Living from Heart Center

 When people experience traumas and repeated hardships, it can cause us to shut down and close off our hearts to the rest of the world. We start to see the world as a dark and scary place. We start to question everyone’s motives and ourselves. We overthink everything and experience a lot of shame, fear, separation, and loneliness.

How can being heart-centered help?

When people dislike and are afraid of themselves, they tend to project this outward, and become hateful and afraid of others outside of who they identify as, and what looks and acts like them. When we truly stand in our personal power, we don’t fear anything outside of ourselves. When we are standing fully in our personal power, we definitely don’t hate anything. When we are threatened by certain groups of people, it is often because we feel unfulfilled within ourselves and our connection to our roots or community. 

That’s why living life from Heart Center is so important. This month is Black History Month. I wanted to talk about living a Heart Centered-life this week, because I think so many people have closed off their hearts due to pain, specifically around their heritage and lineage. There are many who have family histories of severe trauma. This pain gets carried through generations and passed on. These groups of people need understanding and healing for how past atrocities continue to play out and plague Black and Brown communities. When the pain is too great, sometimes the only choice we have is to shut down.  

However, now more than ever we need love in our world. Now more than ever, we need to unite with each other. We need to support and uplift each other. We need to listen and respect each other. Now more than ever, we need to open our hearts and live from Heart Center. 

When we live life from Heart Center, it changes our outlook of the world and ourselves. It is powerful to bring your awareness to your heart and start to consciously open your heart back up, even though it has experienced great pain. Living from Heart Center is not easy at first, especially if your heart has been closed off or shut down for a long time.

What does it mean to live life from heart-center?

Living life from Heart Center means choosing daily to keep your heart open to the world and everyone in it. It means being aware of how you respond to the world, and not taking things personally. It means choosing to forgive everyone, understanding that we each carry invisible wounds. These cause us to hurt others if we are not conscious of them and actively working to heal them. This is why we need to act from a conscious place, as most people are acting from an unconscious, and often wounded, place. 

Living from Heart Center requires you to love yourself. If you can’t love yourself, it is much harder to give love freely to others. When we don’t love ourselves, we love with the condition that others must fill us up, when they often can’t. Loving yourself is powerful, because then everyone else’s love becomes a beautiful bonus to an already full internal fountain. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be loved by yourself, friends, and family. If self-love if something you struggle with, check out last week’s blog, as this was the topic!  

Living from Heart Center means understanding we all make mistakes. We are human and we are flawed. That’s a beautiful thing. There is no handbook for life and many of us did not get the same solid foundation of an upbringing.  We’re all coming from different backgrounds and experiences, which means we have so much wisdom to offer each other! If we work together and collaborate within our community, we can learn a lot about the beauty within ourselves and the world around us. When we understand we all make mistakes, we can be more forgiving, and work together more easily. 

When we live life from Heart Center it means we love ourselves and we accept the people around us for who they are. We understand that each person is on their own unique path. We respect and honor those paths, and how they are different from our own. We can learn a lot from each other, but ultimately, we are here to learn our own lessons. Living from Heart Center means knowing each person is responsible for themselves and we are responsible for ourselves. Living from Heart Center means trusting people to make their own decisions for what is best for their lives and knowing that it is not our business to criticize or judge them.  

When we live life from Heart Center, we focus on ourselves and improving our area of the world. When you live from Heart Center, you automatically start to care more about the world around you and wanting to make it a better place. When you focus on living life from Heart Center, it becomes much easier to find your purpose and sacred calling.

Heart-Centered Meditation 

To help you practice opening your heart, below is a meditation you can do as often as you would like… 

Get seated or lay down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes and take 3-6 large, deep breathes. Notice if there is any tension in your body, and if so, try to release it. Notice if there is peace and love present in your body.   

Either way, bring your awareness to the center of your chest, where your ribs meet. This is where your heart Chakra is. Notice if there is a sensation present in this area. If your heart was represented by a color, what color would this be? Imagine this color in the form of a ball or a flower. Imagine this ball of color or flower growing, until it is the size of your body.  

Imagine this ball of color or flower filling your whole body up with the energy of love. Imagine the lightness and softness of this energy. Once this loving energy has filled you up completely, imagine extending that energy to all your friends and family. Extend out this ball of light and imagine all your loved ones inside it with you. Extend this ball of light to your neighborhood, your customers or clients, your church, your coworkers, your favorite barber or hairdresser, your favorite waiters and bartenders, postal workers, your teachers…Keep it going. Can you also extend that ball of light to include people who have hurt you? You don’t have to, but it can help shift to more compassion and heal some of the lingering pain between you.

Can you extend that ball of light out to include the whole world? Can you imagine all of Mother Earth’s beings in your ball of light? Can you send the whole world, and all its people, your love? Notice what it feels like to do so. Notice what sensations come up. When you are ready, come back into your body. Come back into the room you are in. Notice the sounds and sensations present around you. Open your eyes when you feel called to do so.  

This is a very powerful practice. We often feel like we have no power, and one person cannot make a difference. This practice gives us power to always offer healing and love to ourselves and the world. We can do this anytime we feel hopeless about the world. 

Always let your love be louder than your fear. That’s how we live from Heart Center. Know that you will fall off balance sometimes, and return to judgment or condemning others. It is okay. Remember, you are human and you will make mistakes too, as I said earlier. The goal is not to never lose balance, but rather to return as quickly as we can to Heart Center.  

Thank you for reading! I hope this gave some insight and you enjoy the Heart-opening practice. To learn more about sessions with me, click here. Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week!

Sarah Lustig is a Licensed Therapist in Colorado and a Holistic and Spiritual Coach living in Asheville, North Carolina. She is the owner of a Nurtured Essence, a healing center, aimed at helping people overcome their fears and live with more purpose and lightness. She specializes in working with wounded healers, empaths, and lightworkers.