Chakra Awakening Intensive Series

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Derrick Trevor George
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Chakra Awakening Intensive Series Dear Chakra Cohearts: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES Chakra 2, Week 3 Preparing this email during early spring feels apropos as the daffodils, magnolias, and green grasses in

1 Chakra Awakening Intensive Series Dear Chakra Cohearts: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES Chakra 2, Week 3 Preparing this during early spring feels apropos as the daffodils, magnolias, and green grasses in Northern California sparkle with life, growth, and aliveness, happily soaking up this past winter s abundant rain. Springtime, with its amazing changes to the environment reminds us of joyful possibility; but change, inevitable as it is, can be challenging. Bringing in sensations, pleasures, and comforts as aspects of our spiritual life can both nurture during transition and excite growth. This week s suggestions include water meditations, Tantric practice, working with conflicts, and increasing happiness through savoring your sensations. Consider doing things a bit differently this month. Even though some say no one likes change except a wet baby, consciousness thrives on change. Avoiding change blocks chakra the flow of chakra two. What part of your routine can you change? The colors of the clothing you wear? If you are a talker, what is it like to be quiet and vice versa if you are often quiet? When you hear yourself think this is how I do this I couldn t do it like her, listen to this inner message. Notice any change in awareness or aliveness if you try on something out of character for yourself. In this vein, here are some practices for you to try on. It is more important to do ONE thing each week then to read all our ideas and not do any. So even now, do something out of character. See what your usual pattern is with these s or other selfimprovement programs and change the way you respond by committing to something that you will do. Then take a few minutes when you get the next to reflect or write about your experience over the past week.

2 Water Meditations: 1. Drink it in. Pour yourself a large glass of water. (It could be a particularly lovely glass if you wish to embellish your senses.) Feel appreciation even as you run the water and watch it conform to the shape of the glass and fill it up fully. As you sit down quietly to get ready to drink, go inside by taking a few breaths. Invite in one or more positive qualities such as gratitude, love, receptivity or bliss. Then imagine picking a word to permeate the water. Sit quietly while you drink the water. Feel its essence pouring though you; experience its temperature, its wetness, and feel it hit your stomach. Imagine it lubricating all through your body down to your fingertips and toes. Wet your finger and touch your face nose, cheeks, eyelids and chin... feeling its delicious moisture and refreshment. You might have heard of Masuru Emoto, a Japanese author and scientist, who in his book The Hidden Messages in Water, describes findings that if human speech or thoughts are directed at water droplets before they are frozen, images of the resulting water crystals will be beautiful or ugly depending on whether the words or thoughts were positive or negative. So bring that positive word and its feeling to water whenever you remember to do so. Aside from this, see if you can remember to make a prayer, even if it s just a thanks, every time you drink water for a week. Then it can become a habit. 2. Soaking and Nurturing. You can choose a bath, shower, hot tub or lake/stream to thoroughly cleanse your body and being. Be sure the area is clean around your bathing area and if outside find a smooth, flat area for you to lay out on and dry. Begin soaking and go through each part of your body as you clean it with a prayer that feels sacred, purifying or loving. For example, you can think and say Now my hands are clean, now my feet are clean; now my face is clean." Feel yourself as one with the water. Experience the sincerity of your prayer and invite the water to take away any negatives you don t want in your life. (This is especially good if you have been the victim of sexual trauma in your life as it is a good way to clean that energy out from your body, and restore you to your own place. Imagine what you would like to invite into your life aligned people, healthy habits, particular events. Think of them as a waterfall pouring their blessings into and through you and becoming available for you to share with others. Sit in your bath, feeling nurtured by water spirits of purity, softening you, and holding you in the womb of Yemaya the African Goddess of the sea, the Great Mother. 2

3 Dress yourself in clean clothes and pour another glass of water. Enjoy the great gift of water in your life. Consider how you could flow and move as one does regularly with the tides. If you can, visit a large body of water soon. FEELING PRACTICES Embracing Conflict It is a lovely sunny day and I am enjoying the sun on the leaves and I am inside typing, feeling the time restraints caused by our fast-paced culture. I notice the feeling of conflict and become aware of ongoing choices between what I want and what I need to do. Jung suggested that maturity was in part defined by the ability to hold the tension of opposites to not have to make it one or the other. How do we contain the opposites and still thrive and have relaxation and peace? A few suggestions below we have found helpful: Give voice to your feelings. Use the NVC feeling words and needs from our last and speak what you feel and notice. If you re conflicted between an evening out and time with your partner, you might say I noticed my own confusion about what to do and felt anxious. I have a need for you to be happy and also I need to nurture my other friendships. Ask your partner what he/she felt and his/her needs too. It will probably make you both feel better and strengthen your relationship. Practice using YES, AND... instead of BUT... Listen for your but... when you have a different opinion from someone, try on the phrase yes, and... For example Yes, your idea to go to a movie tonight sounds fun and I want to have time to talk with you during a more spacious dinner." Or when a co-worker tells you how to do a project, you can respond: yes your idea has much merit, and I would like to include my ideas too. Honor the opposites If you are noticing two polarizing needs or desires such as spending money on a new outfit or spending on education, give both parts of you equal consideration. You might stop and listen to one side thoroughly; maybe write about it, and really give it your attention and curiosity. Then do the same with the other side, noticing what it offers you and what it needs. Come back to a centered space and see if giving space to both parts make you clearer and capable of handling the tension. This week, identify an inner conflict that reflects two different parts of you. Talk to someone about it and share your feelings and experiences. Notice any tension, indecision, or anguish, and give time and attention to both parts by writing about them in a journal or notebook. You can also find an image that reflects the strength of holding your tension and allow this image to inspire you to stay steady and strong. Walk down the middle. Imagine you are conflicted between whether to work more or stay home more and spend time with your kids. Make a large imaginary circle inside 3

