Singing with the heart chakra
Continuing with our series of “singing with the chakras”, today is the turn of singing with the heart chakra. In other words, how to sing with your heart!
The key words for this centre are love, connection, balance and harmony.
In our exploration of singing with the chakras, we have found that the root chakra establishes the basics of security and stability for our life. The sacral chakra gives us the “gut feelings”, the creativity and enjoyment of life. The solar plexus chakra goes further in shaping our emotions and our sense of identity.
In the heart chakra, our more basic emotions evolve into true feelings. The personal identity and the ego are transcended so we can connect harmoniously with all beings around us.
With this energy centre we experience love in all its different forms. Relationships, love of nature, of God, appreciation of the beauty around us. With this chakra we develop our capacity of loving others and ourselves.
The heart chakra is situated in the centre of our chest, half way between the lower 3 chakras – related to the earthy things of life, and the 3 higher chakras – more related to the spiritual world. It is the bridge and the connection between these two different and equally necessary worlds. As mentioned in previous blog posts, no chakra is “better” than the others. In order to develop a healthy heart chakra, as well as all the higher ones, we need to have healthy “earthy” chakras, as they are the foundation. We need them, even if our aspirations in life have more spiritual purposes.
The heart chakra is the centre that develops our compassion, our empathy, our capacity for feeling unconditional love, and our tenderness. Through this chakra we start to perceive the world beyond ourselves.
When we have a healthy heart chakra, we find harmony with those around us. We have a balance between giving and receiving. We have an open heart, but we know when to protect it so we don’t get hurt. We let go of things that no longer serve us. We are empathetic towards situations, but impartial enough to not be tossed around by wild emotions. We also have a healthy heart muscle, which we need to let the blood circulate through our body and make possible the health of all our other organs with their respective related emotions.
The element of the heart chakra is air. Air is many times considered cold and distant, and so too the people with a strong air element in their charts. But without this element we cannot experience true love, but rather we would be guided purely by more earthy energy relating to just our instinctive impulses. Is good to have the air element strong to balance the other elements, otherwise we may confuse true love with selfishness and become slaves to our impulsive emotions.
The sense related to the heart chakra is touch. Physical contact with living things is important for the development of this sense, this could be other humans or even our pets! The relationship between depression and the lack of contact and physical touch is well known – something that can be fixed with a simple hug!
The heart chakra is developed between the ages of 12 and 15 years old, generally around the age that we experience our first love. The traumas experienced in this stage of our lives, as well as the way our parents acknowledge us as future women and men rather than “just kids”, will play an important role in the way this centre develops.
When this centre is unbalanced, we can experience things such as:
- Excessive jealousy
- Imbalance in giving and receiving
- Social anxiety
- Holding onto past pains
- Fear of commitment
- Being overly critical with yourself
- Fear of rejection
- Asthma, low pressure, high pressure
- Incapacity to feel empathy towards others
Singing with the heart chakra: how it connects to our voice
The heart chakra, as well as all the others, has an important effect on our voices.
It is situated close to our lungs, where we receive the air which is the fuel of our voices. When our chest is compressed, our capacity of receiving air becomes compressed too. The lungs are also the organs that are related to the emotion of grief. If we don’t let it go, then our lungs also become stuck, affecting our capacity to receive new fresh air, and to give our voice to the world as well. The capacity of giving and receiving freely!
For singing with the heart chakra, we need to let the air circulate freely in order to have a healthy and strong voice.
Having a weak or over active chakra, also affects greatly our posture in that region of our body, which prevents the voice from flowing freely. This causes not only restricted breathing, but also stiffness in the muscles that we need relaxed and available for our voice production as well as our resonance.
What you can do
There are many things you can do to help balance your energy for singing with the heart chakra. Here there are some of them:
- Hug and be hugged – try for several times a day if you can
- Pat animals when you get the chance
- Practice gratitude and forgiveness
- Spend time in nature
- Wear green or soft pink colours
- Healing stones: rose quartz, emerald, jade, rhodonite
- Essential oils: rose, ylang ylang, lavender
Opening your chest – a practical exercise for singing with the heart chakra
For this exercise, simply start by finding a posture where your hips, shoulders, and ears are aligned so your posture is straight but also relaxed.
Gently open your arms to your sides and place your hands on your shoulders. From here, start drawing circles with your elbows, backward and forward.
When you’ve become comfortable with the exercise, start making the circles smaller and add an AAAH sound while you keep moving.
If your posture tends to curve forward too much (sadness posture), focus on drawing the circles backward with your elbows to open up your chest.
If your posture tends to hold your chest too tight (pride posture), then focus on drawing the circles forward to relax your chest.
This exercise will also help you to improve your breathing by opening your ribs.
Enjoy it!
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I help people to develop their voice and singing from a holistic approach. I teach vocal lessons in person in Auckland, NZ, and online. Also stay tuned for my new online singing programs!❤️
My greatest passion has always been the voice, music and energy arts.
My personal and artistic journey has led me to understand that the voice and the body are fully connected, and that includes not only the physical body but also the mental, emotional and spiritual body.
Through holistic vocal training you not only learn to become a great singer while taking care of your voice, but you also improve your mental and physical wellbeing❤️
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