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.

How to Optimize your Hormone Cycle

So, yeah, this is for the ladies: Part 3 of a series on the female hormone cycle. 

Step 1. Notice changes in your cycle. Here are some suggestions:

1. Use your calendar. I’ve been charting my periods on my home calendar for years. I also chart ovulation, since that is a good indicator of when exactly my period will come (12-14 days later, for almost everyone). Also I feel like ovulation is kind of a special occasion, because it tells me I’m capable of creating life.

http://www.wikihow.com/Know-When-You-Are-Ovulating

2. Chart your cycles. Heard that one before, eh? Might be ‘cause it’s a good idea. But you don’t have to use it just to for fertility, as is commonly seen in the media. You can make a home-made calendar just for charting your moods, dreams, cravings, and other changes through your hormone cycle. Or, you can use an electronic calendar on gmail, phone/tablet, or computer.

3. Create a word processor document for each phase of the cycle: “Menstrual”, “follicular”, “ovulation” and “luteal/pre-menstrual” If you don't like the way these sound, you can use other names. I’ve heard the menstrual phase called “moontime”, “bleeding”, or you could try something more playful: “Aunt Flo’s visit- remember to make brownies!”. Use the word documents to keep track of changes in your mood, dreams, food cravings, or whatever you want in each phase. You can look back on these when you need inspiration, or use it to keep track of emotional and physical symptoms/changes.  

Step 2: Optimize your life based on what you notice. 

Once you start noticing how you’re feeling, what foods and activities you crave, during each phase, the next logical step is to optimize your life so you can do those things. As we know, life runs smoothly when we do the things our body/energy systems naturally ask of us. (The asking, of course, can be anything from a whisper to a furious kick!)

Physically, Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom  (1998) has some marvelous tips for using diet and exercise to regulate hormones and alleviate cycle discomfort. (I highly recommend dropping the $18 for this book; it has been a resource to me for 12 years, and it clearly explains the mind-body connection for women.) Once you begin to learn what foods and herbs help alleviate cramps, PMS, or other imbalances for you, you can easily do an “elimination diet” type experiment. For example, in the book, Dr. Northrup recommends eliminating red meat and egg yolks for cramps, and supplementing with calcium-rich foods. For fatigue during menstruation, you can see if supplementing with iron-rich foods might help, or if your system just needs rest.

Emotionally, there are as many ways for the hormone system to interact with your neurobiology as there are fertile women in the world. This is why it is crucial for you to familiarize yourself with the language of your unique hormone cycle. When you begin to ask your body what it needs, instead of telling it what it should do for you, you will unlock your body's energy. You may find hidden talents that you never knew you had. Your relationships will almost certainly improve.

You may find this process brings up strong emotions of fear, anger, or sadness that you didn't know were there. As women, our relationship with our bodies may be tainted with cultural beliefs about weakness, "dirtiness", or shame. Lara Owen's (1993) book Her Blood is Gold: Awakening to the Wisdom of Menstruation is a powerful resource for looking at those beliefs, exploring healthier alternatives, and honoring your body's own wisdom. If you find this a difficult process, it is certainly OK to seek professional counseling, support groups, or simply reach out to female friends. The good news is that more and more of us are healing and our wisdom and support is popping up everywhere. Now is the time for women to heal; now is the time for us to blossom. 

I’ll be posting ideas for optimizing each phase of the cycle. As for now, reader, I’ll leave you to your wild and precious imagination.  :)

Energies of the Female Hormone Cycle

This is part 2 of a series of posts designed to help you, ladies, make the most of your cycle. We don’t hear much about this. Usually it’s in the context of fertility planning, or managing the “symptoms” of menstruation with various products. We use painkillers, caffeine, and clever self-trickery to pretend that we are always the same. But we’re not. We have an ever-changing palette of hormonal “colors”, which is a good thing, if we know how to use them.

A few posts back I mentioned Alisa Vitti’s (2011) video, “Loving your lady parts as a path to success, power, and global change.” This isn’t the only resource for understanding your hormone cycle. I also highly recommend Dr. Christiane Northrup’s book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom (1998), which I rely on below for information on the hormonal aspects, as well as the concept of a creative cycle being expressed through ovulation, premenstrual processing, and menstrual renewal. Finding this true for me, I simply extended the metaphor to include the 4 seasons. Below, you'll find the energies and hormones present in each phase, with tips on how to maximize them. However, it’s your body’s wisdom that will be your best guide.

(Medical literature typically identifies the follicular phase (high-estrogen) as Week I. However, since menstruation correlates with winter/rebirth, I find it appropriate to begin with menstruation, so I'm taking the liberty to present it this way.This will be a change from earlier posts.)

I: Menstruation

Hormones: None. The left and right brain communicate well during this time.

Energy: Feminine.

Life cycle: Birth/Infancy, Winter.

