10 Characteristics of Women’s Energy Bodies

First off, a shout-out to a book I never thought I would be shouting out (and which really doesn’t need my help to sell!): Dan Brown’s latest The Lost Symbol. He’s gone in a much more interesting direction in this one: Noetic science, merging ancient mystical teachings with modern physics. He references everything from Lynne McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment to the Zohar (a primary Kabbalah text) and practically every metaphysical and mystic system ever developed by man. Plus all the modern quantum physics stuff featured in movies like What The Bleep Do We Know?, The Living Matrix and others (many of which my friend Jenny Mannion over at Heal Pain Naturally has reviewed at some point if you are interested.) So if this is your thing, check it out.

Now for the topic at hand: More on women’s energy or subtle bodies. Recently, I have been reviewing the various theories on women’s energy systems that I have read over the years, from both spiritual and energy medicine sources. I was making a list of the various properties attributed specifically to women’s energy bodies for myself, and realized some of you might be interested. Although I’ve touched on many of these themes before, I’ve never put it all together in one post.

I’m interested to hear which of these theories resonate the most with you – which ones in your experience, and according to your intuition, seem true. And that goes for men too, because the implication in many of these is that men are the opposite or different from women on each of the counts. Ok, here goes:

1) Women’s Energy is Centripetal, Men’s is Centrifugal

The idea here is that by default women’s energy circles inward, and is therefore attractive, drawing things towards it, while by default men’s energy cycles outwards, projecting rather than attracting. Both men and women can control and reverse this with their intent (conscious or unconscious) but by default women’s energy is centripetal and men’s is centrifugal. This especially comes into play with sexual energy, and the different ways the two sexes try and attract sexual partners. It also comes into play in families, with the women in any familial group said to be the energetic ‘organizing principle’, because of this centripetal quality.

2) Women’s Energy Bodies are More Sensitive/Absorbant, Men’s are More Solid/Protective

Women’s energy bodies are also generally said to be more sensitive to external energies, and more likely to absorb these energies, rather than repel them. This has pros and cons, as external energy can serve as the ‘raw data’ for intuition, but absorbing too much energy, or the wrong kind, can deplete or disperse a women’s energy field more quickly in certain situations, for example, in a large crowd.

3) Women’s Energy is More Fluid, Men’s More Fixed

Related to the idea that women’s energy bodies are more receptive is the idea that they are more fluid – that they change more rapidly and more often than men’s, in response to the environment and other people. In nature, this can mean that women merge energetically with their environment more readily and quickly, and the same thing in a group of people (so obviously this also has pros and cons, depending on what you are merging with.)

4) Women’s Energy Bodies are More Expansive

Also along these lines is the idea that women can expand their energy fields to encompass others around them more readily (think Bella as a vampire in the Twilight series if you have read it.) Personally, I am not so sure on this one, apart from a mother’s energetic relationship with her children (which I’ll get to in a minute), as I have seen more men with powerful protective abilities in this regard, perhaps because I have known many martial artists. The centrifugal nature of men’s energy seems to actually make their energy fields more readily expandable, in this sense, to me.

5) Women’s Energy Bodies are Fertile Ground for Energy Lines

This one is a touchy one. The idea with this one is that in interactions with others, and especially in close relationships, women become the anchor line energetically for both parties. In sexual terms, some traditions teach that a woman actually gets an energy line ‘planted’ in her energy body with every sexual encounter, that can take years to cut if she wishes to do so (and that this is not the case, or at least less so, for men.) But it’s not just sexual energy lines, it’s really in all kinds of relationships – the idea is that women naturally harbor these lines. And that this can become especially problematic for us if we are ‘anchoring’ too many people for us to handle.

6) Maternal Energy Lines are Distinct, and Progress Through Time

This one concerns the energy line between mother and child. The idea is that the first 3-6 months after birth, a child really is an extension of his or her mother energetically – their energy fields are merged. Gradually over time this energy connection separates, and the child becomes a distinct energetic being, although a unique energy line remains between them for life. The energy line between father and child, or other relatives, is established through other means, through emotional bonding and history, rather than through this intrinsic energetic line.

7) A Women’s Energy Body is Cyclical

There are lots of variations on this one, but the primary one is that the nature of a women’s energy body shifts over the course of her menstrual cycle. Her energy body is ‘more’ of all the things listed above – centripetal, sensitive, fluid, etc. in the days leading up to menstruation, and especially right before and during, and then is a little less so in the days leading up to ovulation. So her energy body is always waxing and waning (moon cycle and all that!) in this way.

8 ) Women’s Energy Bodies Have Distinct Life Phases

Tied to this is the idea that women’s energy bodies go through very distinct shifts corresponding to the major reproductive-related physical changes they experience during their lifetime: The onset of menstruation, sexual maturity, pregnancy, nursing, perimenopause, and menopause. (I wrote about this a bit before, but there’s a lot more information out there on this.) This has implications for both their energy health and spiritual path at each point along the way.

9) The 2nd, or Sacral, Chakra Plays a  Unique Role in Women

Because of #s 6 – 8, the chakra or energy center related to women’s reproductive system, the 2nd or sacral chakra, plays a unique role in their personal power and energy health. Just as women and men are each at risk for different physical illnesses because of their physical and hormonal differences, they are at risk for different energetic issues as well. And in the case of the 2nd chakra, this means that any damage or blocks related to it are particularly damaging to women. And conversely, that a healthy 2nd chakra has even more benefits.

10) A Women’s Sacral Chakra is a Unique Spiritual Doorway

This comes up in some form in all the ’sacred feminine’ traditions, even in those that don’t define chakras per se. The idea is that the 2nd chakra (or corresponding area in other systems) in women can function like a portal, a doorway to other dimensions and to spiritual insight, in a way that in mainstream teachings usually only the third eye and crown chakra are said to.

As you can imagine, I could write on each of these for days. But first I really am interested to know which of these work for you and which don’t. I do think these differences are a spectrum, not absolute, so they are more relevant to some women than others (and for that matter, some men also.) Also, which of these are you more interested in hearing more about, if any?

Tibetan Knowledge on Birth, PPD, Motherhood, and Childcare

This week on BellaOnline I reviewed The Tibetan Art of Parenting, and while I focused on the Buddhist-oriented knowledge in the review, what really interested me was the info on mother’s and children’s subtle energies and energy systems. As some of you know I have an interest/obsession in the sacral or 2nd chakra, and have written before on its relationship to childbearing and raising (among other things.) Along those lines, here is some of the information I found the most intriguing, and thought some of you might also (and none of this is meant to be a recommendation of any type, although I do have great respect for certain aspects of Tibetan culture):

- Keeping a mother warm just prior to, during, and after childbirth is considered essential, because it is believed that giving birth takes up so much of a mother’s lifeforce that she doesn’t have enough left to keep herself warm. Although the book itself doesn’t specifically mention chakras (some Tibetan lineages utilize chakra techniques and others do not), this little tidbit was interesting to me because the kundalini, or energy that rises through the chakras when they are open, is often called ‘heat’, and many people experience an energetic heat when doing chakra techniques. So a deep or chronic coldness is never just physical, but also energetic, and can indicate blocks or lack of energy in the chakra system and associated subtle energy channels.

Tibetan mothers are kept warm with blankets and warm broth during childbirth. Of course, in most Western hospital settings, the temperature is frigid and birthing mothers are not allowed any food, even broth. This shocked one Tibetan mother who gave birth in the U.S. As she put it, “I told the nurses I was cold and thirsty and they gave me ice chips!”

