Heart Chakra Meaning
The heart chakra, which is also known as Anahata in Sanskrit, colors your life with beauty, love, and compassion.
Motivated by the principles of integration and transformation, the heart chakra bridges earthly and spiritual aspirations.
The main meanings and functions that are associated with the heart chakra involve your love for yourself and for others.
This is the chakra that governs how you relate to people and how you handle relationships.
The heart chakra gives empathy and compassion, and it’s responsible for your ability to forgive and accept. It’s also the chakra involved in changes and transformations.
With the heart chakra, you are able to grieve properly and attain peace and tranquility. You are able to remain compassionate and achieve complete discernment.
It’s the center of your awareness and the integration of your insights, especially when enhanced by the April Birthstone.
When the heart chakra is free and unblocked, you will feel deeply connected, and you will experience a harmonious exchange of energies with all that’s around you.
You will have a better appreciation of beauty, wonder, and magic.
However, when there’s something blocking your heart chakra, you will experience difficulties in how you relate to other people.
You will experience excessive jealousy and codependency. You will also become withdrawn and closed off.
Heart Chakra Color
Even though most people think that pink is the color of the heart chakra, it’s actually associated with the color green.
The auric color of this chakra is seen as a smoky pink, which is a popular depiction of love and romance.
Green is composed of blue and yellow in equal parts. It’s the color of love and resides at the very center of your being, which is the heart center.
Green is the energy color of transformation and love. It lets you transform your ego and the needs of your lower chakras and allow them to open up to love.
Green color chakra fills you with inspiration to become more loving and compassionate.
It’s the color of balance, life, and growth. It is through balance that you discover the center from which you can love, build healthy and nurturing relationships, and give and accept love.
The energy of the green color chakra is calming and soothing, like a soft blanket of grass under your feet. It’s the color of nature, the trees, and the grass.
As you unfurl the petals of your heart chakra, you can also discover the seat of compassion, not only for others but for yourself, too.
You start to radiate love, and you begin to feel the interconnectedness of everything in life.
On a physical level, the green color chakra relates to the cardiac nerve plexus, thymus gland, breasts, arms, shoulders, chest, lungs, and heart.
People with strong green chakra energy stand tall and give out energies of openness.
Those with weak green chakra energy appear tight in their upper bodies because they are slouching, with their shoulders dropping forward.
They are protecting the heart center, making their head and neck drop forward as well.
The gifts of this chakra color include a strong heart and a healthy blood circulation. It also boasts of a healthy immune system.
People with this chakra color are strong in the upper body and flexible in the neck and upper back. They also have very high lung capacity.
The physical challenges of this color chakra include heart problems, lung problems, painful and tight muscles in the upper body, and an imbalanced immune system.
On a mental level, green color chakra means growth and expansion. It makes forming connections with others and with the deeper parts of yourself so much easier.
Green color chakra brings the energies of freedom and development. It’s the building block of your self-acceptance and your acceptance of others.
Green represents the development phase when you begin to form relationships with friends and family.
When the heart chakra becomes blocked or imbalanced, this is usually the cause. You get wounded in your personal relationships, and you heal from your relationships as well.
When the green color chakra is strong, you become more sociable, and you can effortlessly combine emotion with reason.
You can see the connection and the importance of having a good balance between the two.
But when this color chakra is weak, you become critical and demanding. You start to demand perfection because you only use your reason and intellect, not your emotions.
On an emotional level, green is an expansive color. The gift of this color is that you radiate love and peace to let others know that they are accepted for who they are.
When this energy becomes blocked or excessive, it becomes a contraction of this soothing and loving energy.
Green makes you more loving and compassionate. It sets healthy boundaries for you so that you will remain emotionally balanced.
This color teaches you to love yourself so that you will be able to love others and maintain healthy relationships. It also reminds you to stay friendly and be more empathetic to the plight of others.
When there’s a weak green energy, the tendency is to become overly critical and judgmental of yourself and of others. You also become very irritable and jealous.
You lack compassion and become narcissistic. There are also weak or poor boundaries that leave you paranoid and defenseless.
On a spiritual level, green color chakra gives you instinctual knowing and growing with the spirit.
From a spiritual point of view, it reminds you that you are entering the wonder and power of love.
When the green energy is strong, you become more compassionate, altruistic, peaceful, and serene.
You are aware that your emotions are a part of something bigger, and that everything is interconnected.
You understand the real meaning of unconditional love, and you strive to give yourself love.
There will also be challenges for the green color chakra because when there is an imbalance, you can experience overwhelming grief.
