Open up your heart chakra

By: Kiki Athanas, Calii Love’s In-House Wellness Expert & Founder of Me by Kiki™

For the summer of love, we’re all about supporting the heart chakra with nourishing green foods. We love using bright and phytochemical-rich ingredients because generally speaking, green foods are detoxifying, deodorizing, and neutralizing.

To put it simply, foods – in particular those that are the same colours as the chakra, have vibrations that can activate or balance your chakras. Since the heart chakra is green, it makes sense that we turn to green foods. The colour of food itself also makes perfect sense in terms of providing clues as to the benefits they provide – yay for intuitive feels!

Let’s think about GREEN for a moment…it’s the most abundant colour in nature! Forests purify our air, and in the ocean phytoplankton purifies our oceans – and guess what?! It does the same thing for our bodies! Generally speaking, green foods are detoxifying, deodorizing, and neutralizing.

Getting back to the chakras now, while the first three chakras are fed by fats, carbs, and protein, the heart chakra is most nourishing by phytochemicals – chemical compounds produced by plants. These substances are obviously most abundant in green vegetables, but they are also commonly found in fruits, nuts, legumes and grains. It is thought that the uplifting energy brought about by dark leafy greens, for example, helps with our expansion, growth and opening up of ourselves – like the feeling of love and the openness to give of ourselves.

Some of my favourite green vegetables include:

• Bitter greens like dandelion, mustard greens, and arugula –> good for digestion and overall feeling of being satisfied after a meal (we really don’t get enough of the bitter taste in the North American diet!).
• Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Brussel sprouts and cauliflower –> great for hormone balancing.
• Microgreens like pea shoots and sunflower sprouts –> “tiny versions” of parent plants with four times the nutrients.

Green fruits fit the bill too – I like kiwis, green apples, green grapes, pears…and of course – avocados!

Taking it up a notch, green superfoods obviously pack an additional nutritional punch! My go-to smoothie boosters include:

• Moringa (also makes a great face mask – get the recipe here).
• Spirulina – is a blue green algae…so it’s also got the BEST EVER colour it in – BLUE! Blue foods help with stem cell regeneration and feed our creativity, so blue-green combos are STELLAR!
• Wheatgrass – a great form of living chlorophyll.
• Matcha powder – my preferred form of caffeine as it provides you with an energetic form of “zen” that releases in a stable fashion throughout the day.

Don’t forget about herbs too! My favourites this summer have been mint because you basically can’t kill that strong and sturdy plant, and of course sage to make dried bundles to burn for cleansing and meditation.

Last but not least, it’s worth mentioning that it’s best to opt for raw green foods when possible, and my tips on keeping it fun and fresh (& RAW) are as follows…

• Smoothie bowls are your friend (here’s a collection that should get you off the ground running)
• Get yourself a spiralizer (and make delicious meals like this)
• “Dehydrated” foods still totally count as raw! Just make sure the food isn’t heated over 104-118°F and you’re all clear!

Incorporate SEAWEEDS into your diet! They’re a great wild food, and make for an awesome travel snack – safe at room temperature and a super nutrient-dense “salt gum” munchie!