- Tibetan medicine does recognize post-natal/post-partum depression, and views it as a “deficiency of life-sustaining winds”. First off, it is interesting to find PND/PPD recognized at all, because there are those in homeopathic/holistic medicine communities here in the West that view PND/PPD as a uniquely modern Western condition, exacerbated by the ‘alienated’ way we birth and raise children, as compared to the past or other cultures. But Tibetans generally have strong family support systems, birth naturally, often at home with family attending, nurse, sleep in a family bed, etc. all methods that some believe lower the incidence of PND/PPD. And they absolutely may help, but clearly the fact that this ancient medical system recognizes it shows that it has been with us for some time, and there is a lot more going on.

The ‘life-sustaining winds’ are essentially kundalini/life force (lots of different terms for referring to this in different traditions), and upon doing some further research on Tibetan views of PND/PPD (beyond this book), I found that it’s believed that in cases of PND/PPD either the mother’s energy was depleted prior to birth more than normally for some reason, was blocked because of energetic issues prior to becoming pregnant, or was not sufficiently recovered after giving birth. In other words, for whatever reason, so  much ‘heat’ is lost during birth that it is the last straw, and the mother can’t recover her own energy enough to meet her own physical and psychological needs. The Tibetans use herbal treatments, energy practices/rituals, massage, acupressure, steaming and other methods as treatment.

I do know some yoga teachers that specifically advocate kundalini/chakra work for PND, particularly teacher Gurmukh (whose pre and post natal yoga DVDs I used in both my pregnancies and loved) but hadn’t really come across it within an alternative medicine system before. For me, it really supports my belief that the 2nd chakra is of special importance in women, the seat of their entire personal power really, and requires special care. (And for the record, I personally utilize both mainstream Western and alternative medical methods for myself and children, so this is NOT meant to discredit or judge the use of hormonal treatments for PND, as I know women who have benefited greatly by this.)

- In Tibetan medicine, when a nursing infant/child is ill, the mother is often treated with herbs, energy cleansing techniques and rituals, even if she is healthy. It is believed that both herbs/medicine and energy streams are transmitted through the mother’s milk to the child. This includes a mother’s moods and any external energy influences. In other words, the mother’s entire state is transmitted to some extent to the nursing child, especially young infants.

- Children are believed to retain past life memories to some extent up until the age of 8 years old. They are also considered extremely intuitive and sensitive energetically until this time. Children under 8 are believed to have a purity and openness of mind (regardless of their past-life karma) that connects them to energetic sensations and spirits that most of us lose after this. Young children’s intuitions and sensations are taken extremely seriously – both positive and negative experiences. On the negative side, there are 24 ’spirit disorders’ that children are believed to be especially susceptible to, from night terrors to various levels of possession. Tibetans therefore use a variety of ‘protective’ methods for their children, especially before this age, and Lamas are consulted if disturbances are recurrent.

- Formal schooling usually starts around 6, and schooling outside the home has long been a part of Tibetan culture. In Tibet, this was a major function of the monasteries, and part of the reason they flourished there. I was interested to find that in the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, most of the schools are now Montessori schools. I stumbled upon Montessori quite by accident with my own children, and have loved it, partly because many of its tenets meld so well with my own beliefs on consciousness that have been shaped by my own spiritual journey. Upon researching Montessori more, I discovered that founder Maria Montessori was very involved with the Theosophists, and was asked to come to India and found several Montessori schools there, and as a result, Montessori is very popular throughout India. (And as I noted in an old post on Indigo/Crystal children, Montessori is also one of the recommended education methods for them. BTW – my own views of the Indigo/Crystal theories has been undergoing a shift and perhaps I’ll post on it again soon…)

- In family units and in relations amongst children, harmony is emphasized above individual feelings. Although I hate to stereotype, I do think this is a distinction that holds for most Eastern cultures vs. Western ones. Here in the West, a lot of parenting philosophy orients around respecting individual children’s feelings, and acknowledging and respecting all party’s feelings when resolving disputes. But in Tibetan culture, there is usually some kind of judgment made by whatever adult is around regarding which child is the one causing the disruption, i.e. who is responsible for the lack of harmony, and the problem addressed that way. So if a child takes a toy from another, or won’t share, he/she is made to give the toy back or share, no discussion. This is a very basic example, but interesting to contemplate when you expand it out to other scenarios. As the authors of this book put it, “In Tibet, demanding your own rights is not valued, because it doesn’t fit into the concept of being a part of the family.”

- Tibetans spank, and the Dalai Lama was hit with a switch by his parents. I have to admit, I was thrown by this one. I am pretty anti-spanking, especially in our hyper-violent culture, and this didn’t seem to fit with a culture where children are taught to delicately carry spiders and other insects outside when they get in the house. But Tibetans consider discipline essential, and spanking to be a suitable punishment for them. Interestingly, it is often carried out after dinner, much after the event instead of at the time, which at least means it is not just done out of anger in the moment. Overall, I think it reminded me that in parenting perhaps technique and philosophy is less the issue than intent and relationship, which is something that has come up over and over in the last 2 weeks (my karma perhaps for my judgmental mini-rant of parents who drug their children for ADD/ADHD??) And along those lines, if you have not yet read Mon from Holistic Mama’s post ‘When I See a Mother, I Will Assume‘, check it out.

As always, I welcome all thoughts and questions regarding any of these topics….

Chakra Immunity Boost For You and Your Kids

I haven’t written about chakras recently, and with all the focus on how to stay healthy in the upcoming flu season  (it seems like everywhere I go there are signs telling me to wash my hands and cough into my arm) I thought I would post a bit on little ways to strengthen your immunity, and that of your kids if you like, using chakra focus. As I’ve posted before, I’m not an energy healer and my interest in the chakras is more from an awareness and mind-energy perspective, but of course the mind and body are related, and the chakras are one form of intersection in that relationship. And anyone can learn to tune into this energetic system.

I use these techniques regularly, with both myself and my kids, based on how I am feeling, especially when I feel like I or they might be on the verge of getting sick, or at risk for it. (And when we actually are sick, of course.) The idea behind all of them is to redirect some energy into those parts of your energetic system that relate to your immunity. We’re not talking serious, long-term illness here, we’re talking colds, flu, headaches, etc. And these aren’t meant to replace any dietary or herbal methods you might have for strengthening your immunity, they just add an energetic dimension.

First a note on illness, at least the kinds of illnesses we are talking about here: It’s a natural part of being human. We have viruses and bacteria in us and around us all the time, and there is a constant balancing act (I don’t like ‘battle’) going on internally between our immune system and these various organisms. When the balance tips beyond a certain point, we ‘get sick’, which means, our body starts to have symptoms related to the internal re-balancing that is taking place. We might take any number of steps to aid our system in rebalancing itself – echinacea or other herbs, vitamin C, zinc, chicken soup, antibiotics, whatever. But it is always our own body, our own immune system, that heals us – not the ‘medicines’. Energetic techniques are just a way of aiding our immune system by consciously redirecting some energy into it.

I find the navel and heart chakras are the easiest to work with along these lines, and in order to determine which technique might be the most useful to you or your kids at any given time it’s useful to assess your or their awareness, and look for trends that have sapped your or their energy in some way. The two most common are dispersion and stress:

Dispersion: This is when you are frazzled and/or fuzzy at a mental, emotional and/or physical level. I am a very mental-oriented being, so this typically manifests for me as ‘busy mind’, but for others it may manifest emotionally, typically as increased irritability, or physically, often as clumsiness. The three can all occur at once, of course, in a triple whammy! Basically, it’s a sign that your energy is not consolidated and centered. It is shooting all over the place in a very unfocused way. If you have a very sensitive energy body – as women especially tend to have – this might be triggered by time spent in a group or crowd, or too much contact with hyper-stimulating media (which yes, does include the internet, depending on how you use it!) If this is your main issue, or your kids, sick or no, then some navel chakra focus might help.

