Sacral Chakra: Healing with Creative Source
/Our second stop on chakra wellness is the Sacral Chakra, the center for creativity, abundance, sexuality, and the pleasure of life.
*To get an overview on the seven chakras, you can visit my earlier post here: Chakra Crash Course
The Sacral Chakra
The sacral chakra is located a few inches below the belly button. This chakra is associated with the color orange and governs the sexual / reproductive organs (in men, aspects are combined with root chakra), pelvic area, kidneys, and bladder.
As you might have learned in my Chakra Crash Course or Root Chakra post, every chakra connects with a scent, stone, music note, and color. I’ll give a quick overview on each, but the majority of information I’ll be focusing on will be in relationship to the emotional / belief system / archetypal aspects of each chakra.
FAST FACTS:
- Color: Orange
- Essential Oils: Jasmine, orange blossom, ylang ylang
- Music Note: D
- Element: Water
Lessons from the Sacral Chakra
Our sacral chakra helps us to cultivate a zest for life, an attractive energy that is open to receiving the sweetness in life in all forms: relationships, financial abundance, beauty / creativity, emotional uplift, and in the creation of new life. Individuals with a healthy sacral chakra bring forth beauty and abundance in their surroundings through joy, laughter, intuition, and creativity. When this chakra is in balance, we are balanced in our ability to give and receive.
In our Western culture, I have found that this chakra is most frequently out-of-balance. Take for instance our approach to work as a society: most of us in Western culture are very oriented towards our work (so much so, even our names come with titles distinguishing our work and education). From an energetic/ emotional perspective, we rely heavily on “making things happen,” a thought pattern that pulls from our solar plexus chakra, the seat of our willpower. Often times this leaves our sacral chakra, the seat of creativity and inspiration, or the thought pattern of “art of allowing,” underutilized or completely depleted. I have seen this contribute to anything from exhaustion, to reproductive and intimacy issues.
When we learn to balance and energize our sacral chakra, we access our source of abundance, joy, creativity, beauty, and passion. Instead of “making things happen,” we become an attractive force and allow-manifest our desires.
Patterns of Imbalance
When we experience some of the following, it can indicate sacral chakra needing attention:
- Excessive cramps (women)
- Impotence (men)
- Bladder infections / UTIs
- Low vitality / loss of energy / low sex drive
- Depression / apathy
- Eating disorders
- Weight gain and loss
- Reproductive issues
- Constipation
Patterns of imbalance happen on a continuum, sometimes we are simply not taking in enough “fuel” or energy to the center, and other times, we are blocking the flow of energy.
From and emotional healing / energetic perspective the sacral chakra has much to teach us in either imbalance:
If we have an over-exercised sacral chakra (plenty of energy, but without proper flow to-and-from our root and solar plexus chakras) you may notice in yourself or others:
- Addictions to work, relationships, shopping, sex, drugs / alcohol
- Black widow energy (feminine), the need to be found attractive and destroy admirers
- Don Juan energy (masculine), the need to be admired at expense of true Self
- Over-taking / stealing, co-dependence, and lack of boundaries
- Parasitical relationships
- Self-destructive tendencies
- Jack / Jill of all trades, master of none
- Emotional manipulation
If we are lacking or leaking energy in our sacral chakra you may notice in yourself or others:
- Compromising vision or ethics to highest bidder or by feelings of lack and limitation
- Creative blockages and stagnation
- Starving artist energy
- Wounded child or patterns of abuse and co-dependence
- Lack of joy, passion, or momentum
- Over-giving, martyrdom, co-dependence, and lack of boundaries
- Lack of intimacy and sexual drive
- Chronic complaining, pessimism, depression
- Fear of emotions, inability to recognize or operate on emotional plane
Our sacral chakra is where our emotions live. Those that are imbalanced in the chakra can experience depression and anxiety, often living in fear over their own emotions. This can lead individuals to shut down or turn off their emotional faculties. Extremism in the other direction, can lead individuals to be emotionally manipulative as a way to gain control in relationships.
