Navel Chakra Balancing for Success

This week we move into the energy and awareness of our Navel Chakra. This energy center is located in the sacral area of our body, the area of our hips, low back and our sexual organs. I prefer to call it our navel chakra but it is often referred to as the Sacral Chakra. 

 Our Navel Chakra, when balanced, is the center of true authentic happiness.

The kind of happiness that doesn’t need to come from the conditions of what is happening in the world around us but the kind of happiness that we find inside ourselves regardless of what is happening in the world around us.

 We have all heard the term “happiness is an inside job” and this is the energy center we can utilize, work with and focus on balancing to do just that. This inner happiness is key to the success of attaining our goals, our New Year’s resolutions and ultimately to everything that we want & desire. This IS the energy center where our desires live. 

 The element of this chakra is water. Flow is what our navel chakra is in its balanced state. In flow we find our happiness.  In flow we find our creativity. In flow we find our true desires. In flow we find Freedom. When we expect someone or something outside of ourselves to make us happy, we have disrupted the flow. 

 As this center houses our happiness and desires, it also has everything to do with all that we are passionate about. It governs our sexuality and our creativity. It is the center of creation, the womb where females carry babies and where males equally participate in the creation of babies. A healthy navel chakra nurtures the womb where the seeds of our desires are planted and watered.  And last but certainly not least this is where our EMOTIONS reside. 

 How do we consciously bring balance to this center? 

As we learned last week in our Root Chakra center, we need to find structure in our grounding practices. This is the foundation the rest of our energy system will be built upon. Once we have developed structure in this root energy, we strive to balance it with our willingness to accept the ever-changing world outside of ourselves. 

 What throws our Navel Chakra out of balance? 

 TOO MUCH ENERGY (emotional overflows)

When there is too much energy in our navel chakra, we feel intense emotions. If we don’t know how to effectively and fully feel these emotions, we won’t know how to release them. This can lead to mood swings, obsessive attachments, poor boundaries and a deep need for acceptance. These energies then cause an “overflow”. What it is that we truly desire is now being drowned in a river of emotions, behaviors and reactions. What causes these overflows of emotions? Many things can, but I am going to talk specifically about when we lose sight of our own desires and our own feelings because we are living our life governed by other people’s expectation of what we should want, feel or desire or even what we perceive their expectations to be. We fall into the trap of what we think we “should do”, “should be” or “should want”. Ultimately, we started this pattern by wanting acceptance of our parents/peers/teachers etc. We may have been taught, guilted or shamed into not going against the norm or bucking the system…and in seeking this acceptance and taking on the guilt, we may have ended up doing what others wanted us to do, leaving what we really want or desire buried deep within us. In the confusion of not living our own desires we may have felt emotions of sadness, resentment, shame, guilt or anger without even knowing why we were feeling these emotions. This is why we can not effectively manage emotions. We need to feel them fully in order to free them. Once we can balance these emotional overflows by learning to embrace and feel all our emotions, we can uncover our desires and begin our journey to inner happiness. (Note; seeking professional help may be required in this process)

 NOT ENOUGH ENERGY (avoiding or numbing our emotions)

Alternately, when we don’t have enough energy in our navel chakra, when the “river runs dry” or a build up of blocks/boulders/emotions has slowed down the flow, we feel emotionally numb. We lack desire, we lack excitement and we certainly can not tap into what we are feeling or what we truly desire. This numbing may have developed over time as a coping mechanism when we were younger and had no means of escape when faced with any type of trauma. This numbing may be a result of self-inflicting numbing such as dependencies on distractions. We may have not been able to deal with the emotions, so we numbed them with food, or drugs or alcohol – there are many ways of numbing or not allowing ourselves to feel our emotions. Some of us throw ourselves into a busy day of work or chores, some of us prefer to numb in front of a TV or computer/phone, others may want to shop – we all have our go-to choose of avoiding our feelings. Ultimately though we are blocking our flow and this is blocking what we truly desire. When the energy of our navel chakra is this low and this slow, we don’t let ourselves desire what it is that we want and even worse we don’t think we deserve anything we do desire. Once we are aware we are numb and are ready to stop the behavior blocking our flow, we can learn to feel our emotions, uncover our desires and begin our journey to inner happiness. (Note; seeking professional help may be required in this process)

 So, how do we consciously bring balance to this center?

 We are all born deserving.

 There are two ultimate truths of the navel chakra…

 The right to desire what we desire.

AND

The right to feel what we feel

 In order to actually know what we desire we have to feel what we feel.

 When we are all caught up in the floodgates of our emotional overflows or numb to anything that we feel we can’t possibly understand what it is we desire because our desires are drowning in the pool of stuck emotions. No flow. No creativity. No desires. No direction. Just stuck. Happiness is fully dependent on the outside world and that will invariably keep us out of balance.

 WHAT CAN WE DO TO BRING BALANCE TO THIS CENTER? 

 To balance this chakra and to flow in the direction of what it is that we truly desire we need to 

• welcome our emotions
• feel them fully
• allow our emotions to move through us

 This is a journey we decide to take within and as we learn to do this, our life begins to flow. We begin to embrace change, we set healthy boundaries for ourselves, we enjoy pleasure, we know what it is we desire and we find our authentic inner happiness!  No longer dependent on the outer world for our happiness, we can anchor and trust in the stability of our root chakra and let the emotions within us rise up. We honor what we feel, we observe what we feel, we no longer block what we feel. We don’t stuff down what we feel, we don’t go on a blaming rant or explode them onto someone else. 

 Anchor into the stability of the root chakra and sit with what we feel inside.  

What we discover is that these feelings are not as scary as we thought they were going to be. We discover that these emotions are not going to kill us. We embrace them, we feel them, and when we let them bubble up, they will feel like many different charges of sensations through our body but then they dissipate. Released. 

 When our emotions are allowed to flow, our desires then emerge and this is when we can get to the root of what it is that we want. What it is that we truly desire. Then we welcome in the knowledge that we deserve everything we desire. FEEL INTO THAT! 

 This week I am challenging you all to a daily intention practice of “finding your happy”

 This week’s intention;

• Do one thing each day that makes you happy.
• Take a mental scan of your body and see how it FEELS. What sensations are present in your body, what emotions are surfacing? 
• If the emotion of guilt or shame surfaces, begin to change your thought process by affirming to yourself that “I deserve everything that I desire” or “I deserve happiness – we all do”. 

 From here we can begin to uncover what it is that we truly desire. 

Ask yourself…

1. What do I desire? (Better health, wellness, relationship, more money, new love…)
2. How do I want to feel? (Safe, happy, connected, loved, understood, free, ease…)
3. What do I desire mentally? (Affirm I have every right to desire what I desire & every right to feel what I feel…)

 We will feel the balance here when we no longer depend on outside circumstances for our happiness.

When our creativity flows

we flow through challenges

we flow through obstacles

we flow through life

 The energy is watery, wavey, always changing, so when you feel off-balance (and we will all experience this) open to every lesson that every emotion can teach you. 

This is the adventure of our navel chakra. 

To experience deeper knowledge of these teachings, attend the Monday 10:30am Hatha Yoga practice and the Tuesday 9:30am Yin Yoga practice (recordings available) Contact Leslie at leslie@wellnessdefined.ca for more information

Now let’s Tap It In!