Svadistana Chakra

Last week we began exploring the seven energy centers known as the Chakras. This week, we've been working with the second chakra, which in Sanskrit is called the Svadistana or sacral chakra.

These seven chakras or spinning wheels of energy, run from the base of our spine to the crown of our head. When we experience our connection to them we deepen our sense of an inherent relationship to all that's around and within us. Each chakra represents varying aspects of ourselves from the most physical to the most ethereal.

Water energy is associated with the sacral chakra and is located about two finger widths distance below our navel. This center is about fluidity, empathy, femininity, our connection to sensual energy and emotions. It's about how we form and maintain relationships. It has the color of vibrant luminous orange and the seed (bija) mantra of VAM. Throughout the week during classes, we have been chanting vam which, when broken down, the "V" sound buzzes at the lips, the "A" sound opens the throat/chest and the "M" (as in m-m good) hums throughout the body and skull. When we chant the seed sound, it's as though we are plucking the D-note string of a violin or guitar that begins to vibrate. This vibration awakens and opens the energy of the chakra, helping us to connect to it more fully. The most powerful tool we have through chanting this sound is through our own voice. When we chant it alone or in groups and connect to the sound current,  we awaken our own energy and it has the potential to shift.

If we think about the energy of water it's all about fluidity. When the water in a mountain brook takes its downhill journey and comes across a rock, it doesn't think "here's an obstacle, I'd better give up and turn around" but rather finds a way to move around it. Sometimes it gathers more energy waiting for more water to arrive, other times it moves over, under or around the boulder. If we think of the movement of the ocean, the tide ebbs, and flows, the waves roll in and out. Within the water element there exists a definite feeling of freedom and letting go as well as a myriad of different moods. 

As the second chakra is related to emotions, when this chakra is in balance our emotions flow through us, just as the element of water does and whatever emotions are present are simply there without judgment and we begin to recognize what emotions might be present. For example, if the emotion of fear is found, our practice supports us in seeing that fear is here without judging if we are good or bad. We begin to "befriend" fear by bringing it into our awareness and perhaps exploring what underlies the emotion. It's as though we are bringing whatever emotion is nestled within our bodies from the dark shadows of the unknown to the light that sits in front of us. We begin to recognize what fear looks like so that we can invoke the element of water and let it flow through us without allowing it to take up permanent residence. All emotions are valid and seeing them arise and then fall away, like the ebb and flow of the tide, is the second chakra finding balance.

A blocked second chakra might be evident by someone who we know who seems to always be fearful or angry (or some other seemingly permanent emotional state). It's as though the emotion becomes lodged within us and expresses itself as "who we are", yet we know that if we become conscious of the deep-seated pattern we have an opportunity to change our course. Part of this process is undertaken through guided meditation, chanting, affirmation, yoga asana, and breathing practices. In order to know this, however, we must find silence in which to hear it.

We can also use affirmations to bring healing and balance into this energetic center. Helpful statements might be:

I feel my emotions and my pain.

I reawaken my passion.

I surrender to this moment.

During a chakra reading, I was once told that being highly empathic and as such the drawer to my second chakra was wide open and people were dumping their stuff into my open chakra. It was one of the first times that I recognized the need for strong boundaries in my relationships with others. I was taught to clear and protect my own energy so as to better serve others. If I can allow what I want to flow in and out of this energy center, not only do I personally feel better but the relationships around me have clarity and compassion.

So, let's continue this journey together as we undertake some basic steps to understanding the second chakra, the element of water, and learn to let go and go with the flow.

Muladhara Chakra

My Mom loves popcorn...and so do I, and sometimes when she's over for a visit we pop up a fresh batch and enjoy it together. At the moment, my husband and I are staying with a friend as our newly purchased condo undergoes renovations. Being a guest in his house, I used his pot which has a glass lid for making the popcorn. As I stood over the stove, I could see the kernels burst and seemingly jump around the pan and I could relate...at times, we are like popcorn, ungrounded and flying all over the place. Without a lid on the pot, complete and utter chaos would ensue.

It got me to asking myself what it is that I was needing at the moment. Being in the midst of a major life transition, leaving a home of 18-years and downsizing into another abode I am feeling the need for stability so, over the next few weeks, we'll be exploring the seven chakras. The word Chakra means wheel and they run from the base of our spine to the crown of our head.  And it's certainly a good time to get grounded as I not only move into a new life chapter but also as we launch into the holiday season.

