All emotion is experienced through the heart, not just love and joy and peace but fear and jealousy and vengeance too. Yes emotion settles in other places in your body but its portal is the heart.

All trauma occurs from a reactionary emotion to an unpleasant event. Thus that reactionary emotion allows the trauma to enter your energetic stream through the heart. To reverse this trauma, healing must come from the heart. The heart is a transmuter. The heart turns unpleasant emotion back into love, the base emotion of homeostasis in the human body. No amount of ritual, spiritual study, forgiveness candles, or sweat lodges can release your trauma without going through the heart and feeling the feelings that got locked away in your body when the trauma occurred. Your heart will feel the feelings, as horrible as it may feel, and transmute and release them back into the ether as love.