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The third chakra sits above the navel, below the rib cage.  It focuses on the balance of our self-confidence and ego. Our self-control and sense of personal power originate from this area.  When we are balanced here, we feel confident, in control, driven and have a good self image.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I often feel a little uncomfortable talking about this chakra due to the emphasis on the word “power” that is often attributed to it.  I am more comfortable thinking about that power as being like electricity running through my body and this chakra is the battery that fuels it.  When I think about my inner strength, I feel more empowered…but…I also feel a little uncomfortable focusing on myself.  This is not because I hate myself (although, I can think of plenty of things I’d like to change a little too easily).  I just feel like I “should” be thinking more about others.  It’s “rude” to think about myself too much.  Then we throw that word “power” in, and I’m running headfirst down a path of guilt about my privileges in life.  Obviously, I have more work to do in this area to get over some of those inner judgements that diminish my own inner strength.  Anyone else???

This chakra is the source of our will to ACT.  To do the difficult things. To face our challenges.  To own our choices.

How do we know if this chakra is blocked?

• We might feel helpless, irritable or have low self esteem
• We might have a hard time bringing our dreams to life or finishing projects we start
• Imposter syndrome
• Lack of energy
• Fear of being alone
• Victim mentality or feeling disliked
• Being passive in decision making

Sometimes this chakra can be over-active leading to:

• Being power hungry
• Perfectionistic
• Critical
• Controlling
• Driven by shame

SO HOW DO WE GET THERE????

• Positive affirmations “I respect and care for myself, I accept myself, I stand up for myself, I direct my own life”
• Actions: Set goals and make steps toward meeting them, get out in the sun, engage in self care, say “no” to things that you don’t really want to do, stretch the front of your body to improve posture and stand up straight

Visit the Facebook and Instagram pages for more ideas on how to support your solar plexus chakra, or schedule an appointment to come in and discuss how to best get this energy unblocked!

Welcome to week 2 of our chakra exploration!

This week we focus on Svadhishthana (aka) The Sacral Chakra.

Sometimes this gets sensationalized as our sexual chakra.  While that is true, there is so much more going on in this energy center!  The sacral chakra is linked to our emotions.  I love that this is also linked to the element of water, because in therapy we often visualize our emotions ebbing and flowing like water.  This helps remind us that emotions are not static…they are always changing.

 

The second chakra is also the chakra of change.  The root and the sacral chakra are close to each other, which might explain why how we feel about our emotions is so closely linked with our sense of safety.  We are meant to feel all our emotions because they are linked to our survival needs.  We fear getting stuck in a negative emotion forever, yet it is in the water-like nature of our emotions to change.  Unfortunately, we also fear change.

Explore your second chakra this week and allow yourself to feel, to create, to flow and to embrace what comes next!

The right of the sacral chakra is TO FEEL.  The work is to release guilt.

When this chakra is BLOCKED:

• We fear intimacy
• no creativity
• feel isolated
• difficulty with change or experiencing joy
• emotionally shut off

When this chakra is OVERACTIVE:

• Over-emotional
• manipulative
• thoughtless pleasure seeking
• excessive guilt, shame and emotional instability

And when it is JUST RIGHT, a BALANCED sacral chakra looks:

• creative
• passionate
• optimistic
• open to new things

This week try being around water and noticing the movement.  Challenge yourself to create something. Repeat to yourself:

I am creative

I am balanced

I am in charge

I am exactly where I need to be

Check the Facebook and Instagram pages for more ideas!

We are starting our chakra exploration at the root of the issues!

The first chakra sits at the base of our spine, right at the tailbone.  It connects us to the earth and our feeling of belonging.  Often we call this “grounding”; that feeling of not being lost in thoughts, but present in our body at the moment.  The root chakra also is in charge of our survival instinct.  This chakra lays the groundwork for the development of all the other chakras.  How Muladhara forms is based on experiences from our first year of life.  Most of us have no idea how our needs got met during our first year, so we might not know where our life patterns come from.

So, what does this mean for our emotional health????

Well, this energy center addresses our right to have and our right to be.  How often do we feel guilty about if we “deserve” something or not?  Anyone else ever question whether or not they are ‘in the way’ or don’t ‘belong’?  This chakra represents how comfortable we are in our physical body and our day to day survival.  Traumas that occur throughout our lives can further affect how energy either moves or gets stuck around our root chakra.

Here are some questions to ask yourself or journal on:

• How do you feel about your body?
• Do you feel safe?
• What do you deserve to have?
• What are your fears?
• What does prosperity look like to you?

