You wake up with a heaviness in your heart. Even rolling out of bed seems like the most impossible chore. And as you go about your day, it feels like there’s a dark cloud following you.
This is what many people with trauma go through. Whether it’s from a difficult childhood or a painful breakup, emotional baggage can weigh heavily. And no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to shake it off.
The good news is, there’s a way to find relief and release—and that’s through heart meditation. The practice focuses on your heart center, releasing the negative vibes to give way to the good.
An open heart is a healed heart, after all. And when you allow yourself to look within and let go of what no longer serves you, magic happens.
How to do a heart meditation
We all have “shame blockages” that keep us from “being real and from being able to move, from being stuck in our heads and really awakening into our hearts and our bodies, and tapping into our natural desire,” explains tantra expert Psalm Isadora. (She, unfortunately, passed in 2017, but her teachings are still available on Mindvalley’s Tantra Touch Quest.)
A great way to remove those blockages is through a heart-opening meditation. It can help you better connect with your emotions and surroundings and open your heart chakra.
Follow these simple steps to ease yourself into a relaxed state.
- Find a quiet, comfortable space—one where you won’t be disturbed during the meditation.
- Sit comfortably with your back straight and your hands on your lap.
- Close your eyes, and breathe in and out slowly and deeply.
- Bring your awareness to the area around your chest—this is your heart center.
- With every exhale, imagine any negative feelings or thoughts leaving your body and dissipating into the air.
- Continue to focus on giving warmth and light to your heart center, and allow any positive feelings and thoughts of love and gratitude to fill you up.
- Stay in this state of meditation for as long as you like. It’s often recommended to start with 10–15 minutes and gradually increase the duration as you become more comfortable with the practice.
Remember, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to open-heart meditation. You may find that your practice evolves over time, and that’s perfectly okay.
The most important thing is to find what works best for you and to consistently make time for your meditation practice.
7 Mindvalley (free) heart meditations to try today
If you’re looking for guided meditations, you’re in luck. Mindvalley has a wealth of expertise from world-class meditation instructors who can teach you how to connect with your heart and cultivate inner peace.
These heart meditations cover a variety of areas, including chakra healing, energy healing, and tantra touch. However, they all have the same goal—to help you through the process of healing and open your heart to infinite potential.
Heart meditations on Mindvalley YouTube
One platform where you can find meditation by Mindvalley experts (especially for free) is YouTube. So whether you’re seeking to heal emotional wounds and deepen your relationships, there is a heart meditation waiting for you there.
1. Heart Meditation for Intimacy | Psalm Isadora
“The world is starving for true intimacy, yet we’re all ashamed of that natural desire,” says Psalm. That’s the inspiration for this open-heart meditation.
It was designed to encourage you to break free from your past traumas so you can fully embrace your emotions. And it’s through your connection with yourself that you can learn to be more loving and intimate.
2. Guided Meditation to Open Your Heart Up to Infinite Potential | Jeffrey Allen
Healing your energy through guided meditation can have a profound effect on the way you show up in the world. Through this practice, you can unlock a deeper connection with your inner self and discover things about yourself you never knew.
Guided by Jeffrey Allen, a renowned energy healer and trainer of Mindvalley’s Duality Quest, you may just discover the power to tap into an infinite field of potential and vitality.
3. Heart Healing Guided Meditation | Christie Marie Sheldon
“The biggest block in your abundance is not what you do, it’s what you believe.” That’s the wisdom coming from Christie Marie Sheldon, a healer, energy coach, and trainer of Mindvalley’s Unlimited Abundance Quest.
She guides you through a powerful meditation that will awaken your heart and fill you with pure, loving energy. By breathing light into that particular area, you’ll infuse every part of your being, leaving you feeling renewed and ready to take on any challenges.
4. The 6 Phase Guided Meditation | Vishen Lakhiani
While the 6 Phase Meditation is specifically geared towards opening the heart, it does engage your mind for you to be able to do so. Led by Vishen, the founder of Mindvalley, he designed it to help you level up in six areas of your life: connection, gratitude, forgiveness, creative visualization, setting intentions, and blessings.
