second chakra Archives - Della Temple

The Yin and The Yang Of It: Finding Your Balance

16 March, 2014 — Posted in: All About Chakras Leave a Comment

What does it mean to be a healthy, balanced human being? What is balance? How does balance play into our desire for Prosperity?

5727907084_d95b45bc99_z Prosperity is from the Latin word prosperitas, and means ‘doing well’. It is the state of thriving and having success. It often denotes being secure, safe, and wealthy, both in money and opportunities. I believe it also means being balanced in our mind, our body and our Spirit.

Our second chakra is the seat of our emotions and our sexuality. Every human being has both masculine (active) and feminine (receptive) energies. Oftentimes we get caught up in the words, but truly, each one of us is capable of displaying strength, drive, and fierceness as well as nurturing, serving, and gentleness.

Yet, in the modern Western world, we are often unbalanced in this chakra. Our workaholic, busy, busy, lives leads to an overabundance of do-ing energies, leaving little time for the be-ing energies. We give little worth to the pleasures of receptivity – listening to beautiful music, lying in the hammock, getting a massage, enjoying the pleasures of creative expression.

We may even be afraid of slowing down and opening to receptivity, not knowing what awaits us in the depths of our being. In a previous post, I talked about the process of sitting in meditation with an emotion and allowing it to surface, unimpeded. As we meet the emotion with patience, without a need to immediately “do” anything about it, we discover a deeper wisdom about ourselves and our desires. By allowing the emotion to be, we defuse its power.

When we allow both masculine and feminine energies to flow unimpeded through our second chakra we come into balance. We dance the dance of the active and the receptive, the creator and the destroyer, the nurturer and the nurtured.

In this state of balance, we find our peace. Peace within ourselves, acceptance of who we are and that we are whole within ourselves. We find that we do not need others to complete us – we may enjoy them and relish in partnerships – but we are not defined by them. We become both the Yin and the Yang. We become prosperous.

Pema Chodron on Patience and Anger

12 March, 2014 — Posted in: All About Chakras Leave a Comment

meditatingwoman

This month we are exploring the role each chakra plays in creating the symphony called prosperity. The second chakra is the seat of our emotions. It is located in the lower pelvic region and often called the Sacral Chakra.

In this chakra, blocks to living in prosperity and ease are often caused by our inability, or better stated – our unwillingness – to allow ourselves to experience the depth and breadth of an emotion. We often find this happening with anger, fear or some of the other hard to experience energies. We often shut down or turn away from fully experiencing these “negative” emotions.

Being authentic means cultivating our awareness of what we’re feeling from moment to moment. Not judging those feelings to be good or bad, OK or not OK. Every feeling is an OK feeling. Anger is an OK feeling. In fact, the deeper we can look at the not-so-nice feelings the more insight we can gain about what out desires truly are.

Pema Chodron, in this Shambhala Sun article, The Answer to Anger & Aggression is Patience,speaks about sitting in patience and allowing anger to surface. To sit in meditation experiencing the emotion. Not running out the door to take care of the situation or calling someone on the phone to release our anger onto them. It’s sitting with it in meditation and allowing it to be. Not resisting, not fixing, not blaming another and not spinning the tale, becoming a victim to the drama. Just allowing it to surface, that is all.

She talks about what happens as we do this – as we reach under the emotion of anger and meet it with patience – we uncover the want, the unmet desire. We might expose the feeling of abandonment, and our unmet desire to be accepted. Or we might uncover feelings of jealousy and hurt buried deep inside the capsule we call anger.

Then we can say to ourselves, “Oh – anger, I see you. I am not afraid of you. I can sit with you and be uncomfortable without a need to fix the situation.” And right there – in that moment of realization the anger dissipates. It loses its power.

As we display this ability to experience a broader depth of emotion, we allow this chakra to open more fully. We are able to allow the flow – not blocking, resisting or covering it up with pretty pink bows. This openness to receiving is the key to bringing this chakra into harmony with prosperity and abundance.

The Second Chakra: Our Emotional Home Base

18 October, 2013 — Posted in: All About Chakras Leave a Comment

The Second Chakra is called the Sacral Chakra. It is located about two inches below the belly button and, like all the chakras, runs from the front to the back of the body.

I see this as the chakra of emotions and female sexual energy. A healthy second chakra vibrates in a state of permission; permission to have whatever emotion we are experiencing in the moment, and to express that emotion appropriately. We are able to cry when we feel the need to cry, and be angry when we need to be angry. We remain in control of our emotions, at the same time expressing them fully and appropriately.

If this chakra is full of the shoulds of the world, then you may limit the number of emotions you can comfortably express. You may feel it is inappropriate to show anger under any circumstance, or you may be unable to show your vulnerable side. If there is foreign energy in this chakra, then you may also find yourself running other peoples’ emotions instead of your own. If your friend is a drama queen, and you have taken on her emotions, you may find yourself playing the victim to your circumstances, instead of constructively dealing with your problems.

Uncovering your true path is a tough assignment if this chakra is filled with outside influences. Discovering the real you, your Highest and Best Self, is a process of removing the layers of other peoples’ thoughts, other peoples’ emotions, other peoples’ shoulds from your space. The next time you are experiencing an intense emotion such as anger or frustration, pause and feel the energy stirring in this chakra. Bring your awareness to whether this is truly your emotion, or someone else’s stuck in your second chakra.

Stuck energy, yours or someone else’s, can cause dis-ease in the body.
One of the best ways to keep your energy flowing is to allow your grounding cord to remove the thoughts and feelings of others from your system. You can also imagine blowing a rose (see Self Acceptance Tools video for more information). And lastly, just by being a little bit more conscious of how energy moves can help get you unstuck.