Clear up heart chakra blockages and heal your relationship with food
Written by Delilah Bisase, RD
The heart chakra is all about love, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and gratitude. The energy in this chakra allows us to accept things as they are, express gratitude, and practice loving detachment. Loving detachment means to let go and release all expectations. Basically, to “let go and let God”.
When it comes to our relationship with food, the three most important lessons from the heart chakra are acceptance, gratitude, and letting go. In a nutshell, healing heart chakra blockages lets us enjoy food guilt free. Let’s break down each lesson.
Acceptance
From the spiritual perspective, acceptance means to be okay with things as they are, and in doing so you begin to see and appreciate the beauty in all things. This includes seeing the beauty in your internal world as well as your external world. It’s a subtle yet very powerful trait to be able to fully love and accept every single part of yourself and others. This concept of acceptance shows up in our relationship with food by way of our self perception. When we see and accept ourselves as beautiful, lovable creatures our eating habits and the way we feed ourselves will reflect that. We will be more intentional to infuse loving energy into our meals.
Loving energy in meals is real and powerful. People will often say there’s no one who makes that one special dish the way their grandmother makes it. The reason for that is because grandma infuses her love into the food and that’s the special ingredient that sets her cooking apart and soothes your soul so deeply. Your grandmother sees you, her sweet little grandbaby, as the most precious, loveable person in the whole entire world. She loves and accepts you just the way you are. Now it’s time for you to see yourself in that same light and infuse that exact same loving grandmother energy into your food.
Here are some examples of what pouring loving energy into your meals looks like
Taking the time to eat your meals in a space that is clean, comfortable, and relaxing. This means, ideally, not eating in the same setting that you work or drive in (ie: not eating at the work desk or while driving in the car). Even if you’re not able to leave the work desk, you can at least close/turn off the computer and move your paperwork aside to make room for your food.
Taking the time to eat your meals and enjoying every moment of it as if you were on a date with yourself. Even if it’s just a 10 minute snack break, you can enjoy every bit of that little moment you have to nurture yourself.
“When we see and accept ourselves as beautiful, lovable creatures our eating habits and the way we feed ourselves will reflect that. ”
Gratitude
Having gratitude means to be thankful for everything- the good, the bad, and the ugly. In terms of spiritual growth and life lessons, gratitude typically comes after acceptance. But you don’t have to go through hardships to experience gratitude. It’s important to be thankful for the daily mundane things, and that includes eating. Many Black folks have probably heard this since they were a kid, but you gotta give thanks, or say grace (same thing), before you eat your food. It might seem like a superficial religious thing people only do at family dinners, but in fact practicing gratitude regularly is quite beneficial for your health.
Taking the time to express gratitude before a meal, whether it’s in the form of a short prayer or 1 sentence giving thanks to Source, helps to get the body out of fight or flight mode and into rest and digest mode. Fight or flight mode is the sympathetic nervous system which gets activated when we are high strung and stressed out. When our body is in this state digestion is not efficient and we are not bound to get the most benefit from our meals. In this state, blood flow to the digestive system is decreased and digestive functions are relegated to a lower priority. This results in food not moving as quickly or being absorbed as efficiently along the GI (gastrointestinal) tract. Rest and digest mode is the complete opposite. It’s the parasympathetic nervous system and this is when we are calm and relaxed. When our body is in this state digestion is much better. So, when we’re working hard at an intense task and then we go straight into lunch, and even continue to work while eating lunch, we’re truly not receiving the full benefit of our meal; neither from a scientific nor spiritual standpoint.
The lesson from the heart chakra is to slow down for a minute (seriously, minimum 1 minute and 1 deep breath is all it takes) and show some gratitude before diving into your food.
“It’s important to be thankful for the daily mundane things, and that includes eating.”
If you’re feeling stuck on what to say when giving thanks, here’s a short routine you can try
Take one big deep breath. Fill up your belly first, and then the chest– then finish with one big exhale
Say (either in your head or aloud) “Thank you [God, Source, Mother Earth, Universe, Allah, Jesus, etc] for this food I’m about to receive. Bless this food, it’s journey here, and bless my body to receive all of the nutrients”
Letting go (of expectations)
The letting go lesson is a bit related to the lesson of acceptance. The idea here is to let go of expectations. Thanks to diet culture, people consume certain foods with expectations to look a certain way. And they believe that when they look a certain way they will then feel a certain way. Fad diets are so alluring for that exact reason. Their method of delivery is different, but the message is the same across fad diets, and that is, “first you’ll lose weight, second you’ll look great, and thirdly once you look great you’ll finally start to feel great!”
That’s not really how it works. No single food, or any material object for that matter, has the ability to provide a long lasting effect of feeling great– it’s only temporary. The only way to achieve that lasting feeling of greatness is through self love and self acceptance. To let go means that you don’t expect a certain diet or food to yield a specific result and change the way you feel. Food is meant to nourish you, that’s it. It nourishes us both physically and emotionally, and that’s where the emotional honesty and intutive eating comes into play. You can read more about that in my other blog post about it here.
“To let go means that you don’t expect a certain diet or food to yield a specific result and change the way you feel.”
It’s important to let go of any thoughts in your head about eating a certain way in order to achieve the slim-thick, or whatever other trending, body type. Replace those thoughts with the simple thought of nourishing yourself and enjoying every moment of it.
If you liked this article, you’ll probably enjoy my free guide called “How to Eat Spiritually and Gain Food Freedom”. It’s both an audio book and e-book that can be downloaded for free. Get your copy today by clicking here.