A Guided Yin Chakra Meditation – Not Just For Women!
I have been wanting to offer more recorded meditations here, and am now going to try to do that more often. Today I have recorded an mp3 of one of my favorite chakra meditation sequences for connecting to your feminine/yin/sacral energy. This has nothing to do with gender – it is the receptive, fluid, intuitive energy that moves through all of us, as opposed to our yang/masculine/root energy, which is assertive, solid, and expressive. Yin and yang define each other, and as they move through us in different combinations, shape our state of awareness and way of being in the world. In today’s world, we have a lot of yang, and it is well-expressed for most of us. Our yin is often underdeveloped, which is why I love this meditation. Most people find that developing this energy in this way is deeply healing, soothing, and nurturing.
In the chakra system I work with, the even numbered chakras are our ‘yin’ chakras. While all the chakras have receptive and assertive expressions, chakras 1-3-5-7 are energetically more centrifugal or outward-moving (yang), while 2-4-6 are more centripetal and inward-moving (yin). This meditation works with chakras 2-4-6, and with two other yin modalities most often associated with bringing our yin energy forward – fluidity and movement. Instead of sitting ramrod straight in this meditation, you will sway and flow. Instead of not moving, you will move and feel your body. You will also work with the infinity symbol (figure 8), often considered a feminine symbol (as all spirals are), by ‘drawing’ this symbol with a finger in front of your body to link your sacral chakra to the earth, your sacral to your heart, your heart to your third eye, and your third eye to the sky.
This meditation is a variation on several I have found in various shakti-based and Tantric traditions (some of which are covered in my Women’s Energy Body Teachings Booklist.) In Tantric traditions there are many methods for bringing our yin energy forth, and then our yang, and merging the two. That’s another topic for another post! For today, may this meditation bring you peace, healing, and a taste of embodied enlightenment.
Yin Chakra Meditation (16 minutes, 7.4MB)
(Click to stream or click and ‘Save As’ to download to your hard drive. This is an mp3 file, so you should then be able to import it into Itunes if you wish.)
Peace!
P.S. Don’t forget the Empowering Your Feminine Energy Body teleseminar starts in just over a week – we will work with empowering our yin energy a lot in that course, and in a much deeper way. Also Bali Essence is filling up fast, just a few spots left, so if you are considering that sign up soon:-)
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Rosie with picture on wall of Yoga Bindu that she, her daughter, and friends recreated from the cover of the book The Master’s Touch: On Being a Sacred Teacher for the New Age by Harbhajan Singh Khalsa and Yogi Bhajan
Since I work a lot with women’s energetics and life phases, I often receive questions about how to deal with challenging symptoms created by PMS, menstruation, pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause. While I provide a lot of energy healing resources here to draw upon, I wanted to add some more physical information, specifically on how to work with these within yoga. For this I turned to Rosie Good, founder and teacher of Yoga Bindu in San Pedro, California, and my own yoga teacher. I have moved often in my life and therefore experienced a lot of different yoga studios and teachers, and never found one I love quite so much as Rosie’s, because of her emphasis on yoga as a spiritual practice, and the beautiful transmission that she herself brings to her classes and studio. She has practiced yoga for 30 years, and is certified in hatha yoga through The Center For Yoga in Los Angeles, and in kundalini yoga and kundalini prenatal yoga through Golden Bridge.
Since the yoga terms here may be unfamiliar to some readers, I’ve linked to Wikipedia on some terms. But I also think there is a lot of information here any women will find interesting, even if you don’t have a yoga practice (and perhaps you will be spurred to begin one!)
Thanks so much for doing this Rosie. Can you first give everyone a little sense of your background, and where you are coming from within the yoga world?
I teach what is called the Krishnamacharya blend, which is Iyengar, Viniyoga, and Ashtanga yoga, mixed with kundalini yoga. What I come out with is pretty much a pranayama [breath]-centered practice. Yogi Bhajan is my primary influence in kundalini yoga, and Gurmukh at Golden Bridge. I’ve also studied a lot with Rod Stryker and Diane Gilbert.
