How Does Love Affect Us Emotionally & Mentally?
Pure love is an amazing thing to experience. It fosters feelings of warmth, safety, and security, supporting our happiness and overall mental health. Emotions like compassion, empathy, joy, and affection stem from love and connects us positively to others, strengthening our sense of identity and belonging. Whether within family, relationships, or broader communities, love is integral to the development of trust and friendship and helps us build powerful bonds that can support us through a whole lifetime. Without love, the world would feel like a very, cold place indeed.
Modern psychology has a profound understanding of the importance of love for humans, especially in our formative years when we are learning about the world & developing our neural pathways. Experiences of love set up our inner mental map that is linked with our nervous system & forges patterns of behaviour that guide us throughout our life. Positive demonstrations of love allow us to grow into secure, well-adjusted adults while dysfunctional experiences can create deep emotional issues & unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Physical Impacts
When we experience love, oxytocin (the ‘cuddle’ chemical) is released into our blood stream, which lowers blood pressure and anxiety, reduces the stress chemical cortisol, and shifts the body from 'fight or flight' to 'rest and digest'. This has a calming effect and makes us feel safe. Soothing, physical touch, such as reflexology or massage, also triggers the same response. Love also releases endorphins – the natural painkillers that contribute to happiness and emotional elevation. Conversely, losing love can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, anger, depression, insecurity, and illness, with grief and bereavement being especially intense.
The Frequency Of Love
Dr. David R. Hawkins (1927–2012) was an American psychiatrist, physician, researcher, and spiritual teacher best known for his writings on consciousness (check out his books on Amazon). He created the widely recognized 'Map Of Consciousness,' a theory that assigns human emotions a place on a logarithmic scale according to their frequency .
In the picture below, I have adapted his concept to show various human emotions and the corresponding frequencies or 'outputs' they represent. Notice how high the frequency of love is!
The lower half represents emotional states with low frequency output linked to restrictive behaviours. Once you reach courage, emotions become more expansive and higher in frequency. Comparing the frequency number of joy and shame shows emotions fluctuate hugely, influencing us and our environment. Experiencing lower emotions is natural, but if not addressed constructively, they can remain stuck in our psyche forming barriers to love and the higher frequencies.
Understanding these concepts is important because our current environment is increasingly governed by fear, which contributes to widespread negativity. Exposure to alarming content in the media or online can perpetuate low energy levels, fostering anxiety and worry among individuals. This cycle of sharing distressing information feeds on itself. It has the potential to leave us believing that there is nothing good happening anywhere, that only division, violence, despair etc remains which further pulls us downwards until we are all sending out this low energy signal and feeling hopeless.
The antidote is to remember that love exists everywhere, and to keep your loving vibration high, emanating outwardly. Don’t get pulled into a mindset of believing that love and all the positivity it brings no longer exists. It does.
The Invisible Side of Love
When you work with energy healing as I do, there is a whole other side to love that reveals itself. I literally ‘see’ the energy of love, perceived within the chakra system and auric field, which I will explain below and how it links to the heart chakra.
The Chakra System
The Chakra System, rooted in ancient Indian spiritual and yogic traditions, holds that humans have seven main chakras—energy centres (vortexes)- located at specific points along a vertical line through the body as follows:
- Crown (top of head) Sahasrara
- Third Eye (centre of forehead) Ajna
- Throat (base of neck) Vishuddha
- Heart (centre of the chest) Anahata
- Solar Plexus (upper abdomen) Manipura
- Sacral (lower abdomen) Svadhisthana
- Root (base of spine) Muladhara
(The words in Italic above are the ancient Sanskrit names for each chakra).
Energy, or 'prana,' (your vital life force) enters via the crown, moves down through the chakras, and exits through the feet into the earth. This process is closely tied to breathing; grounding techniques often involve mindfully slowing your breath to shift energy from the over busy brain & refocus yourself back into the body for calmness.
Each chakra has a unique colour and links to certain body regions and psychological traits. Depending on our emotional state & life experiences, chakras can be healthy or blocked, overactive or underactive, balanced or imbalanced, and their colours become less vibrant when in a negative state.
The flow of energy within the body may impact physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. For instance, individuals who consistently suppress their opinions or struggle to articulate their thoughts might experience blockages in the throat chakra. Such interruptions can potentially result in regional health issues, including recurring sore throat, ear pain, or neck discomfort, as inhibited energy may manifest through physical symptoms.