You will not be able to see or feel your connection with the bigger life that’s waiting for you. You will be stuck in what the lower chakras need, and you will feel lonely and isolated.
There will be love in your heart, but there will also be fear.
Heart Chakra Symbol
The symbol for the heart chakra is a circle with twelve petals.
There’s a downward-pointing triangle that is interlaced with an upward-pointing triangle, creating a hexagram or a six-pointed star.
The intersecting triangles symbolize the air element and its all-encompassing attributes.
They also represent the union of opposite energies or principles, like male and female energies, and spirit and matter.
The star that this symbol creates radiates the harmonious union of forces and features the function of the heart chakra as a center of connection and integration.
The twelve petals are usually depicted with the color red.
You will often find that the heart chakra symbol features in artwork, on clothing or in jewelry that is designed to work with this chakra in the most effective way.
It is a very distinct, and very beautiful, symbol! Many people looking to heal their heart chakras do so by visualizing this symbol as they sink into meditation.
However, as we will discover as we go through this piece, there are many other ways of developing your relationship with your heart chakra into a positive one.
Heart Chakra Location
The heart chakra can be found in the center of the chest. It’s the fourth chakra from the bottom of the spine in the traditional seven chakra system.
The most commonly accepted location for this chakra is the center of the chest, right in the middle of the breasts.
It’s a little to the left of the actual heart, which is why it’s often called the heart chakra.
As the fourth chakra, it’s important to know that it is multi-dimensional.
It is energetically symbolized with a front going through the middle of the chest, and a back going through the spine right in the middle of the shoulder blades.
Because of the heart chakra’s location, it’s associated with the lungs and the cardiac system.
These are interdependent organs and rely on their breathing functions to function properly.
It’s also associated with the thymus gland that’s in charge of controlling the immune system.
Traits and Characteristics of the Heart Chakra
The heart chakra is associated with your ability to love. It’s about integration, and it acts as a bridge between your earthy and spiritual desires.
This chakra transcends your personal identity and your limitations on your ego. It allows you the experience of love and connection with everyone and everything.
The heart chakra has a heart-centered discernment. It gives you the gift of appreciation for the beauty of everything.
Its energies focus on experiencing meaningful and deep relationships.
It’s the heart chakra that connects the lower chakras with the upper chakras. It’s the heart chakra that acts as the center of integration of your higher aspirations and your earthly matters.
The heart chakra is all about relating and connecting. The emphasis of this chakra is on love, sharing, and receiving, and how open you are in your relationships.
The heart chakra helps you convert your experiences and emotions. This makes it an essential part of any relationship, whether it is with other people or with yourself.
Love that is felt through the heart chakra is not just about romance, but about going beyond the limitations of your ego and your personal preoccupations.
When you live from your heart, and your heart energy is balanced and opened, you can see clearly and you can position yourself in any situation.
The heart chakra is a center where you can experience beauty in life.
Looking at the world through a healthy heart chakra is being in a state of acceptance and openness that brings you in touch with your world.
When the heart chakra becomes weakened by circumstances or has not yet developed properly, it will have the tendency to be overactive or blocked.
These are imbalances that you can address by harmonizing the chakras and supporting the heart chakra in developing a healthier way to handle energy.
The heart chakra becomes overactive because it’s compensating for blocked energies in other chakras. Part of healing an overactive heart chakra is determining which other chakras are blocked.
This way, you can work on opening them and bringing them back to balance.
Focusing on the heart chakra will still help you manage the symptoms. Meditation and energy healing on the heart will smoothen the flow of energies through it.
What Causes a Heart Chakra Imbalance?
The heart chakra is central to your ability to give and accept love.
Emotions that are connected with the heart chakra include love, anger, bitterness, hate, grief, resentment, forgiveness, loneliness, compassion, loyalty, self-centeredness, trust, generosity, gratitude, commitment, and the ability to follow one’s heart.
Issues and life experiences that impact the heart chakra include the death of a loved one, rejection, breach of trust, abandonment, adultery, divorce, injustice, and emotional abuse.
Heart chakra pain is often related to having a broken heart from being disappointed in some way by someone you love.
Loss, trauma, grief, abuse, and rejection are all emotionally painful to go through and can leave an energetic impression on the heart chakra.
When the energy in this chakra becomes blocked or disturbed, you will experience a surge of negative and painful emotions.
The heart chakra is vulnerable to disruptions associated with love and relationships.
Everyone has a history of relationships. In this history, there are many things that gave you both positive and negative experiences about love and loving others.