Krishnamacharya is probably the most influential teacher in 20th century yoga. Iyengar was one of his students, as was K. Pattabhi Jois, the founder of Ashtanga yoga. And since I know you would like to focus on women’s practice in this interview, it’s interesting to note that Krishnamacharya was the first teacher to allow a woman to practice – Indra Devi.
This was in India? What led him to teach her?
Yes, in India, although she was a European woman, and has talked about her experience. She says that she pestered him, asking him over and over to teach her. She would sit in child’s pose before him and ask. That was the way he was taught – he would sit in front of a yogi’s caves for weeks waiting before the teacher would see him and meet with him. So she impressed him, and eventually he taught her. And then he taught his wife and his daughter-in-law, and yoga gradually opened up to women for the first time.
And now here in the U.S. at least, women make up the majority of yoga practitioners! Before we get into that more though, I wanted to hear a bit about your spiritual background, because I know that you are a practicing Catholic, but also practice yoga as a deeply spiritual practice, so I’m interested to hear how you blend the two for yourself?
Well I sometimes call myself ‘Catholic and…’, because there’s so much more to what I believe. When I was young, my yoga practice actually took me away from Catholicism, and then it brought me back.
That’s interesting, because Catholicism is really the most mystic of the Christian traditions in many ways. I mean, all the saints have siddhi powers!
Yes, that’s true! I took Sanskrit for a couple of years, and my teacher said something that made this blending ‘click’ for me. He said, ‘You learn another language not necessarily to speak it, but to better understand your own.’ I think it’s the same with culture and faith traditions. I think when you learn about others, you find out more about your own. And Catholicism blended a lot of traditions in its formation, it’s all still in there. It seems the more I studied Hinduism and yoga, the more I wanted to return to the faith I was brought up in and understand it more deeply.
Yes, I can see this, this is true for me in many ways too. Ok, turning back to women in yoga, I’m first interested to hear if you think yoga has changed as the result of so many women practicing it here in the West?
Well, that’s hard to say, but I think overall that here in the U.S. at least on the physical level it has become more focused on strength. It’s interesting because Gurmukh said Yogi Bhajan told her part of her role was to strengthen women. So her classes were known to be very tough. And I think as that happened, more women were drawn to yoga for that reason. They wanted to experience their body as strong, and to experience their body weight in a positive way, because they had so many experiences out in the world where that wasn’t the case. So that’s probably the main physical change.
How about on the spiritual level – within Yogi Bhajan’s kundalini yoga teachings, does he speak to any differences between men and women practicing? I have never found much writing on this in kundalini yoga writings, only in Tantric traditions.
Yogi Bhajan did not really talk about differences in practice for men and women, but Rod Stryker has – he comes from a more Tantric tradition, and includes similar teachings to yours on the central role of the sacral chakra and women. And of course Gurmukh focuses on teachings for women.
Ok, let’s get into the asanas [physical postures], as I know many women would like more information on this. I’d like to move through all the different phases of a women’s life. First, during PMS and menstruation, what asanas can help with symptoms?
Well for PMS, inversions. Inversions every day! And it doesn’t have to be a big inversion – you can just lay on your back with your feet up on the wall, or do downward dog, which is considered a semi-inversion. Or of course you can work towards bigger inversions if you have an established practice – headstands, plow, etc.
For menstruation, the traditional teaching is that you shouldn’t do inversions during your period. I do teach that in my teacher’s training courses, but in class I actually don’t emphasize it much, because I and many women I know find we benefit from inversions at this time. Medically, there is no reason not to invert – there used to be a belief that doing so would slow or inhibit the flow in some way, but medically that’s been proven not to be true.
However, energetically, it is a little more complicated. Prana is our incoming energy and apana is our outgoing. During menstruation, your body wants to release a lot of apana. When you turn upside down, you are raising that apana to the gastric fire, and the traditional teachings are that this mix might cause you to retain something your body wants you to let go of, or cause you to release more than you should. So that’s the foundation for why traditionally women were told not to do inversions during their periods.
But I find personally that it’s different each month for me, and that sometimes I really feel inversions are helpful. Especially if I have back soreness, a plow may feel great, for example. And I find that it may actually shorten my period, with few issues. So that may actually be an example of this apana idea of releasing more faster actually being a positive.