Located at the base of the spine, the Muladhara chakra connects us through our physical bodies to the energy of Mother Earth. We feel this energy through our bones, muscles, and tissues. Just as we might say that a building has "good bones" that create the foundation of the structure, we too can feel our physical nature through our bones and the muscles that move them. This physical body of ours is how we connect into the physical world around us, not only through movement but by standing barefoot on the soil or sand, getting our hands into the dirt through gardening, hugging a tree or touching a huge granite rock during a hike. We can feel the pulse of the earth, her energy, and rawness.

To connect to this field of experience we can also visualize the base chakra as a spinning vortex of deep, vibrant red. If we close our eyes and imagine an outward spinning of red at the base of our spine we can magnify the experience through repeating the seed or bija mantra for this chakra which is LAM (sounds like LOM). We can repeat this over and over to create not only a humming at the energy center but a vibration at the lips with the sound of "mmmmm". Try lam lam lam lam lam lam lam...repeatedly for a few minutes and feel its effects.

The base chakra is about security, safety, community, and connection and when it's in balance, we feel as though we are able to move freely about our life. When out of balance it can lead to a sense of insecurity and greed. We need this balance in order for our energy to continue to rise up through the higher chakras, so spending time being on the earth is a vital foundation for further growth. We can also use affirming statements or mantras to enhance our connection:

I am safe.

I trust more. Fear Less.

I am centered and grounded.

A powerful visualization is to sense a radiant orb of red light, centered in front of the sacrum, at the base of the spine within the pelvis. From this light, we send a powerful tap root down our body and embedding it into the earth's energy. Since this chakra is also associated with our tribe and ancestry, we might find it useful to honor the qualities of our ancestors, who forged a path for us to exist and, at the same time, perhaps imprinted within us some qualities that no longer serve us. We can let go of what we don't need sending it to Mother Earth who can transmute any form of energy. The image can be like an esoteric umbilical cord connecting us to a safe energy from which we originated and from which we get nourished.

I also made a connection this week from a powerful vision I had as my husband and I were leaving Australia and returning to live in the States in 1997. The image was of me standing ankle-deep in the iron-rich Australian sandy soil of the Outback, often called "The Red Center". I felt that before I could literally uproot my Australian life, I needed to connect into the powerful roots of where I had been. I needed to have a sense of security and familiarity as I was about to undergo a massive life shift.

So notice if you're feeling unsettled and either literally or metaphorically place your feet in the soil in a favorite place of yours on the earth. Allow yourself to get grounded and supported by the earth's "mother" energy and know that when you do, no matter where you are physically in the world, you will always be home.

Inside the Box

I never know where inspiration might come that will ignite the idea for my weekly blog. Having written consistently over the past 15 plus years, I have grown to simply trust that some spark will arise if I simply stay open to the possibility of what may come to me. I have also become good at latching onto conversations or comments that cross my path from week-to-week, feeling into the energy and everyday concerns that people, including myself, have.

This week's inspiration came from a conversation with a younger relative. He's 25-years old, single, a college graduate, and uninspired by his job. He's looking for something different but doesn't know what and he has an interest in travel. Not surprisingly, my words of support were to take off traveling...he has no major responsibilities to keep him planted in the same place. He has the opportunity in many directions to explore and venture into that void of the unknown, yet knowing if need be, he can head back to something more familiar. I harkened back to a time when I was finishing up as the head coach of a gymnastics club. I was at an impasse as to what to do next. I knew I'd keep teaching the casual aerobics/fitness class but quietly made a deal with myself that over the next 12 months I would say "yes" to anything that seemed interesting and reasonable.

I wound up working at a very popular pub in Melbourne, The Geebung Polo Club, learning how to cook. I loved the fast-paced, very social, and hectic work environment. It was lively and interactive. I was good at getting food out quickly in a short period of time and fine-tuning my cooking skills. I had even considered going to a culinary academy but shelved that idea as my main goal was to travel extensively. Had I not given myself permission to try something different, I may have stayed "inside the box" which is one of comfort and familiarity.

And that's the main thought of the week...to notice when things feel familiar and comfortable, and to notice if there's something sitting outside of the box that you're curious about. Something that may have been lurking in the shadows of your consciousness but for whatever reason has stayed hidden. Sometimes we believe the "no" voice roaming inside our heads. We believe in the limitations we set for ourselves and keep the heart-pulling endeavor tucked away. But what if anything were possible? What if you didn't have to worry about the "how" to do it, and just took one step toward it? 

