Heart Chakra
Do you struggle with acceptance? Acceptance of yourself? Your body? Other people? Our heart chakra governs our ability and capacity for acceptance. When it’s blocked, acceptance might be more difficult. So let’s explore the heart chakra and how heart chakra affirmations can help you move towards a place of acceptance.
Our heart chakra is the bridge between our upper and lower chakras. Some of the aspects of self that it governs includes: acceptance, love, compassion and balance..
It is also the governing force for our relationships. Our relationships with others, yourself, your body, the planet, and something bigger than us. Essentially, any relationship you cant think of, you can thank the heart chakra.
What is Acceptance
I imagine some of you might have already rolled your eyes at the idea of working towards acceptance of your body. Aaaand if you’re reading this, there is a part of you that is curious to learn more.
Acceptance can feel like a buzzword these days. Personally, I find some resistance to certain buzzwords. Whenever I notice that within myself, I take a beat and explore the word in various ways to understand the energy surrounding it. One way is to look at how it is commonly defined.
If you google acceptance, you’ll find the definitions include: accepting something that has been offered, to be admitted into a group, college, offering, etc., and agreement with a belief, opinion or explanation. You might be scratching your head thinking these don’t resonate and if so, let’s explore one more definition.
Psychological acceptance is to embrace a subjective and generally distressing experience. Ah yes, embracing a distressing experience such as emotions or body image distress. This probably resonates more so than the above definitions.
If you’ve ever experienced distress, you also know that embracing it is much easier said than done! This is one reason why I love working with the chakras, which we will explore next.
Cultivating Acceptance
There are many skills one can implement to help move towards acceptance, such as radical acceptance, reframing, etc. I find working with the heart chakra can be another lovely option. This approach can give you a “healthy” sense of control and empowerment in the process.
Balancing the heart chakra can allow you to cultivate and step into a space of acceptance with less risk of dysregulation, activation and/or triggering. While exposure and learning how to move through these is very important, if you don’t have the tools and support, it can sometimes do more harm that good.
This work can provide a foundation of acceptance as you balance the heart chakra. With that foundation in place, you can then move deeper into the somatic and psychological work with more confidence that you can handle what may arise.
Body Acceptance
Accepting one’s body can be VERY challenging for many reasons. This can feel very overwhelming, especially when there are many layers at play driving the body image distress. Weight stigma, chronic illness, religious trauma, social media, trauma and messaging from others are just a handful of the many layers that can exist around body image distress. We will explore this more in future posts.
One of the many challenging aspects of healing ones relationship to their body and food is that doing the work can create a great deal of discomfort from the various thoughts, feelings, emotions, fears and anxieties that arise. Feeling overwhelmed, many people return to behaviors, as that has been their coping mechanism in the past. This is one of the reasons why you hear people often say that recovery is not linear. This is also why having support is so important. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or you think you are, I do encourage you to reach out to the Alliance for Eating Disorders to find providers in your area. .
Thus, working with the chakra system can help provide healing and stabilization throughout your entire system, so you can address the issues at hand.
Why the chakras
I hope you’re starting to see the power of working with your chakras! It can give you a relatively neutral entry point. This is because most people don’t have false narrative and beliefs around their subtle or energetic body. The chakras are part of our subtle body. I won’t be discussing that today, but you can learn more by watching a free lesson in my Chakras 101 course about the subtle body.
While there are many ways to work with this chakra, today we will explore heart chakra affirmations for acceptance. You may or may not vibe with affirmations. They aren’t for everyone, but I do invite you to give them a whirl and see how it feels for you in this point in time.
My second invitation to you is to use these as a jumping off point. If they don’t resonate with your lived experience, create your own! This too will help cultivate a sense of control and empowerment. Win win, y’all!
Find at least one that feels authentic for where you are at on your personal journey. The more you can individualize your recovery, the less you will compare yourself to other people’s recovery. In time, this can also help to soften the comparisons in other areas, like body image. It’s all connected friends.
Let’s dive into some affirmations. Please keep an open mind and an intuitive pulse to see what resonates for you.
15 Heart Chakra Affirmations for Acceptance
I am at peace with who I am
I accept my limitations
I accept my body
I accept what I can’t change
I embrace my circumstances with an open heart
I accept my past selves
I accept myself
I accept my perceived flaws
I embrace my journey
I accept what I can change
I accept others as they are
I embrace my sense of purpose
I accept my past actions
I am enough
I embrace the flow of life
How to work with affirmations
Let’s explore some ways to work with affirmations.
I invite you to utilize this youtube video to help integrate heart chakra affirmations for acceptance into your routine.
You can also pick one and write it down on a post-it and place it somewhere you’ll see it often. Some examples my clients like to use are a mirror, the fridge, desk, and/or computer. Ideally, pick a place you’ll see it frequently.
If you prefer to use technology, you can also go set reminders on your phone with the affirmation, create a cool image with it and use it as your phone wallpaper or lock screen and/or use affirmational apps.
Alternatives
If you find that affirmations aren’t your jam, keep reading this blog as I do bring in other ways of working with the chakras. Feel free to sign up for my newsletter below to be notified when new posts go live!
I also highly suggest checking out my chakra courses.
Chakras 101 provides some balancing techniques. This is a great option if you are curious about the chakras, but not yet sold. You also get a $75 credit towards Getting Unstuck so you don’t have to pay in full for both.
Getting Unstuck provides you with balancing techniques based on your specific chakra imbalances. Unsure of your imbalances? This course will walk you through various processes to identify this. Getting Unstuck takes you on a deep dive into the chakras and integrates the work I do with clients and used on my own journey towards healing and reclaiming your relationship with your body and food.
Until next time friends, stay curious!
Disclaimer: This post is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute individualized support or medical advice.
Blair is a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, E-500 RYT and Reiki Master. She integrates spirituality with modern day science to help people heal and reclaim their relationship with their body and food.