Heart Chakra Blocked Symptoms & Healing Techniques

Ever wonder why sometimes you want security (stable job, home, marriage, etc.) yet also want the freedom to just be (alone time, travel, no schedule)🤔?

You want excitement, but also routine. And it feels like you’ve got a whole lot of back and forth going on😖? Welcome to the heart chakra my friend! This energy center is the dance between security and freedom. It is the place where you integrate both sides of yourself. Let’s dive in.

Understanding the Heart Chakra

The chakra system begins with chakras one (root chakra) and two (sacral chakra), which are very personal. The root and sacral chakra are all about your own space, personal safety, and realm of desire and sexuality. 

When moving up to chakras three (solar plexus chakra), four (heart chakra), and five (throat chakra), things become more interpersonal. The chakras govern how you connect with other people and the world around you. 

Then comes the transpersonal energy centers, sixth (third eye chakra) & seventh (crown chakra).

Chakra three, was all about your own will power. The fourth chakra is where you are TRULY connecting to people. If communication and connection are hard for you, you’ll want to check if your heart chakra is blocked. It could be in a state of excess or deficiency.

The fourth chakra, Anahata chakra, is about how to elevate your interpersonal relationships.

I’m sure when you think about the heart chakra your immediate thoughts are “love” and positive energy. And yes, the heart chakra is all about love, intimacy, and compassion, but it is also about finding your equilibrium. Your boundaries. This is the chakra most associated with HEALING. You have to heal your shadows and learn to release negative emotions in order to come to a space of inner peace.

You can go in depth with the heart chakra (and even the whole chakra system) in my special Uplifted Academy Heart Chakra Course and monthly plan. But I’ll give you a quick overview of this energy center for now.

Physically

Did you know the heart is the first organ to be formed in the embryo? Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal. Some fun facts about the heart:

• It’s a single organ unlike a lot of other organs in the body.
• It has 62x-5000x more of an electromagnetic current than the brain🤯. It’s basically the electromagnetic center of your body!
• The heart sends more signals to the brain than vice versa.
• In a study of the electromagnetic waves of the heart and the brain, people were shown images (unbeknownst to them prior so they could have been beautiful or violent images) and they found that the heart reacted up to 6 seconds sooner than the brain! Find out more here.

This proves that your heart is an intuitive organ. It knows the future – literally! There is an element of precognition in this energy center.

When thinking about how a blocked heart chakra can affect a person physically, start with looking at the chest and heart region (the “thoracic spine” for those of you who’ve done my YTT). Chest pain could be one such example of blocked heart chakra. Or poor posture or circulation.

I’ll get into more specifics later, but for now when thinking about how the heart chakra affects you physically just look to its location (the chest) and the major organ it is connected to (your heart!).

Emotionally

Joy & happiness charge the heart with energy. Grief depletes it. Feeling hurt and betrayed fall into that category of grief as well. If you don’t express these emotions, the heart will harden and create a rigid boundary. You must fully express your emotional issues so that the heart can shed that armor and feel safe to give and receive in a relationship.

You’re probably tired of hearing this, but emotion is energy in motion and you need to let it MOVE all the way through your body in order to let it go.

Unfortunately, modern culture teaches the opposite — to repress our energy. Emotions and self expression are bad. Especially as a woman. Be quiet, be nice, and don’t let anyone know how you really feel. How can your heart chakra open or receive when you’re having to repress half of who you really are?!

When you embrace grief and release it you let it go. Which leaves the heart open to experience joy. This is why it’s so important to not just focus on your “love life” when working with the heart chakra. It’s about your overall well being. Working on self love and mental health and a big part of that is grief. 

What does that look like for you? Maybe you don’t know how to grieve? Here’s a tip to start: think about what that person gave you and how you can give that to yourself. Think about their qualities that you loved and how you can embody those qualities.

Maybe it’s not a person but bad memories lead you to grieve for the childhood you could have had but didn’t. What can you give yourself now that you needed then to heal those wounds?

So often in yoga you just hear “open the heart, open the heart” but what does that even mean?!?! Just physically opening your heart isn’t enough. You need to grieve, you need to soften, to breathe, to relax, to integrate, to slow down, make time and space for all of this and practice self acceptance. This Uplifted Yoga podcast episode about how to practice self care is one I highly recommend to anyone working with a heart chakra blockage.

Spiritually

The heart chakra is the fulcrum of the seven wheels, there are three above and three below it. Which is pivotal because it is about the integration of the above and the below. It’s where you integrate your spiritual practice with the aspects of daily living. The heart chakra is where polarities integrate. 

Integration is the key word of this chakra, if you couldn’t tell already 🤪. 

When you are feeling hurt or emotional pain, you disintegrate. You become overly sensitive and have a hard time holding everything together. The heart integrates the head with the emotions. It dissolves the polarities between them.

It’s basically the biggest balancing point of your body, bringing the spiritual body and the physical body together.

When the heart is balanced and peaceful it is like a launchpad for accessing higher consciousness.

So if you think you have an imbalanced heart chakra, this is definitely something to pay attention to and the Heart Chakra plan inside Uplifted can help!

Heart Chakra Blockage Symptoms

You can have an underactive heart chakra, or an overactive heart chakra. Heck you can actually have both at the same time!!

But, when you’re looking at heart chakra blocked symptoms try not to focus so much on excess and deficiency and how exactly your heart center is blocked. Try to just focus on connecting. How can you just connect with this area of your body, remembering it’s all about balancing and self acceptance.

