Poses for the
Heart Chakra
Doubting your psychic abilities is natural and you can expect it. Selfish thoughts contract your psychic awareness and compassion expands it, which is why the heart chakra is so essential to developing your clairvoyance. It is the largest chakra and has the biggest electromagnetic field. You can’t control the information that comes to you; you just allow it to come. We live in a multidimensional reality where lower-vibration spirits can contact you if your vibration is low, thus yoga will raise your vibration to allow you to tap into loving, healing vibrations. The heart chakra is the chakra that opens you to higher vibration consciousness, and spending time getting it in working order will help you immensely in this process.
As you start to work with the upper chakras, you’ll find the poses are less physically demanding because these chakras are activated by relaxing. The less tension in our body, the more positive we are able to feel and the more we can vibrate feelings of love, empathy, and joy. These are the emotions linked to the upper chakras.
The heart chakra is linked our relationships and the depth of our connection to others. It’s linked to our self-acceptance and our ability to forgive. It’s where we store sadness, grief, and the pain of separation. We are able to feel peace, harmony, and balance when this chakra is in working order. We can find compassion, empathy, and self-love by activating this chakra. If this chakra is blocked, you may feel a tightness in your chest.
Physically, problems in the heart chakra or blocks in the energy flow through this chakra can manifest as chest infections such as bronchitis, pneumonia, or lung cancer. The heart chakra regulates the immune system, so autoimmune diseases or a weak immune system susceptible to colds and flus indicates the chakra needs healing. The heart health, arms, wrists, hands, and shoulders are linked to the heart chakra. Muscle inflammation, high blood pressure, and asthma or feeling short of breath can indicate poor energy flow in this chakra.
If it’s overexpanded, you may feel you’re overemotional and drained by feeling too much empathy. It could make you give too much of your time and energy to others. If you constantly struggle with jealousy, feeling like a victim, or that your life is stagnant, this chakra needs a boost. You can see this in others because they are shy, speak poorly of themselves, and seem sad.
The heart chakra is the bridge to our spiritual side. It allows us to feel compassion for humanity so we can start to move away from the primal desires in the lower chakras and see what the world needs. Instead of wanting things for ourselves, the heart chakra allows us to actually feel the pain and sadness of the world so that we can also feel uplifted as humanity is healed of the greatest pains it faces. It is where the phrase “bleeding heart” comes from when people speak of someone who wants to help others.
Affirmation for the Heart Chakra
I am openhearted and share my feelings without guilt. I listen with the intention to understand, and I have compassion for all beings. I am a spirit that feels most alive when I am supporting my earth family. I breathe in deeply to connect to my soul, and I hold the intention to make others feel safe in our friendship. I release my wounded identity and step into the healed version of my mind, body, and soul. I forgive the past and appreciate the lessons learned.
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Lie on your stomach and place your palms under your shoulders.
2 Slide your shoulder blades down your back and zip your legs together. Untuck your toes.
3 Engage the lower belly and keep the glutes loose.
4 Spread your fingers and press into your hands as you lift your chest. Straighten the arms and keep the chest lifted up and back.
5 Keep the shoulders down, away from the ears. Breathe deeply and slowly as the chest shines forward.
6 Keep the lower stomach pulled in to protect the lower back.
Exit the Pose:
1 Slowly come down one vertebrae at a time and rest before repeating the pose.
2 To neutralize the spine after doing this pose about six times, sit on your heels and tuck the tailbone, which will help decompress the lower spine.
3 Always follow backbends with core-strengthening exercises such as boat pose and plank pose to neutralize the spine and reduce soreness.
Duration: Hold the pose for 3–5 rounds of breath.
Modifications: If you have pain in your lower back with this pose, you can just lift up halfway into low cobra. Focus on bending in the middle spine instead of the lower spine. Never push to the point of pain in the back. Flexibility comes over time.