Ideal activities: Rest, dreaming, prayer and meditation, nurturing activities (baths, cuddling), right-brain activities (brainstorming, improvisation).

II: Follicular Phase. Beginning on the 4^th-8^thday after your period starts, and lasting ~7 days, this is when your hormones rev up again. You may feel more energetic and more interested in socializing, work, and sex.

Reproductive hormones: Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteal hormone (LH), estrogen.

Energy: masculine, forward-moving, 3^rd chakra.

Life cycle: Adolescence (formation of identity and trying new things), spring (building and preparing for reproduction/creativity).

Ideal activities: Reminiscing about the past, bonding with partners and close friends, gathering information, planning.

III: Ovulatory Phase. The week in which you ovulate, this is a time of high energy and communication power. According to Alisa Vitti, “you are like a magnet” - can you relate?? 

Hormones: Having peaked just before the egg is released, your estrogen, FSH and LH start to decline. Progesterone starts to rise in their place.
Energy: Feminine, connecting, heart chakra.

Life cycle: Adult, Summer: Seeing multiple perspectives, having an instinct to produce, create, and nurture.

Ideal activities: Having difficult conversations, asking for things, being social, work that requires connecting the dots, creative projects.  

IV: Luteal Phase.

Hormones: Progesterone peaks about 7 days before menstruation, then begins to decline.

Energy: Masculine/feminine balance; 5^th and 6^th chakra.

Life cycle: Elderly, Winter: Possessing wisdom earned through experience; “composting” the past in order to aid the next cycle's growth. 

Ideal activities: Touching up/finishing projects; Presenting work/creative projects to others; Giving and receiving feedback; Processing areas for improvement in work or personal life; Expressing needs that have not been met, or gratitude if they have. 

See my next post for how to optimize your life based on your unique cycle.

"Why do I feel so...?" Your body may have the answer.

I've been trying to think of how to explain what this blog is about, to sort of lay it out for you. As I was writing my last post about PMS and girl-hormones, the phrase "Why do I feel so..." seemed to encapsulate my frustration regarding my cycle. As girls, we are basically told, "So, you're about to have this thing that's going to make you crabby, tired, and possibly in-pain for the next 35 years of your life. You won't be able to do much about it, and you won't really know why, but, er, welcome to womanhood!" In a way, this describes the experience of being human, too.

As a woman, my hormones have affected my life profoundly. But by understanding the different aspects of the cycle, and going with my body's messages, I found relief from what once were "symptoms". Anxiety became creativity; fatigue became deep rest and intuition. No longer a burden, my hormones are now an asset to me. I want to share with other women how I got here, as well as new research that explains what's going on with us, so we can become radiant and empowered in our bodies.

Other aspects of the brain-body connection apply to all, of course. Neurologists are starting to discover mechanisms that actually connect the brain to the body: deep breathing, mindfulness, gut flora, and sexual health are being revealed as superhighways to well-being. The question, "why do I feel so...?", is starting to be answered. Whether you're looking for answers to this question, or just practical ways to enhance your mind-body connection, you'll find some of those answers here (for starters, check the links section)!

Chakras are an interesting topic, too. My training at IYT taught me about the energy body and how to use yoga poses, breath, and visualizations to balance the chakras. Chakras are energy centers along the spine that connect the physical, emotional, and energetic aspects of us. You can think of them as transformers, which transfer energy between thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and physical form. Chakras are a powerful way to create health through any number of means, and once understood, provide another answer to the question, "why do I feel so....?"

The body has a language, and science is starting to corroborate what many of us know intuitively: that the body speaks to the mind, and the mind to the body. With this knowledge, the possibilities for attaining health are set to multiply. For example, most serotonin is stored in the gut, and therefore, deep breathing stimulates the release of serotonin, which makes you feel calm. Women are likely to feel more creative when they have a good sex life, according to Naomi Wolf (2012). These are just some of the ideas that inspire me to improve my my total well-being. I hope you'll join me!

Hormone Cycles: girls' guide to happy and powerful living

So this is a blog about the mind-body connection, about living well in a truly embodied way. If you're a woman, your hormone cycles can be a powerful gateway toward harmony between body and mind. Why? because the 4 phases - menstruation, follicular phase, ovulation, and the luteal phase - all have a distinct effect on how your brain works. And those effects can work for you or against you, depending on how well you know yourself and how willing you are to heed your body's wisdom.

As a woman, I've been waiting for science to clue into women's cyclical wisdom for years. In 2002, I was a junior in college, and had gotten my hands on Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, a big book by Dr. Christiane Northrup about women's health. Northrup (1998) explained how diet, lifestyle, and beliefs can affect female conditions like PMS, all the way on up to ovarian cancer. A PMS sufferer at the time, I grasped onto the idea that living more in harmony with my hormonal cycles could alleviate my moodiness. And you know what? It worked, like a charm. Since then I have been providing myself time to reflect, meditate, be creative, or whatever-I-feel-like (within reason) during the week before and the week of my period, and have come to experience these times as a resource, rather than a burden to me.