I have also witnessed how these opportunities to take chances are finite as I've seen my Mother's world shrink. She has dementia and the possibility of exploring has diminished. I see this as another reason to explore and uncover what lights your fire, sooner, rather than later.

We've just passed the New Moon cycle, a perfect time for planting seeds of intention that we hope manifest in the future. This week in classes we've been working on staying open to the potential that sits before us. We begin the process by getting truly grounded, sending energetic roots of energy from our body into the earth. From that starting point, from connecting into a familiar and solid energy, we inhale into a field of infinitely expanded space. As we exhale, energy returns through our envisioned energetic roots to the "Mothership" once again connecting back to the familiar. As we continue connecting to the breath, each inhaling breath expanding into the unknown potential, each exhaling breath connecting to the familiar, we eventually point our hearts in the direction of something that we're curious about, yet is sitting in the shadows. As we breathe into it, we begin the process of linking what we wish to manifest from the unknown into the known. It's as though we are silently speaking our intention to the Universe, tilling the soil for future manifestation.

Happy exploring!

Life in the Fast Lane

I've had a classic Eagles song rummaging through my brain this week because my theme is "Life in the Fast Lane", which surely means you lose your mind, or so the song goes. I'm trying to do exactly the opposite of that - losing my mind, that is, as we speed toward the deadline of our moving date. We have to be out of our house next week...the moving van is coming and the day after, we say good-bye to our residence of 18 years. Then, it's a big hello to our 'new', smaller place the following week and, needless to say, it feels as though we are living life from a jammed packed, fast-paced perspective.

Not only are we packing and moving, but we're celebrating our grandson's Bar Mitzvah this weekend, I'm running a special workshop next weekend, the yoga teacher training continues, the mentorship program is all happening and well...blah, blah, blah. Life is rather packed both figuratively and literally. 

Over the past few years, I've been drawn toward minimalism and slow living, and a large part of the downsizing draw has been influenced by that awakening awareness. There's a saying in the "slow" community, that sometimes you need "to go fast, in order to go slow". Initially, I didn't really get that as it seemed like a contrary idea. But now it's beginning to make sense. The fast lane we are traveling in at the moment is temporary. It's not a way of being that I or my husband wish to engage in, yet, we both want more ease and simplicity in life. Having smaller digs, less stuff, less financial responsibility equals slow living. And in order for us to step in that direction, we needed to undergo a major life-transformation. We are letting go of over half the stuff we own. It's a major culling of what gets cut and what gets re-purposed and re-directed. Sentimentality has lessened as the practicality and draw of great ease nears. It's getting easier to let go of what we really don't need or what no longer serves us.

The thought of the week and the practices we've been undertaking in classes this week are to notice if we're hanging out in the fast-lane of life and, if yes, why? Is there a particular drive for you to be there in order to create greater calm in your life? Or are you moving at a speed that's one of habit, more than one of consciousness? 

My default speed has always been fast...I'm not slow by nature. I like to make things happen and get stuff done. So, as I sought greater ease and inner peacefulness in my life, I started looking at slow-living, which simply means to live from a place of mindful intention and consciousness. I really want to create a life that's aligned with my inner voice. So living slow is definitely a challenging practice for me, but one that I'm embracing with grace and curiosity. And I have to say, it feels awesome to be releasing dusty papers, tucked away goods, and selling furniture. We are excited to launch into a different place that will have new discoveries and feelings. It's time to let go and put on my blinker to indicate I'm slowing down.

Are you ready to change lanes, too?

All of Me

I remember calling up an orthopedic center asking for a particular doctor. When they asked what I was being treated for and I said, "my knee", they replied..."oh, that doctor doesn't do knees." And so it goes in the medical profession of specialization, which isn't a bad thing, particularly if I have something wrong with the knee. If that's the case, I want to see "the knee person", not "the shoulder person." We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as body parts, diseases, and symptoms. Thankfully, a growing number of functional and integrative medical practitioners, who treat people holistically, is expanding. 

And the good news is, that yoga does, and always has, looked at the totality of who we are, without breaking us into pieces.

This week's thought is about just that...looking at our whole self and understanding it through three perspectives. If we think of ourselves as being the element H2O, that of water, we can understand the idea in a manageable way. 

When H2O freezes, it becomes ice. It's solid, tactile, and we can perceive through touch and sight. We can liken ice to being our body, solid and perceivable. We also know that ice is impermanent. If we hold it in our hands, it begins to change form and melt.

