Have you ever experienced the lightness of having an open heart? The difference between living with an open heart versus a closed one is dramatic. Having an open heart can make everything feel right, or at the very least, guide you toward what feels right for you. It also attracts people and opportunities to you; having an open heart can change your life.
However, keeping your heart open can feel a little scary and not easy to do. It requires practice and diligence, because there are so many things inside and outside us that can close it, given the stresses and emotional challenges we all face.
I've developed many mind-body methods for opening your heart, or more specifically, your heart chakra. From various meditations, energy sensitivity exercises, and visualization exercises, these all allow individuals to experience the opening and lightening of the heart, which many have never experienced before. However, like many things in life, keeping our hearts open in our day-to-day lives is a matter of dedication, practice, and habit-building.
1. Develop a Routine
First, I do believe it is important to establish some sort of mind-body training for opening the heart. Make it a regular part of your health routine, just like preparing healthy food or brushing your teeth. This is important because, just like taking a shower or bath, these practices help to wash away any negative energy residues that might otherwise build up in your energy system.
You can find many examples of these in my books and training programs. For example, you can find some exercises in Chapter 10 of my book, Love Heals Practice Guide, or in my blog posts. Try these exercises out and see which ones leave you feeling light and bright, and make those part of your daily routine, preferably for a few minutes both morning and night.
2. Observe Your Reactions
To live an open-hearted lifestyle, however, we need to carry this feeling of energy with us throughout the day, not just immediately after training. To do this, focus on the feeling of an opened heart chakra immediately after training. You will notice that your chest feels relaxed without any sense of heaviness, and if you focus very carefully on the energy, you will feel a subtle vibration. In your mind’s eye, imagine that light is emanating from the center of your chest, bathing everyone you meet in golden light. If you can maintain this kind of open-heartedness, I guarantee that people will love to be around you, and they will feel a sense of healing just to be in your presence.
To maintain this energetic state day in and day out, however, very careful self-observation is required. You may notice at first that this feeling is easily lost during your day. For example, if you commute to work, your chest may tighten as soon as you get in your car as you anticipate the traffic and the aggressive behaviors of other drivers. This is certainly a normal response, but you can train yourself to keep your heart chakra open despite these challenges. To do this, try to turn this daily experience into a kind of training. See if you can observe your mind when it becomes negative in response to your situation. Rather than allowing morning rush-hour traffic to be a source of stress, view it as a meditation and an opportunity for mental training.
If you feel anger or frustration, please don’t rebuke yourself in your own mind. Instead, notice these emotions and tell yourself, “These emotions are not me but mine.” Then, focus on releasing them and replacing them with positive thoughts, such as, “I am fortunate to be part of life on this day, even with all this busyness and difficulty. I take joy in my life, and I choose to be a beacon of positivity.” Breathe deeply into your chest and imagine any darkness being washed away with each exhalation. If you can, feel the differences in energy in your heart chakra as your mind changes.
3. Change Your Responses to Others
One of the most important times to cultivate an open-heart lifestyle is in our relationships with others. Unfortunately, many of us have felt injury and emotional betrayal from people who’ve come in and out of our lives. Realize that you can do nothing about the hurtful behaviors of other people, but you can do something about your own mind and its response to others. A great amount of emotional injury happens precisely because so many people have closed their hearts in response to the injuries they have received, and they, in turn, end up hurting others. Because this is so common in our society, you likely have negative habits in your dealings with other people that you need to examine. By choosing an open-heart lifestyle, you are essentially choosing to end the cycle of closed-hearted people passing their pain onto other people.
To do this, observe your behavior and your mind very carefully in response to other people. Do you tend to see your work life as a winner-takes-all competition? Are you carrying resentments about family members or important friends in your life? When somebody treats you rudely do you automatically lash out with more of the same? If you find that you do behave or respond negatively in many cases, please understand that that is very normal and often the default response in our society. You can become a healer of society, however, if you are willing to work on and grow yourself in this regard. I recommend keeping some sort of journal wherein you examine yourself carefully and keep track of your progress toward a more positive, open-hearted response to the world.
And most importantly, keep an open heart toward yourself. Very often, our most judgmental and unkind thoughts are directed toward ourselves. If this is true for you, you must work to change this since you can never really be a positive person for others if you can’t be positive toward yourself. Treat yourself as a small child who is learning a new skill. Think of yourself as your own parent who is training yourself to become the highest version of yourself possible. You need to have high standards for your inner child, but you also must demonstrate unwavering love and compassion as well.
If you can learn to live a truly openhearted lifestyle, you will automatically become a natural healer for the rest of the world. Many, many people are living with a sense of sadness and disconnection from other human beings, and many of our social structures are based on ruthless competition, negative emotional reactivity, and self-centered definitions of success. A person who actively trains him or herself to be an openhearted individual is someone who can change the world just by being who they are and going about their day in a different way, a more positive way. I urge you to do this both for yourself and for the future of humanity.