Kate Allen

The Second Chakra

Written by Kate • May 31, 2011 •
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The Second Chakra- The Sacral Chakra

The second of the seven chakras is known as the sacral chakra. It’s located between the pubic bone and navel, up from the root chakra. Its function is to allow us to feel desire and pleasure and our sexuality.  It is associated with the color orange and the water element.

As I mentioned in my last post on the first chakra, the root chakra is associated with the first two years of life. We spend the first two years or so of our life, focused solely on surviving with little thought to the other aspects of life which, later, will so completely consume our lives. As infants and toddlers, we simply want and need to be fed, clothed, housed, taken care of, and loved.

After the first few years and life is less about eating and being taken care of, we’re now focused on exploring life and experiencing pleasure and desire, and much later in our lives, it’s about our sexuality. The second chakra is associated with ages 2-4 or so.

This is the third post of 10 posts on the 7 Chakras System. Here is the first post, an Overview of the 7 Chakras, and here is the second post, The Root Chakra.

Open and Balanced
When your sacral chakra is open and balanced, you affirm your ability to feel pleasure, to be sexual, to satisfy your desires for a variety of experiences, and you have a lack of guilt about taking care of yourself.  You can firmly say, “I feel. I desire. I want.” You live a life that has pleasure, beauty, sensations, and some form of pampering. And as an adult, you enjoy your sex life and feel good about being sexual- without guilty, shame, or any negative feelings.

Unbalanced or Weak
Signs of an unbalanced or weak chakra are two sides of the same coin. If you often deny yourself pleasure and live a utilitarian type life style or if you indulge in nearly every whim, denying yourself nothing, you probably have an unbalanced chakra.

Causes
We either deny ourselves nothing or everything, to a larger extent. By denying ourselves pleasure, spontaneity, joyfulness, beauty, and art, we can throw our chakra out of balance.

Also by denying ourselves true pleasure, and substituting something else for beauty, pleasure, and sensuality, through eating, drinking or buying things or having sex in exchange for a feeling of pleasure, we also throw our chakras out of balance.

Symptoms of a Sacral Chakra Imbalance

• Do you nurture yourself- take long baths, get massages, enjoy a play, do things you enjoy?
• Do you listen to your body? Do you acknowledge your feelings?
• Do you enjoy sex with your partner and feel good about the act itself?
• Do you have beauty in your life; flowers, art, nice things that make you happy when you look at them?
• Do you celebrate your accomplishments, big and small?
• Do you allow yourself good food, good wine, nice desserts?

If you answered no to some or many of the above-listed questions, your sacral chakra is probably out of balance.

Examples of Situations that Can Throw Your Sacral Chakra Out of Balance

Denying Ourselves Pleasure
A common way that many dieters throw their sacral chakra out of balance is through their method of dieting. Many diets have us eating far less than the calorie intake required to maintain even our goal weight in order to create the calorie deficit for a quick loss of weight. One of the first things to go is many of the foods that provide us pleasure. So we no longer will give ourselves desserts or use fat or oils to spice up our dishes. And we no longer eat pleasurable food and instead eat our diet food.

Or some diets suggest that we reward ourselves only when we lose the targeted amount of weight, so we cut out clothes shopping, massages, new shoes, and anything else that brings us pleasures. Some diets even have us do both.

And so there goes pleasure through eating, savoring a glass of good wine, or taking care of non-basic needs through nice clothing when required or a new pair of shoes. This can spiral to denying ourselves any pleasure so that we keep to our diets or a schedule or our ideal that pleasure and enjoying life isn’t OK, that we need to sacrifice in order to be happy.

As a side note, I’ve been following Tonya Leigh, a weight loss mentor who would rather have her clients focusing on filling their life up with pleasure and her theory is that when her clients get happy, they get thinner. Her new course, Slim Chic and Savvy, began yesterday. [I don’t get paid for this reference. Just an interesting note about pleasure in your life]

Substitution for the Real Thing
Another common way that younger people especially try to increase pleasure in their life is by overindulging in eating food or having sex, often to excess in order to have some sense of pleasure and connection in their lives.

When dieting or overly strict eating causes loss of enjoyment of the food itself and we no longer allow ourselves anything luxurious in this every day act, we can then binge or eat past fullness. We at least can enjoy the feeling that eating gives us, calming us down and numbing us out.

And when we don’t have a connection and don’t understand or believe our sexuality is natural and can be a loving and wonderful experience, we can trade sex for connection, for pleasure, for sensations.