This will help restore your posture so energy can start flowing up your spine and so the kundalini can awaken more fully. It will build the muscles that hold your spine in place and stretch the stomach to help with blood flow to the vital organs. It is a great counter pose to sitting at the computer. It will also warm up your spine for deeper backbends if you do it about six times slowly and with engaged muscles. It can be done in a relaxed state without putting in lots of energy and act as a more energy- restoring pose as well. For those recovering from trauma or struggling with depression, even doing one a day for thirty seconds will start getting the energy moving as you breathe in this position. It stretches the entire front of the body, opens the hip flexors, and stretches the ankles, neck, and spine.
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Begin seated with your legs out in front of you. Point your toes and place your palms flat on the ground next to your hips. Keep the legs together and engaged throughout the pose.
2 Inhale and lift the hips so that your shoulders, hips, and feet are in one straight line.
3 Tilt your head back so your neck is in line with the rest of your spine.
Exit the Pose:
1 Take a few rounds of breath in the position, keeping the body engaged, and then slowly come down to rest.
2 Repeat the pose 5 times.
Duration: Hold the pose for 3–5 rounds of breath.
Modifications: If this is too challenging, do reverse table top. Bend the knees and place your feet on the floor. Lift the hips so your knees stack over your feet and your hips are in line with your shoulders.
One should be sure to also do the forward bends taught in this chapter so that you stretch the front and back of the chakra. The back of the chakra is said to be the area we receive, while the front is the area we give. In energy healing practices like Reiki, someone may have energy streaming from the front of the heart but be blocked at the back, so the energy would need to be balanced in order for the person to connect to their upper chakras properly. Usually the back of the heart is linked with the ability to receive, which is tied to self-worth and self-acceptance.
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Begin on hands and knees. Place your hands directly under your shoulders and your knees directly under your hips.
2 Inhale and lift your chin, dropping your navel toward the ground like a hungry cow as you stretch the front of the neck. Stretch to your maximum.
3 Exhale through the nose and round your spine like a cat as you bring your chin to your chest. Stretch the spine fully and tuck the tailbone. Pull your navel toward the spine.
4 Continue moving back and forth between cat and cow, inhaling intensely in and out of the nose. If you make sure you actually hear your breath, you’ll get much more out of the movement.
Exit the Pose:
1 Do this for 3 minutes. At the end of 3 minutes, inhale and hold your breath in cow for 15 seconds, and then exhale and hold the breath out in cat for 15 seconds.
2 Relax back into child’s pose, sitting on your heels
with your forehead on the ground.
Duration: Do this for 3 minutes at a pace that feels good for you. You can speed up as you warm up your spinal muscles.
This is an efficient pose in that it moves the spine forward and backward so that it works on both the receiving and giving energy associated with this chakra. If you are stiff in this movement, it’s certainly one you would want to do more of because that shows a lack of energy flow. If you struggle to stay awake in meditation, do this prior to meditation and you’ll find your nerves have a stronger charge so that you don’t feel nearly as tired.
Fun Fact: Some people are able to channel in languages they do not know. They can get the names of family members, how they died, and even where they lived. This is called evidential mediumship and is a common practice in the UK. Mediumship is an interchangeable term for clairvoyance in the UK, but in the US it refers to communicating with deceased spirits.
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Before beginning this pose, set your intention to release any sadness or negative self-talk that has been on replay in your subconscious. Doing a pose with intention makes the pose more powerful because your thoughts direct the energy you release. Enter the pose in a sacred manner as if it were a healing ritual and not just a way to make your spine flexible.
2 Begin standing on your knees with your knees no wider than your hips.
3 Place your palms on your lower back with your fingers pointing down, and lift your chest so you rise up and out of the lower back.
4 Energetically pull the legs toward each other and begin to lean the upper back behind you. Don’t dump into the lower back but aim to stretch the upper back.
