when you need it the most. 

The more open the heart chakra energy channels are, the more it allows us to give infinite love and compassion. We’re better able to obtain a deeper understanding of self and others. 

The corresponding element of the heart chakra is air. This element represents freedom and expansion.  Air — like love — is everywhere. It’s all around us. By keeping our hearts open and our love flowing freely we can honor this element as we focus on giving and receiving without restriction.

Unblocked vs blocked Heart Chakra

The heart chakra, when energy is healthy and free-flowing, creates a feeling of fullness. By finding balance within this energy center, you begin to feel more loving, compassionate, trusting, caring, and open.

And when the heart is open, you may become more empathetic and optimistic — motivated to believe in yourself and what might be possible for you (spoiler — these possibilities are limitless!). You experience feelings of deep self-love and find forgiveness comes more naturally. 

Creating and maintaining fulfilling relationships become easier as this love flows through you.  You’ll feel deeply connected to the world and those around you. You’ll feel open to new experiences —  especially relationships. 

With an open heart, it’s easier to see the beauty in the world and appreciate the love surrounding us. We feel truly connected to ourselves, and to the ones we love. We fall in love with ourselves as we accept ourselves for who we truly are and with our body just as it is.

When there's a blockage or imbalance of energy in this chakra, it could create feelings of emptiness, anger, jealousy, and fear of betrayal.

A blocked heart chakra can also manifest as symptoms of physical ailments or disease — directly affecting the heart, lungs, and chest.

Unhealthy energetic flow within the heart chakra can make you feel lonely, isolated, and unable to connect. Past relationships that left energetic wounds can cause us to feel stuck in the past — unable to move forward and forgive. 

You may be afraid of sharing your heart again and have a hard time trusting in your relationships. Because of this fear, you may be reluctant to trust, have poor boundaries, engage in manipulative behaviors to gain control, and experience feelings of unworthiness.

You may also experience:

• Fear of rejection
• Feeling bitter or cynical
• Holding grudges and/or being slow to forgive
• Being overly defensive
• A fear of intimacy
• Poor circulation
• Heart palpitations
• Upper respiratory and/or other breathing issues

A blocked heart chakra makes it difficult for people to connect to others in a real and meaningful way — making it a challenge to feel things like self-compassion, empathy, or forgiveness. 

This can make it hard for people to feel unconditional love for those in their lives and have a deeply loving relationship with themselves.

How to Heal Your Heart Chakra 

If you want to open your heart chakra you must concentrate on cultivating self-love as well as love for others. It’s like the saying goes, you can’t love someone else until you love yourself!

Until you create and sustain self-love, unconditional love can’t be shared with others— and it makes it very hard to allow yourself to let others love you in this way.

Repeat positive and loving affirmations to yourself. Taking time to care for and appreciate you can help create this loving energy that's needed to open your heart and nurture relationships. 

Affirmations

• I deeply love and accept myself
• I am loved
• I am truly grateful 
• I am deserving and worthy of love
• My heart is open to giving and receiving love 
• I feel deep compassion for myself and others
• We are all connected
• I trust in my body and my voice

Incorporate the oils of rose, jasmine, bergamot, or lavender into your affirmational practice. This can help further open the heart and encourage healthy energetic flow.

Place a drop of oil (of your choice) onto your hands. Rub your palms together and inhale deeply.

Practice Breathwork

Since the Anahata is associated with the element of air – breathwork is a wonderful way to open your heart chakra.  

Breath work is a technique that utilizes deep and focused breathing exercises. These exercises can help create conscious change in your breathing patterns to promote relaxation, increase focus, process emotions, and boost mood.

Practice Gratitude

A great way to do this is to keep a gratitude journal. You can either do this in the morning and live in this space of gratitude throughout your day or use it as a tool of reflection before you go to sleep. 

Start by doing this exercise for one week. Write down 3 things you are grateful for each and every day and notice how this shifts your state of mind and being. 

Meditation

Through meditation and opening the heart chakra, we practice bringing awareness to every kind of love. Balancing your heart chakra allows you to forgive and release things that may have hurt you in the past. It can help open you up to the energy of love, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion. To help heal old wounds. 

Incorporating rose quartz, emerald, jade, and green aventurine stones into your meditation is a great way to help ground you. You can also take advantage of their high vibrational energy to facilitate your own healing.

The mantra sound of the heart chakra is YAM. Chanting this mantra helps open the heart center, and allows you to experience love and compassion more easily.

Begin by finding a comfortable seated position. Sit tall with your spine straight and the chest open — expanding the heart space.

Close your eyes and begin to bring your awareness to your breath. Inhale deeply and sigh it out.

Repeat two more times.

Now, bring the palms of your hands together — similar to a prayer pose — in front of your heart space. Rub your palms together creating warmth and energy between them. Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your stomach. 

 Feel the warmth radiating from your hands into your heart space and in your belly. 

Draw your attention to this heart space. Visualize a small green light glowing beneath your hand. Continue to breathe. Visualize your breath flowing into this space and nourishing this green light with every inhale. 

Watch this light as it begins to radiate out from your heart space and fill your whole body. 

As you breathe, repeat the affirmation - “I deeply love and accept myself. My heart is wide open. I am free to give and receive love”.

Only by opening our hearts can we allow love to flow in and out. Allow your heart space to open more and more as it radiates love and compassionate energy. Feel the love within the entire universe as it swirls around you.

Now, gently release your palms and turn them up towards the sky as if offering a gift. Visualize the green light of loving energy flowing out of you and back into the world. 

You may choose to direct it to someone you love or to no one in particular — trust that this loving energy will fall upon those who need it the most.

Using the loving, compassionate, and expansive energy you have created here at this moment, direct a little back to yourself. Feel it as it wraps around you like a warm and gentle hug. 

As you continue to soak in this warm and loving energy, slowly bring your awareness back to the present moment. 

Take one more deep breath in, and sigh it out. 

Slowly open your eyes.

Live in this space of pure and loving energy throughout the rest of your day.

Living From a Space of Love and Compassion in My Own Life

Learning how to heal and open the heart chakra can be a beautiful and life-changing experience. It’s a really wonderful way to begin your journey toward healing and self-love.

I always try to live life from my heart space. 

I practice self-love and set boundaries when necessary to care for myself and my heart. I try and remember to allow my heart to stay open — even when things are difficult. I practice being compassionate with myself and others and live in a space of integrity. I try to recognize when I haven’t shown understanding to others when they might have needed it at that moment. I try to look at the world through a lens of love as I move forward practicing compassion and care.  

Living life from this space has changed how I LOVE. 

It has allowed it to become limitless.

And now, I’d so love to share what I’ve learned with you. 
If you’d like to expand your own heart and your world, you can book a complimentary clarity call with me here.