I am completely dumbfounded by the fact that the menstrual cycle (more accurately, and henceforth known as, the "hormone cycle"), continues to be an area of mystery, awkwardness, and taboo. That is, I find it dumb - dim-witted, nonsensical, and illogical - that this part of women's lives should be considered off-limits today. Which is why you never hear this:

"Hi yes Sally, I won't be coming in today, I'm not feeling well."
"Oh, that's too bad. What's wrong?"
"Got cramps, and feeling emotionally sensitive and in need of quiet. You know how it is, Sally!"
"Haha, yes of course dear. We'll see you in 3-4 days."

There's the 2nd-wave feminist approach that menstruation is merely a physical process, so women should gladly use pills and products to keep themselves in the game 24/7. But with science now showing variations in brain morphology and chemistry during the cycle, it's hard to deny that for many women, the menstrual cycle is a bio-psychological-spiritual phenomenon that truly affects their lives.

So it was with delight, but not much surprise, that I finally saw Alisa Vitti's (2011) Ted Talk, "Loving Your Lady Parts as a Path to Success, power & global change", in which she laid out the neurobiology the 4 phases of the hormone cycle. They are:
1) Follicular: with increased access to creative energy, a good time for starting projects;
2) Ovulatory: with hot communication skills;
3) Luteal: with an eye for detail; and
4) Menstrual: with increased connection between left and right brain, the best time for reflection.

I've been feelin' and writing about this for years. I will say that my own mental/emotional cycle doesn't exactly follow Vitti's model; for example, my follicular phase can feel more preparatory than all-out creative. All women have their unique version of this cycle. Vitti's point, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is that following the "blueprint" of your individual cycle can be a path to health, happiness and success. By listening to your body's regularly timed messages, women can discover a treasure trove of creative wisdom, power, and energy. Click next for tips on using the energy of each phase!

Try a Little Tenderness: protecting what's vulnerable

In my last post, I talked a good deal about how we handle our emotional vulnerabilities in public. It reminded me of this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:
"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members."

This sentiment can be interpreted in many ways, but as a mental health professional, my mind immediately goes to those who are emotionally sensitive. After all, although emotions can give a lot of power when directed toward a clear purpose, they can also impair our functioning, the extreme of which would be mental illness. I find this a fascinating topic in a world which is still, in many ways, afraid of emotionality. As I mentioned last week, people see emotions as potentially destructive, and because they fear that, they clamp down on emotional expression. However, the avoidance of emotions can cause just as much damage as their careless expression. One of the ways it does this is by weakening the emotional self, to the extent that we may carry wounds we're not even aware of.

As a counselor, I learned about inner child work, which recognizes that even as adults, we carry parts of our younger selves with us. It's really not such a stretch; if you try to remember something from your childhood, you may feel yourself catapulted back into those same feelings, as if you were there all over again. Who we are today is a result of our brain building, layer by layer, over what we experienced as children, and the reinforced habits we learned as children, some of which are embedded more deeply than others. For my clients who had beliefs that they couldn't seem to change, I'd help them go back to when the beliefs were installed, and we would travel through childhood scenes, facing old wounds, adding reassurances to soothe and correct. The process was painful, and we didn't always see it through, but if nothing else, it helped them achieve an important feat: they understood and accepted their most vulnerable places.

It is, after all, the vulnerable places from which we lash out and hurt others. It's the vulnerable places which become too sensitized, get overwhelmed, and cause us to withdraw, missing out on opportunities to connect and be supported, missing opportunities to participate. As a songwriter, I'm all too familiar with this: having begun a campaign to put my music out to the world, I would suddenly feel overwhelmed with the idea of revealing my deepest feelings to strangers; I would withdraw completely, "take a break" from performing, and even stop playing my guitar for months at a time. I often think to myself that I should never give up music, because after all, it's a gift from God, and even if I'm not sharing it, I still have a right to enjoy it for myself. Even when the memories of perceived rejection and hyper-sensitivity get mixed up with playing, I should still play until I've gotten through it, let the music take me back to my soul. And yet, sometimes I don't.

I recently had an interaction with a musician who was putting together a song list for a musical program. As part of the organizing committee, I wrote an email to him that some changes were needed to the songs. He responded to my email saying artistic programming was a sensitive and personal topic and that he would prefer to talk to another committee member about it. Obviously he was offended, and I was offended too, though I wasn't sure why. Beyond all the judgments that spewed from my head, it came down to this: he didn't think I understand artistic sensitivity, when in fact I understood all too well.