5 If you feel comfortable, bring one hand at a time to your heels. Keep a slight tuck to the chin but lean the head back. Breathe slowly and deeply, and always pull back if you feel twinges or sharp pains.
Exit the Pose:
1 Move slowly out of the pose by bringing hands to the lower back to support it and engaging the core as you come back to standing on the knees.
2 Sit on the heels and scoop the tailbone under you slightly to neutralize the spine.
3 You can also follow this pose with a high plank (push-up position) to help reduce soreness in the back muscles.
Duration: Hold the pose for 3–5 rounds of breath.
Modifications: For those who don’t feel ready for the full pose, keep your hands on the lower back and lift your chest up and back. Keep the lower stomach engaged and lift up and out of the lower back. Be sure to breathe.
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Begin seated with your legs out in front of you.
2 Keep the legs together and gently lean forward. Let the arms fall wherever it’s most comfortable, and allow your neck to relax so your head hangs heavily.
3 Breathe slowly and deeply, slowing your breath as much as you can. Feel the back ribs expand on your inhale and contract on your exhale. You may feel a release of energy after a few minutes that feels like heat in your root chakra.
4 On each exhale, release stress and tension. If you want, mentally state “I am calm” or “I am relaxed” on each inhale and exhale.
Exit the Pose:
1 On an inhale, slowly lift your chest, coming back upright.
2 Repeat the pose 3–5 times daily to reduce lower back pain or calm down.
Duration: This pose can be held 3–10 minutes to allow the tension in your body to melt.
Modifications: If your hamstrings are really tight, you can sit on a folded blanket to elevate your hips and help you lean forward or you can sit against a wall as well. If you’re pregnant, bring the legs slightly apart.
Seated Wide-Legged Forward Fold
Chakra Activated: heart
Enter the Pose:
1 Start seated and bring the legs into a straddle.
2 Lean forward and let your neck hang heavy. Take slow and deep breaths through your nose.
Exit the Pose:
1 On an inhale, slowly lift your torso, coming back to an upright position.
2 Grab the backs of your knees and pull up and in to bring your legs together.
Duration: Stay in the pose for 5–10 minutes and afterwards notice how calm you are.
Modifications: If your hamstrings or back are really tight, you can sit on a blanket to elevate your hips and help you fold forward. To help you relax into the pose, you can also fold blankets and place them under the forehead or stack soft yoga blocks under the forehead.
This pose will help you see just how much you can regulate your own energy using the breath and forward folds. We need to be in a relaxed state in order to access psychic information, and this pose is a great way to learn. If you couldn’t stay in the pose, it’s likely that your mind was overactive. Try it for less time and you’ll start to notice it makes you feel better, which will inspire you to do it more. Be gentle with yourself if you struggle to do it. Just love yourself in the process. Struggling with yourself will lower your vibration, making the psychic development process more difficult.
Heart Chakra Check-In
This chakra may require extra work. We all experience heartache and know what it feels like. The nerves in this area need to be healed, and there is often a lot of energy stored in our cellular memory that needs to be released. It could be damaged from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The more you work to release your own heart chakra, the easier it will be to recognize when someone else has an energy block there. When we become clear, we can perceive the energy around us clearly and easier. It makes sense that the largest chakra in the body also needs the most work. We can’t ever really be done with the work, either. The subconscious has been playing those pains over and over so the neural pathways in the brain take time, sometimes years, to rewire. However, the more you use breathwork to rebuild the nerves, the more power you will have to reroute those thoughts.
The construction zone of your chest, lungs, heart, shoulders, and arms also needs work and needs to be moved, and the spine must become mobile in order for this chakra to be unlocked. People who feel emotionally dead must seek help for healing. They can see a healer in addition to changing their diet and doing daily meditation, breathwork, and yoga poses. The heart may have developed many behaviors that are based on those pains. We may avoid stepping into our life’s calling because we don’t believe in ourselves. We may block love because we don’t love ourselves. We may even treat ourselves like dirt because we believe the stories we have been telling ourselves that we are not powerful, that we are not good enough, not worthy, or not a good person. We must forgive ourselves, love ourselves with daily actions, and do the work to rebuild this chakra.