Yes, it may be you are working with this idea of the apana meeting the gastric fire – it’s like you are gathering up what needs to be released in the plow so it lets go faster and easier.
Yes, there’s a way to work with it. So I try to help women to really tune into their own bodies, and feel for themselves what feels right on a particular day. For me, I feel I can work with this, so I don’t avoid inversions.
Yes, that makes sense. So going back to PMS, for PMS symptoms, inversions are the best for relief?
Yes. Although a good all around yoga practice is the best for everything, including PMS! But inversions every day will help.
Ok, thanks. Moving on to pregnancy. What do you usually advise?
Well in kundalini yoga, what Gurmukh (who of course specializes in this) teaches is that in the first trimester we really don’t need to do anything differently, assuming there’s no problem with the pregnancy. However, in hatha yoga, many teachers teach that in the first trimester you want to take it really easy, to make sure the pregnancy takes root. So there are some differences in view between hatha and kundalini traditions. For me, here, I like women to take it easy those first three months, just to be on the safe side.
Are there any asanas that help relieve the nausea that many women feel in their first trimester (morning sickness, although we all know it’s often not just confined to the morning)?
There is a pranayama [breath practice] that is really good at helping with this – sitali – where you curl your tongue in on the sides and stick it out a bit, and suck your breath in through it. Then you exhale either through both nostrils or alternating nostrils. It is also a cooling breath. But it’s good for nausea at any time, including during pregnancy.
That’s great to know. How about as a woman moves into the second and third trimesters?
In the second trimester, assuming you are feeling good, you can do whatever feels good, although never anything on the belly, and shavasana (corpse pose) on your side, your left side is best. The head should be raised if on the back. I don’t like inversions for women at this point, and no breath of fire. I do like mula bhanda [a root lock done by contracting the muscles of the pelvic floor] throughout pregnancy, although I know some teachers advise letting that go at a certain point.
Really? I’m surprised, because we are advised to do kegels [pelvic floor contractions] throughout pregnancy, and mula bhanda really starts with a kegel for women, right?
Yes, basically, although there’s a subtle difference. Eventually mula bhanda in women becomes an internal contraction of the cervix. It becomes so fine-tuned that this is where you contract – it is not even the vaginal muscles anymore.
Yes, that’s the true kegel in Tantric traditions too, although it’s not called a kegel. I like to do something called an ‘energy kegel’ which is a variation on this, where you release light upward from the sacral chakra upon release of the internal contraction. The cervix is the internal focal point for the sacral chakra in women in the chakra system I work with.
Yes, that makes sense. So I like continuing mula banda throughout pregnancy, although some kundalini traditions advise stopping it. I think it is just considered too much stimulation at a certain point.
Then as pregnancy progresses, of course hip openers are good birth preparation, although women have to be careful, because the hormones loosen your hips, and you don’t want to overdo it. At a certain point in the third trimester, it’s best to hold back from the fullest expression of your hips opening, so you don’t overstretch the connective tissue, which doesn’t always bounce back.
So what about post-partum? How soon do you advise returning to yoga? And how to phase back in?
Well you can start with pranayama [breath exercises] right away. This can really help facilitate your own recovery. And grab some moments to meditate – of course yoga is more than the asanas [postures], so physically while you are recovering you can gather your energy this way. But then as far as the asanas, you can return as soon as your doctor says it’s OK, which is usually 6 weeks. And start with building strength again. I like to do a lot of backbend variations, even small bends, to begin rebuilding abdominal tone and strengthen the lower back. I also like to do a lot of standing postures, to develop hip and leg strength. So rebuilding strength is the first step, and of course a well-rounded practice.
Ok great. On to perimenopause and menopause – are there any asanas or pranayama associated with relieving any difficult symptoms women experience during these life phases?
There is not a lot specifically taught about this, and of course that’s partly because there aren’t that many women teachers that have been through this yet, but that is changing. But I think kundalini yoga is especially helpful, because it is really working with your glandular system. It is working with balancing your entire glandular system, which of course includes your hormones, so it will help smooth the hormonal transitions that occur. And inversions, again, are part of this – inversions are great for your glandular system.
Meditation also, because it quiets down the parietal lobe of your brain – the part of your brain that says ‘this is where I end and this is where the world begins.’ In true meditation, this is quieted so you don’t have this separation. So when you are hurting or uncomfortable, from anything, including these big life transitions, meditation will help because it quiets down this sense of ‘I’. And since kundalini yoga does all the preparatory work to help you get to this calm place, it is especially helpful in that regard too.
In hatha yoga, the emphasis is more on being healthy overall. If you are healthy going into these phases of your life, you will experience fewer issues. You might want extra emphasis on maintaining your pelvic floor, or want to address physical body ailments specific to you, but if you are healthy overall, that will go a long way to ease the transition.
There are also some teachers now focusing more on weighted yoga, in order to help support bone density during this phase. It used to be this was kind of frowned upon, but more teachers are adopting this as more older people take up yoga, because bone density is a big concern, and is aided by this kind of weighted strength work.
There are also teachings on yoga and the stages of life. This is not specific to women, but is part of Hindu teachings. And the final stage is really our spiritual stage in that system – brahmacharya. We are brahmacharya when we are young, and then we return to it in our final phase of life. Traditionally, asana practice is said to wind down during this phase, and pranayama and meditation become the central practices. Now we are living longer and in better physical shape, so asana can continue for a long time, but philosophically, I think there is still something to learn from this. The transition is from the physical to the spiritual – our yoga practice shifts.
Yes, and this ties into the teachings of so many different faith and energetics traditions. It’s really about shifting our identity from being body-based to spirit-based during this phase. I think women especially have a profound opportunity during this time – to use perimenopause in this way. I think for people who don’t do this, aging is more difficult.
Yes, I see this all the time. When older women come in and cannot do everything that younger participants can do, or can’t do what they used to, some will become frustrated and want to quit. But they have so much more to experience and benefit from yoga – really the good part is just ramping up! Realizing this helps so much with emotional aging. Yoga is a life long practice. With age we can really give up on trying to prove something physically, and move inward.
Thank you so much Rosie, this is great information! Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Just keep practicing! Practice daily – even a little – if you can. Invert daily, even just a little. It changes your whole perspective. And for women, as we age, kundalini and restorative yoga. Meditate.
I support that. Thanks so much! And for those of you in Southern California, I highly recommend trying out a class with Rosie at Yoga Bindu. She also has her first CD out, a Restorative Yoga Practice, that you can order by emailing Yoga Bindu.
Please feel free to share your own thoughts and questions in the comments. And I do promise a new recorded meditation in my next post! Namaste-
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With Mother’s Day coming up, at least in my part of the globe, I thought I would combine 2 themes of this blog – the spirituality of motherhood and interfaith explorations. My plan was to compile a series of uplifting and soul-inspiring quotes about motherhood from history’s greatest spiritual leaders and teachers.
Except I couldn’t find many.
Oh sure, there were a few along the lines of ‘love everyone like a mother loves her children’, but that was about it.
Hi all, I plan to do a full post on Friday related to Mother’s Day, and offer a guided chakra meditation designed to help in the pursuit of that holy grail of motherhood – balance. But I wanted to make a couple of announcements separate from that first.
I’m happy to announce that I have created an updated version of my free e-book Women’s Energetics: Healing the Subtle Body Wounds of Sexual Abuse and Trauma. It’s available here as a PDF, or you can go to Smashwords to download other versions. It is available at Amazon also, although for 99 cents, the lowest price they will allow new authors to price at (I am committed to offering this e-book free here.) However, even if you have gotten the free PDF version here or another format at Smashwords, any reviews on Amazon (or Smashwords) are appreciated!
This new version includes more introductory material, direct links to the accompanying guided audio files, answers to the most common questions I have received, and an Appendix of other resources for sexual healing, including websites and book suggestions. Please help me spread the word about this so that it reaches the woman it is meant to reach. Thank you.
I’m also happy to announce I will be doing my first ever teleseminar, on Healing and Empowering the Sacral Chakra. I have taught this material in person many times, and am excited to now be offering it this way. This course is not focused on healing from sexual abuse and trauma per se, although that will be one aspect of it. But the emphasis is really on helping women connect with this energetic aspect of ourselves – the subtle body root of our feminine power – in a more profound way. It is not just focused on theory but on practice, and transmission – I will guide you through powerful energetic meditations and healing work. We will also commune together on a shared forum for the duration of the class. Details are here – I hope to connect with many of you I have come to know in the ‘blogosphere’ in this deeper way (although note that you do not have to be present on the calls live to participate, all will be recorded.) Sign up soon – the course starts June 4th!
Motherhood and energetic balance on Friday. Namaste-
Lisa
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Of Earth’s Portals and Gateways…
“Here was a place where the veil lying between the worlds was thin…she need only step through the mists here, and be in Avalon.” – Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer-Bradley
“This is the place that shamans have known of for millenia. They pass through the portals…moving between the worlds…This is the entire universe in which you’re destined to dissolve.” – Terrence Mckenna
“Walking is doing wonders for body and soul. I’m completely focused on the present moment, for that is where all signs, parallel worlds and miracles are to be found. Time really doesn’t exist.” – The Aleph, Paul Coelho
I thought this would be an easy post to write as the canyon country of the U.S. southwest is my spiritual home – the place that resonates most deeply with my being. But in fact as I sat down I felt at a rare loss for words, and went in search of quotes from other (better) writers to help. I’m not really sure I can add anything to the quotes and pictures above, but I will try, as I do believe in the power of words to express the inexpressible (a koan for you!)
I’ve written about Nature Mysticism before – the ways mystics from all different spiritual traditions have related to nature, and the peace, beauty, and balance that time in nature brings out in us. I’ve also written about Planet Earth’s Chakras – a post I wrote just for fun and never imagined would become so popular. I also recently came across an interesting article about a research project on the healing powers of nature, which (among other things) confirmed that even just looking at pictures of nature can benefit your health. So even if the words in this post do nothing for you, hopefully the pictures will!
What I really want to talk about today is the magical gateways nature offers us – the places where the ‘veils between the worlds’ are thin, and we can slip through. This is the shaman’s art; and yes I know the word ‘shaman’ has been co-opted and romanticized and perhaps abused, but for the purposes of this post, I hope you will allow me to use it, as I do so with the greatest respect.
Although I use the word shaman, this kind of traveling, or shifting, is really talked about by mystics of every spiritual tradition – it’s not owned by any one. I view it as a byproduct of our natural fluidity – the fluidity of human awareness. Our awareness is really a spectrum, and we are shifting along this spectrum all the time – from moment to moment we are living in different worlds. Walking through the mists or veils at earth’s spiritual portals is really just an extension of this fluidity.
Some people ‘see’ these worlds in pictures, but that’s not the only way to experience them. They are a vibration, a feeling, a space or dimension that opens up - the way they will be experienced or processed by the ‘brain’ is different for each individual. Part of the reason I like chakra meditation in particular is because it helps develop our subtle awareness for just such experiences – it trains us to feel these shifts and distinguish them. Our chakras are themselves each doorways, and different places in nature resonate with each one – some places take us through the ‘heart’ doorway of love, others through the ‘navel’ doorway of power, still others launch ‘vision quests’ of the third eye.
The shaman’s path has gone a bit out of style in many spiritual circles today. Spirituality, at least as its culturally expressed, goes through phases and fads like everything else. In the 60s and 70s, talk of traveling and shifting in this way was very in (perhaps I missed my moment!) Of course, this was fueled partly by the interest in psychedelic drugs, but those were never necessary. The fluidity of our awareness is natural and doesn’t require anything to create it, although it sometimes does need awakening, and definitely needs grounding and training to sustain (grounding was what was missing in some of the spiritual talk of the psychedelic era.)
Nowadays, discussion is more about mindfulness, being in the moment, being present, and inquiring. I’m all for that. Now more than ever, we are conditioned to live outside the moment – in the past, in the future, on the weekend, on vacation, when we get that new house, or car, or raise…And meditation of any type starts with mindfulness. But being in the moment – present awareness – offers us more than a pronounced appreciation of the here and now. As Coelho says in the quote above, in a moment, time ceases to exist. A moment is a doorway into eternity. A moment is a doorway into every world, every potential, and the light of Source itself. There are no limits on a moment, because our mind – and the order and perceptual framework it normally provides for us – stops.
If we are fully in the moment, if we are stopped, when we come upon a place in nature that functions as a portal, we can travel through. Otherwise, we might walk right by it. I watch thousands of people do this daily in my favorite National Park (Zion, which I visit several times a year.) There is no better proof that we each live in different worlds even when we are in the same physical place than taking a walk through a place like Zion. For some, it is simply a photo op – a visual ‘place’. Others are impacted by the energy, but not sure what to do with it – perhaps they get giddy, or perhaps they go the other way, feeling anxious – threatened by their relative smallness. Still others feel or see nothing at all – they are locked in a human drama of some sort that prevents than from connecting, like a family squabble, or lover’s quarrel. And then some are stopped in their tracks, sensing or seeing the dimensions of light that are opening and closing where they stand.
Although these portals exist all around the world, and each of us resonate with different ones, for me it is the southwest desert and canyon country – which some find harsh and barren – where I best stop. In the most remote places, there’s no human reference point – no sign of culture, or even of sentient life (although of course a careful examination reveals all sorts of resourceful and resilient life…) There is really no sense of humanity at all. The base of these canyons and mountains are 250 million years old, and we humans are barely a blip in their history. We are inconsequential. Their existence feels independent of us, and even our worries about global warming, the environment, and the rest seem irrelevant. It is our own survival that is threatened, not that of these places. These places know that, and convey that, and strip away any semblance of self-importance.
Many believe the spiritual gateways are closing. This is in fact the whole premise of Mists of Avalon (the first quote above) – that the choices humans make en masse can close or open these portals, and that we have in fact been closing them for some time. And some feel that if they do close, a fundamental human opportunity will have been lost, perhaps forever. But pondering this is a bit like pondering the koan ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?’ If we forget how to access these portals, do they cease to exist?
One could ask the same thing about enlightenment. If you’ve read a lot of my posts, you know that I use that word outside of any particular spiritual tradition – I don’t think it’s owned by Eastern traditions, or that there is only one way to find it. I view enlightenment as a fundamental human opportunity, that individuals from many different backgrounds and cultures throughout the ages have sought, and some discovered. Traditionally we are not really supposed to talk about enlightenment, because to talk about it is to diminish it, to define it, to turn it into a concept or projection – a ‘thing’ in the mind. And yet, if we don’t talk about it, will it disappear? Will the doorways to it close? As interest in spirituality (as distinguished from religion) grows, are we watering it down too much, to the point where we are letting the doorways to enlightenment close? Are we so focused on self-improvement, and ‘manifesting our dreams’, and social change, that we are walking right by the veils?
I don’t know the answer to that, but when I visit earth’s spiritual portals, I am reassured, and struck by how much more this planet gives us than physical sustenance. It is a beautiful, magical place, and opens us to the beautiful, magical planes in ourselves.
What are some of your favorite places? What do they show you and where do they take you? Please share! (And speaking of magical places, don’t forget to check out the Bali Essence website if you haven’t done so already…)
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Bali, Guest Post, and Book Shares…
I haven’t posted in awhile as I’ve been on retreat and then vacation here (yes, those are my munchkins)…
…and here…
…and here…
…but there are a few things I wanted to share this week, and then next week I’ll do a post on Nature Energetics, incorporate more pics of my favorite places, and talk about the energy they transmit and doorways they open (and I look forward to hearing from some of you about your favorite places as well.)
First off, I am VERY excited to announce that I will be joining Cyndi Dale, Chantal Monte, and Anthony J.W. Benson in offering an amazing retreat in Bali this Fall!! As you may remember, I interviewed Chantal here about Bali this past January, in a very popular post that many of you commented on or emailed me about. The response to this post is partly what helped birth this trip. So if Bali is calling to you, check it out – this will be an amazing inner and outer journey.
I am also very happy to share that I am guest posting – or actually, was interviewed – by friend and fellow blogger Cate over at Heart on my Sleeve. Cate and I have been corresponding for awhile now through our blogs, as she has shared a lot about her own spiritual journey through midlife. Among other things, she prompted me to share how I decided to name this Blog ‘Mommy Mystic’ – a story I have often thought of sharing here, as I originally resisted that name:-) So come on over to visit Cate and I there…
I have also recently reviewed a couple of books on Amazon that some of you may be interested in. The first is Elaine Pagels’ latest, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelations. Many of you may be familiar with Pagels popular books on the Gnostic Gospels. As with those books, my favorite part of this book is her sharing of excerpts from other Revelations (accounts of personal spiritual experiences and visions from early desert mystics) that were found at Nag Hammadi, famously buried in large clay pots there, and discovered in 1945.
The second book is The Way, by Kristin Wolf, interestingly enough also of a Christian bent (it is Easter week after all…). This is a radical re-imagining of the birth of Christianity from a nature-based, feminine spirituality tradition. I don’t want to give away too much more, as I think it’s best read without any knowledge of the plot (although most of the reviews, including my own, do give some away, and I don’t think this ruins it, if you want to know a little more.) Although I didn’t love everything about this book, I loved a lot, and appreciated its creative perspective.
I’ll be back next week. Whatever your religion (or lack thereof!) I hope you have a wonderful Easter – for me, this holiday, and its historical pagan roots, represents rebirth, so may you experience that for yourself the next few days:-) I am going to close comments here to encourage you to visit the Bali site, and to visit Cate and I over at her blog, where I will be commenting with her…
Namaste-
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The Energetics of Midlife – Burning in the Fire
Alex Grey's Holy Fire, www.AlexGrey.com
“In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils.
And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.” -Rumi
March 8th is a busy day this year! It’s always International Women’s Day, celebrated as an actual holiday in some parts of the world. It’s also the March full moon this year, which means it’s Magha Puja Day (or ‘Sangha Day’) in many Buddhist countries – a day to celebrate spiritual community. In Tibetan communities it’s the annual Butter Lamp Festival Day, when sculptures are made out of yak butter to celebrate miracles attributed to the Buddha. And then we also have a solar storm today, which depending on who you talk to, is either a major, or completely inconsequential, event.
It also happens to be my 45th birthday, which is not being celebrated widely in any part of the world, but has prompted some interest in my own household. My five-year old daughter asked me very matter-of-factly, “Does this mean you are going to die soon?” Her twin brother just sighed and said “It takes a loooooong time to count to 45.” Their 7-year old sister, our resident spin doctor, prepared a breakfast presentation on why my birthday was a great time to get a pet turtle.
I decided that how I would really like to spend my birthday is finally writing a post on the energy shifts of midlife, including perimenopause, which has been on my blog to-do list for some time. And there’s one word for summing up the energetics of midlife, at least within the spiritual traditions that discuss it – FIRE. As in holy fire, sacred fire, kundalini, transformative light, and the burning away of obstacles and any debris. Also hot flashes of course, which I have yet to experience, but are all part of the energetic fun.
From an energetic perspective, midlife shifts occur throughout our forties. Biologically, perimenopuase for women is the 8-10 years prior to menopause, and the current average age for menopause is 51. Throughout most of our 40s then, our body (and energy body!) are experiencing shifts in preparation for menopause, regardless of whether we experience any physical symptoms. Our hormones are shifting, and usually we experience at least some cycle irregularity during this time.
Energetically, this irregularity extends to the cycles of our subtle body. From adolescence through our thirties, our subtle body follows a predictable pattern of centrifugal and centripetal action corresponding to our menstrual cycle. In the 2 weeks or so leading up to ovulation, our subtle body shifts towards a more outward, expressive, emanating mode – what some call the ‘intention’ phase of our cycle. In the following 2 weeks or so leading into menstruation, this reverses, and our energy gradually becomes more inward-focused, absorbent, and receptive – sometimes called the ‘intuitive’ phase.
If you are attuned to your chakras, or any other subtle body mapping, you can clearly feel this shifting at the level of each energy center. It adds a whole new dimension to PMS, because you can begin to see how some of the symptoms normally associated with it are partly due to an increased energetic sensitivity. This is the root of many feminine spiritual traditions that consider menses a time for seclusion – not because we are ‘unclean’ but because we are highly sensitive and in fact can use this time to seek answers, receive visions, and facilitate transformation.
During perimenopause, this predictable cycle is thrown into flux. Instead, we can go through months of feeling hyper-sensitive to our energetic surroundings (a long intuitive phase), followed by months of feeling super-productive and expressive (a long intentional phase.) Relationships and boundaries that we thought we had all figured out suddenly don’t seem to be working anymore. Ditto for our identity, which is often already getting hammered by the fact that our children are getting older, society models physical attractiveness on 20-somethings, and a growing awareness that we are in fact (as my 5-year old daughter so nonchalantly reminded me) mortal.
This is more than enough to make our 40s a tumultuous time, full of potential to either crash and burn or grow beyond our wildest dreams (or more likely, a little of both.) However, there is another interesting thing that our 40s are associated with, and this is a natural rising of the kundalini energy, particularly the red kundalini from our root up through each of our chakras as it attempts to push through any blocks it encounters. This is what we are trying to facilitate in chakra meditation practices, and it can also happen spontaneously at any time, but many energy workers believe that it occurs for almost everyone to some degree during their 40s.
I first came across this teaching many years ago in Barbara Hand Clow’s Liquid Light of Sex: Kundalini, Astrology and Key Life Transitions although I later found support for it in Tantric teachings as well (‘liquid light of sex’ is a phrase sometimes used to refer to the kundalini, although I prefer ‘liquid light of creation’, as sexual energy is really just one expression of it.) I don’t want to get too bogged down in the astrological details, but basically the phase we usually refer to as midlife is astrologically defined by two key transits:
Our Uranus Opposition: This usually happens around 41/42, although it can impact us for up to a year before and a year after this. Uranus is sometimes called the ‘awakener’, and it is linked to the kundalini energy. Traditionally, the Uranus opposition is a time of deep questioning of all conditioned or accepted beliefs. It can also be a time of deep triggering, as the kundalini energy receives a ‘boost’, and if we have set a trajectory of spiritual growth, this will trigger literally any block we have at any chakric level. This means all fears, insecurities, or resentments will come boiling to the surface, and there is a tremendous opportunity to face and release these once and for all. The other choice is to dig our feet in and cement ourselves even deeper within these limiting patterns, which in many cases will close the door on any major personal growth for the rest of this lifetime.
Our Chiron Return: Around 50, we experience our Chiron Return. Chiron is associated with healing, and particularly with spiritual healing – releasing karmic wounds, or if you prefer ‘learning the lessons’, that are our primary themes for this lifetime. If we enter this phase aware and ready to let go of all our baggage, we head into the last decades of our life as true ‘wise women/men.’ On an energy body level, if we have spent our forties allowing the kundalini to work its way up through all our chakras, triggering and clearing as it moves, we enter our Chiron Return ready to be completely transformed into a being of light. Although enlightenment is possible at any time, this period in particular is pregnant with this potential. And no matter what, it is a time when we can shift into transmitting light through us, becoming an instrument for it in the world, at a level we can only imagine prior to this. In other words, as our physical body ages, our energy body comes to the forefront, and we increasingly live, and interact, from it.
Heady stuff. What it means is that our 40s are potentially a time for a complete energetic rebirthing. Of course, when we are in it, living our daily lives, it is hard to see how to integrate that understanding. Everything is shifting in and around us – our bodies, our careers, our families, our view of the world. I think the best thing we can do, and what mystics throughout the ages have advised us to do is to stay in the fire. As Rumi puts it in another great passage of his:
“If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone,then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don’t abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.”
In other words, let all you have assumed to be true, burn, and awaken to a new kind of knowledge. Let all that is uncomfortable come to the surface. Expend no more energy in trying to hide your shadows, from yourself or others. Face them – this is the fire. Express your dreams, don’t let them wallow. Cook in the fire, and be transformed.
If the intention to do this is true in you, the kundalini will bring it all to the surface for you, as it seeks to move deeper into each chakra. This will remake you, clearing what you no longer need, and planting the seeds for new potential, as a fire does for the woods. If you are a woman, and thus going through perimenopause at the same time, your body is literally remaking itself too. Of course, you don’t want to actually burn out, so sometimes you need to slow down the process, and that’s OK. This is where self-care comes in, and spiritual practice, and energy healing work if you need it.
So that’s midlife! Pretty exciting no? Feel free to share your own stories and insights in the comments. From inside the fire, that’s all for now:-) Namaste-
