Heart Chakra (Anahata): Meaning, Symbol and How to Open It

By the Awaken Library Editorial TeamEditorial Team · Updated October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026 · How we write

Anahata, the heart chakra, is the fourth of the seven centers of tantric yoga. A 16th-century Sanskrit text puts it in the heart as a red lotus with twelve petals around a smoke-colored region of air, and the name means “unstruck”. Green, pink and talk of love came from Western books.

Heart chakra at a glance

The middle column is the source: the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (“Description of the Six Centers”), written by the Bengali teacher Purnananda as part of a book he finished in 1577. Arthur Avalon, the pen name of the judge John Woodroffe, translated it in 1919 as The Serpent Power. The right column holds what Western writers attached afterward.

What is the heart chakra? The meaning of Anahata

It is the fourth of the six lotuses that the text pictures along the spine, counting up from the base. By the numbers it is the middle of the seven chakras that Western books list, which is why modern teachers call it the bridge between “lower” and “upper” centers. The text does not use that language. For Purnananda it is one more stage of an image to hold in the mind.

What does the old image contain? A red lotus, twelve letters, a hexagonal region of air, a seed sound, two figures, a triangle of light, a golden stone, and a flame. Verse 22 compares the lotus itself to the celestial wishing-tree, which gives “even more than” the wish. That is the closest the passage comes to the warm meaning the heart has today.

The warm meaning is real, and a lot of people use it: the heart as the place of love, care and grief. It belongs to a later layer. Below, we keep the two apart.

Why Anahata means “unstruck”

The Sanskrit anāhata is “not struck”. The commentary printed with Avalon’s translation explains it: the lotus is called this because here the sound of the absolute, Śabda Brahman, is heard, a sound that arises without two things being struck together. Everything we hear in daily life comes from a collision: a hand on a drum, a breath on a string. This one is imagined as arising on its own.

So the name refers to an inner sound. Love is a later association. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a hatha yoga manual that predates Purnananda’s text, spends much of its last chapter on this sound. Its fourth chapter tells the yogi to practice hearing the anāhata nāda with a collected mind, and says the mind caught by that sound grows still. Modern guides sometimes translate the word “unhurt” or “unbeaten”, which suits the Sanskrit but moves it from a sound to a mood: the heart that cannot be broken. That second meaning is popular and consoling. It is modern.

Where is the heart chakra located?

The text says “in the heart” (v. 22) and leaves it there. Western books settle on the center of the chest, at the level of the breastbone, and say the spinning part sits in front and in back. Neither point is a structure a doctor could find. It is a place to rest your attention.

To find it, sit up, lay a flat hand on the middle of your chest, and breathe normally for three breaths. The warmth and the small movement under your palm are a good enough marker. If resting a hand there feels odd or tense, put it on your lap and think of the spot.

What does the heart chakra do?

In modern books the heart chakra “governs” love given and received, compassion, forgiveness, trust and the ability to grieve without freezing. Our self-check at the top uses three everyday versions of that: reaching toward people, being kind to yourself, and letting go of old grievances. The questions cover the last two weeks. They give no verdict on a chakra.

The 1577 text lists a different set of results. Verse 26 says a person who meditates on the heart lotus becomes “lord of speech” and, like the god Īśvara, able to “protect and destroy the worlds”. Verse 27 adds control of the senses, wisdom, “inspired speech” that “flows like a stream of clear water”, and the ability to enter another person’s body. Woodroffe reads promises like these as praise of the practice (stuti-vāda), not as a forecast. Nothing in these verses is about loving anyone. The text sees the heart as a place of steadiness and concentration.

Heart chakra color: green, pink, gold or red?

Modern charts show the heart chakra as green, and many add pink. The source gives neither. The lotus has “the shining colour of the Bandhūka flower”, a red bloom; the twelve letters are vermilion; the air region is smoke-gray; the goddess is yellow; the lightning-triangle and the stone are gold (vv. 22–25). Green does not appear anywhere in the passage.

The Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater, writing from his own clairvoyant impressions in The Chakras (1927), called the heart center “glowing golden”. Green came later and from a different place. Kurt Leland, who traced the history of the Western chakra system, reports that single spectrum colors were assigned to the chakras by color therapists from the 1930s on, and that the full modern package of rainbow plus a list of qualities appeared together in print in 1977. Green is the fourth color of that rainbow, so it went to the fourth chakra. We found no early source for pink; it shows up in New Age lists tied to gentle love and rose quartz.

Heart chakra symbol. The symbol is a lotus with twelve petals around a six-cornered figure, often drawn as two interlocking triangles, with the letters of the alphabet from Ka to Ṭha on the petals. The twelve letters and the six corners come from the text (v. 22); the petals’ meanings that popular sites add (twelve qualities, twelve “divine” traits) do not. The same two-triangle star turns up in other traditions; our sacred geometry page lists where.

Blocked heart chakra: signs, and when it is the heart itself

Lists of “blocked” or “closed” heart chakra symptoms usually include loneliness, difficulty trusting, holding grudges, jealousy, fear of intimacy and being cold toward others, plus chest, lung and circulation problems. Those are two different kinds of item, and they need different answers.

• Life signs such as keeping people at a distance, going over old arguments, finding it hard to accept help, or being harsh with yourself. These are real, they are common after a loss or a falling-out, and they usually have a specific cause you can name.
• Body signs such as chest pain, pressure or tightness, palpitations, shortness of breath, pain in the arm or jaw. These are for a doctor, not for a chakra. No exercise on this page can tell you what is causing them.