That said, let’s look at some common signs of a deficient and excessive heart chakra. You can experience physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, and/or behavioral symptoms. Let’s take a look at each to help guide you on your journey of awareness.

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A post shared by Brett Larkin 🧘‍♂️Uplifted Yoga (@larkinyogatv)

Physical Symptoms

Emotional Symptoms

Behavioral Symptoms

Heart Chakra Healing Techniques

Integration takes time. You can’t force this energy center open. Rushing is the opposite of what the heart needs and is really bad for this chakra. Why? Because when you rush you disconnect you from your heart. Slowing down is what connects us. 

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t feel big physical and emotional changes right away. All things in good time.

Some key themes to remember when healing the heart chakra:

• The breath is always the secret path into the heart 
• It has to slowly unfurl like a flower blooming. The heart can’t unfurl without the time and space to do so.
• Self acceptance. You can’t transcend the self if you don’t accept the self first.
• Slow down and shine a light on the wounds on the inside and do the inner work. 
• Self care, whatever that means to you.

Read more: Anahata: Heart Chakra Meditation For Healing and Balancing 

Yoga Asanas

As a yoga teacher your heart chakra class is probably full of heart opening poses. I invite you to play with polarity here, not just incorporating poses to receive but also poses of surrender. Again, INTEGRATE these two concepts using the front body AND the back body to promote balance.

Some asanas to incorporate to help imbalanced heart chakra:

• Child’s pose
• Cobra pose
• Cat pose/Cow pose
• Forward folds
• Bridge pose/wheel pose

Pranayama (Breathwork)

The element of the heart chakra is air. So it makes sense that pranayama would be one of the most powerful ways to bring balance to this energy center. Alternate nostril breathing (also known as Nadi Shodhana) is a great option, as well as Sitali Breath . Alternate nostril breathing will balance both sides of the brain and your energy body. Sitali brings balance between the body and mind, and as you know the heart is the fulcrum of these two places.

Affirmations

Heart chakra affirmations can be POWERFUL. Here are five of my favorite heart chakra affirmations to bring connection and balance to that blocked heart chakra space:

• My heart is grateful and my soul is peaceful.
• I am a powerful force of loving energy in the world.
• I am filled with courage.
• My love of life is my guiding light.
• I am love, I am peace, I am light.

Visualization & Meditation

Meditation is the perfect method to slow down and connect with your heart space. Imagine your heart as a beautiful flower and watch as each petal slowly opens to bloom. It may not happen the first time you try, and maybe not even the second time. But, if you meditate regularly you’ll start to see a profound effect in time.

Energy Healing

It’s always a good idea to look into working with a professional energy healer as well. Someone who understands how exactly to assess these energy points and how to overcome obstacles and bring balance. There are reiki healers, or chakra workers, even a holistic wellness specialist can help you.

Don’t forget smaller tools like healing crystals. They are small but mighty!

Heart chakra stones are mostly those that are the color green, but pink stones work with this energy center as well. Here are some examples:

• Aventurine- brings comfort and harmony
• Emerald -promotes unity and love
• Rhodonite – releases fear, activates compassion and forgiveness
• Rose quartz – represents unconditional love

Journaling

And lastly(but most certainly not least 😉) journaling prompts. Journaling is one of the best therapeutic activities you can do. Journal on these questions and see what comes up for you. Explore those feelings: 

• How can I more effectively balance doing and being? Our culture focuses on doing and not so much on being. So what are some practical ways you can balance all your “doing” with being.
• What practices help me soften? Is it the feeling after a fiery yin class? Or is it a specific pranayama technique?
• How, when, and where can I healthily grieve? This is figuring out how to discharge the heart. Emotion needs to bubble up and out, so how can you give yourself the time and space to really let out these full expressions of grief.
• What part of myself do I need to integrate right now? Every level of self development is going to bring new things, new shadows, that need to be integrated into your life. Look at what might be triggering judgment in you right now. Maybe someone talks too much and it bugs you or you can’t stand the silence. Look at those and see how you might need to INTEGRATE some of that into your own life. 

Prevention and Maintenance

Remember, the heart takes time and patience to balance. Try not to get frustrated with yourself if you aren’t seeing changes in your heart center right away.

As mentioned earlier, grief depletes the heart while joy and happiness fill it up. The important thing to maintain a healthy flow state in this chakra is self care. Do the things that bring you joy, but also let yourself FEEL the entirety of any grief or strong emotions you are experiencing to let the energy flow through you. 

Notice the things that you love about other people, and even the things that trigger your judgment. Embody the things that bring you joy and explore the shadows. Discover how you might be needing to incorporate similar behaviors in your own life.

Don’t forget that the surrounding chakras can affect this one too. And seeing as how the heart chakra is smack dab in the middle it’s probably a good idea to check in with all seven chakras.

Try The 7 Chakras Alignment Guided Meditation for Beginners | Chakra Balancing and Healing (30-min)

There’s always the extended Chakra Challenge within the Uplifted Membership too.

Final Thoughts

Creating a balanced heart chakra is an ongoing process🙏. One you’ll have to come back to every time you create a new relationship or have an emotional upheaval. There is no one time fix, so if you feel stuck on this journey use the tools in your chakra toolbelt, come back to the breath, work with the yoga poses, cultivate self love and compassion and build your self confidence.

You can overcome past trauma and past wounds and regulate your nervous system in a healthy way. And it’s totally okay to ask for help if/when you need it. It’s not just about how you love externally, but how you love yourself internally as well.