Balancing Heart (Anahata) Chakra

What is your relationship with your emotions? Do you allow yourself to feel them fully? Or do you suppress them?

Are you codependent?

Do you treat yourself with kindness, love, and respect?

Do you find it easy to forgive yourself and others? Or do you hold onto bitterness and grievances from the past?

Answering these questions can help you understand if your fourth chakra, the heart chakra is balanced, or not. But first, let's dive into what the heart chakra is.

What Is Your Heart Chakra?

The heart chakra is located at the center of the heart space and is associated with the element of air. You can imagine it as a green spiral orb circling clockwise.

The Sanskrit word for the heart chakra is Anahata, which translates to "way of the heart". You can think of it as the bridge between the lower three chakras and the upper three. 

Why Balance Your Heart Chakra?

When your heart chakra is balanced, you are filled with feelings of love and kindness. It is what opens you up to the feelings of care, empathy, and compassion. 

Your relationships light up, as you have the capacity to extend love to both yourself and others. 

How Do You Know If Your Heart Chakra is Imbalanced?

An imbalance in the heart chakra can manifest itself in different ways. You might feel unworthy and mistrustful. You might be codependent, finding it hard to operate in life without others. Or exhibit manipulative behaviors. 

Physical symptoms of an imbalanced heart chakra are poor circulation, high or low blood pressure, and heart and lung issues.

How to Balance Your Heart Chakra

There are many ways to balance your heart chakra. Take a look at the list below and choose what resonates:

• Heart opening yoga poses where you are extending your chest such as fish pose, cobra pose, camel pose, and cow face pose
• Wear, carry, or use the following crystals in meditation - malachite, emerald, jade, rose quartz, and peridot
• Diffuse or wear scents such as rose, lavender, melissa, jasmine, and orange.
• Make forgiveness a daily practice. 
• Meditate on love. A metta, or loving-kindness, meditation is the perfect practice to balance your heart chakra.
• Wear green or pink.
• Chant the sacred heart chakra tone of Vam.
• Eat green foods.
• Practice affirmations such as, "I am love. I direct love and light to myself. I am love and kindness. I am peaceful."

Now that you know how to balance your heart chakra, what actions will you choose to take?

Share with us in the comments below!