Three Ways to Focus on Your Heart

Focusing on your heart health is one of the most important things you can do to maintain a healthful lifestyle that’s full of abundance, energy, and grace. Without both a healthy physical heart and positive emotional connection, it’s hard to maintain balance and momentum.

I’ve found that when my emotional heart is happy, I am able to center myself easier, feel physically lighter, and want to spread positive light in the world. Here are three things you can do to maintain heart health both physically and emotionally.

Practice Open Heartedness

Brene Brown talks a lot about wholeheartedness in her books. Wholeheartedness is the act and habit of engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It’s thinking and knowing that you are enough, you are worthy. She also finds that you can only love others as much as you love yourself.

So let’s practice being open hearted. Accepting everything that comes to us as a positive and welcoming all that come into our lives. A tea ritual is a way to connect to others and share in a moment of joy and abundance.

I love using Serenity Meadows in my tea rituals when I need a physical reminder to be open hearted. This tisane has hawthorn leaves and flowers; hawthorn is used to address all matters of the heart.

Hawthorn is used to increase blood flow and to regulate energy reserves and energy release. It’s also taken to ease fears and anxieties and is even believed to help heal a broken heart. Read more in the Herb Spotlight here!

Calm Your Heart with a Breathing Ritual

Air is the element of the heart chakra. It’s all about movement and also making action happen. That’s very similar to the heart - it’s a gentle organ yet it’s the center and symbol of powerful emotions.

Our lungs are affected when we suffer from physical or emotional heart problems as they are next to the heart and the symbol of air in our bodies. How many times have you found it hard to breathe when you’re feeling anxiety or even excitement?

I like to perform two different breathing rituals to open my heart and settle down my emotions. These lower stress and your heart rate to maintain cardiovascular health.

Alternate Nostril Breathing is great to bring balance back to your breathing. It’s calming, so it improves cardiovascular function, and very simple.

Sit comfortably and exhale completely. Use your right thumb to close your right nostril. Inhale completely and use your fingers to close your left nostril. Open your right nostril and exhale through the right side. Inhale through the right nostril, then close it. Open your left nostril and exhale through the left side.

That is one cycle. Repeat complete cycles until you feel grounded and your heart rate is normal, or up to five minutes.

Mindful Breathing is what I call this one. It’s very simple. I like to make myself a cup of tea and as the tea is steeping, I’ll set a timer for the length of time it takes to steep the tea (usually about five minutes). I find a beverage helps ground you as you can experience it with all your senses.

Then, sit and take deep inhales and exhales. Notice the weight of the cup in your hands, the smell, the sounds around you, the taste as the aroma wafts into your nose, notice the leaves unfurling in your tea. If a thought comes into your mind, acknowledge it, then refocus on your breathing.

Remove Blocks to Open Your Heart

How many times have you associated a heart with love? Brene Brown says that you can only love others as much as you love yourself. When I feel myself closing myself off to others, I perform a small candle ritual to remove blocks and open the pathways for an emotionally healthy heart. Like the breathing rituals, this is very simple.

Sit comfortably with a candle in front of you. Red and pink is symbolically associated with hearts and love, but the color isn’t as important as the act of doing.

Hold in your mind where you are blocked. Feel it, see it, call up the emotions you have around it. Then, light the candle and visualize the flames removing the barriers, burning them down, so the flow of energy between that was blocked has a clear path. Call up the emotions you’ll feel when this obstacle is removed and the images of the blockages being removed.

Heart health is more than just maintaining good cardiovascular function. It takes a holistic look at your emotional wellbeing. Your heart is a powerful symbol of your emotions. When you’re emotionally and physically taking care of your heart, amazing things will flow into your life.