How to Open Your Heart Chakra
Our heart chakra is the source of our ability to open to love, forgiveness, empathy and compassion. When it is blocked, we struggle with loneliness, fear of being hurt and even begin to become bitter about everything. When it is open too much, we tend to over give, become co-dependent or lose our boundaries.
But the heart chakra goes beyond just emotions, it also has physical implications too. Including tension, possible breathing blocks and heart problems.
And to not leave out the spiritual side, when our heart chakra is closed it directly impacts how we feel about ourselves. And this can lead to feeling unworthy and that you have no life purpose
Luckily there are heart chakra healing exercises to help you rebalance your heart chakra. These approaches heal from emotional, spiritual and energy perspectives.
What Practices Will Open My Heart Chakra?
Heart Opening Yoga Poses
Some yoga poses allow you to physically allow your heart to be open. Instead of closing yourself off by hiding your heart, you use the poses to extend your heart out.
Another way to think of this is when your shoulders are rounding and you are slouching, your heart is closed in. When you open your shoulders and stand tall your heart is open. That physical closing off of the heart can block energy flow to it.
Simple movement of your body can help you to open your heart chakra and allow it to have more energy flow.
While I am not a yoga teacher, I will tell you that there are many poses to choose from. Over the decades of my personal yoga practice, I have found two poses that are easy for heart opening are the cobra pose and bridge pose.
Here is a heart opening practice from my favorite YouTube teacher!
Heart Chakra Music
Music is a great way to change our moods and tune our bodies. Music has vibrations, known as hertz. Different frequencies impact our bodies in different ways. Think about how when you work out different songs can either boost your performance or slow you down. It can also impact your chakra system. For the heart, a hertz of 639 will help you open it up.
The nice part of using music for your heart chakra is that many different styles can be used. You can have a song with singing bowls, or tuning forks can be used or even flutes. And many musicians have created heart chakra music on platforms like YouTube that you can easily access.
I love to use Sonic Yogi’s music when I am struggling with balancing any chakra. Here is his heart chakra piece that I like.
Bonus tip for all chakras: I created a playlist in my personal account on YouTube that has a song for each of the chakras in order from the crown to root. All I have to do is hit play on the playlist and it moves through each charka.
Forgiveness Practices
When we are hurt in a relationship that closes our heart charka. Practicing forgiveness allows us to not only heal from past emotional wounds but also open up our heart chakra.
I have an entire article on spiritual forgiveness if you want to dive deep, you can find that here. Beyond that article there is one easy to use forgiveness prayer that you can use to open your heart chakra.
Ho’oponopono Forgiveness Prayer
This is a Hawaiian prayer for forgiveness. The words are: “I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you.”
They are intended to be used like a mantra where you repeat them over and over. It works for forgiveness on yourself and others.
It is very powerful, especially if you do it on a regular basis. My trick is to visualize the person you are trying to forgive while saying this. Imagining that you are directly forgiving them. If it is you that you are trying to forgive, then place your hand on your heart and tune in to it while repeating these words.
Heart Chakra Essential Oils
Scent is a powerful tool in healing. Not only are there certain plant scents that help with moving spiritual energy, but there are also scents that impact our emotions and physical relaxation. Smell is one of the quickest ways to get a reaction from your body.
Think about when you smell something that reminds you of your childhood. It instantly transports you to your grandmother’s kitchen or to how your mom smelled.
There are smells that will help you with opening up your heart. Essential oils are a great way to expose yourself to these smell.
The top essential oils that will help your heart open are pink grapefruit, rose otto and bergamot.
I personally use the heart chakra loving compassion blend from Plant Therapy.
Heart Mudras for Meditation Practice
A mudra is the hand formations you use during meditation. Each one of them does a different thing based on the shape and how that impacts your energy flow.
Using a heart chakra mudra is a powerful way to direct your energy flow to the heart chakra and help open it.
The one that I use takes your thumb and presses it against the middle and ring fingers. This is officially called the Hridaya Mudra.
Emotional Healing
We close our heart chakra when we get hurt. The pain from past wounds makes us want to stop subjecting ourselves to love.
Emotional wounding can also cause our heart chakra to open too much. When we walk away from emotional pain with the idea we have to do more, we start to over give and try to love everyone and everything.
Working on emotional healing will help you mend old emotional wounds and return your heart chakra to the right size.
I have an entire article on different emotional healing tools; you can read that here.
In addition, I am going to share some journal prompts you can use to emotionally heal and open your heart.
Journal Prompts to Open Heart Chakra
Here are some journal prompts to help you understand why you are blocking your heart.
- Am I willing to receive all types of love? Love is more than romantic. Are you shutting down one type that can prevent you from balancing your chakra and healing?
- Why would I not want love to flow to me? Create a list of all the reasons. Then pick one to start asking why. Try to figure out how it started. So, you can heal that situation.
- What do I love about myself? Self-love is a big part of opening your heart. Start to develop a love for yourself to expand your chakra.
- What does love look like to me? Understanding what you think it is and how it is showing up in your life can show you what may need healed.
Reiki to Clear and Open Heart Chakra
Reiki is an energy healing practice that can help you clear old energy around your emotions and past events. It can also help bring in the right energy to help you open up to loving yourself more.
You can do private Reiki session to help clear energies specifically blocking your heart, as Reiki clears the chakra system. Learn more about Reiki and the chakras here.
You can also use pre-recorded Reiki sessions to help with overall energy flow which will help your heart chakra. You can check out my Reiki video to help you open your heart to self-love on YouTube.
How Can I Create My Own Heart Chakra Opening Practice?
Knowing what tools work and putting them into action are two different things! So, now that you have some options to help with opening your heart. Let’s explore how to create a heart chakra opening practice that works for you.
The goal is to find a combination of practices that allows you to feel safe, forgive others and open to new possibilities. This can take time, especially if you just experienced an emotionally difficult time around love.
You may have to play with different combinations till you find what works for you in the moment. Remember we are all unique, so you will need to adjust till you find what helps you.
I recommend you start by picking out two that you want to try. Then try them individually and then together. This will allow you to see the difference between each one separately and then when you layer them.
Layering multiple of these together will bring you faster results.
Sample Practice Ideas for Heart Chakra Opening
- Meditate using the Ho’oponopono. While you are meditating add in heart chakra essential oils.
- Meditate with heart opening music while using the heart mudra.
- Play a Reiki video while journaling about your last break-up and how that impacted your willingness to love. (I do customized Reiki videos if you need one for a specific healing you are working on. Learn more here.)
Ultimately balancing our heart chakra is an ongoing process. Everyday we experience things that can upset our emotional and energetic balance. Working to identify the heart chakra practices that help you the most will make keeping yourself balanced easier.