Stress: As in tension, tightness, constriction. These are the main energies of stress – a build up of mental, emotional and/or physical energy to the bursting point. When you are worried, when you are fixated on a deadline or a problem and can think of nothing else, your energy is bottled up and constricted, with no way to release. And of course it’s well known that too much stress negatively impacts your immune system. When your energy is constricted in this way, it can’t flow properly internally. For kids, the causes of stress are different – any new situation might trigger it. If stress is your or their main issue, then some heart chakra focus might help.

In a way, dispersed and stressed states of mind are polar opposites, with dispersion occurring when too much energy is flowing outward in an undirected way, and stress resulting in too much energy being constricted internally, causing energetic ‘clogs’. And yet, it is possible to experience both at once, or rather, to be swinging back and forth between the two (take it from me!) So the main point is to just try and identify which is the dominant trend in your awareness. Once you’ve done that, here’s techniques for addressing each (and yes, you can do both):

Navel Center – Consolidating, Centering Your Energy:

- The simplest thing you can do – anywhere, anytime – is to just place your hands over your belly, just under your navel, and breathe deeply into your hands for a minute or so (or whatever you can manage in the moment.) The idea is to do deep, belly breathing, in which your belly – not your chest – is rising and falling. If you can, focus on feeling heat in that area – focusing on the heat from your hands can be helpful in this regard.

- If you have a bit more time, and can actually close your eyes and visualize, then try visualizing a red or fiery red-orange ball of light in this area, just under your hands. Although yellow is traditionally the color associated with this chakra in the systems most Westerners are familiar with, the yantra (sacred geometry image) associated with this chakra is usually red, and red and orange are the colors of the 2 lower chakras, which you are also pulling on here. Plus red or red-orange has a warm/hot and strong association, all of which you are trying to pull on in this technique. As you do this, really imagine that you are pulling yourself back together – pulling in all the dispersed pieces of yourself from the ether, and consolidating them right here, in your belly.

- Doing either of these or some sort of navel focus at some point during exercise can be especially helpful. This center is associated with will and drive, so if you are doing aerobic exercise of some type, even fast walking, the combination of exercise, will power, and navel focus can really speed the centering process. And if you do yoga, spending part of your savasana (corpse pose) time centered on your navel, before completely relaxing and releasing, can be helpful.

Heart Centering – Releasing, Opening Your Energy

- Similar to the main navel center technique, for this one I like simply holding your hands over the center of your chest for a minute, one on top of the other, and focusing your attention underneath. However, the focus here is more on a sense of release. With each exhale, gently open your hands away from your chest (you can just imagine this if you aren’t in a position to actually do it) and imagine you are releasing any negativity or constriction outwards. When you inhale, close your hands back over your heart in a protective fashion, and try to feel some warmth or tickle in the area.

- Again, if you are in a position to close your eyes and visualize, and/or if you want to do this as part of a formal sitting meditation practice, a visualization can help. I like to visualize a ball of white light (although if you are used to the traditional colors of light green or light blue here, that is fine too -  I am not a purist on chakra colors, personally.) Imagine the ball growing stronger and stronger, and pushing out any negativity as it does. Then imagine it relaxing, settling back down to its starting size, and as it does, relax your entire body with it. Continue this release and relax cycle for 2-3 minutes if you can.

- When we are stressed, we also tend to become disconnected emotionally – we are trapped inside our own mind/body. So another way to trigger the heart chakra is to consciously trigger warm, joyful emotions. This can be very tough to do when you are highly stressed, but if you can do it, it is highly effective. Two access states for this are beauty and affection. Simply visualize any place or sight that you find particularly beautiful, or any being for which you can easily feel an uncomplicated affection (I always say, puppies and young kids are generally safe bets!) If you can actually get these emotions flowing, your energy will naturally move down into your heart chakra, and then you can practice one of the release exercises from above.

It’s important not to get overly complicated or worked up over doing any of these properly. They are just general guidelines. In my experience, if you can just learn to assess your own energy or that of your children periodically for signs of dispersion or stress, before they get too pronounced, and address them right away, this can help your and their immune systems – and overall energy levels – tremendously.

Now a note on kids. With kids age 6 and up (although it varies) you can actually teach them these techniques if you wish. My own are younger than that, and with them, I don’t attempt to get them to visualize or anything like that. I just place my hand over their navel or heart chakra (depending, of course, on whether I feel they are dispersed or stressed) when they are on my lap, and breath with them. Sometimes I encourage them to ‘breath into my hand’, which they like. When they are sick, or tired, they especially like this. And of course the parent-child energy bond goes to work here too.

So there you go. I feel like there are a lot more variations I could have put in here, and questions I could have addressed, but I will save those for the comments, if there is interest. Also feel free to contribute any of your own immunity boosting approaches, for you or your kids…

2nd Chakra Series – Motherhood and Creating

This post is the third in a series I am doing this week on the 2nd chakra in women. The first post was on Tantric Sexuality, the second on Intuition and Seeing, and the posts after this are on Spirituality and Bliss and 21 Ways to Care for Your 2nd Chakra. If you are really interested in this topic, I encourage you to check out the comments on those posts, especially on the Intuition post, because a lot of good material got brought up there, and it is helping me clarify my own thoughts. And add your thoughts too, of course!

Also, these posts are all long I realize, so don’t worry, they will be here to come back to later (that’s the great thing about the internet.)  And I’ll be returning to my once or twice a week posting schedule when this is done:-)

I wanted to speak a bit more about working with the chakras from a healing perspective vs. ‘using’ them, the latter being what this series is about. I think most Western writing on the chakras is related to balancing, healing, clearing or repairing them, and this is the focus of the various techniques involving crystals, music, oils, clearing sessions, etc. But the occult traditions I am drawing on here focus more on how do you ‘use’ the chakras to develop unique skills – such as seeing, healing, manifesting and more – or for gaining spiritual insight (which is the next post.) It’s like the difference between healing your body vs. using it in sports. Just like professional athletes have refined their use of their body to a level most of us never attain, adepts in chakra traditions have refined the use of their chakras to a high degree. And we can all learn from their skills I think, even if we are not looking to go pro.

I also wanted to say that I do think all the chakras are involved in all these functions, just like all the muscles of the body are involved in almost any physical activity, but some draw on one muscle group more than others. The reasons I am focusing on the 2nd chakra are: 1) I have been getting strong intuitions to do so (and I’ve learned to ‘follow orders’ on this kind of stuff at this point!), and 2) the 2nd chakra is the defining ‘different’ element energetically between men and women, just like the reproductive organs of our body (which are related to the 2nd chakra) are our primary physical difference. So why not write about the 2nd chakra in men also? Because frankly it’s already been done – most of the surviving historical writing on chakras was written within traditions that were predominantly male, and they didn’t think much about how it was different in women. With the exception of the few traditions I have mentioned, there isn’t much on women’s 2nd chakras – most of it has been written in the last 50 years or so in the West.

OK, finally on to the target topic for this article – Motherhood and Creating. This topic is the flip side of the last article. Creating (including procreation) is a yang or outward-moving aspect of the 2nd chakra, while intuition is a yin or inward-moving one. While for intuition we absorb energy or ‘data’ into our energy bodies (which is partly pulled in by the centripetal nature of our 2nd chakra), while creating a life, a painting, or composition, or anything else, we push it out into the world, apart from us.

Of course in any type of creation, this inward and outward movement work together: In procreation, our body first has to pull the fertilized egg into the womb, nurture/germinate it for 9 months, and then push it out. Other acts of creation are similar – we have to sense/intuit an idea, then germinate and develop it, and then actually manifest/execute it in the external world apart from ourselves. This creative process is traditionally associated with the 2nd chakra  – in men also. (Of course the energy of other chakras might be involved along the way, such as the third eye for insight/ideas, the throat in terms of self-expression, the heart if we are trying to create something as a message of love or out of love, or the navel in terms of the will and intent required.)