Do this writing exercise in your journal. The act of writing helps you get clear in your own mind and helps you see that you are making progress. First, write how you feel your heart chakra is doing. Write about how you sense compassion within you and how you would you like to awaken it more. Write down what you feel guilty, envious, or jealous about. Write down if you feel codependent in relationships. Write down how much you love and accept yourself. Journal about how well you are able to open up and connect deeply with others. Improve upon this by looking people in the eye and sensing their true essence.
Intuition Check-In
As your heart chakra becomes more clear, you’ll begin to feel the upper chakras activating. You’ll be able to start checking in with your intuition each day. You can start the day by asking what you need to know about the day and recording any impressions you get or feel. This will strengthen your intuition and is a great way to start seeing the future. You will start getting more images in the third eye the more you open the upper chakras. As you work on the upper chakras, you can begin to ask spirit for messages and expect them. Additionally you can start noticing what energy you have available to you to choose when to do what. You will get messages when your intuition knows something isn’t right for you by feeling tired or uneasy before going. For example, sometimes you’re creative and other times you’re hyperorganizational. Sometimes you’re too emotional to make clear decisions and sometimes you’re clear and neutral minded.
Meditation for the Heart Chakra
This meditation can help you overcome sadness, feeling like a victim, being jealous, feeling like you can’t open up to people, grief, lack of compassion, or embrace the need to forgive. If you’ve been through a breakup, lost a loved one, or had a series of difficulties, you will be able to use this meditation over the course of the next few weeks to release the emotional energy that is stored and keeping you from experiencing more joy. Doing this meditation in conjunction with the breathing exercises and poses for the heart chakra is like a heart chakra boot camp. You will transform your heart chakra so you can get your vibration raised to perceive from the higher-vibrational chakras, where your psychic powers reside.
Meditation Prep
Find a quiet and relaxing place where you won’t be disturbed. It is recommended that you record the guided meditation in your own voice in a slow and calming tone so that you can go deeper into the meditation and use it as many times as you would like. You may want to play heart chakra frequency music to listen to during this meditation, which is easy to find online. Any calming spiritual music can help you go deeper into meditation as well. Have your journal and a pen handy as it’s very helpful in your development of psychic abilities to keep track of your healing and reflect on the amazing things that happen during meditation. Put your phone on silent so you will not be disturbed, and light a candle to create a sacred healing space. Set the intention that spiritual helpers will aid you in this healing today. If you have any favorite crystals, hold them in your hand to help raise your vibration for this meditation. If you feel like your mind is very busy or agitated, try taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes before meditating. Breathe slowly and deeply in and out of your nose for a few minutes to give yourself a chance to settle in and relax so your guided meditation will be more effective and easy for you.
Guided Meditation
Close your eyes and sit tall like a yogi. You will count yourself back from five to one to get into a deep meditative state. Breathe in through your nose slowly and then out of your mouth, which brings you to five. Now slowly breathe in your mouth and out of your mouth, which brings you to four. Now slowly breathe in your mouth and out of your nose, arriving at three. Then breathe in your nose and out of your nose, which will bring you to two. Finally, take one more deep breath in your nose and out of your mouth, arriving at one. You are now in a calm and completely relaxed state. Your energy begins to float up above your body and up, up into space, where you find yourself in a massive green vortex of light that is spiraling slowly. This planetary-sized energy has some bumps that disturb its otherwise smooth surface. Some of those bumps are very big and some are less so. Look all around you as you stand in the center of this vortex in your mind’s eye.
