Heart chakra

"A heart that is ready for anything"

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Rumi

Our hands are in service of our hearts. What we do in the world ideally reflects deep love in our hearts.

Color: green

Element: air

Poses: shoulder stretches, chest widening poses

When air element is grounded, we are creative, spontaneous, ready for anything.

When air element is not grounded, we are anxious, scattered, fearful, busy, etc.

Third chakra TED talk

This TED talk on Success talks a lot about third chakra issues.  I highly recommend it.

Check out this great Podcast: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510298

Root Chakra, cont

"If yoga is to make us more healthy it is because it coheres us more closely to our environment." Matthew Remski

Poses for the first chakra include:

those that stretch feet and legs: calf stretch with blanket, hero's pose, ankle circles, dancer, tree
those that are very low to the ground: locust, child's pose, reclining poses
forward bends of all kinds
squats

First chakra is related to the time we spend in the womb and to the first year of life.

- our relationship to our mother
- our survival instincts: warmth, comfort, food, the feeling of being welcomed into existence

"The child learns that a body well-fed, loved and cared for is pleasant to live in, as is the world around it."

"Trauma, abandonment, physical abuse, hardship, hunger, or physical difficulties damage the first chakra.  Our basic survival program is built on mistrust.  Pain and trauma teach us to override our body's needs, to ignore them, sublimate them.  Energetically, the child pulls his energy upward in his body, away from his roots."

quotes taken from The Sevenfold Journey, by Judith and Vega

Root Chakra

"Very little grows on jagged rock.  Be crumbled. Be ground.  So that wild flowers will grow up where you are."  Rumi

Chakras are spinning vortexes of energy that correspond to nerve plexuses in the physical body.  There are seven major chakras, starting at the base of the spine and travelling up the center of the body to the crown of the head.

Learning about the chakras offers us more tools with which to balance the body/mind.

The first chakra is called Muladhara and is located at the base of the spine.  Its corresponding color is red, and it is related to the element Earth.

Muladhara is related to the legs and feet.

Muladhara is related to our feeling of security, safety, rootedness, and being at home.  It is related to our family/tribe, and, especially, to our mother.

When the first chakra is balanced, we feel secure, safe, and at home in ourselves.

When the first chakra is out of balance, we feel insecure and fearful.

To make an altar for the root chakra, consider placing rocks, gems, sticks, pictures of family, potted plants, red candles, etc.  If concern over money is an issue, you could place a checkbook on your altar.

One of the ways to balance the first chakra is to feel your connection to the earth.  In asana practice, come back again and again to what is touching the ground.  Feel the security and rootedness that comes with being steady and connected to the earth.  Hold poses longer than usual, and focus on standing poses.  Poses which are low to the ground and spread out on the ground are also useful to connect with the energy of Earth.

In anxiety, our awareness moves up and out in the form of spiraling thoughts.  Find security and calm by bringing your awareness down to the earth.


"Our bodies know that they belong to life, to spirit. It is our minds that make our lives so homeless." John O'Donahue

Somatic Meditation

"The practice of somatic meditation, on the other hand, does bring us into a state of peace, but it is a profoundly somatic peace-- one that is inseparable from deep relaxation-- which permeates the body like a deeply satisfying, spreading, golden glow.  We feel the peace, not in a primarily mental way, but more in a fully physical way.  It is not our mind that is at peace, but rather our body that is deeply peaceful, relaxed, and at extraordinarily deep ease.  Shamatha, when practiced in a somatic way, can lead to a deep sense of inner well-being and even bliss."

Touching Enlightenment, by Reginald Ray, p. 178-79

"We are so busy managing our lives as to cover over this great mystery we're involved with.  What has happened to our wildness?"  -- John O'Donahue

Ocean class

"If you don't become the ocean, you will be seasick everyday."

Embodiment: rest your awareness on feelings deep inside and you will merge with the great ocean within you.

Water images, ocean images

Side bends, wave shapes, watery qualities in the practice

Backstroke, side angle, leaning tree, side bend over the bolster restorative

Embodiment, continued

"We begin to understand that distress itself is an expression of the "wisdom of the body."  It is the body's way of letting us know there is work that needs to be done and life that needs to be lived-- and our discomfort shows us the way in.  Discomfort, then, is always a message-- that we are holding on too tightly to our sense of self-- and an invitation for us to relax, open, and surrender to the fire of larger experience."

-- Touching Enlightenment, Reginald Ray, p. 83

Our bodies experience everything that happens to us and around us, whereas our minds are constantly filtering things.  Experiences that our minds don't allow get stored as "unlived life" and will eventually show themselves as pain, tension, numbness, etc.

"We freeze so that we won't have to feel the intensity of what is occurring." p. 80

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." -- Malraux

"As with our traumas, so with virtually every moment of our lives--  the full range of our experience is not admitted, but is pushed back, jammed down, and walled off, where is abides in the body as conscious or unconscious tension." p.114

"Rather than try to actively "figure out" what happened and how it fits into our idea of "self", we simply abide within the body, in the sting and the pain, and perhaps the humiliation and confusion of what occurred.  Abiding in that way, we let all of it work on us, in the shadows and in the darkness." p.114

In our culture we prize the thinking mind and hold sensations, dreams, images, emotions, intuition to be secondary.  But our mind is constantly filtering and judging based on an idea of "self".  Our body is open and porous, connected to everything.  Our bodies contain wisdom and information to guide us.

"When we let go of what we think, we meet in our body a being or a kind of being that is informative, self-affirming, and satisfying."  -- p. 154