So then, when the process is complete, and we’ve created something outside ourselves, what’s our relationship to that which we’ve created? With most artistic creations or other physical things that you create in the world, a bit of your energy goes into it and stays with it forever. In many occult traditions you find this idea of ‘transmission’, and the idea that a piece of spiritual art, or a spiritual text, can transmit a specific lesson non-verbally, directly into our awareness. (In fact, this kind of learning is the ‘real deal’ in these traditions – words and philosophy are considered a very limited form of knowledge and teaching.) This is the energetic aspect of a created object – the transmission from the creator.

Ideally, we let go of what we create – we ‘close’ the line, so to speak, between us and the object, letting it exist separately from ourselves. But motherhood is different. It takes eighteen years (or so) for the creation to be ‘finished’! And really it never is. So there is an energetic line from us to each of our children, for the rest of our lives. Cyndi Dale told me she thinks of this as an energetic cord between mother and child. Others have talked about it though – particularly in the Carlos Castenada traditions, some of the Tibetan Buddhist Tantric texts, Elizabeth Haisch in Initiation, and even Dr. Christine Northrup in some of her books (I’ll put a book list in the last post.)

This energy connection is extremely intense at birth – really for the first three months after birth our children are energetically still part of us – and gradually lessens in intensity over time. But managing it is tough, and initially the energy shift, and particularly the energy outpouring to the child, can be extremely tough to handle and accept, especially for women who have some 2nd chakra issues anyway (and again, prior sexual abuse is a main cause of this, but there are others, and Anatomy of the Spirit is a great book to consider in terms of delving into this.) I think this can be a contributing factor to post-natal depression as well. Then, the sense of dispersion increases with each additional child. Women who don’t learn to manage these lines well can get really wiped out, and lose their own manifesting abilities and vision entirely.

That’s the reason motherhood – and even sexual activity (which I’ll touch on again in the next post) – was considered an eliminating factor in a lot of these occult traditions. It just wasn’t considered possible for a woman to manage these energy lines and pursue Tantric or kundalini yoga practices, or to be a seer, energy healer or Shaman in some indigenous traditions (and I already mentioned the Oracles of Delphi in a prior post.) Of course, women had a lot more children in the past, and could lose up to half of them in early childhood, so the energy connections they were managing were very different. They also typically had much fewer options available to them to pursue their own creative and manifesting abilities, so the power associated with their 2nd chakras might have been less developed.

So personally, I do not believe those restrictions have to apply anymore, but it can be a challenge to strike the right balance. The main point is, managing motherhood and our other pursuits energetically (let alone the time factor!) is not easy. On the one hand, that energetic connection is the root of the special mother/child bond, our empathic and intuitive connection to our children, and our abilities to energetically soothe and heal them (and just holding them, at any age, is one way to really feel and activate this connection.) On the other, the energy line is another outpouring of our energy, and can leave us feeling drained, dispersed, or unmotivated.

I think just having this knowledge can be tremendously powerful, and start to shift how we subconsciously relate to this line. Then, there are three main concepts to keep in mind:

Pacing – Recognize that the energetic needs of your children will lessen over time (as long as you let go naturally, step by step, as they grow.) So whatever you are trying to manifest or create, or whatever occult skills you practice, pace yourself. Yes this means you can’t necessarily have it all, right when you want it. Welcome to real life! Personally, I don’t know any women who believe in that old maxim anymore anyway (and if you do, make your case in the comments!)

Balance – Paying attention to what both you and your children need on a daily basis, and as it evolves over time, is essential. If you hold too much back, that’s hard on your kids (and you are missing out.) But if you give too much, particularly more than they need at a given point, you exhaust yourself, and potentially hold them back from developing their own power too. Balance is an ongoing practice, a day-by-day, week-by-week, thing. It’s just like physically trying to balance on one leg – it requires constant attention, constant adjusting.

Access More Energy – The above two points are both based on the idea that you have a limited amount of energy, and on a certain level, that’s true at any given point in time. But it’s a fundamental teaching of any occult tradition that energy (or power) doesn’t come from us, it comes through us. So learn to access more. How? Volumes have been written on that! And I’ll try to cover some of them in my last post, but some are obvious – taking care of yourself, yoga, meditation, time alone, etc. But also, think about what already energizes you, especially any creative or manifesting type activities you enjoy. That’s something that is already pulling on your creative powers, your 2nd chakra powers, and understanding what it is about that activity that energizes you will offer you clues as to how you personally access your energy/power, and thus how you can increase it. Ultimately, it’s unlimited.

One final point I wanted to mention is that many women say that they feel more creative after becoming a mother, and I found some teachings on this by a contemporary spiritual teacher too. I think this definitely happened in my case, after an initial difficult adjustment period. For me personally, I think this was due to my accessing my 2nd chakra in a way that I hadn’t done before. Procreation helped me tap into those creative forces in a way that my prior life activities had not. Maybe someone who was already well-connected to their creative energies before becoming a mother would not experience that, I don’t know.

And just as a final aside, this post is NOT meant to be a case for or against motherhood, or for or against any particular parenting choices (please do NOT pull me into the ‘Mommy Wars’!!!)  I’m just trying to look at it from a technical, energetic perspective. This knowledge can really help us work truthfully with the life we have, and recognize both its gifts and challenges.

Your comments and questions are always appreciated.

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Also, check out the nexy post, Spirituality and Bliss.

Introduction to the 2nd Chakra and Tantric Sexuality

Awhile back I said I was going to write a series on the 2nd chakra, and particularly the 2nd chakra in women. I’ve delayed and delayed it, because I was having a really hard time clarifying for myself everything I wanted to say. It’s become a bit of a block. I’ve finally just decided I have to spit it all out quickly, over a few days. So, I am going to post on the 2nd chakra related to the following this week: 1) Tantric sexuality (this post), 2) Intuition and Seeing, 3) Motherhood and Creativity, 4) Spirituality and Bliss, and then wrapping it all up with 5) 21 Ways to Care for Your 2nd Chakra.

I usually only post once a week or so, but I’m planning on doing these one a day over the next 5 days. So for those of you that subscribe, sorry if I back up your Reader or Inbox, and don’t worry, it’s not a permanent change!

As background, I talked a bit about why I wanted to do this series in this post, and about women’s energy bodies in general in this one. I don’t think you need to have read those posts to follow this series, but I do want to repeat one theme from those posts: I think anyone, and particularly any woman, can benefit a lot from some contemplation and understanding of the 2nd chakra, even if your own chosen spiritual path does not address chakras.

I don’t want to get bogged down with too much background on the chakras, but I do think it’s worth mentioning that current Western chakra writing primarily focuses on chakras from the perspective of health – mental, emotional and physical health. That’s a relatively new development in the history of chakras, because classic sources (which are mostly Indian and Tibetan) were interested in them for occult and spiritual purposes. I feel both are valid, but my focus here is more on the latter, and thus some of what you read might be quite different from sources that are more health oriented.

One of the differences you find between the traditions is the chakra mappings themselves, particularly the placement of the 2nd chakra. Here’s the map I use, which corresponds to that used in most Tibetan lineages that address chakras (and sorry I couldn’t find a picture of a woman, or at least a cuter guy – for some reason these mappings are always very unattractive!):

Chakra Mapping

As in most chakra systems, the 1st chakra is at the tailbone, and you work your way up to the 7th at the crown of the head. The mapping most Westerners are familiar with places the 2nd and 3rd chakras differently from this picture – the 2nd is typically at or just under the navel (where the 3rd is here) and the 3rd is at the solar plexus (where there is just a black dot here designating a minor energy node.)

As Cyndi Dale discussed when I interviewed her, there are actually many different chakra mappings that have developed around the world, and even pretty profound differences in mappings amongst classic Indian and Tibetan sources. How to account for these differences? I think of them in terms of different types of maps: You can have a roadmap, a geologic map, a hiking map, a natural resources map, and more, all for the same area. They are all equally valid, they are each just meant to serve a different purpose. And none of them is the place itself. So various chakra mappings are tools for helping us identify and work with energy patterns and structures within our non-physical being. And they are each slightly different depending on the purpose for which they evolved.