As you encounter life’s challenges, there are two ways that you can cope.
You can choose to shut down and reduce the energy that you spend on the situation, or you can increase the energy to fight it.
These defense mechanisms become anchored to your chakras. As time passes, these defense mechanisms cause the imbalance in the chakras.
Overactive Heart Chakra
When the heart chakra is overactive, it can lead to a lack of wisdom and discernment in relationships.
The heart chakra is often seen as the point of integration for your altruistic and personal aspirations through love and relationships.
When this energy center goes on overdrive, it can obscure the boundaries between yourself and others to the point of losing your identity and abusing the power of love.
The heart chakra is linked to love and emotions.
People with an overactive heart chakra are ruled by their emotions. They may find it difficult to manage them or to let go of the pain of the past.
Common symptoms of an overactive heart chakra include an indiscriminate way of loving. There is a lack or an absence of boundaries in both platonic and romantic relationships.
There is also a tendency to tolerate too much from others to the point of neglecting your needs and desires.
When the heart chakra is overactive, you just accept other people in your life without discernment, and you lose your sense of identity.
There’s a tendency to give too much to others, and you just say yes to everyone, even it does not benefit you.
An overactive heart chakra causes codependency. It also manifests physically as heart and circulation problems, like heart palpitations, heart attacks, and high blood pressure.
5 of the Most Common Blocked Heart Chakra Symptoms
The heart chakra can become closed off or imbalanced as a result of life experiences that have a powerful emotional or physical charge.
The blockage can manifest in the energy flow or in the tendency to become overactive.
- When the heart chakra is blocked, you become overly defensive.
- You also feel closed down.
- You become jealous and fear intimacy.
- You also rely too much on other people’s attention and approval. You try to please everyone at all costs.
- You also put yourself in the role of the rescuer or savior.
Heart Chakra Healing in 10 Steps
1. Go green.
Green can soothe the hyperactivity in the heart chakra. Go outdoors and surround yourself with nature.
Hike through the forest, or simply sit outside and enjoy the nice day. Even opening a window and letting the fresh air in can give you a good start.
2. Wear green.
Wear green or surround yourself with the color green. Fill your home or office with this color so that you can gently nudge your heart chakra into healing.
3. Let it go.
Learn to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you have committed in the past. Release the blockages in your heart chakra by releasing your resentments from your past hurts.
Find the lesson in every painful experience and let go of what hurts you so that you can begin the process of healing.
Practice self-love and self-respect. Send love and appreciation toward the part of yourself that you always neglect or criticize. Keep doing this and over time, you will build a strong core of self-love!
4. Meditate regularly.
Visualize your heart chakra as a radiant and beautiful green orb that glows with unconditional love.
Imagine all your hurts and disappointments dissolving and healing themselves. Hold on to these images until the hurt disappears and you get back the lightness in your being.
5. Keep a gratitude journal.
Write down at least five things that you feel grateful for at the end of each day. Read what you wrote the previous night when you wake up the following morning.
Breathe the feeling of gratitude in and out of your heart chakra before you start your day. When you are reminded of the fact that you are very blessed, you will live each day mindfully and purposefully.
6. Practice kindness.
Make it a habit to send genuine and loving good wishes to yourself and to other people. When you start the day with kindness, you will be inspired to be kind the whole day, every day.
Be kind to people, even if they don’t deserve your kindness. Just keep paying it forward, and people will realize the value of your gestures sooner rather than later.
7. Engage in activities that make your heart happy.
When you do the things that make you feel alive and inspired, your heart will be happier and more fulfilled each day. All the fears and worries will be dissolved, and you will have more space in your heart for love and other wonderful things.
They don’t need to be big and fancy. These things can be small and simple, or old and forgotten. As long as they make you happy, go all out and make them happen!
8. Focus on giving instead of receiving.
The more you give, the more you will receive. When you give without expecting anything in return, you become blessed a thousandfold!
Give love to people, even when you know they don’t deserve it. The more you love, the more you will realize that your capacity for love is so much bigger.
9. Reflect on old wounds.
Think about your old emotional wounds and how they have changed you as a person. Are you a better person because of them, or are you weaker, sadder, or more negative?
Come to terms with your old wounds with kindness and compassion. Forgive yourself and learn to let go of what weighs heavily in your heart so that you will feel light and free.
Remember that the longer and tighter you hold on to your pain, the more deeply it will hurt and leave a scar on you.