4 a room or outside somewhere. Then imagine a line down the middle of it. Let one half of the circle represent one side of your decision such as putting energy into your career and working more, and the other side of the circle represents staying home and spending more time with your kids. Walk around the perimeter of the circle, fully embodying all the feelings that go with one side of the dilemma and when you cross the imaginary line to the other side of the circle, switch to feeling all the feelings that choice would bring you. By embodying the feelings, you can let yourself dance it, make noise, really act it out in a big way. After you have gone around the circle a few times, fully getting each choice into your body, walk down the middle. See what integrates. Strengthen your wholeness. As you practice holding two sides of a decision or experience, you might notice a wholeness that comes from being with both of them. You haven t ignored any uncomfortable feelings but are giving yourself a type of inner yoga practice. Weaving the opposites increases energy, inner trust, and awakens you for new growth. Imagine yourself weaving parts of yourself together into a stronger, richer, more mature self, so you have the emotional muscle to bring more of you to the world. Embracing both polarities is what gives us the fuel for power in the next chakra. Savor your sensations, one at a time We invite you to savor your sensations this week and next. Brain researcher Rick Hanson encourages us to feed the good thoughts; neurons that fire together wire together. While eating or walking in nature or sitting still in the evening, take a moment and focus on one sense, such as listening. Listen fully and give yourself this moment. And be sure and celebrate how good this feels. Tell someone about it. Recalling a positive experience strengthens positive brain states leading to greater well-being and balance. TANTRA Tantra is usually thought of as the spiritual aspect of sex, or alternatively the sexual aspect of spirituality. In reality, Tantra (from the Sanskrit word for loom) is a weaving of many Vedic philosophies, and especially a doctrine that sees life as based on rejecting nothing and embracing everything, especially the integration of polarities: those of mukti or liberation (upward current) and bhukti or enjoyment (downward current of manifestation). These rising and falling currents create the chakras and cause them to spin, hence the name chakra which means wheel. Throughout our yoga practice and all aspects of life, chakra practitioners seek to engage both sides of a polarity fully, yet integrate them together: mind and body, self and other, masculine/feminine, emptiness and form, expansion and contraction. Tantric practitioners use sexuality and sensuousness as a means for liberation. Working the energies of two people coming into intimate contact emphasizing not just the genital act, but the entire field of touching, arousing, engaging, loving, feeling, and increasing sensation throughout the whole body allows us to experience a state of heightened awareness within the body, not outside of it. It literally expands our consciousness if we re conscious about how we do it. 4

5 There are many Tantric schools and practices, and to explore this more fully than is possible in an , you might check out your local area for a Tantra workshop. Many workshops are open to both couples and singles. I also recommend books by Margot Anand such as The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. Tantric sex seeks to heighten all the sensations of lovemaking: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. It works towards heightening the charge or turn-on, to make for increased consciousness and body awakening, to say nothing of deeper intimacy and connection with another being a first step toward dissolving ego into oneness. Basic Tantric Practice One of the key points in Tantric practices is the alignment of the chakras, not only within oneself, but between two people. A common position is called the yabyum, where one person (usually the woman, but it doesn t have to be limited to heterosexual couples) sits facing her partner on his or her lap, legs wrapped around the partner s back. Allow your chakras to align all along the torso, bowing to touch foreheads, or third eye. Both partners then synchronize their breathing, one inhaling as the other exhales, as if the breath were a circle of exchange. While breathing, stroke each other s skin and undulate your pelvis and spine in whatever way feels good to you, yet keeping the energy contained so that it builds and rises up the spine. If this results in lovemaking, the synchronization of breath is continued, and at the point of orgasm each person focuses their attention on a common desired outcome: such as finding a vision, opening their hearts, breaking through some difficulty, enhancing creativity, or solving a problem. If you don t have a lover, you can do this with yourself, focusing deeply on each chakra with touch and visualization, one at a time, from bottom to top, while breathing and undulating your spine. As above, continue to build the charge, and either let yourself simply experience a high state of arousal (keep the charge), or bring yourself to climax, focusing on a desired outcome. (Next month, in third chakra, we will talk more about charge but for now just consider it to be like prana, chi, or life force energy.) Chakra blessings, Anodea Judith 5

In light ~ Kim. 10 Practices to Empower Your Presence Page 1

In light ~ Kim. 10 Practices to Empower Your Presence Page 1 Being in service to self and others in any capacity begins with being present, grounded and centered. These qualities are cornerstones of wholeness and mindfulness. These simple practices are ones I have