If you have chest pain right now, stop reading. The NHS says most chest pain is not a sign of anything serious but advises getting medical advice, and to get immediate help if you think you are having a heart attack. In the US, call 911. Panic can feel the same as a heart problem from the inside, so do not try to decide which it is yourself.

The idea of a chakra that is “blocked” or “closed” is not in the 1577 text. It comes from 20th-century energy healing. As a metaphor for “I have been shutting people out”, it can be handy. The more useful follow-up is the plain one: shut out from whom, and since when?

How to open and heal the heart chakra

In the tradition, “opening” a chakra means long, supervised practice. In everyday talk the phrase covers gentler things, and these you can do alone:

• One small contact. A two-line message to someone you have lost touch with. You do not have to explain the gap.
• A friend’s voice. When you catch a harsh thought about yourself, ask what you would say if a friend described the same situation.
• Thanks, specific. Tell one person one thing they did, in a sentence.
• Grievance, down on paper. Write what happened in one sentence, then what you want from it now. Decide on one action, or on none.
• Repair or distance. Not every rift needs mending. Sometimes the kind step is to stop going over it.
• Loving-kindness. Silently wish a few people well, as in the practice below. A 2015 meta-analysis of 24 studies with 1,759 participants found that this kind of meditation raised self-reported positive emotions, with medium effects on daily positive emotions. It measured mood, not hearts or chakras, and the authors said more studies were needed to find out which parts of the training do the work.

Heart chakra yoga poses. Teachers usually suggest backbends that open the chest: cobra (Bhujangasana), camel (Ustrasana) and bridge (Setu Bandhasana). The gentlest version is to clasp your hands behind your back and lift the breastbone for five slow breaths. Start with the easiest form of each pose, keep the neck long, and skip it if your back or neck hurts. The 1577 text names no postures for Anahata; these pairings come from modern yoga classes.

Heart chakra affirmations. “I am loved” or “I forgive everyone” tend to bounce off when you do not believe them. Choose one that is true while you say it: “I can be kind to myself today”, “I am allowed to take a break”, “I can start with one text to one person”. If it still sounds false, change it until it is accurate.

Heart chakra stones, mudra and signs of a blockage

Stones. Modern lists of heart chakra stones name rose quartz, green aventurine, jade and malachite. The colors of these gems follow the modern charts: green from the rainbow scheme, pink from New Age talk of gentle love. None of them appears in the 1577 text; crystals and gemstones came in with late 20th-century New Age practice. There is no evidence that a stone acts on a chakra or on the heart. In the one test we know of, Christopher French’s team at Goldsmiths (2001) had 80 people meditate holding either real quartz or a fake, and both groups reported the same tingling and warmth. A gemstone, or any smooth stone, can still serve as a cue in the hand to slow down.

Mudra. No hand gesture belongs to this center in the old text either. Modern chakra lists differ; the usual choice for the heart chakra is padma mudra, the “lotus”: the heels of the hands together at the chest, fingers spread open like petals. Our mudras page has the plainer anjali mudra, palms together at the heart, which many teachers use the same way. Use it to keep the hands still during the practice below; the mudras guide says where each gesture comes from.

Signs of a block. Talk of heart chakra blockages, and the lists of symptoms that go with it, uses the language of 20th-century energy healing. It is not a diagnosis, and no test can see a chakra, including the self-check on this page. The useful question is who you have been shutting out. Chest symptoms go to a doctor first, as the section on blocked heart chakra signs says.

A 5-minute heart chakra meditation

This sequence takes its image from verse 26, the still lamp flame, and adds a short kindness phrase from a different tradition. Press Start and follow the highlighted step, one minute each. Or read the steps and use your own timer.

If the phrase feels hollow, or sadness comes up, you do not have to push through. Go back to the breath and the flame only, or stop and look around the room. Grief that does not ease over weeks is a reason to talk to a therapist.

Heart chakra vs solar plexus chakra

The solar plexus chakra, Manipura, is the third center, one step down at the navel. A full guide is on the solar plexus chakra page, and the whole system is laid out on the chakras hub. The next center up is the throat chakra.

In the text, the move from fire to air is a step upward from the burning of the navel to something lighter. In the Western reading, it is the move from “what do I want?” to “who is there with me?”. The self-check at the top of this page asks the second question only.

What comes from the old texts and what was added later

What we do not promise. We cannot show you a heart chakra on a scan, and nobody has: Cleveland Clinic calls chakras a possible metaphor, not a recognized part of the body. The self-check measures nothing about your heart, physical or otherwise, and the practice will not mend a broken relationship or ease grief on a schedule. It might leave you a bit calmer for a while. Chest pain, a racing heart, or sadness that has lasted for weeks belongs with a doctor or therapist before anything here.

How the self-check counts

The six questions cover three everyday areas that Western books file under the heart, two questions each: reaching out (questions 1 and 4), kindness to yourself (questions 2 and 5), letting go (questions 3 and 6). “Rarely” is 0 points, “Sometimes” 1, “Often” 2, so an area scores 0 to 4. The area with the most points is the one the result suggests starting with. If areas are level they all appear, and if none reaches 2 points the result says nothing stands out.

Because the rule is short, we ran it on every possible set of answers, 729 of them, while building the page. Each area is alone on top in 22.4% of answer sets, 29.2% end in a tie, and 3.7% have no area above 1 point. The total sorts into three bands: 0–3 points (10.7% of answer sets), 4–8 (78.6%) and 9–12 (10.7%), and the top band tells you that if it has lasted for weeks, a doctor or therapist comes first.

The questions ask what happened rather than how you see yourself, since people answer the second kind with who they would like to be. Nothing is sent anywhere. Close the tab and the answers are gone.