Allow yourself to spot the largest bump in this smooth, flowing light spiral. The biggest bump represents the energy that is most affecting your life right now in your heart chakra. The biggest pain you’ve been holding onto or pushing down is ready to come forward and be healed today. You may feel a sensation in your chest as it reveals itself because you are shedding light on something you may have been pushing away. This is safe and this is right where you need to be. You will feel much better after you release it. It may be an early wound from your childhood where you felt neglected or stopped loving yourself. It may be a deep sadness that never was allowed to be acknowledged. It may even be a sadness you feel for the world. Let the memory or thought you’ve been holding be revealed to you. It may even be a belief that is hurting your own ability to love and accept yourself. When you see or know what it is, ask the universe to lift this energy from your heart now and watch as the bump in the vortex dissolves into pure white light and then the green energy becomes smooth and radiant. Feel the subtle relief and joy that comes after this energy that has been trapped is released.
Next, scan the giant vortex around you for a cluster of bumps, which represent a series of events that created a belief or worldview that is no longer serving you. It likely relates to how you see yourself or your major life goals. It may be that you felt you needed to live up to a certain ideal because you were pressured or that someone insulted you and you believed you weren’t good enough. Allow this thought pattern to be revealed without fear but with hope that you will be free of any self- hatred or self-sabotage. Collect all these energies you see into one gray ball and give it to the universe to recycle into something more useful. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale allow the universe to remove it from the vortex effortlessly. Replace those spots with gratitude and self- acceptance. Feel love emitting from this vortex, healing the old patterns and wounds about not being enough.
Now you will charge up this vortex with the energy of compassion and total peace that comes from knowing your purpose is to care for others without need or want for recognition. This peace dissolves the ego and the insecurities of the lower mind. The total peace of self-love and acceptance of purpose will be summed up in one word: “expand.” This word helps you see yourself spiritually and not as an individual. Fill every speck of light in this huge moving vortex with this word and feel how your own heartspace is indeed spreading out to feel love and loved. Sit in your mind’s eye in the center of this deep love and know that you can grow now. You were stunted in life because the energy of love, the most pure part of you, was not able to flow, but now it is flowing. The Sanskrit term for the heart chakra is anahata, which means unstruck.
It’s time to receive a healing gift from the universe, which knows what you need in order to heal and harmonize your energy. As you sit in this large vortex, you will see a gift coming down from above that is one thing you can incorporate into your life to help heal your heart chakra. Don’t overthink it. It may seem quite simple; love often is. It may be a bathtub, a hug, a nap, or a cup of soothing herbal tea. What do you see that can be a part of your healing process? Allow it to be revealed, and don’t judge whatever shows up even if you’re not sure how it will help you just yet.
Meditation Wrap-Up
Take three deep breaths to slowly bring yourself back to the room you are sitting in. Slowly open your eyes and write down what gift you received in the final moments of your guided meditation. Write down if you saw or realized other old pains that you can heal in the next meditation. Write down if you felt any shifts or experienced something surprising. Date the entry and remember to note which chakra you were healing. Note if you would like to spend more time on this chakra or if it feels fully charged and healthy. Note if you think it may be overactive and you are giving too much, which is a pattern you can release with the next meditation. Write down the word “expand” to remind you to use it to help you activate this chakra.
Psychically this chakra holds the most energy. That means it also is one we likely have to spend the most time clearing and reclearing. Just because we develop our intuition doesn’t mean we don’t go through heartache, loss, or experience human emotions. Psychics are just as human as everyone else; if anything, we feel things more strongly, which will make doing these meditations all the more helpful and necessary to feel free and happy. If you are feeling off or are not sure which chakra might be causing you to feel less than great, start with the largest chakra, the heart chakra, and you’ll likely find something that can be released. As you get this chakra flowing and truly feel and experience new levels of self-love, you will feel and experience more energy. You will feel and experience your soul instead of just theorizing about it. Energy is something that moves us or keeps us in bed, lights up our face or makes us cringe in pain. Energy is everything, and you are learning to navigate your own and get to know your own so that you can help others do the same.