10. Express your gratitude.
Even if it’s in silence, express how grateful you are for something or someone. They make your life worthwhile, so make sure that they know you are thankful for them.
When you acknowledge your blessings and thank the Source, you are blessing yourself with even more blessings!
When you tell the universe how much you appreciate something, it will bless you with more gifts that will make life even more worthwhile.
Heart Chakra Stones
Many people who are looking to heal, develop or realign their heart chakras do so by welcoming different sorts of heart chakra crystals into their life.
Many varieties of stone and crystal are available for this purpose, and they range in size and budget – meaning you can have a piece that doubles as decorative or aesthetically appealing, or keep things more low key.
And of course, certain kinds of these crystals have different specialisms, so to speak, in their way of healing the heart chakra – we will go into some of these different crystals and their properties below.
However, before we do so, remember that there are even more of these heart chakra crystals than is listed below – but don’t be overwhelmed!
Any and all of these can help you, so all you need to do is locate and embrace the stone and energies that most speak to you.
Malachite is an excellent stone that can cleanse your chakras. It’s a powerful heart chakra stone, and it can influence your heart chakra to open.
It can also protect you from negative energy while keeping you open to all kinds of love.
Carry your Malachite stone with you for protection and for an emotional shield. It will bring you inspiration, optimism, and positivity.
It will also help you move through negativity and mend your broken relationship. It will give you the ultimate healing energy so that you can forgive and move others.
Epidote is an energetic stone which can be programmed to enhance a particular intention that you want to manifest in your reality.
It can foster stronger and more intimate connections, and it can strengthen relationships.
This heart chakra stone can also attract more prosperity and abundance. It requires you to give so that you can receive something in return.
When it comes to this heart chakra stone, what you throw out to the universe is what will come back to you.
Make sure that you are throwing love and kindness everywhere so that love and kindness will find their way back to you!
Another stone that can open the heart chakra is Chrysoprase. It encourages joy and positivity, which makes it a positive influence in your life.
It unblocks your heart chakra by letting a strong energy flow from your heart to the universe.
When your heart chakra is open, Chrysoprase will help attract an abundance of happiness and love.
If you are struggling with your own relationship, it can be extremely beneficial to have a healing chakra stone like Chrysoprase.
It will restore your faith in the person you love, and it will repair the broken bond that you have with someone special.
Chrysoprase will also alleviate symptoms of depression, tension, and anxiety and give you emotional balance.
When you find yourself in a dire situation, Chrysoprase will give you hope and facilitate your inner growth.
Fuchsite is a whimsical stone that will encourage happiness and relaxation which is important in any kind of stressful situation.
It’s believed to be a healer’s stone because it will invite miracles into your life.
This heart chakra stone will repair any damage that was caused by pain and negativity, and it will shine an encouraging light into your life by promoting your lighthearted and playful side.
Rose Quartz will help you know yourself and love yourself more. When you get to know who you truly are and what you stand for, you will become more open to others as well.
Rose Quartz is great for promoting a loving force in your heart. It will heal your heart chakra and remove the blockages caused by negative energies.
Emerald will strengthen the sense of unity, partnership, and unconditional love in your relationship. It will open your heart chakra so that you can also calm your emotions.
It will help you recover from negative emotions and replace them with positive action. Emerald will also strengthen your ability to enjoy life to the fullest!
Peridot opens, purifies, and activates the heart chakra, getting rid of all negative patterns and vibrations that are no longer good for you. It’s a stone that will motivate you to grow and change with the different seasons of your life.
Prehnite brings energies of serenity and unconditional love. It shows you how you can live in peace and harmony with nature so that you can achieve your spiritual growth.
Meditation with the Heart Chakra
The heart chakra is central to your inner energies, knowledge, and self-awareness.
When you meditate with the purpose of activating your heart chakra, you will effectively be opening yourself up to feelings of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness.
The heart chakra is not just associated to love for yourself, but in fact, also enables you to extend your love and appreciation to those around you.
The energy that comes from this chakra is highly useful when forming and strengthening the relationships that you have with the people around you.
When you activate your heart chakra during meditation, you will invite emotions of acceptance, love, and peace.
These feelings will allow you to truly embrace your life for what it is, which includes getting closure on a hurtful past and making peace with it so you can move forward with your life.
Unleashing your heart chakra will ensure that your energies work in harmony with the forces around you so that you can achieve serenity and tranquility in your life.
This chakra will enable you to appreciate the love and beauty around you and be able to relate more deeply with the people around you.
Meditation allows you to access your heart chakra and remove the obstacles that are blocking its energies and preventing them from working for you.