This powerful meditation not only enhances your brain power and emotional state but also transforms you, both consciously and unconsciously.
Heart meditations on the Mindvalley app
If you’re on the hunt for heart meditations, whether it’s for the beginner or the experienced, look no further than the Mindvalley app. With an account, you’ll have access to ones that can help you tap into your emotions, cultivate compassion, and get in tune with you.
5. Deep Stillness: Heart Opening Meditation | Tom Cronin
Guided by the founder of The Stillness Project, Tom Cronin, this absolutely warm, gentle meditation takes you on a journey to access your inner lovingness. It’s a daily practice that can help you feel more love and increase your ability to forgive.
Mindvalley tip: Listen to it with the 639 Hz Solfeggio frequency to help balance your emotions and harmonize your relationships.
6. Heart Trance Meditation for Forgiveness and Self-Love | Nalaya Chakana
This beautiful state of introspection is essentially a heart chakra meditation. Join Nalaya Chakana to explore the depths of your heart chakra, also known as Anahata. With her soothing voice, she guides you to soften the walls around your heart and access the wisdom within.
Mindvalley tip: Listen to it with the 528 Hz Solfeggio frequency, which is also known as “the love frequency.”
7. Manifesting Through Chakras | Anodea Judith
Chakra expert and energy healer Anodea Judith (and the trainer of Mindvalley’s Chakra Healing Quest) shows you how to do a heart chakra meditation with this particular practice of awareness.
She’ll help you manifest your deepest desires and aspirations by using the power of your chakras—and in this case, your heart chakra.
Mindvalley tip: This particular energy center is associated with the color green. And to enhance your experience, consider wearing something green or meditating next to plants.
Benefits of heart meditation
Just like mindfulness and mantra meditation, this practice sits under the umbrella of meditation. And when you do it on a regular basis, it opens you up to plenty of benefits.
Here are a few science-backed benefits of learning how to open up your heart:
- It reduces stress and anxiety levels. One way this happens is through the reduction of cortisol and adrenaline production. In fact, one study found that the participants who practiced loving-kindness meditation had lower stress levels compared to those who didn’t.
- It increases feelings of compassion, empathy, and social connectedness. A study conducted by researchers at Emory University found that heart-centered meditation led to increased activity in the brain regions. These are known to be associated with empathy and compassion, and in turn, feelings of connectedness with others.
- It enhances emotional intelligence. A 2021 systematic review determined that those who practiced mindfulness, such as heart meditation, are able to regulate their emotions, as well as reduce emotional exhaustion.
- It improves heart health. As stress levels reduce, that also takes the pressure off the heart. As a matter of fact, one medical review shows that meditation can have beneficial effects on decreasing cardiovascular diseases.
- It enhances cognitive function. The practice of awareness is also known to help improve brain performance. A 2023 study published in PLOS ONE found that even a single session of meditation “may acutely enhance cognitive performance regardless of meditation experience.”
- It promotes deeper sleep. According to research, a mind-calming practice, like heart meditation, can induce a relaxation response and improve your sleep quality.
- It increases feelings of overall happiness. With all that’s been said, it should come as no surprise that heart-centered meditation can lead to happiness and all the feelings associated with it. This type of practice, according to an older, yet still relevant study, induces positive emotions like love, joy, and contentment.
It’s as Anodea says in her Mindvalley Quest: “The more we allow one kind of energy, the more the other can come through.” And so, when it comes to the benefits of heart meditation, no words ring more true.
Meditate to elevate
This is life. And chances are, you got jaded along the way.
That’s no reason, though, to put up walls of defense around your heart. As Psalm says, “The surprising thing about always trying to protect yourself is, the main person you’re hurting is yourself when you’re holding back so much.”
Mindfulness practices, like heart meditation, are a great way to really do the inner work and get to know who you truly are. And Mindvalley has experts, like Psalm Isadora, Jeffrey Allen, Christie Marie Sheldon, Vishen, and Anodea Judith, who can help guide you along the way.
You can download the Mindvalley app (over a million downloads and counting) for free. There, you’ll find hundreds of meditations in the collection, as well as getting free access to four new tracks every day.
As the saying goes, the grass is greener where you water it. And you can start with your heart.