The chakras are often described as mind/body/spirit nexuses, or intersections of our physical and non-physical energies. Within the Tantric traditions, of which there are both Indian and Tibetan Buddhist lineages, they are often also described as awareness vortexes. Some people describe the shape of them as spheres, others as cones, others as planes. Don’t get caught up on the shape. The important thing, for women especially, is understanding the centerpoint of the 2nd chakra in this system. It is at the cervix, the opening of the uterus. In some women, this corresponds to the g-spot, the semi-mythical point of maximum sexual arousal (hopefully that sentence won’t get me boycotted by the search engines, which a friend warned me about!) Assuming this location, this chakra is associated with some pretty amazing experiences and functions in our physical body: It is associated with internal orgasm, with holding a baby into the womb during pregnancy, and with opening to bring that baby into the world during the birth process.

Is it any wonder then, that as a spiritual doorway, it is pretty intense?

In the meditative systems that utilize chakras there are two different themes or ‘purposes’ to chakra meditation that you find: 1) Bringing the kundalini, or life force energy, up through all the chakras into our crown chakra, and 2) Going through the ‘doorway’ of each chakra into spiritual dimensions of awareness (I don’t like that phrase ’spiritual dimensions’ but the words used are usually something along those lines.) What fascinates me is that the experiences described by mystics from pretty much any tradition – Christianity to Zen to Sufism to Eckhart Tolle to Kaballah to Vedanta – correspond to one or more of those described in the classic chakra texts. So, one of these two things occurs spontaneously whenever we have an experience that we classify as ‘mystic’ or ’spiritual’ – either some kundalini has risen up our main spinal energy channel or we have ‘walked through’ the doorway of a particular chakra. We may not describe it that way, but ‘under the hood’ of our energetic system, that is what is going on.

Ok, on to Tantric sexuality. You may be familiar with this term from the numerous ’sex aid’ books on the market bearing this name. These have little to nothing to do with true Tantric sexuality. Most of these books have just borrowed a few positions and ’sex is union’ or ’sex is sacred’ type themes from the original texts, and repackaged them as methods for attaining maximum physical and emotional pleasure from sex. Which I have no problem with. Life is short, have as much fun as you can. BUT, this is not Tantric sexuality.

I also feel duty-bound to mention that most modern Tibetan Tantric Buddhist traditions do not incorporate actual physical sex into the practice. All those robed Tibetan monks that you see are not secretly having orgies behind monastery walls. Tantric Buddhism does work with themes of desire differently than other Buddhist branches, and often visualizations of male and female deities in sexual union are one of the meditative techniques used, but for most that’s as far as it goes. The best introduction to Tantric Buddhism in this regard that I have found is Lama Yeshe’s Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire.

For those lineages that do practice Tantric sex (and there are Hindu yogic lineages that do so also, not just Buddhist ones), the same approaches are described as in meditative techniques: The ‘goal’ is either to bring the kundalini up through all the chakras into the crown, OR to catapult through a particular chakra, using it as a vortex into pure awareness or source. The difference is that you are using the incredible energy of sexual desire – one of the most powerful human urges – to drive this process. Properly directed, you use this energy to catapult yourself into experiences that could take years to reach sitting on a meditation cushion. Basically, you are using rocket fuel instead of plain old gasoline. In formal lineages, it takes years of preparatory training before you’re allowed to try this, and even then it’s considered a challenging practice.

So why am I talking about this?

Because the biographies of some of the female teachers within these lineages, and some other completely unrelated traditions (like some pagan texts, the Carlos Castenada books, and the books of female ’sorceresses’ within his group), elude to another possibility within this kind of sexual practice. They discuss the womb – or really, the 2nd chakra, NOT the associated physical organ – as a doorway into creation itself. It is in a way the ultimate vortex, a doorway directly into the creating aspect of the universe/God/Goddess/the tao/nirvana/whatever-name-you-want-to-use. And both partners can walk through this doorway – the doorway of the woman’s 2nd chakra – during sexual union.

This aspect of the 2nd chakra in women – as the ultimate vortex into creation itself – is the background I wanted to provide for the rest of this series, and the only reason I wanted to cover Tantric sexuality at all. I went through all this to support the idea that women’s 2nd chakras are fundamentally different from men’s. (Other contemporary women writing about chakras have said this also – Cyndi Dale mentioned that she believes the 2nd chakra is the true seat of women’s kundalini, rather than the 1st chakra, which is the traditional teaching.) So this is the technical case for why, if you are a woman, you should view your 2nd chakra, and an understanding of it, as particularly important.

Hopefully that didn’t leave you blurry-eyed, and peaked your interested enough to read the next post on Intuition, which should be a little less theoretical…

Please feel free to comment, dispute, or ask any questions you have in the comments, so that I can address them as the series progresses…

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Blog Shares

I wanted to share some blog posts I’ve found interesting recently. I am going to start trying to do this every couple of weeks either in a post or in the right sidebar, as I know I have found a lot of new blogs that way on other’s sites.

Here’s a post from The Zen in You about U.S. Catholic Bishop’s warning parishioners of the ‘dangers’ of reiki, which triggered a lot of interesting comments. 

And although I have a lot of issues with Catholicism, I do love many Catholic saints, especially the woman. Here’s a nice post on one of my favorites, St. Therese of Lisieux, from She Power.

Here’s an interview – including in the comments – with Sue Patton Thoele, author of several women’s spirituality books, including the recently released Mindful Woman. Also on Awake is Good recently was a post about 13 Indiegenous Grandmothers who are working to past their wisdom on to future generations.

A couple of interesting posts on parenting related themes: One on Compliance vs. Freedom and the different approaches to setting boundaries at Taking the Lid Off the Sun. Another about homeschooling, or really about how mindful attention facilitates real learning, at Mama-Om.

Jenny at Healing Pain Naturally has been doing a great job lately of covering movies and interviews about and with healers of all types, and the scientific research that is starting to validate and explain energy healing modalities. She recently introduced The Living Matrix, which sounds fascinating. 

Here’s a couple of posts that define the two different types of chakra systems: Tantric and dynamic. Although I view the chakras slightly differently, I found these articles interesting.

And finally, for a little laugh, check out  Enlighten Your Day’s Inspirational quote post, recently updated to include some ‘pessimist’ comments from a Reddit user.

Hope you enjoy…

Interview with Cyndi Dale – Chakra Expert and Author of The Subtle Body

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy by Cyndi Dale. If you read the review, you know I REALLY liked this book. Cyndi agreed to a phone interview with me, and I found talking with her just as fascinating as reading her book. We discussed how she went about researching this material, the many differences in energetic anatomy systems that she found, her view of the chakras, and – my favorite – the unique role of the second chakra in women, including how it relates to motherhood. While I had originally planned to post this interview after I had started my Mystic Spirituality for Women series, I liked it so much, and found it so relevant, that I decided to go ahead and post it now.

This printed interview is an abridged and edited version of the full interview. I hadn’t originally planned to post the full audio file, but Cyndi agreed to it and there is so much interesting material that I couldn’t cover it all here, so I’ve posted the podcast at the end. Enjoy, and feel free to post questions, comments and additional resources.

1. This must have been a huge undertaking, what led you to take on this project?

I have always wanted a book like this for myself, to use as a reference in my own practice, but never found a single source that combined this kind of information. So I really set out to write the book that I would want to have and use. Fortunately, the people over at Sounds True Publishing had wanted to do an encyclopedia of energetic anatomy for some time, and they were very open to whatever I wanted to include. And one of my goals was to create something anyone could understand, including someone who knew nothing about acupuncture, or chakras, or even electricity. I wanted to make the scientific information accessible and useful to anyone. But I also wanted it to be useful to experienced practitioners, whether they were medical doctors or energy healers.

