About 15 years ago, before I became serious about my yoga practice, I had long suspected that my social work career was lacking a serious spiritual element and my sex drugs and rock and roll period was coming to an end. So I went looking for some spiritual guides.
It was when Louise Hay and Doreen Virtue had started to peak in their careers and ‘Self Help’ books were the craze.
The books on my shelf were mostly authored by Deepak Chopra, Eckart Tolle, Carolyn Myss (still a fave) and Anette Noontil, author of The Body is the Barometer of your Soul.
My mission was to activate my intuition in order to heal myself and I found myself attending a 3 day workshop by the Angel Lady herself, Doreen Virtue.
Much like the authors before her, she talked about our different energy centres, often better known as our chakras and one thing that stuck in my mind was the way she referred to the sacral chakra as the ‘sex, drugs and rock n roll chakra’.
This still makes me laugh to this day, and I completely understand her reasoning behind this. The sacral chakra is affiliated with our reproductive system and develops from the time we are 6 months old, til the time we are about 2.
It co insides with the time we develop our taste buds, so anyone that’s had kids or has ever looked after them will know that it’s often the time that they’ll spit food back at you if they don’t like the taste.
It’s the phase in our life when we become aware of our genitals and one of their primary functions when we discover the world of toilet training.
It’s also the period that our fine motor skills are refining, as is our ability to speak and connect with others. It’s the time in our lives where we starting to draw, play, negotiate, speak and generally communicate and connect.
Our creativity is starting to progress, as is our ability to express ourselves. Unfortunately for many, it’s also the time that we begin to associate certain types of behaviour in terms of an action and reward process.
If we behave well, we’ll get a chocolate. If we stop yelling, we get to have a toy. If we eat all our food, we’ll get dessert. If our family is violent, we take solace in the comfort of either food, or a certain type of behaviour.
It’s also the time that the predisposition for many of our addictions begins.
As we develop our fire and our confidence in the energy centre above known as the solar plexus chakra – the same energy centre that is affiliate with the pancreas.
If we are constantly plugging into an external source like a drug, coffee, alcohol, or some form of external acknowledgement, we are constantly going to be relying on something external in us to feed our internal power, confidence and drive.
When the ego is challenged, a person can unconsciously crave foods such as refined sugars or white flour, which cause spikes in blood sugar, that can help to numb a person from their higher consciousness.
We are literally giving our power away.
Recently, I was so sad to hear about the passing of one of my favorite actors Philip Seymour Hoffman. It goes to show that even when your talent is recognised by so many people – unless you validate YOURSELF, your demons will only keep coming back to haunt you. The 40 day sacral chakra e course goes into this in greater detail.
THIS is one of the reasons that we work from the inside out. Because it doesn’t matter how much the world loves, validates and honours us, if we can’t do it for ourselves, we will struggle when it comes time to interact with others.
What about you? Where does your power come from?
Image Source: I Am Christopher Durst