If we think of H2O in its liquid form, we notice how many moods it can possess. Water can have qualities of a still pond with no ripples on the surface, as well as a turbulent ocean with huge waves crashing about. It can be turbulent and elusive. Ever have a leak in the house which you can't quite find? Water has a way of seeping into unseen places and it's more difficult to hold in our hands without losing some of it through the cracks. Water in its liquid form has the qualities of the mind. Often difficult to capture, sometimes overpowering, and frequently shifting through various moods and states.

And if we bring H2O to a boil, it turns into steam or vapor. As my tea kettle boils, I can momentarily see the steam escaping, but I'm not able to grasp it. It's more elusive as its molecules dissipate into space. This is the quality of the spirit...we know it's present but difficult to see and challenging to grasp.

These three qualities of water are who we are in various forms. As a practice, yoga invites us to find harmony and union within body, mind, and spirit. It's as though body, mind, and spirit are the composite parts of a giant, stabilizing cable. When the three are equally "pulling their weight" the structure is at ease and balanced. If one or more is weakened, then imbalance is created which over the long-haul can lead to deterioration.

This week, check in with where your energy goes - into the physical, mental, or soulful self? Is there one thing that you could bring into your practice or let go of that would cultivate a greater sense of harmony in your being?

I recognized a few years back that the physical strand of who I was dominated. I was identified with and well-versed in the body, both practically and theoretically. Yet I knew that to cultivate a deeper connection to my inner world, two things needed to happen. Meditation and Seva (service).  Prior to committing to my daily meditation practice, being with myself and all the crazy mind-chatter was something I never practiced, so it was like taking a chance on how I'd react in certain situations. Meditation opened up the space between action and my own reaction, shifting how I related to myself and others. The other piece, service, was a gradual unfolding. I discovered that when I served others, it brought an element of connection not only to those being served but to an unexplored space within my own heart.

Now, both meditation and Seva (service) are the two most powerful parts of my regular practice. They've helped to calm the ever-fluctuating thoughts of the mind and brought a sense of compassion into my life. In strengthening those intertwining cables of body, mind, and spirit, I ride the waves of change and find states of equanimity in a peaceful and harmonious way. I can't help but think that all of us have this potential for greater lifelong ease. I feel if I can do it, the kid who was so physically active for so many years, you can do it as well.

Take some time to see what will serve you on the deepest level of who you are and step directly toward it. It'll serve you...all of you!

Big Surf

4 AM. I look at the clock and think to myself that this must be my new bewitching hour as I've been waking consistently around this time for the past week. And I know why...I have many things happening, seemingly all of them at once. But in reality, it's not all at once, it just feels that way.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, our house is in escrow and we're buying a condo. We are undergoing a massive downsizing, from 3200 SF to 1400 SF.  We have items for sale and have been clearing, sorting, packing, donating, taping boxes together, trying to figure out what will work in the new place. Fortunately, we have less stuff than we had three years ago when I stepped onto the path of simple living and decluttering.  Nonetheless, at the moment it feels like a superficial pass over a bigger challenge. We've lived in this house for 18-years and I've come to realize that my "storage and saving" methods are similar to what was modeled by my Mother (who literally didn't throw anything away). Although we're definitely not at that level of keeping things, we have drawers and boxes that haven't been opened or used for quite some time. I've also realized that with technology certain things like CDs, hanging files and videotapes are now obsolete space hogs.

As we sort through our personal piles, we also decided to hold a "pre-loved" sale at the yoga studio since we're not allowed to have a traditional garage sale due to our HOA rules. This translates into an added layer of hauling and pricing to prolong the life of many items, avoiding the dreaded landfill option. All of this is taking place in the open spaces of my week, which just narrowed as we launched into the next 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training and Mentorship programs. 

Just to be transparent...I'm not complaining. I'm actually really excited about this purging transition. We set the intention a while back to begin to travel more lightly in the world, putting our house on the market and beginning the process of letting go of material objects. These are things we've chosen and now it's coming into manifestation, it just seems as though time is a valuable commodity and we're under the clock with a deadline. 

Then life happens during all of these best-laid plans.

Just before the first session of Module One of the YTT, my Mom got ill and ended up in the emergency room six-plus hours.  Thankfully, my husband was the support crew and I joined them at the ER after training finished for the evening. Again, thankfully a pesky urinary tract infection was the culprit and Mom was released to go home. We all know the saying, "the straw that broke the camel's back" which isn't "the brick that broke the camel's back", meaning it may just be the addition of something that seems relatively minor to knock you off your surfboard.

