5 Ways to Open Your Heart Chakra

Do you feel too much anger or jealousy toward others recently? Perhaps, you seek love but feel too hurt to open up. Activating the heart chakra can help attract more love into your life and feel more compassion towards others.

What Is a Chakra?

Have you ever stopped to wonder where soul meets body? According to Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the physical and spiritual come together in the chakras. These swirling wheels of energy align along the spine, with three lower body chakras and three in the upper body. Connecting them all is heart chakra, or Anahata in Sanskrit, located in the center of the chest.

Meaning unhurt in Sanskrit, Anahata controls the love energy in the body. On a physical level, the heart chakra responds to the heart, lungs, immune system, and muscles of the upper body. On a spiritual level, opening the heart chakra fills you with love, forgiveness, and compassion.

The Heart Chakra at a Glance

Name in Sanskrit: Anahata meaning unhurt or unstruck
Location: Center of the chest
Color: Green
Element: Air
Signs of balance: The ability to openly give and receive love
Signs of imbalance: The inability to love yourself and others, hatred, depression, grief, selfishness, and jealousy

The way of the heart means living a life with the energy center of love. If you find yourself suffering from negativity about yourself and others, you may need to open your heart chakra. These five techniques will help to balance, open the chakra, and naturally bring more love and compassion.

Opening the Heart Chakra

1. Burn Anahata Incense and Essential Oils

Aromatherapy helps to manifest the healing of the Anahata and awakens the capacity to love. To open the heart chakra, try burning essential oils, candles, or incense with scents of rose, lavender, sandalwood, orange, and jasmine.

2. Repeat Positive Affirmations About Love

Positive affirmations set intentions toward healing by breaking old patterns and directing behaviors in a new direction. To open the heart chakra, try repeating affirmations related to love and healing such as “I am open to love”, “I forgive myself and others”, “I love myself and all human beings”, or “I have an open heart”. Over time, repeating these affirmations will invite more love and compassion into your life.

3. Practice Yoga Poses to Open the Heart

Heart opening poses in yoga can also help to activate the Anahata chakra. Poses such as the upward facing dog, camel, and bridge drive the chest toward the sky and open the heart.

4. Use Healing Stones With the Vibrational Love Energy

Each chakra has its own frequency and corresponding color, and the heart chakra vibrates in the colors of green and pink. Because healing stones have energy frequencies of their own, carrying them around can help tune into the frequency of the heart chakra. Choose crystals like rose quartz, jade, green calcite, green tourmaline, or green aventurine to unblock the heart chakra and attract love energy.

5. Recite Mantras to Shift Energy Toward Love

Mantras refer to sacred sounds, words, or phrases that help to focus meditation, similar to a prayer. Repeating mantras associated with love can help balance the heart chakra. Take a deep breath and repeat the compassion mantra, “om mani padme hum” to align your energy with love. You can speak the mantra aloud or silently.