How Your Heart Chakra Health Affects Emotional Well Being and Relationships

Heart Chakra Through the Ages
Poets, Mystics and Philosophers speak of our hearts as a place of mystery. It is described as being a place where understanding beyond rational logic lies. It is a place where we can enter into the wholeness of our selves.
Ancient traditions that have energy as a foundation of their medicine, developmental awareness and spirituality point to the heart chakra as the center where we can develop balance between inner and outer worlds.

Heart Chakra Properties
The word “chakra” is from Sanskrit and translates to “wheel of light.” There are seven major chakras in the midline of your body. The chakras run from the base of the spine to the top of the head. They are centers of electromagnetic energy. Each of the major chakras is associated with a particular function physically, psychologically and spiritually. They are connected to each other and to the body’s organs through an extensive network of fluid-like energies, referred to as nadis or meridians. These channels run parallel to your central nervous system. Each chakra looks like a swirling vortex. Energy moves through it like a cyclone or water moving down through a funnel. By alternately spinning clockwise and counterclockwise, our chakras maintain a dynamic balance between receiving and building energy (clockwise motion) and releasing excess energy (counterclockwise motion).

Heart Chakra Function
The heart is identified as the place where we:

• Develop the ability to attune to self and other
• Access deeper awareness of and capacity for spirituality
• Contact the aspect of self beyond enslavement of thought and emotion
• Connect with our deepest nature
• Experience the present moment

Heart Chakra: A Place of Openness
Deepak Chopra speaks about the heart as “The Place of openness” where our sense of touch and emotional consciousness are located. It is also where we develop the ability to give and receive unconditional love. He goes further in stating that it is where we can release feelings of isolation, pain, suffering and unworthiness

Spiritual traditions reflect that it is part of our life journey to use our heart’s energy to engage in self-reflection, connect with our Soul, move toward balance and develop healthy self-love and acceptance. When we do so, we bring a healthy flow of heart energy to our lives and are able to share that with others.

The heart chakra is where we can connect with wholeness, learn self-love and acceptance, and embrace the duality of life rather than be caught in the separatism of the ego with its judgments of good and bad, black and white. Positive, balanced qualities of the heart chakra bring us into resonance with love, acceptance, harmony, peace, compassion and devotion. Laughter can flow freely. We can cultivate balance, real intimacy and let go of resentment and jealousy if our heart energies are strong and coherent.

Below is a guided meditation to help you connect, center and strengthen your heart.