When we are in balance with our sacral chakra, we recognize our emotions as our internal GPS system, guiding us to people, places, work, and relationships that serve our greater good. After all, when we feel good - we do good.
Healing the Sacral Chakra
When working with the sacral chakra in session, we are clearing old belief systems and patterns of control to help move out energetic blockages in this area. Through emotional healing, we are shedding light on aspects of our consciousness (systems of thought) we have about ourselves and others. Through awareness, we are able to energetically release that which no longer serves us.
Those who are healing sexual trauma or patterns of co-dependency are most often re-balancing the sacral chakra in an emotional healing session. Our sacral chakra governs our ability to balance responsibility in relationships, and cultivate win-win, mutually beneficial relationships. The sacral chakra helps us to tap into our creative source, so that we may experience enthusiasm, personal creativity, and passion in our daily lives.
As part of my practice, I typically recommend exercises following a session to help move energy and create new, supportive thought systems and habits in our waking lives. While emotional healing works all on its own, I have found that when we combine active practice with inner work, we make changes easier and with less effort. Here is an exercise from my toolbox, that can help balance the sacral chakra:
Energizing the sacral chakra: The art of allowing & creative flow
As I mentioned earlier in this post, our culture tends to support willpower (the energy of pushing) and tends to diminish the feminine-creative aspect of allowing (the energy of receiving). For this post, I would like to share a simple practice to open up and energize our sacral chakra.
Have you ever experienced being in a state of joy, and the feeling of flowing through a day? Instead of ticking boxes off a checklist, you seem to have the right conversations, with the right people, at the right time, and things seem to magically and effortlessly come together. That added smile at your local coffee shop, sparks a short, loving conversation with a barista. And the simple affirmation to your child results in a heartfelt hug. These experiences happen because self-love is contagious. When you are in love with your life, other people experience love in your presence.
Do you know what the most important part of any equation in life is? You. So if you are experiencing lack or limitation in life, relationships, boundaries, romance, money or otherwise, it is often because we have not extended those things to yourself first.
I suggest a process of reverse engineering. First, pinpoint the area of lack or limitation. Let’s use a man who has been married a number of years, but feels undervalued and underappreciated by his partner. Here are some of the questions I might ask this person:
Have you ever taken yourself out on date, cooked yourself a nice meal, or spent a day or night romancing your inner God/Goddess?
Meaning, does this person connect with his own sexual / creative energy to bring romance, beauty, and zest into his personal life.
What do you do for yourself that feels creative and inspired?
Meaning, does he exercise his own creativity to feed his spirit, taking personal responsibility for feeling alive, enthusiastic and abundant in his own life.
How do you treat yourself, moment-to-moment, day-to-day?
Meaning, how is he teaching others to treat him?
In essence, how we treat ourselves, teaches others how to treat us in-return
When we heal patterns of imbalance in ourselves, we heal the patterns of imbalance in our relationships.
I typically recommend that we focus on one area that feels the most sticky. For instance, if we get to the question of, “What do you do for yourself that feels creative and inspired?” And the reaction is a laundry list of family responsibilities, lack of time, and even disgust at the suggestion of taking time for oneself as being “selfish,” we know we’ve hit the sticky question. This can just be an indication that this area of our life requires a bit of attention. Sometimes resistance is our friend in helping to distinguish where our attention needs to go.
I would then suggest that this client take 3 hours a week to do something creative and inspired. This will feel completely foreign to most people, maybe even totally irresponsible. These are common reactions to a sacral chakra out-of-balance. But this is where the magic happens. For when we take time to feed our inspirations and desires, we enter into a space of enthusiasm and happiness, reigniting our love of life. What most people begin to notice is that when they love life, life begins to flow, things come together, and we open ourselves up to partake and allow in the fruits of life.