A blockage of the heart chakra will make you feel undesirable emotions of jealousy, pain, and anxiety, which is why meditating with the heart chakra is important to remove such toxic feelings.
By strengthening your bonds with your surroundings, the heart chakra also guides you towards an understanding of the higher realm.
The chakra acts as a channel between the world around you and the spiritual realm above you.
In essence, your heart chakra is what connects your spiritual desires with your worldly wishes, allowing you to unveil your true inner being and discover your higher self.
Being centered around the heart, the heart chakra will ensure that you truly experience the connection you share with yourself on multiple levels.
Once you reach a deeper understanding of yourself, you will be able to focus on building your relationships with the people around you.
It will enable you to be more mindful of your surroundings, especially of the feelings and opinions of your loved ones.
Since the heart chakra mainly generates feelings of generosity, care, and love, it will beckon you to share your blessings with those in need.
At the same time, it will make you more accepting of the thoughts of other people because you will start to understand where they’re coming from.
Your heart chakra is what allows you to get over your preoccupations and apprehensions and lets you open up your heart to the beauty of the universe.
By focusing your energies on your heart chakra during meditation, you will develop a healthier, stronger way restore a much-needed balance in your energies, thus ensuring a smooth, peaceful life for yourself and for the people around you.
Of course, another way to attune to these energies in a way that feels grounded and anchored to the physical is by using heart chakra stones.
We described numerous varieties of these above, and they are usually green in color or have some connotations of love and healing in some way.
Many people looking to meditate on their heart chakra and its issues choose to hold a stone or crystal of this kind to guide their inner journey.
You might like to do this too, or you may instead prefer to set up such a stone in your meditation space.
It’s entirely your decision how to best meditate on the heart chakra with crystals, so definitely experiment with a few options to see what most profoundly connects you to these energies.
My Final Thoughts on the Heart Chakra
A well-balanced heart chakra makes you more loving and compassionate towards others.
You don’t expect anything in return; you just love and give kindness away because that is what the heart chakra is urging you to do.
A healthy heart chakra will give you an immense gratitude for all that you have in this life.
It will encourage you to live in discipline and establish more solid relationships that will give you happiness and satisfaction.
It will give you the freedom to step away from your comfort zones and start living your life on your own terms.
On the other hand, people with an overpowering heart chakra need to slow down and take a break. They need to discover the love that they have within themselves.
Conversely, those who have inactive or underactive heart chakras need to open up and share more of themselves if they want to receive love fully and completely.
It’s the heart chakra that rules your relationships and interactions with the people around you. It determines your values, ethics, and beliefs, as well as how you accept yourself and those in your life.
Meditate regularly upon this chakra so that you can strengthen and protect it, and so that you will become dearer to other people. Doing so will also help you keep your senses completely under control.
When your heart chakra is balanced, you are compassionate and you are able to love deeply. You have a strong sense of emotional fulfillment.
When it comes to relationships, you are able to enjoy deep intimacy and maintain healthy personal boundaries.
You are kind, trusting, forgiving, and nonjudgmental. You naturally radiate peace, and you have a strong connection with nature. Whatever you do as a profession, you do it with your healing presence.
When your heart chakra is balanced, you have great compassion for all living things. You recognize their incredible intelligence.
You are caring, kind, joyous, understanding, and outgoing. You feel completely at ease with yourself and you feel safest when you’re with the people you love.
You have a great understanding of others and you accept them for who they are. You don’t judge, and you are not critical of their actions.
Spending time alone is something that you don’t mind doing. You don’t rush into one romance after another. You wait for the right one to come to you because you know that it will, when the time is right!
When it comes to the heart chakra, it will allow you to forgive easily and naturally. It will make you feel that your heart is full and that it’s never lacking.
It will give you proof that love is all around you, and that it is in your nature to heal. More importantly, it will remind you that the love you give will come back to you many times over.
When working with your heart chakra, remember that intention matters.
Before doing anything else, set your intentions. Make your purpose clear, and make sure that it comes from a positive and loving place in your heart!
Diana Houston
Diana Houston is a respected crystal expert and the author of 'A Beginner's Guide to Healing Crystals: Getting Started With Crystal Healing – A Complete Guide.' Her passion for crystals and their healing properties made her a leading authority on the subject.
Diana's expertise and passion for crystals have inspired countless readers and practitioners, and her book has received rave reviews on Amazon. With her clear and insightful guidance, Diana is a trusted guide for anyone seeking to unlock the transformative power of crystals.
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