Because this chakra is aligned with our survival instinct, the emotion it either activates or blocks is…FEAR.  Our work at this energy level is fear vs trust.

How do we know if this chakra is blocked?

• We might be overly fearful or try to be overly practical to hide fears
• We could be flighty, disconnected, distracted or depressed
• Low energy or easily angered
• Inability to hope or dream, cynical
• Tied to old habits, feeling stuck
• Poor physical health
• Financial instability or greedy, materialistic

When our chakra is in balance, we feel: full of energy, secure, stable, healthy

SO HOW DO WE GET THERE????

• Positive affirmations “I am safe, I belong in the world, I have all that I need”
• Visualization: Try picturing a ball of warm red light at the base of your spine connecting you to the core of the earth.  As you inhale, pull bright white light from the earth to you to nourish you.  On your exhale, picture the warm red light moving back into the earth to feed your roots.
• Being in nature:  Go for a walk or run outdoors, foot rubs to activate the sensation of a deeper pull from gravity, exercise or eat food that feel like they are enhancing the physical health of your body

I know it is a little wet and chilly here in the Pacific Northwest right now for prancing barefoot through the grass, but it will certainly get that root chakra charged!

Visit the Facebook and Instagram pages for more ideas on how to support your root chakra, or schedule an appointment to come in and discuss how to best get this energy unblocked!

It’s the end of 2019 and as we look forward to 2020, many people think about what they want to see differently in the new year/new decade. Personally, I have never been a big fan of the New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer to focus on intentions of what I want to change. Maybe that’s just a different way of saying the same thing.

In the past few years, I have used the beginning of the year as an opportunity to balance my chakras. What the heck is a chakra, you might ask???? Well, prepare for me to nerd out on you, because I love this stuff!!

Most Eastern traditions have some focus around how energy affects us in our day to day life. It may go by different names depending on the cultural background of the teaching, so you may have heard terms like “qi” or “prana”. For the purposes of this blog, we are going to stick with “energy”. In the Indian teachings, there are energy centers through the body that line up along the spinal column called “chakras”. The word chakra means wheel. Often the chakras will be illustrated as wheels or circles that our energy moves through. If one or more chakras are blocked, energy does not flow as efficiently.

Each of the chakras are linked to different developmental stages of our lives and have different goals. In order to feel our best, we want to address how each of our chakras are functioning. In the world of psychology, this is very similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I like the chakra systems better because they are a little less dry!

This year, I encourage you to challenge your resolution setting a little, and dive into understanding your chakras. Visit the Facebook and Instagram pages for encouragement along the way. Each week we will focus on a different chakra. Throughout the next few weeks, we will address each chakra’s needs and balance ourselves for the best start to this new decade!

A long time ago in a womb far far away…we instinctively knew how to soothe ourselves. We opened our mouth and inserted a thumb.

Then parents and dentists intervened and took the thumbs out of our mouths…but they didn’t teach us a replacement tool for how to calm ourselves when we are in distress.

Enter the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skill of Self Soothe: it works by giving your nervous system calming input through your 5 senses. When I am having a rough day, I will pull up YouTube videos of baby goats frolicking around in pajamas. It takes my mind off of what is distressing to me and gives me something pleasant to focus on. Maybe for you it’s pictures of friends, family, vacations or even looking at nature. The idea is just to let yourself fill your sense of sight with whatever is calming or positive to you. Then repeat this with the other senses of taste, smell, touch and sound.

Some days, all I need is a baby goat…other days, I might need a warm bath with scented candles, soothing music, baby goat videos and a chocolate cake. That’s stacking the sensory information to tip the scales in your favor.

Our 5 senses provide information to the brain about what is happening in our environment.  Remember, the brain is locked away inside the skull, it only processes the information the senses give it.  The problem is, if we are letting the mind wander, it can pull up old sensory information to play out to keep itself busy.  This is why we can think about pink elephants and picture them in our mind, or smell cookies and remember a great memory with grandma.  This can be an issue if your brain is recycling anxious, depressive or traumatic information.  When this happens, we can become distressed and feel stuck.

Here is where Self Soothe comes in.  The brain is like a puppy who wants to chew your shoes; in order to stop that behavior, you have to redirect the puppy to something you do want them to do.  Swap the shoe for a chew toy.  Here, we swap what the brain is fixated on with sensory information that it needs to process in real time…only, we control what information it gets.

By doing this, we take control of what our mind focuses on and use this to improve our mood in the moment.  Try out this skill this week and see what it does for you!