The heart chakra is our love center, the place where self-love, unconditional love and compassion resonate most strongly. When tuning into our truth and purpose, the heart helps us find a way to express it outwardly, leading us towards connecting with deep creative needs and desires.
The challenge is we often let the head take over and ignore the heart’s call.
Listening to head over heart distracts us from what we need most of all in order for creative expression to thrive – self-love. When self-love is clear, plentiful and grounded in daily life, everything else about the creative journey becomes clearer. We can also be more patient with how life unfolds and flow with what’s revealed – the most essential element of a creative journey.
A balanced heart chakra enables us to use creativity as a tool for self-discovery. Following what we love is the truest form of creative expression, whether we do that as a career, hobby, or a way to connect with others.
View the Heart as Bridge Between the Worlds Within
As the core of unconditional love, compassion and connection, the heart chakra resides at the center of the 7 main chakras. It energetically brings together the more physical-centered lower three chakras, and acts as a gateway to the higher chakras and spirit. In essence, it’s the bridge that connects our mind, body, spirit and emotions, and serves as a space for them to integrate with each other.
The heart chakra helps us balance fears about having our creativity exposed or judged, while developing the self-love required for true self-acceptance of our creative gifts. As we learn about ourselves and others through relationship and connection, the heart must find the balance between opening itself up to vulnerabilities, and protecting itself from being hurt.
Full expression of the heart chakra also enables us to put empathy into practice, as we learn to understand and connect with others intimately and accept them as they are, moment to moment.
Choosing what you want to experience through love makes for a very strong heart chakra. It also requires you actively release the hurt and pain experienced up until this point through forgiveness. Freeing up the heart chakra from fear and experiences of the past allows us to embrace more love and a more expansive path forward true creative expression in the deepest of ways.
Due to the fact the heart chakra is such an essential element in connecting the 7 core chakras together, it’s important to get a clear understanding of how it’s flowing.
An out of balance chakra can be moving too quickly or too slowly. This is what can happen as a result, as described by Liz Simpson, author of The Book of Chakra Healing:
Too open/spinning too fast: Possessive, loves conditionally, withholds emotionally “to punish”, overly dramatic
Blocked, slow or sluggish: Fear of rejection, loves to much, feels unworthy to receive love, self-pitying
Balanced: Compassionate, loves unconditionally, nurturing, desires spiritual experience and in intimate connections
Making Love a Priority in Relationships and Creative Expression
Love is the unifying force that connects us all, despite religion, political beliefs, background, creative strengths or weaknesses. It’s a frequency recognized by all living things.
One of the easiest ways to practice more love is to watch how you talk to yourself and others.
Are we patient, loving and kind in our own mind? Or focused on what needs to get done, how far we are from meeting expectations, or picking on every aspect of creativity so it never sees the light of day?
Are we co-dependent, expecting the love of others to define our self-worth? Are we always searching for something bigger and better to reach for, without appreciating what we have created so far? Is it hard to compliment someone else and see the gifts in what their creativity has to offer?
Or is there room in our heart to share and express love in a way that feels natural and creatively fulfilling through self-expression, projects or in relationship with others?
In truly listening and consciously re-wiring how we talk to ourselves, it’s easier to see the roots of a heart-chakra imbalance.
An exercise to help support the heart on the journey to balance through love and forgiveness is the ancient Hawiian practice of Ho’ oponopono. It also can be practiced as a meditation set to music.
- I love you
- I’m sorry
- Please forgive me
- Thank you
The mantra is simple and powerful. It brings attention to filling the heart with a resonance of love while letting go of the past, and provides a way to share love with each other and the universe – all at the same time. This practice can also release memories contributing to current emotional blocks, empowering us to live in the present moment where creativity is waiting to be expressed.
For extra support in balancing the heart chakra, here are some suggestions for yoga poses and tips on how to work with crystals or stones.
To center oneself in love mindset each day, it can help use this affirmation:
“I love myself for who I am and the creative potential within me.”
Ultimately, the heart chakra enables us to practice balance compassion for others and self-acceptance in a bigger way. The best way to serve the heart each day is to ask, “How can we share or circulate more love through our creative self expression?”
Next in the series: Throat Chakra
For more insights on practicing some creative self-love, check out previous blog posts: See Yourself as a Creative Work in Progress and Creativity Kick-Start: Write a Thank You Note to Your Creative Self.
For more specific support on heart-chakra blocks, connect with me for an intuitive reading. Also be sure to refer to the previous posts in the series for the root chakra, sacral chakra, and solar plexus chakra. And last but not least, check out my podcast, Flirting With Enlightenment, for tips to tap into the inner wisdom of the heart chakra.
Photo credit: Priya Saihgal – heart chakra art Beverly – butterfly