My Favorite and Transformative Ways To Connect To and Open Your Heart
It’s Valentine’s Day. This holiday has been overwrought with images of love, couples and a romanticized idea of what it means to be in love – one that focuses more on fantasy than the depth and patience that love takes. Love is a connection – to our hearts, to each other, to life. If we are disconnected from our heart space, it’s impossible for us to feel love. As an intuitive counselor, I hear many of my clients echo the same feelings around connection – that they feel disconnected from themselves and their joy, from their relationships both friendships and partners, and from their communities.
Once we are awake, roused from unconsciousness, we can feel the pain of being disconnected. This is often the pain that first wakes us up. This awakening might tell us we feel disconnected from our intuition, our guides, our partners, our families or our communities. In this space, we begin to search for how to reconnect and to heal this internal chasm. This disconnect makes us feel alone – and Valentine’s Day can make that chasm feel wider whether we’re single or not. It’s a holiday that can quickly put us into a space of comparison – especially if we are not in a relationship.
Valentine’s Day is a holiday all about love. Not only romantic love but it can be a holiday to connect and listen more deeply to our heart space. The heart space is where we are able to receive love – it’s not an intellectual process. It’s a felt process and the more we allow ourselves to practice being loving, the more we are able to feel love. It can be easy to wall off our hearts, the protective barriers arise from our egos, as a way to defend against the natural hurt that life throws at us.
Our ever creative ego and intellect, come up with ways to protect against feeling hurt ever again. It comes at the price of defending the space in our hearts. When we protect our hearts, we block intimacy. Intimacy is allowing ourselves to see and be seen. Being seen can feel scary – it can make us feel vulnerable and scared. Our wounded egos look into the deep dark and see a mess. It notes all the places that we aren’t okay, where we are unlovable, where we need to hide away from the world for fear of being hurt or rejected.
We can use Valentine’s Day to focus on reconnecting to our heart space and feeling safe, both by seeing and being seen. The heart space is an expansive and powerful place for healing. The first thing we have to remember is that we’re already “in” and never “out of love.” As long as our hearts are beating, our Spirits are here and connected to the Universe and in love.We sense this when we are around little kids who give and receive love freely. They don’t worry about being loving or being loved. They’re not worried about being seen, they’re just open to life.
We can quickly start to reconnect to this space, and I’ll give you some of my favorite tools to connect. The first tool to remedy and reconnect with the heart space begins with a simple exercise. Find a quiet place to sit, take a few moments and close your eyes, put one hand on your heart, let your attention drift down to your heartbeat and feel it in your physicality. Using your imagination drop into the space in your heart. Now, remember the last time you felt pure love - that open-hearted, intimate, deep loving energy. Feel it in your body. Now imagine sending yourself that love from your Higher Self. Rooted in that deep, loving, compassionate energy, remember how much your guides love you, how much the Universe loves you. Think about your friends and family, and remember how loved you are by all the people in your life, how appreciated you are. Let yourself feel it. Do this every day. I do this every morning as a way to send love and comfort to myself.
Another beautiful tool is to start listening and reconnecting to our heart space is to begin to remind and list all the things that you love about ourselves. Where are you magic? Where are your gifts? Where are the things that you know about yourself to be true? Where are your victories? We close our hearts because we feel like there is something deficient internally, we begin to look outside ourselves for validation. When we start to see the things we love about ourselves, we begin to celebrate and see ourselves clearly. We begin to reconnect and open our hearts.
Another way to connect to your beautiful heart is by being generous with others. Be a good vibes fairy – tell people what you genuinely love about them. Instead of making it a physical attribute, tell them what the things that admire and appreciate are. Their sense of humor? Intelligence? Their joy? Generosity? Practicality? Use this as a tool to connect to your own intimacy – where can you see the people in your life? What are the things you can genuinely reflect back to them? This fosters connection and opens your own heart by being generous. When we practice seeing the Spirit in people, we connect to the depth instead of the surface.
Another way to reconnect to our hearts and to each other is to allow ourselves to be good receivers. Often as empaths, we are naturally giving yet have difficulty receiving – this is a way to protect our hearts. If we don’t need anything, we can’t get hurt. If we actually start the practice of doing less and asking more from the people we love, we allow ourselves to be seen and supported. This heals our hearts as it helps to reprogram the part of ourselves that can believe we are too much.
Finally, one of my favorite tools and one of the most courageous in healing our hearts and reconnecting is to have authentic, compassionate conversations with the people that we love. Whether it’s a much-needed conversation around things that are bothering us or even just reaching out to trusted people for support and mirroring, these conversations are a pathway to healing our hearts and reconnecting with our joy. It takes back our voice, one of our most potent tools in connecting to our intuition, and is a practice of unburdening ourselves. When we are honest and open, we inspire others to do the same. Being authentic has a powerful ripple effect and encourages honest, compassionate communication that is a healing force in the world.
Most importantly this Valentine’s Day, know that you are not alone. If you’re feeling disconnected, remember that you’re already “in love” and that no part of you is ever out of it. If you’re needing help or support in connecting to your heart space and healing, I am always here for support for both readings and mentoring. One of the most loving things you can do for yourself is to allow yourself to be supported and invest in your own support and self-care.
To see if mentoring or a reading is the right for you book a free 15 minute call here . If it's right, I'm looking forward to connecting.
Sending you lots of love on this Valentine’s Day.
Xx
Love
Sonia