It did involve a huge compilation of information. I don’t think a single source provided even a tenth of the information in any one section of the book. I really wanted to look back over five thousand years of human history, at all these different traditions, and say ‘look how they are different, but look what they have in common – a single word, energy.’

2. I have certainly never found anything else like it, and I thank you for creating it. I am not a healer, but think this is a tremendously valuable book for anyone interested in  this topic, especially because it combines so many different traditions. How did you go about researching all of this, and what did you learn?

One of the surprising things was how much I learned about the world’s different chakra systems. Chakras are my area of expertise, but I hadn’t realized how much variation there was out there, and how hard it would be gather info on some. I hadn’t realized how much variation there was in the traditional Indian or Hindu based systems that most of us learn here in the West. Most of us here have been taught that there are seven chakras, and with a few variations, that is what everyone knows. But when you look deeper into the East, at the Tibetan systems, and the Tantric systems, you can find systems that focus on only three, or even one with as many as twenty-four chakras.

Over time, each lineage and teacher focused on what they thought was the most important, and tailored their chakra system to their own purposes. And they didn’t always write it all down. Some of these chakra systems, I would be reading a book, and it would say ‘there are eight chakras in this system’ and then the book would only describe four. So much of the teachings have been done orally, and for different purposes, so there isn’t a universal agreement, even within traditional sources, on the subject. So there was a lot of culling involved, and I can see why no one had tried to compile all this before. By contrast, the traditional Chinese and Japanese meridian systems are pretty systematic and well-documented.

3. Yes, all the different chakra mappings from different traditions was one of my favorite parts of the book. How did you gather information on some of the more obscure ones, like the Cherokee and Mayan systems?

Well, when it comes to the chakras especially, I have been an avid reader on this topic for decades. As a child I was very intuitive, but I shut that down at about twelve, and opened back up in my early twenties, and since that time have been incessant about gathering information about the chakras, auric fields, intuition, divination, and other energy-related topics. So I had information on many of these systems in my library, and just had to dig a little deeper to get more info. The Mayan system for example, I had probably known about for twenty or twenty-five years from reading, and had also traveled down to the area to receive teachings directly from teachers and shamans.

4. So how about the scientific material, the information on physics and related scientific research that you also include in the book – was that information new to you or had you also been studying that for a long time?

No, it wasn’t new to me. About fifteen years ago I began to wonder if everything I was studying and doing was just so much New Age mumbo-jumbo, or whether there was some scientific validity to what was going on. I learned about the Hunt study, by Dr. Valerie Hunt, a UCLA professor who did research on the chakras. Since that time I have had a burning interest in gathering all the scientific information I could related to my areas of interest. A lot of that drive is personal, because growing up I was very intuitive, and was often told I was weird, or making things up, etc. And I came from a family with several medical doctors, so I was always kind of the black sheep. So subconsciously I do think I have been driven even more to find these kinds of scientific studies, so that I can say, ‘look, there really is something to this, this is science.’ And in fact, not only is there science about these invisible phenomena, but more and more science is saying the invisible drives the visible.

I am not against allopathic medicine at all, that is why I put in the physical anatomy section of the book. But to me, that is just the tip of the iceberg, just what we can see. If something can come out of the energetic realms to help us develop new ways of diagnosing people, or doing surgery, or whatever, then that can really help people. And these are the same worlds – the world of the meridians and chakras is the same world as the one we knock-on and call ‘allopathic’ or ‘concrete’ or ‘real.’ It’s the same world, and only science can explain that. Spirituality helps us experience it, but only science can help us explain it.

5. Yes, I couldn’t agree more, these two worlds are starting to come together. Which raises another interesting question, did you find a lot of difference between the systems derived for healing purposes and those derived for spiritual purposes?

Yes, I did. The meridian systems are very body-based, and so are well-diagrammed and universally agreed upon. And there is more research supporting the use of those systems. But most of the chakra systems have been developed within the context of spiritual teachings, and aren’t very body-based. Part of my life’s work has been to make chakra work more body-based, and actually that has bothered some people. In the past, when I was presenting work on using the chakras for aiding relationships, or manifesting abundance, people were offended by that. They said ‘this is an enlightenment system’. So that was a concern in this book too. I knew some of the kundalini teachings with a spiritual heritage have traditionally been kept private, and that there would be people that would say it was dangerous for me to make these so readily available.

6. Yes, I have run across that attitude too sometimes, in my own chakra meditation teaching. But I am starting to think that some of these things that might have been dangerous or risky in the past are not anymore, because of the heaviness of today’s world.

Yes, that’s a good point. In today’s world, we need every source of light, and passion, and compassion, that we can get to break through. We’ve had enough breakdown recently, we need a breakthrough. So maybe some of these techniques that in the past were considered only safe in the hands of a few are for us all now. We all need to be enlightened now. There’s just no turning around anymore. I think it’s exciting to put so-called ‘ancient knowledge’ or ‘hidden knowledge’ in people’s hands and minds. Because this really is ‘the secret’. The ‘secret’ isn’t wrapped up into some single law, the law of attraction…it’s really all these teachings. And this is really what this book is supposed to be doing, to be making that knowledge available.

7. I think it is a very empowering book in that way. Another question I wanted to ask you about regarding chakras was when you write that although most traditions discuss them as wheels of light, from a psychic’s point of view they are more like loosely connected bands of waves. Can you talk more about that?

Well basically in the world there are particles, or little dots of energy, and waves, or bands of moving energy, and then there is energy like light or photons that are both particles and waves. Chakras are able to convert waves of energy into particles and particles into waves. So chakras that are in the body, that center in the body, are almost like a little particle, but that particle emanates waves – waves and waves of energy. And chakras are able to read or hook into bands of waves that hook into the right vibratory level, and bring those into the system, into the body, and into different parts of us as well. So I think it’s a mistake that people just think of them as conical wheels. The ‘wheels’ are made out of these spectrums of streaming bands of energy. And not only do they emanate to the front and back, if you really look at it, the waves go sideways as well. There are bands of energy that go off the chakras that aren’t the auric fields and go out to the sides – and up and down for that matter.

8. It’s like they are a whole data collection system.

That’s really what they are – data collection, data storage, data interpretation. And information is only as good as what you know how to do with it. So that’s part of the chakra healing process – figuring out what good ‘software’ programs we have in there, and what bad ones, and how can we convert the bad ones. And then we can go a step further and say, ‘what latent programs do we have?’ What programs are programs that ‘came in’ with me, you could say, the ‘spirit’ programs, because those are stored on the inside of the chakras too.

9. Yes, fascinating. Ok, we are running short on time and I have to ask you a question that is personally important to me, regarding the second chakra. I feel like the second chakra functions differently in men and in women, and I haven’t been able to find much information on this. Do you think this is the case, and if so, have you come across anything on this?

I love it! In my first book, New Chakra Healing, which is actually getting reissued in July with more material, I actually do talk a bit about this. It came about because in my own healing work I kept seeing that women’s and men’s second chakras were different. Then years ago I read one of the Carlos Casteneda books, and he talks about the idea that women have an entire universe inside of their uterus. That the uterus itself is like a mini-universe, and it mirrors the outer universe. And because historically women are used to being treated like nothing, because on the outside they have had little, they have actually learned how to travel on the inward planes through this universe, whether in dreams or visions or other means.

So I personally believe that the seat of the kundalini in women is their second chakra. It has to of course incorporate the first chakra, but in women the second chakra initiates it. Which means that women really initiate [the kundalini rising] through second chakra areas such as feelings, emotions, the maternal instinct, and the desire to connect, much more than the desire to individuate [which is associated with the first chakra.] So these chakras are completely different for men and for women. And I think women’s power center is actually the second chakra, not the first chakra.