Artists, writers, musicians, visionaries, emotional people... we all have a higher dose of emotional sensitivity than average, but it is only a liability as long as we treat it that way. In fact, emotional sensitivity is a kind of  power, almost like another sense. As Elaine Aron points out in The Highly Sensitive Person, sensitive people often pick up on things that other people don't. (1997, pp10-11.) But like any sense, it needs to be focused in order to be used. If we let our emotionality run rampant, we could find ourselves reacting to things unworthy of our attention, or neglecting some needs in favor of others; if we repress it, we miss out on the heart-wisdom and gut-wisdom that could bring real satisfaction to our lives. This may sound obvious, but it's occurring at infinite levels in the interaction between life and self, and the process of negotiating with our emotions is a never-ending journey. Everyone has a "weak link" in their personality, from an angry side to a tendency to withdraw or become selfish when challenged. Usually the weak link is what we're LEAST aware of, which overtakes us when we're feeling the worst.

The typical response to the inner weak link, in our society, is to eradicate it. Only completely removing the weak link will produce a feeling of security and confidence in oneself. The problem with this is that it's a negative strategy. By focusing on the problem not being there, you merely increase its power, because 1) you are ignorant of the way it works, and 2) by avoiding it, you increase the fear-based energy it already has. Consider the character "Gollum" in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. When treated with respect and kindness, Gollum's desire to be helpful increases. When treated with suspicion and held at arm's length, he becomes more deceptive and violent. Gollum is a wonderful metaphor for the "shadow side", that part of our inner child which is fear-based, because he never goes away (and neither does the inner child), he is fearful and selfish, and above all he wants to be accepted.

The inner child has positive aspects too, but it's this fearful, vulnerable side that can have the most power if left unattended. This is because the brain views protecting us from threats as more important than seeking positive experiences. Only when we feel safe from threat are we able to access the more positive, creative, forward-thinking, and unselfish sides of ourselves. In other words, by protecting what's vulnerable - being willing to know it, understand it, accept it, and focus it toward something positive - we become strong, supple, and more able to handle whatever life brings.

When I used to teach domestic violence offenders about how to handle conflicts with their wives, it was shocking how often they were totally unaware of what they were feeling during the last argument. It was as if, in times of stress, they became cut off from the feeling parts of themselves, and in retrospect could only recount what they thought about the situation. As they recounted the arguments, it was common that the wife had become more agitated as the argument went along, a fact which was told by the men in an incredulous tone, sort of like, "you see how unreasonable she is?" I helped them to understand that their unrelenting adherence to "logic", which they hoped would win the argument, was the very thing that spiraled it out of control. Then I would teach the basic skills of expressing feelings using "I" statements. Some of the men used these skills with success, but others struggled to put them into practice even after 10 to 15 weeks. Given the simplicity of the skills, it was clear to me there must be an underlying belief system getting in the way. One of those beliefs was: "You can't win an argument with feelings." Another one was, "Feelings make you weak." (Incidentally, these beliefs exist in popular culture aimed toward boys and men, which, according to Jackson Katz, is a major factor in male violence.) This led the men to not only be obsessed with "winning" the argument and appearing superior, but to be habitually unaware of their own feelings, and unable to empathize with their wives. When you think about how difficult life would be if taking these qualities to the extreme, it shows the importance of valuing the "vulnerable" in us as a path to true strength.

Conversation with a friend

I said, what sort of path is that to walk, up there?

Don’t you think it limits your vision, seeing only what you see, walking only how you go?

You said: what sort of way is that you walk? Don’t you know what I know?

Of course, friend – you don’t think so? Here’s a mere sprinkling of my vast knowledge...

If you did, you would understand me.

You think I know nothing. How wrong you are.

Let me try again.

I think I know what you know. But perhaps I am mistaken. Would you teach me?

Perhaps. Other people walk my way too. And I can tell the ones who don’t understand.   

I said, I’m from barren lands that made me old before my time. I had to learn to be young again. To speak in the voice of my body, my heart. I fear those who do not know my language. I fear the barren paths of abstention. I fear the loneliness of those who hold themselves apart.  

I want very much to be alive, and also wise.

I want the same, my friend. I can see those barren lands, and their desolation. I see how they lie close to overgrowth and poor attention. I only seek to clear the weeds. These weeds grow relentlessly, and it takes a sharp eye to discern.

I’ve heard of this, I said, this path. It’s just… I fear for you. That you’ll forget to take care of the good garden, while you’re clearing away what you think is overgrowth.

But I must eat as well, you said. And I do. I fear for those who take in whatever they see, without discernment.

I see the garden, and the junkyard, and the wasteland. I also see the sky, where you take refuge. You long to see clearly, I understand this. But I choose to stay in the garden, to make sure what we do and how we love becomes wholesome.

It’s good we each have own way. I can see you now, you know. We’re actually not so far apart.  

I know. I see you too.