The Mind/Body Connection: The right to feel with the second chakra
By Nancy B. Loughlin
Published in News Press on June 11, 2013. Posted with permission.
Marcie Molloy Gillis demonstrates King Pigeon to open the second chakra.
Reclaim your right to feel.
Svadhisthana, the second chakra energy center, is in the sacrum, hips and lower abdomen. The first chakra is about grounding and security. The second is about movement, sensation and pleasure.
A free and flowing second chakra is apparent in someone who is compassionate and emotionally available. Such a person is friendly and open without being clingy.
With a healthy second chakra, you can express yourself sexually without using others or exploiting yourself. You know you are entitled to be loved and happy, and you don’t have to do anything to earn it. You are a prodigal child.
All humans have a need to feel connected to the universe. It’s why you step outside of the house each day, make friends and become intimate with others.
But second chakra blockages can cultivate explosive emotions and hypersensitivity.
When the second chakra is misaligned, you may feel like you are inherently flawed, and you might be nursing a fragile self-worth. You over-compensate by pleasing others but discover you still aren’t appreciated. You might be easily hurt by others’ words and actions. You overwork yourself, never allowing yourself to feel pleasure.
Water is the element associated with the second chakra. Water flows. It’s adaptable. It explores and fills the contours of its experience. Perhaps when Bruce Lee advised, “Become like water,” he had the second chakra in mind.
Align and cleanse the second chakra, and meditate on your right to feel good.
Yoga. Negative life energy accumulates in the hips and lower back. Hold pigeon pose, bound angle, cow-faced pose and wide-legged forward fold. As you hold these poses, emphasize exhalation, releasing all that no longer serves you. Silently repeat the mantra “VAM”; visualize or wear orange.
Since water is the second chakra element, practice your yoga in the pool’s shallow end, at the ocean’s edge or on the paddleboard.
Take nightly baths. Shower outdoors.
Swivel. The second chakra is about movement. Take to the hoop to awaken Kundalini energy stuck in the hips. It’s also a fun way to burn 100 calories in ten minutes.
Dismiss guilt. While fear is the default emotion of the first chakra, guilt is the second’s centerpiece. Instead of allowing that inner monologue to belittle you for past transgressions, substitute gratitude dialogue for lessons learned. Write haunting memories in one column. In the next, substitute a line of thanks for what you learned. Whatever you did, you were working with the energy and knowledge you had at that time. If an amends is necessary, do it. It may be a phone call, financial restitution or simply paying it forward and being decent. Move on, and get your juices flowing again.
Your second chakra meditation: “I’m entitled to be happy. I’m entitled to be loved. Life is good.”
Next week: the fires of transformation in chakra three