10. That’s exactly what I think! But I haven’t been able to find any support for that in classical texts. Have you, or do you think they were all written by men and so the information is just not there?

I think they were all written by men, I haven’t found it in any of the classical texts either. The only thing I ever found were the Castenada references. Women haven’t written – they know these things, but haven’t written them. It wasn’t safe – it wasn’t that long ago that women with visions or strong feelings were taken to the hospitals to have their uteruses removed, because they were ‘hysterical’ – that’s the ‘hysterectomy.’ If you look at history, until recently it hasn’t been safe for women to show these second chakra powers. The only other resource I can think of is Diane Stein, she’s written a lot of books about psychic abilities in women, and may talk about this a bit, but not so much from a technical perspective – the energy anatomy perspective.

11. Yes, well and for me my interest in this was really triggered by motherhood. At the point I had kids, at 37, I had already been doing chakra meditation for 15 years, and it took me a long time after the birth of my first child to figure out how to regather my second chakra, and still allow a healthy connection from it to my child. I feel like there is this whole tantric motherhood aspect that needs to be discovered and addressed.

Yes. I had a child first at 28 and then at 39, and I have worked with a lot of pregnant women, and based on my experience I started to track what I call the ‘cords’, a maternal cord between mother and child. I talk about this in the upcoming new edition of New Chakra Healing. It’s like an umbilical energetic cord. And it gradually resides over time, first at 3 months, then at 6 months, etc. Women are often shocked, they feel like they can’t do the things they used to do, and it’s because some of the energy is going to the child. And I don’t think you ever completely get the line back, you just have to learn to work with it. This is why you see a lot of women who don’t hit a stride of success or momentum, especially spiritually, until their fifties, when their kids are older. And of course some of us take that energetic cord and stick it into the wrong people, men or our own mothers or wherever, and feed them our energy, which is where we really lose our power.

Thank you Cyndi. Here’s The Subtle Body at Amazon, or visit Cyndi’s website. And here’s the full interview in mp3 form (please note that this recording is a little choppy – I hadn’t originally planned on posting the audio file):

cyndidaleinterviewmp3

Please: this with anyone you think might be interested.

Mystic Spirituality for Women Series

As I mentioned in my Are You A Mystic post, I’ve been organizing a series of posts I would like to do on mystic spirituality for women. I’m not sure this is the perfect series name, because some of the posts aren’t gender specific, some that are for women are geared for mothers and therefore not relevant to all women, and some could arguably be considered more occult than mystic. But this is the best overall title I could come up with so far.

This series is really to organize my own thoughts, which I felt it important to do this week because my birthday is this Sunday (42 for those counting!) and birthdays are a great time to initiate new things. My birthday coincides with International Women’s Day, so what more perfect time could there be to initiate a series for women? This particular post is kind of a Table of Contents – I will add in the links to each post as I complete them. Needless to say, the order and titles may change as I go along, but I wanted to give regular readers a sense of where it is headed.

This series is personally important to me, because it is the result of my own research (through reading and my own intuition) into this area after the experiences I had with the birth of my first child. Although I integrate different forms of meditation into my practice, my core form is chakra meditation, which I began as part of my Vajrayana Buddhist studies, and later evolved through my studies of other mystic traditions that include the idea of energy bodies and chakras. At the time I had my daughter I had been doing  chakra meditation daily for almost fifteen years, and teaching it for three.

While I won’t go into the details here, to put it simply, one of the goals of chakra meditation is to raise the lifeforce or kundalini up through all of the chakras. I noticed while pregnant that it became more and more difficult to do this, and from the reading I did I understood this to be normal, as both my physical and energetic body directed most of its resources to the new life. But what I didn’t expect was how hard it would be to re-establish my ability to raise the kundalini after my daugher was born. And I also didn’t realize the extent to which my energetic connection to my child (and later children, with my twins born 19 months later) would impact this.

For all of you that don’t study chakra meditation, you may be wondering ‘why should I care?’ There are lots of spiritual paths, why not just embark on one that doesn’t involve the chakras? Well, to that I would say that the vibrational and energy patterns and practices associated with chakra work are really the underpinnings of all spiritual experience. Many paths don’t work with the chakras explicitly, but the shifts that happen at that level still occur. When I read St. Theresa of Avila’s descriptions of her ‘union with Christ’, Rabia Basri’s poems on experiencing the beloved in nature, or even Zen abbess’ Mugai Nyobai’s satori moment, I see the shifts described within chakra meditation texts, even though none of these traditions work with them. I view writings on the chakras and other spiritual energy systems as ‘looking under the hood’ of mysticism, at the technicalities of what occurs when you have a mystic moment. And while you don’t have to understand what occurs under the hood of your car to drive it, some of just like to know:-)

Both the Are You A Mystic and Women’s Energy Bodies – Phases and Cycles posts might be good prequel reading for this series, but you’ll be able to follow this series without them (in fact I am going to try to make them each self-sufficient, but we’ll see how that goes.) Also, one thing I ask as you read this is that you remember this is a blog, not a master’s thesis. I am going to try and reference sources when I have them, but some of this is just my own POV. I’m happy to entertain debate on any of these issues in the comments, but just want to say up front that I DO know some of what I am saying does not jive with traditional chakra teachings.

Ok, here’s the topics, which I’ll start next week:

The Four Mystic Paths – Overview of the four types of spiritual paths as outlined in the Vedas, which I think is the best way for understanding all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions, and the different types of spiritual experiences. They are bhakti (devotion), jnani (inquiry), karma (service), and raja (combines all the others with occult and energy studies.)

Vibrational Spirituality: Under the Hood of Mysticism – A high-level look at the traditions that explicitly focus on energy bodies and chakras as part of spiritual practice, including kundalini yoga and Tantra.

The Second Chakra and Women’s Energy Bodies – The second chakra corresponds to the physical location of our reproductive organs, and therefore functions differently in men and women. How does this impact our paths to mystic experience, regardless of what tradition we are coming from?

The Second Chakra and Seeing – The unique receptive qualities of women’s second chakras make it a powerful force in our intuitive abilities – essentially, we ’see’ differently than men.

The Second Chakra and Motherhood – We energetically nurture our children through our second chakra, long after birth. How can we manage this in a way healthy for both us and our children? And how does this impact our mystic sensibilities?

What’s It All Mean? – How does all this information impact how women approach spirituality and mystic experience, i.e. how can we use all this information?

I welcome questions and comments on specific areas you are interested in related to each of these topics…this is a very fluid series (and that feedback is partly why I find blogging so valuable in helping me sort through my own ideas.)

Please: this with anyone you think might be interested.

February in Review

Last month I did a month-in-review post for the first time, idea and format courtesy of Mon at Holistic Mama, and the feedback was good, so here we go again…

Summary

Both the kids and I are more balanced this month, partly because I wrote less (hence fewer posts here), and because my mother and stepfather are visiting the area for 7 weeks, and can help out. The kids LOVE all the extra attention – a good reminder that mindful attention is all they ever really need. This month felt like a transition – I’m not entirely sure to what yet though.

Fun

The twins are potty-trained!! Right now this feels like the biggest accomplishment of my life. Nothing like trying to catch two 2-year olds ‘in the act’ to develop mindfulness.

Making valentines with the kids. I have NO artistic abilities whatsoever, but as a mother have discovered that I love arts and crafts, so doing it with my kids this age sets me free. Does look like they will soon surpass me in skill however.

Getting lots of comments on my ‘Are You a Mystic?’ post. I don’t seem to inspire comments much, although a respectable number of you do read this  (unless DH is paying wordpress and feedburner to inflate my stats??) So I was happy to finally get comments, and hope to inspire more with a new series on mysticism for women this month.

Being interviewed by Amy Jewell of www.cirkla.com on BlogTalkRadio. On my hand before the interview I wrote: 1) Don’t talk too fast, 2) Don’t say ‘um’, and 3) Don’t giggle. Listen and let me know how you think I did. Thx.