The Aura
Everything in the universe consists of energy, including trees, animals, and rocks, each vibrating at a molecular level. Humans have an aura—an electromagnetic field emitting emotional signals—which others subconsciously sense. If we could all see the aura with the naked eye (some people can, including myself when I work with reiki!) you would be able to tell someone’s emotional state or intention through the colours being displayed and you would no longer dismiss that ‘gut feeling’ you have about someone as being your imagination.
Experiencing a joyous atmosphere, like at music festivals, lets you feel the crowd's frequency of happiness. Similarly, you can sense when something is wrong just by entering a room (think shared office space?!) because of how it feels to you. These subtle vibes are part of the invisible energy system we all share.
The Heart Chakra (Anahata)
Now to the love part. The Heart Chakra, the fourth chakra located in the centre of the chest, is associated with emotions of compassion, empathy, unconditional love, joy and forgiveness. Have you ever noticed that people often subconsciously place a hand over this area during intense feelings? When balanced and open, with love flowing freely in and out it supports positive relationships with ourself and others.
When love is absent or you are grieving, hurt or emotionally damaged the heart chakra may become blocked. Trauma impacts this chakra and can result in depression, jealousy, isolation, and self-loathing. Building walls for self-protection often leads to further isolation and missed opportunities, unlike healthy boundaries, which help you assert your needs and maintain well-being.
Many people avoid love because they think it has the capacity to hurt them. This is not true. Love itself can only ever be love. It is the loss of love or the damage to a love connection that causes the other emotions to manifest. Grief is an unbearable state that takes a long time to recover from. But it is not love. It is grief, with its own name, frequency and vibration.
One of the purest loving connections that we may experience is with our dearly loved pets. People often say that this feels like ‘unconditional love’ and animals do have a very pure emotional frequency that they emit. Our bonds with them tend to be far more honest and uncomplicated than with other humans – and the love flows freely back and forth between you and them, with your heart chakra and theirs fully open. (Yes! Animals have a chakra system too, but it is slightly different to ours!)
Empaths & Healing Personality Types
Empathic and highly sensitive people often have open or enlarged heart chakras, which can lead them to help others excessively and risk burnout or being exploited. Those working in healing/caring professions often have an ‘open heart’ & people will gravitate towards them as the loving frequency being emitted feels so comforting! These types of people also find cruelty and injustice of any kind hard to cope with and often want to protect those who are vulnerable - but they must protect their own energy too and give some of that phenomenal love back to themselves.
If this is you - it's important to set boundaries, take time for yourself, and monitor your energy balance.
Reiki Healing - How Love Looks To Me
When I work with reiki on a client, I am directly accessing their auric field & chakra system that contains all the energetic fingerprints of their human experience – past & present. I literally see colours around the body in my mind’s eye.
Emotional scars are shown to me as darker colours & I can feel the density of the energy in that area - sometimes it is like putting my hands through treacle & may be a mix of greys & browns. Anxiety or feeling trapped often looks like grey smoke around the body and I can feel a sense of not being able to breath properly. An area of profound emotional damage or trauma presents as a purpley red - much like the colour of a heavy bruise.
The energy I channel to begin unblocking & healing these imbalances often presents as a very bright colour or white, gold or silver. But one frequency/colour that comes through a lot is the gift of pure love being channelled into the chakras. This always appears as the most beautiful shade of soft pink, sometimes mixed with lilac, forming a light, fluffy cloud around the client. It conveys a feeling of deep, nurturing, unconditional, mother love and is also cleansing and calming.
The vibration I experience is profound – it feels like total safety – and as if I have been lifted off the floor, it is so light. As the reiki energy moves through the auric field & chakra system, it will gently gravitate to the areas where it is needed, to begin rebalancing the client’s energy.
Reiki is a non-invasive treatment (people remain clothed) and I work away from the body occasionally lightly touching the client where it is needed. It is a deeply relaxing experience and people often feel emotionally lighter afterwards and can experience a sense of ‘letting go’ and a release of heavy energy they have been carrying. If you have any questions on anything in this blog or would like to find out more or book a reiki treatment, please do get in touch with me – I would love to hear from you.
Michelle x