We all have moments of great intensity and pressure in our lives, and it may seem that the smallest of things added to that pressure pushes us to a tipping point. What our yoga practice teaches us, is that all of this is impermanent and transitory. Our personal practice becomes the touchstone for steadiness, no matter how big the waves pounding at our feet. For me, it's been my daily meditation practice, the non-negotiable in my life. And this week in class we've been practicing five steps to help us navigate high-intensity times:

Breath, Relax, Feel, Watch and Allow. Take a deep breath and relax any tension in the body. Feel the sensations in your body from moment to moment. Watch your reaction to the situation at hand without judgment and allow it to be what it is, without the temptation to fix, change, or run away from the present moment.

My thought for the week is about learning how to surf the unpredictable waves of life.  It's as though I've been standing in the surf being pounded by multiple and seemingly endless waves.  At times they seem to last forever, wave after wave.  But as I surrender to the process, the waves still come but get further apart and less intense.  They are still coming, most notably in the quiet hours of the early morning or when I awake in the middle of the night. I then tap into my practice of conscious breathing trying to coax myself into relaxation and a return to sleep.

Breath and relax...it works in any situation!

Layers

This week's inspiration came to me as I was taking a morning walk while listening to a podcast. The conversation in the podcast was about how these people had been experimenting with making changes in certain areas of their lives. One piece of advice was to do a small amount of change at a time in order to establish it and see how it works for you. It got me thinking about how our yoga and meditation practices are ongoing. We make our way to the mat and see what happens. We sit in meditation and notice how active, agitated, or calm our minds are during the session. The more we do these practices, the more we get to see how dynamic a process it all is. Things shift and change, often beyond anything we can control. Life shows up to challenge our best-laid intentions and, in doing so, we walk through the mud of transformation.

But are we actually transforming? Or are we simply trying to get back to the basic notion that what and who we are is inherently divine perfection?

In yoga, it is believed that we are born fully whole and nothing outside of us defines who we are at the core of our essence. Yet as we age, layers begin to form around this inner light as we learn to cope and grow in the adventure of being human. Over time, we gather layers of identity, sometimes connected to life events, often traumatic ones, and we define ourselves by what we do, how we look, and the professions we undertake. And instead of them being flimsy layers, they can become armored and seemingly impenetrable. We may be seen as tough, overly chatty, drearily quiet, reserved, outrageous, or slightly crazed. We describe ourselves through what we do - for example, I'm a yoga therapist/teacher and business owner. We can latch onto these descriptors whether they're actually true or not. It's like being given a nickname and unable to shake it throughout your life. It sticks and we believe everything connected to it.

If we're lucky, conscious, and/or curious, we may come across a method or practice that helps us to begin peeling back these layers of identification and once again begin to glimpse who we truly are. Having drunk the yoga and meditation flavored Kool-Aid years ago, I firmly believe it offers us a way to peek into our inner landscape. The ancient yogis described us as having five layers, or Koshas, making up the entirety of our being. Beginning at the most obvious physical layer they move toward a "bliss" layer as we pass through mental and emotional parts of our being. Our culture is notorious for getting overly stuck in the physical, body layer of how we look and the material wealth we accumulate.

If you've never undertaken this practice, take a couple of minutes and give it a try. First, make a list of who you are-you might include your name, occupation, how you're related to people (sister, father, aunt), your interests and descriptors. Next, imagine that you've taken this piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into a fire...completely obliterating your identity. If you are none of those things, then who are you? This is a common question posed along many spiritual paths. When you drop away the external shell and turn to your internal self, what do you find?

This is particularly potent as it relates to aging consciously. As our body changes with the loss of muscle mass and agility and as our memory may become sketchier, if we're overly identified with those parts of ourselves, we begin to create our own suffering. 

I used to play competitive tennis and "tennis player" would have been high on my list of what I was all about. Then I had a shoulder surgery that took me out of the sport as I wasn't able to play the way I had previously. A fellow tennis player said to me that she wouldn't know what she would do if she couldn't play tennis. I didn't really know how to respond to her other than to say that I had other things in my life which I loved and were fulfilling. I had made peace with letting go of that part of who I was and by doing that perhaps I stepped a bit closer to knowing that I was more than the label of 'tennis player'.

As Ram Dass so eloquently said: 
"I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn't who I am."