All addictions can be traced to the sacral chakra, substituting sensation for our need for true pleasure, beauty, and joyfulness in life.

Ways to Balance Your Second Chakra

Many of the balancing methods below don’t cost a thing and can take just a few minutes each day.

Pamper Yourself

• Take a long bubble bath with scented candles
• Take the time to read a new, juicy fiction book
• Take 20 minutes after dinner and enjoy a nice glass of dessert wine, just because
• Make yourself a fabulous meal
• Get a massage
• Buy yourself a new pair of shoes, just because
• Dress in the clothes that make you feel like a million bucks, just because

Play

• Have fun doing something you really enjoy, like a game of cards, Scrabble or your favorite board game
• Play World of Warcraft or your other favorite online game and enjoy the time spent “goofing off” without guilt
• Go bowling
• See some improv or do some of your improv with your friends
• Do something fun just because you enjoy it

Be Outside

• Go on a walk in nature, in a park, around a lake, in a garden
• Enjoy a long walk listening to your favorite music
• Go camping in a gorgeous setting

Change Your Space

• Add some color to your walls.
• Light candles and enjoy an evening reading by candlelight
• Hang some art that pleases you, even if it’s a framed picture from one of your magazines

Really Enjoy What You’re Doing

• Rather than over eating, create a sumptuous meal for yourself and enjoy it. Savor each bite and only eat until you get the beginning of the full sensation.
• Really connect with someone rather than having mindless sex in order to feel. The connection will feel much better and do more for you in the long run.

Yoga
Some of yoga poses are quite helpful, such as hip and sacral openers. They can be done on your carpet in your bedroom or any space where have a little bit of room and 5 minutes free from interruptions. Anodea Judith recommends the following:

• Goddess Pose
• Pelvic Tilts
• Hip circles [circle your hips in small circles, increasing the size of the circles as you go]

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
Unfamiliar with EFT? Check out this page to show you the basics, for free. There are many other sites that have a more thorough explanation of the technique but they require you to provide your email address. Your choice!

EFT at the highest level: you first state your concerns and that you deeply love and accept yourself. You then release each of the specific ideas, anxieties, and fears that you are feeling. Then you state affirmations or better ideas that should replace your anxieties and fears and that make you feel better, more empowered by thinking them.

Deeply Love and Accept Yourself
You first touch the karate chop point [as shown on the link] while releasing the block through stating, “Even though I am not good enough, even though I think I_______ [shouldn’t enjoy myself, enjoy food, drink, have sex, etc ], I deeply love and accept myself.

Release
Then go through each point tapping three or four times at each point; eyebrow, side of eye, under the eye, under the nose, under the chin, the collar bone, under the breast/ribcage, under arm, and crown – while releasing whatever it is you’re experiencing.  You can go around the tapping circuit a few times until you’ve fully release what you need to.

Starting tapping at the eyebrow and going through each point:
I release the feelings that I’m bad, I don’t deserve good things, sex is dirty, sex isn’t good, love is hard, love is constricting, relationships are hard, I can’t connect, …etc

[Keep tapping]. I release all of this from my body.

[Keep tapping]. I release from my sacral chakra, from my whole body:

No relationships, denying myself is good, have to use sex to be noticed, have to use sex to connect, low self-esteem, bad relationships, patterns of bad relationships, … [fill in whatever you’re feeling that is keeping you from enjoying your life as pleasurable and full of beauty -as you keep tapping]

Affirmations
Now you begin replacing the feelings and beliefs you’ve just released through saying affirmations that work for you, while tapping through the entire circuit again.

[Start tapping] I am worth it. I deserve to have pleasures. Desire is a good thing. Sex is sacred and good.  I deserve to have good things in my life. I am comfortable with my body. I take care of myself. I love myself and my body. Marriage is easy.  I can nurture myself and my family. I am of the light.  [Fill in what works for you….]

Keep Going
Continue with any of these suggestions from yoga, to EFT, to letting yourself really feel life and all the delightful abundance it has to offer. These balancing techniques will help balance your chakra and make you able to feel more able to nurture yourself and your playful, pleasure loving part of you. Once you feel balanced, playful, and curious again, consider looking at your next chakra, the third  chakra.

What helps you experience the delights that life has to offer? What are some ways you take care of yourself?

Next up: The Third Chakra- the Solar Plexus Chakra