Starting up my meditation classes again. Always amazed how much teaching propels my own meditations forward.

Hiking in my favorite place with DH (see picture below.)

Challenging
Rain. The month started out with LOTS of rain, which normally I love, but this got old. I know, those of you busy shoveling your driveway don’t want to hear my whining. But eight years in sunny southern CA have made me a wimp.

The dentist. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to visit the dentist for the first time in five years, since we do actually have dental insurance. This resulted in not one, not two, but three deep cleanings.  All I can say is – FLOSS!!!

The economy hit closer to home. The midwest town where my family is from has been hit very hard, and two cousins were laid off this month, one after 23 years working for the same company, and the other with four kids and an already perilous mortgage. Others we know have survived recent lay-offs and/or taken paycuts. It is interesting to feel the feelings of anxiety this brings up, as well as compassion, and questions as to how to help.

Thoughtful

I have continued to explore the weird world that is Twitter. On the upside, I have found several Buddhist and spiritual articles from tweets that I liked. On the downside, Twitter is basically hell for an intuitive person. It’s full of people desperate to get your attention in 140 characters, and because of the high volume, this occurs at a frantic pace. It is like a giant out-of-control  human psyche made visible. Very strange. And addictive, of course. And then there is the mystery of the sudden influx of followers I got this past week. Am I listed someplace? Adding to the mystery is that many defined themselves as Christian Conservatives??? Really not sure what to make of all this.

An insight/thought

I have noticed that at the start of my meditations I am spending more time working through two prominent layers of distraction. The first I call ‘internet mind’, which is a busyness related to additional time online (including Twitter), and  which is very frenetic. The second is a pervasive subtext of anxiety, increasing with the world’s focus on the economy. Cutting through these two layers so that they don’t subtly  ’attach’ to and magnify my own thoughts is tricky business.

Website/blog Find

Liked this interview with three women spiritual/yoga teachers I really respect – Lama Tsultrium Allione, Shiva Rea, and Sarah Powers

Words

“If you can fix a problem in a single subtle structure, the solution will be shared throughout the entirety of the body–subtle and physical.” A little geeky I know, but I get geeky when it comes to chakras and energy body stuff. This is from The Subtle Body, which I loved reviewing this month.

Note to Self

Must stick to vow to limit daily online time, and to honor an ‘internet sabbath’ – at least 24 consecutive hours offline once each week.

Favourite Tip/Idea from web

Also liked this article from Karen Miller, author of Momma Zen, called Parents, Leave Your Home. She is always good at highlighting the ways we perpetually wish things were other than they are.

Slice of home

This isn’t a slice of home, but a slice of the home in my heart (sorry for the uncharacteristic sappiness.) With my mom and stepfather here to watch the kids, DH and I were able to hike in one of our favorite places, for the first time in five years. We started at the bottom, down by that river you can barely see! Based on how my legs feel, it will be another five years before we try this again.

Review – The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy

I don’t usually like to do book reviews so close together (just recently did Empowering Your Indigo Child), but I find myself recommending The Subtle Body by Cyndi Dale to everyone I know (including recently in a comment on a healing blog I visit, Heal Pain Naturally), so I decided I should just go ahead and review it already! Plus, this book is related to some of the themes I recently covered in Women’s Energy Bodies – Phases and Life Cycles, and that I will be looking at in more detail in my upcoming mystic spirituality for women series, so it actually provides a nice transition post.

**EDIT**After this review was published, I was lucky enough to interview Cyndi on many topics related to this book, so be sure to check out that post too.

The subtitle for the The Subtle Body is ‘An Encylopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy’, and this is exactly what it is. Ms. Dale, an already respected author, healer and writer on the chakras (and sure to be even more so after this work) has compiled and detailed energy body teachings from virtually every known energy healing tradition. Among these are Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, native and shamanic traditions from around the world, Hindi, Tibetan and Kabbalah chakra systems, ancient Greek philosophy, Western mystic teachings such as those from the Rosucrucians, and many, many others. She has combined this material with sections on basic human anatomy, and coverage of cutting-edge science that supports the mind/body/spirit connection, including work in physics and research into various alternative healing methods.

The result is simply amazing, a masterpiece really, for any healer open to the idea that “All medicine is essentially energy medicine, for energy composes the world.” It is also a gift to anyone like myself who is not a healer but an occult geek interested in any and all energy body teachings. The book is primarily written as a reference manual for healers, and as such begins with chapters on general energy healing principles, and a chapter on ethical guidelines for healers. It then moves into a section on basic human anatomy. Although this anatomy section is pretty straightforward, Ms. Dale intersperses research tying energy theories to physical anatomy, such as one on the energetic principles behind DNA, and a sidebar on the different types of brain waves.

From there the book moves into its core topics, with major sections on Energy Fields, Energy Channels, and Energy Bodies. The Energy Fields section provides a primer on energy fields, from both a physics and energy healing perspective. Part of the value of this book is that Ms. Dale manages to explain things like the Unified Field Theory and Zero-Point Field Theory in terms a non-scientist like myself can understand (or mostly understand, anyway.) She then moves into all different kinds of waves, L-Fields and T-Fields, and more importantly, what all this has to do with various energy body theories. If all this sounds a bit too theoretical, don’t worry – since this is structured as a reference manual, each chapter is self-contained, and you don’t need to read it cover to cover. I have to admit to getting a bit bleary-eyed at the various wave theories, but I perked up in her section on Field Pollution, which covers the potential impact power lines, cell phones and microwaves have on our body’s various energy fields. I also particularly liked her chapter on Sacred Geometry, and the patterns underlying our physical world that help us work with subtle levels, including as part of healing.

The Energy Channels section is mostly devoted to a presentation of the meridian system used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which serves as the source for both acupuncture and acupressure. Beautiful color pictures detail all the major meridians, and several comprehensive charts break down their relationships to the elements, acupuncture points, internal organs, and more. The Energy Bodies section then covers my primary interest – chakra systems, including the classic Hindi system, the slightly different Tibetan system, the Tsalagi (Cherokee) system, an Incan system, a Christian version derived from the Bible’s last book Revelations, Egyptian and African systems, and a Kabbalah-derived system. As with the meridians, each system is beautifully illustrated, and charts relate them to physical body parts and ailments. Ms. Dale also provides an overview of the role of chakras in the kundalini meditation practiced within some Hindu and Tibetan spiritual traditions. She finishes up with a section describing what must surely be every energy diagnostic and healing practice in the world – from acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, and crystal use to thai massage,  numerology, radionics and mudras.

As I said, this book is a reference, an Encyclopedia, and is priced as such. But it is also expertly organized and indexed, to assure that a reader can return to it over and over looking for guidance on a particular ailment, energy system, or healing practice. Ms. Dale does compare the systems, but doesn’t try and reconcile the differences between them, or offer judgment on which are more effective or provable, leaving that, presumably, to the healer and/or reader. I would think any healer would want to own this book and keep it close at hand, and anyone interested in energy body theories from a spiritual perspective as well.

To check out quotes from the book, see the associated Twitter account homepage (I’ve been enjoying the daily quotes for a couple of weeks), and the author’s website at http://www.cyndidale.com/. You can also purchase the book at Amazon.

And, although I know book reviews don’t normally inspire a lot of comments, please feel free to use the comments on this one to recommend any related resources you have found, or, if you have read any of Cyndi Dale’s other books or know her personally, provide more feedback. I really enjoyed receiving so many of your comments on my last post, and have vowed to encourage more commenting going forward (unfortunately I found out I can’t install CommentLuv without upgrading to WordPress.org, and I just don’t have the mental bandwidth for that right now, but I do love your comments anyway!) I’ll continue the mystic series I started with my last post later this week….

And if you like, please: