Create the Life You Imagine ~ March 2019

Balancing the Lower Triangle

“If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’ into the enemy.”

~ Parker Palmer

The next power center in the lower triangle is the second chakra. The second chakra is associated with the color orange and is located in the sacral area of the bodyin the lower abdomen and pelvis area, just below your naval, and in the small of your back. While the first chakra is attached to the grounding energy of the earth and to your physical body, the second chakra is associated with the element of water and your emotional body. Its energy reflects our emotional nature and represents our requirement for emotional nourishment through relationships. It activates our need for other people and is connected to our ability to give and receive love. A healthy second chakra keeps us connected to the natural flow of feelings, sensations, and desires we experience as we move through life in our physical body and makes connections and relationships with others. The second chakra is our passion center and is also connected to our feelings of sensuality, sexuality and creativity.

Developmentally, the second chakra is connected to our early emotional learning from the ages of about two to thirteen. If you have ever spent time watching two-year-olds at play, you will notice that they start to pay close attention to emotional body language and may mimic and practice expressions of happy, mad, sad, scared and other emotional states. Healthy parenting in this early childhood stage will support children in noticing and naming their feelings. If you have spent time with early teenagers, you might notice that their emotions can be like a tumultuous ocean of energy, and part of this life stage is learning how to process and balance those waves of difficult emotions. Children raised in optimal conditions would emerge from this life stage knowing that their feelings are marvelous indicators of their inner life experience and should not be ignored or suppressed. They would also learn the value of sacred relationships where they can trust that their needs and desires will be attended to and prioritized, and that we can have safe and healthy boundaries with others grounded in mutual love, care, support and respect.

As we move into adulthood this chakra is directly connected to our relationships with others and often reflects the emotional patterns we have learned through our early family interactions. The second chakra closely monitors the connections we make with other people and stores up all the emotional history and baggage that we collect over the years through our personal relationships. If we have unfinished business from a primary relationship with a parent or caregiver during our early life, we store those old traumas in our second chakra. If we pay attention to our current relationship patterns, we may find some of those old family patterns showing up again and again as we continue to repeat and relive those same dramas with new people that show up in our lives.

As our emotional energy center, we want to keep this important information center flowing freely in a steady and balanced state. When our second chakra is in balance we feel happy and content and engage in life with a sense of pleasure and joy. We find that life is an enjoyable experience in the company of family and friends, nourished by our five physical senses as we enjoy the touch of our loved ones, the taste and smells of our favorite foods, and the sounds and sights of the natural world. When this chakra is overactive, however, we may find ourselves feeling overly sensitive or emotional and may take things very personally in our interactions with others. When we feel vulnerable in our second chakra, we may get caught in patterns of power struggles and control in our relationships. When this chakra is suppressed, our passion for life goes flat as we lose that sense of sweetness and pleasure in life, and we are at risk of experiencing depressions or addictions. Second chakra imbalances also show up in our physical body over time in symptoms like low back pain, bladder issues, reproductive challenges, and blood sugar imbalances that could lead to diabetes.

The power of this center it is our ability to connect with our feelings and our passion for life as we navigate our journey. If we stay connected to the flow of feelings through our second chakra, they will tell us when people and situations are safe and positive and when they are not. Our sense of creativity and passion will lead us toward experiences that will satisfy our healthy desires and activate feelings of happiness and pleasure. The shadow of this power center, however, is that it can become a purgatory of our old emotional wounds. When we get caught in the shadow of this chakra, every turn in life provides the next opportunity to feel vulnerable, hurt, offended or disempowered and to act out the same old emotional dramas again and again. Quaker spiritual teacher Parker Palmer reminds us that if we are getting caught in toxic relationship patterns, we might want to reflect on the old dramas and traumas that lie buried in our second chakra. If we want to activate the healthy power of the second chakra, we need to take the time to let go of the old emotional baggage, so we can liberate ourselves from the dysfunctional patterns of our past.

Finally, this chakra is connected to a healthy sense of self-esteem. You can’t have healthy relationships with others if you don’t nurture your ability to love and care for yourself, prioritize and support your own needs, and set clear and appropriate boundaries with others. People with low self-esteem may feel anxious and vulnerable as they move through life because they tend to lose their power in relationships. They may get caught in unhealthy patterns of dependency or co-dependency because they fail to stand up for what they need, let people violate their boundaries, and spend a lot of their precious life force trying to please others, even when it compromises their own sense of well-being.

So as we work with the second chakra, it’s time to raise yourself up and clean out the old emotional closets as you learn the lessons that life has offered. Old traumas and injured feelings clog up your second chakra and stop the natural flow of energy that should be moving through this water chakra. You need to be prepared to forgive others and yourself for the difficult emotional experiences of your past by simply naming and accepting what didn’t work and releasing the pain and suffering into the stream of love that flows effortlessly through your energy system. If you can let go of old feelings of judgment, resentment, guilt and shame for the ways you have gotten mixed up in unhealthy patterns of relationship, you can commit to practicing healthy new patterns of self-care and boundaries to balance your emotional body and to support healthy relationships with others using the natural flow of your second chakra energy.

Wishing you the blessings and light of the Soul, as you create the life you imagine.

Tracy

Stepping Stones:

This week reflect on the energy of your second chakra. Practice noticing, naming and paying attention to your feelings as you move through your day, rather than letting them pile up in your unconscious until they are like a pile of goo that clogs up your feeling system. Be reflective about your relationships with others. If you are stuck in a pattern that doesn’t serve you, journal about how you learned that pattern and how you could shift into more a more balanced state of relationship by using the power of your healthy second chakra. If you catch yourself engaging in self-talk that diminishes your sense of self-esteem, see if you can identify the emotional patterns from your past that activated those negative stories and let them go. Remember, healthy relationships with others depend on a healthy relationship with yourself. Monitor and manage that self-talk, keeping it positive, kind, loving and gentle. We are all here to learn these same lessons and we have to be gentle with ourselves if we want to grow and change. Here are other some healthy second chakra practices:

1. Let yourself be in the happy flow of your second chakra energy by engaging in some spontaneous play and laughter with people you love;

2. Do something creative—paint a room, cook something new, plan a spring garden—anything that you feel passionate about will activate this chakra.

3. Find a good coach, counselor or therapist to help process and clear out old emotional stories that are creating repetitive patterns;

4. Use a high vibration affirmation to balance your second chakra energy. Here are a few examples of second chakra affirmations. Choose one of these to repeat again and again this week or create your own:

I let go of fear, shame and doubt. I let go of judgment about the events of my past and release any suffering for myself or others. I accept love, peace and joy into my life today.

I let go of guilt about taking care of myself. I release the idea that focusing on me is selfish. I do self-care knowing I deserve time, love attention and health. I take loving care of my body through my positive thoughts and actions.

I let go of all anger and resentment about other people in my life. I release all experiences of pain, disappointment and loss in my relationships, and choose to live joyfully in the now.

I let go of control. I surrender the need to control the people in my life or the events of the future. I celebrate the blessings of each person and each moment. I gratefully accept the gifts of today.

Our second chakra is balanced when we let go of old patterns and let the past be the past. Listen to Kate's rendition of Let It Be to help you make that shift by going to the Products Page on my website and just scroll down to the Transcendence CD and click the track to inspire your journey this week. Both of Kate's CD's are available for purchase on that page.