From the perspective of Western religion in which many of us were raised, it can be hard to understand the second chakra without cultural baggage getting in the way. The second chakra, one of 7 holistic energy centers which rests in the low abdomen, is (unsurprisingly) related to sexuality. But it's also related to all things watery and flowing, such as emotions, pleasure, and our ability to respond fully to the emotional and physical abundance in which we live. In other words, this chakra is all about pleasure, satisfaction, and feeling like we deserve to experience all that is good in life.
The Christian religion doesn't have a clear message about this. I've been to some churches where people were dancing in the aisles and hugs were given freely, but there's also that stereotype of the stiff church where "looking good" is more important than truly belonging and accepting others, despite the messages of Jesus. And where, as we know from the movie "Footloose", dancing and showing off the body are considered to be a threat to our immortal soul. As a very sensual and beauty-oriented young teen raised in a Protestant church, I never felt that I could fully explore my spirituality there.
It was my craving for a spirituality that encompassed the sensual world which brought me to yoga. Since Westernized yoga is pretty widely recognized as being more Tantric than Vedic, I won't try to speak for the Vedic philosophy that is the 5,000-year-old root of real yoga. But what we have today, is a Westernized hatha yoga that makes a ton of space for sensual explorations of the body. Yoga studios offer a place for people to move in ways that are receptive to the body, rather than dominating it like traditional fitness does, and this allows us to experience sensuality in a way that's safe and conscious, and usually accompanied by good tunes.
Although it can be said that this "feel-good yoga" distracts from the real goal of spirituality, and that can certainly be true, I also think it can heal the wounds of the 2nd chakra, which, in my opinion, run deep and wide in our culture. One only has to look at the high rates of addiction to substances, pornography/ dysfunctional sex, sexual frigidity, and body image problems to see that there is a problem here, and it runs right through our collective second chakra. But understanding this chakra can help us heal.
How? Well, by balancing the second chakra, we can reach a balance between compulsive pleasure and total denial of the body that is experienced by, let's say, chronic dieters, or any of us who strive to eat, shop, and live ethically. By balancing the 2nd chakra we allow ourselves to feel more deeply, both physically and emotionally, and this lets us find satisfaction more easily in life. By reclaiming the right to pleasure, we shed so many things: our guilt and shame for our desires which we all have; the need to compulsively consume food, sex, or material wealth; and the fear of feeling our vulnerable need for belonging and intimacy, which we all have. Healing the second chakra allows us to fully embrace our vulnerability, as interdependent beings who crave touch, pleasure, and the good things in life. Instead of becoming stuck in the pursuit of pleasure, we can free ourselves to feel, experience, and finally to transcend.
Showing posts with label Chakras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chakras. Show all posts
Friday, May 2, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Yoga and Creativity
When I practice mindful movement, I align with my creativity.
By aligning with the creative force, I heal myself and my world.
When I started doing yoga, I was 24 years old, a
recent college grad waiting tables for a living. With my degree in English, I had trouble finding a better job in my small town. To make matters worse, I was having health issues related to celiac disease (undiagnosed at the time), so my physical and mental energy were at an all-time low. Yoga class was the
first exercise I had ever enjoyed. It combined music
and spirituality with an exercise style that was low-impact, calming, and intuitive. And,
it helped me reconcile my need for a self-created life with the physical limitations of my illness.
As a young adult on the verge of creating a life, I was torn between two extremes: a high level of creativity, and on the other hand, my unconscious belief that
life was hard and there was no room for the creative soul. As my celiac symptoms of fatigue and malnutrition
started to develop, life kept feeling harder. Over the next 8 years,
yoga gently helped me understand, once and for all, that... life is good. That it’s OK to want things,
to create them, and then to feel satisfied. Life was not, as I worried, a struggle with my lower self, as it threatened to
drag me into "dark cravings" for status, pleasure, and materialistic things. No... life was an invitation to tenderly
embrace those needs, thereby arriving at compassion, freedom, and satisfaction. Look, we
live on the most pleasurable planet in our solar system, full of green plants and flowing rivers. It’s not all wonderful, of but it’s certainly OK to focus on the parts of it that are, because in doing so, we find our passion for living.
Yoga has not helped me transcend my lower chakras; rather, it’s helped me meet my lower-chakra needs gracefully. Contrary to myself at 24, inspired but stunted, I now feel empowered to reach for my needs, whether it’s a cuddle with my
lover, an hour with my guitar, or a great job that pays well. And it’s not only self-serving things. My being also craves things like
knowledge, self-respect,
connection, and purpose. As “lower” needs are met, “higher” ones emerge. Yoga
helps me identify them, and simultaneously to realize they are not me. Some degree of healthy detachment is necessary in order to achieve satisfaction in life.
According to chakra theory, the 2nd chakra houses creativity. Its Sanskrit name translates to
“One’s own place”, and it holds our desire, creativity, satisfaction, and pleasure. The 2nd chakra
represents the need to
create a life tailored to our unique organism. Our own place. This place, which
can include our partner, friends, home and career, becomes a
jumping-off point for how we contribute to the world, and for our
spiritual development. All of this relies on the creative force within us.
Because I had such a difficult time claiming this need for
“my own place” in my 20’s, I have a good understanding of the part the 2nd chakra plays in spiritual growth. When I got into yoga, I knew I wanted a spiritual life. But I didn’t understand that having a lifestyle was also important, and in its absence, my spirituality withered. From age 24 to 26, I worked for minimum wage and
lived poor while studying yoga, reiki, and women’s health. While
my friends were establishing their careers, I was distancing myself from the world, and becoming pretty unhappy in the process. After
landing my first salaried job at 28, I allowed myself to explore my long-neglected
interest in fashion, and decorated my home the way I wanted. It was there, in the little brick cottage I rented, that I found “my own place” – amongst
the tigerlilies, wild strawberries, and long afternoons decorating the sun-dappled living room. It was there that I forgot my spirituality, and there I claimed it again, this time with my whole self. I made room for myself as a songwriter, fashionista, chocolate addict, and eventually, a wife to my husband. None of this made me any less interested in spiritual practice. As I fulfilled these yearnings, I felt free, alive, and satisfied.
Yoga also helped me stabilize my health. In a way, the body is also “one's own place”, since it is formed by the creative energy of prana. Yoga postures are designed to harmonize the energy body, which helps physical health as well. For me, this could not happen without mindfulness. Through realizing that my body is not me, I've awakened to my body as a creature: a needy creature, but still lovable! This makes me more willing to relax into my prana, bringing health and energy.
In Western culture, our relationship to the life force isn't ideal. We seem bent on taking in as much as we
can in terms of material goods, calories, and stimulation, while neglecting the need to care for bodies. While healthcare
professionals try to educate us about healthy habits, we struggle to maintain a desire to be healthy, constantly "falling off the wagon". I think this could all be rooted in our unhealthy attachment to the material world. Our obsession with the physical, external aspects of ourselves keeps our core insecurity at bay, but prevents us from really enjoying life. Yoga, like any mindful practice, helps us become aware of ourselves as creators. In the stillness that follows mindful movement, we find our being, which is a fountain of inner satisfaction. Then we can begin to create boldly. We can begin to consider,
not how we can ask more of the world, but what can we give? What do we want to see on this big canvas?
~
This piece relies on ideas from Joseph LePage in the Integrative Yoga Therapy (2004) Teacher Training Manual.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Healthy Activities for the Heart Chakra
I've been wanting to post some of the chakra healing tips I compiled for Chakra Yoga last year. And since it happens to be Valentine's Day, I thought I'd focus on the heart!
When I teach Chakra Yoga classes, I always have fun with this one because the heart is just a huge part of our daily existence, and plays an important role in the chakra system as well.. Basically, it's the connection between the lower chakras and the upper chakras, the place where self-interest meets the more transcendent aspects of equanimity, compassion, insight, vision, and one-ness. Until the lower chakra's needs are met, it is difficult to open the heart. But when the heart is open, it feeds the entire system.
- Backbends! Oooh yeah, a little Camel, or Reclining Butterfly, and you'll be bathing in heart prana.
- Triangle Pose - although it engages the whole body, Triangle relies on having an open chest, and gives you the feeling of radiating outward from your heart. If you feel like taking your stability up to the next level, float on up to balancing Half Moon, with the shoulders relaxed.
- Selfless giving to others.
- Receiving without guilt
- Honest communication
- Delicious food, candles and soft music relax the brain, opening you up for connection.
- Self-appreciation. Thank yourself for something you've done today.
- Express appreciation to loved ones; skip the complaints.
- Spices: cinnamon
- Essential oils: Rose, jasmine.
- Metta meditation or gratitude practice.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Chakras and Personal Power: naming and claiming relational needs
Like most people, you've probably heard of the 7 chakras - energy centers that connect to our physical, mental, and emotional selves. If not, this Anodea Judith website is a good primer. I was introduced to chakras in 2005 when I took the IYT 200-hour yoga teacher training. At the time I was a waitress, so the 2-week yoga intensive in the Pennsylvania mountains felt refreshing, to say the least. Our teachers taught us about the 5 koshas, or layers of being, that are affected by yoga practice. They taught us the 8 paths of yoga and how hatha yoga is about balancing energy through physical movement. And they taught us how the chakras are directly affected by yoga postures and techniques.
After the intensive, I had to teach a class for my internship, and I decided to base it around the chakras. Then in 2008, after several months of researching the chakras, I presented a Chakra Yoga series which ran for about a year. After taking a few years off to focus on my counseling career, I ran the class again from 2012-2013 at Lifesource Yoga. I also incorporated chakras into my mental health counseling with a few clients, since I understood the relationship between childhood development, psychology, and the chakras. For example, for a client who tended to neglect his/her physical health, we would explore early childhood experiences through the lens of the first chakra in order to normalize and conceptualize the experience.
Today I'm going to focus on how to use chakras as a vehicle for personal power. The very act of understanding your energy system is a step toward personal power. This is because chakras are an expression of our capacity to give to, and receive from the world.
Western psychology, in its 120 years or so, has had a huge task, which is undoing the myth of the individual and replacing it with healthy modes of relating. Since we live in a patriarchal society, masculinity is held up as a superior mode of being, and is defined by self-reliance and independence from relationship. Therefore, men and women who have relational needs (which is basically everyone) have been historically shamed and prompted to "grow up", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", or otherwise become independent from our need for external approval. While it is not a bad idea to be free from external approval - after all, this need can feel like a straitjacket - psychology has raised excellent questions, such as: "if one's developmental needs are not met, how can one become independent?" "How can a therapist, through transference, assist someone in meeting those developmental needs?" and "Should independence really be the gold standard of mental health?"
Furthermore, as a result of the emphasis on independence, there is a lack of knowledge of healthy interdependence, or relationship skills. What exactly is a healthy relationship? Psychology has been busy answering this question, especially since the 1970's, as seen in the huge explosion of self-help books on the topic. "Personal power", a concept from feminist psychology, is one way to answer the question. This kind of power has nothing to do with dominating/forcing your way through life, but rather, invites you to take full responsibility for your own feelings, needs and actions, as a path to success, fulfillment, and even social change.
The full implications of this are mind-boggling. Good thing for me, I'm just going to focus on its relationship aspect! Rather than expecting others to make us happy, which leads to fear, grasping, and control, with personal power we take responsibility for our needs and feelings. This doesn't mean we give up hope of others meeting our needs, it just means that we ask them to, rather than expect them to. And from this place of awareness without expectations, we feel more empowered, more whole.
Enter the chakras: your guide to your emotional, sexual, spiritual and physical needs. Each chakra is a center of both giving and receiving. The heart chakra is where we experience needing love; it is also where we experience feeling joyful and wanting to give. Sensations in the heart chakra of tightness or deadness may signify a need for love, since the need for love is one of the scariest things to feel (in our culture). Those who have the most satisfying relationships are often those who acknowledge their need for love just as well as they give it. In obvious ways, the same is true for the 1st chakra: when one's physical needs are met, one is more able to do physical work. As for the 2nd chakra, sexual energy flows in and out of it: by opening to pleasure, the energy increases, and we feel moved to give pleasure in return. Or, lower-chakra energy can be channeled into higher chakras, which is why we need holidays at the beach. :)
Core needs of each chakra
1st: safety, health. Sign of imbalance: anxiety, fatigue
2nd: pleasure Sign of imbalance: tension, anhedonia, addiction
3rd: mastery, challenge Sign of imbalance: low self-confidence, boredom, apathy
4th: love, connection Sign of imbalance: chest tightness, depression
5th: integration ("processing time"), purpose. Sign of imbalance: sore throat, impatience, overwhelm
6th: knowledge Sign of imbalance: assumptions, prejudices, pessimism
7th: spirituality Sign of imbalance: inaccurate perceptions of self, lack of faith
By understanding the needs associated with each chakra, you are essentially taking a giant first step toward personal power. You take responsibility for the fact that you have needs, rather than expecting others to read your mind, or give you permission to need. Unfortunately, because of the myth of the individual, the belief persists that having needs is somehow wrong, which makes it more difficult to claim personal power. I can't tell you how often this would come up in my counseling work with couples; and guys, I'm not blaming you for this, but it was often the men who lacked that sense of empowerment to get their needs met. Actually, I think this fact is largely responsible for the lack of emotional competency in men (which is evolving, of course): that men tend to be under a lot of pressure to not have needs. Whoever you are, and whatever your level of self-awareness, it is wonderful to remember that it's OK to have needs, and continue fine-tuning your ability to feel and name them. The more we grow in this capacity, the easier it will be to find a healthy interdependence between ourselves, the world, and the people we love.
After the intensive, I had to teach a class for my internship, and I decided to base it around the chakras. Then in 2008, after several months of researching the chakras, I presented a Chakra Yoga series which ran for about a year. After taking a few years off to focus on my counseling career, I ran the class again from 2012-2013 at Lifesource Yoga. I also incorporated chakras into my mental health counseling with a few clients, since I understood the relationship between childhood development, psychology, and the chakras. For example, for a client who tended to neglect his/her physical health, we would explore early childhood experiences through the lens of the first chakra in order to normalize and conceptualize the experience.
Today I'm going to focus on how to use chakras as a vehicle for personal power. The very act of understanding your energy system is a step toward personal power. This is because chakras are an expression of our capacity to give to, and receive from the world.
Western psychology, in its 120 years or so, has had a huge task, which is undoing the myth of the individual and replacing it with healthy modes of relating. Since we live in a patriarchal society, masculinity is held up as a superior mode of being, and is defined by self-reliance and independence from relationship. Therefore, men and women who have relational needs (which is basically everyone) have been historically shamed and prompted to "grow up", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", or otherwise become independent from our need for external approval. While it is not a bad idea to be free from external approval - after all, this need can feel like a straitjacket - psychology has raised excellent questions, such as: "if one's developmental needs are not met, how can one become independent?" "How can a therapist, through transference, assist someone in meeting those developmental needs?" and "Should independence really be the gold standard of mental health?"
Furthermore, as a result of the emphasis on independence, there is a lack of knowledge of healthy interdependence, or relationship skills. What exactly is a healthy relationship? Psychology has been busy answering this question, especially since the 1970's, as seen in the huge explosion of self-help books on the topic. "Personal power", a concept from feminist psychology, is one way to answer the question. This kind of power has nothing to do with dominating/forcing your way through life, but rather, invites you to take full responsibility for your own feelings, needs and actions, as a path to success, fulfillment, and even social change.
The full implications of this are mind-boggling. Good thing for me, I'm just going to focus on its relationship aspect! Rather than expecting others to make us happy, which leads to fear, grasping, and control, with personal power we take responsibility for our needs and feelings. This doesn't mean we give up hope of others meeting our needs, it just means that we ask them to, rather than expect them to. And from this place of awareness without expectations, we feel more empowered, more whole.
Enter the chakras: your guide to your emotional, sexual, spiritual and physical needs. Each chakra is a center of both giving and receiving. The heart chakra is where we experience needing love; it is also where we experience feeling joyful and wanting to give. Sensations in the heart chakra of tightness or deadness may signify a need for love, since the need for love is one of the scariest things to feel (in our culture). Those who have the most satisfying relationships are often those who acknowledge their need for love just as well as they give it. In obvious ways, the same is true for the 1st chakra: when one's physical needs are met, one is more able to do physical work. As for the 2nd chakra, sexual energy flows in and out of it: by opening to pleasure, the energy increases, and we feel moved to give pleasure in return. Or, lower-chakra energy can be channeled into higher chakras, which is why we need holidays at the beach. :)
Core needs of each chakra
1st: safety, health. Sign of imbalance: anxiety, fatigue
2nd: pleasure Sign of imbalance: tension, anhedonia, addiction
3rd: mastery, challenge Sign of imbalance: low self-confidence, boredom, apathy
4th: love, connection Sign of imbalance: chest tightness, depression
5th: integration ("processing time"), purpose. Sign of imbalance: sore throat, impatience, overwhelm
6th: knowledge Sign of imbalance: assumptions, prejudices, pessimism
7th: spirituality Sign of imbalance: inaccurate perceptions of self, lack of faith
By understanding the needs associated with each chakra, you are essentially taking a giant first step toward personal power. You take responsibility for the fact that you have needs, rather than expecting others to read your mind, or give you permission to need. Unfortunately, because of the myth of the individual, the belief persists that having needs is somehow wrong, which makes it more difficult to claim personal power. I can't tell you how often this would come up in my counseling work with couples; and guys, I'm not blaming you for this, but it was often the men who lacked that sense of empowerment to get their needs met. Actually, I think this fact is largely responsible for the lack of emotional competency in men (which is evolving, of course): that men tend to be under a lot of pressure to not have needs. Whoever you are, and whatever your level of self-awareness, it is wonderful to remember that it's OK to have needs, and continue fine-tuning your ability to feel and name them. The more we grow in this capacity, the easier it will be to find a healthy interdependence between ourselves, the world, and the people we love.
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