Understanding How We Feel the Chakras

This is a little talk on how to understand the chakras better.

I have been a yoga practitioner for over 30 years and a teacher for nearly two decades and I will admit it took me a long time to understand the chakras.

It was not until I went and had a type of therapy that connects with the way you feel that I really felt like I understood the chakras.

So this type of therapy is called rapid eye movement therapy and it is done by a psychologist,

A trained psychologist.

And when I was doing this therapy she would ask me what was my first memory of trauma and where did I feel it in my body.

And in that I had this aha moment that that's what chakras are.

In many ways,

You know,

We can't see them.

We can only feel how we experience things in our body whether it's emotions or illness or pleasure or pain.

But when we recognize that we often feel things in our body that is how I connect to the chakras.

Now there are many explanations of how they work and how they function but the easiest explanation for me and possibly this is because previously I was in the field of early childhood and would often have to make hard things simplified.

For me,

Understanding the nuance of this helps me understand the chakras.

So when I feel nervous my belly hurts.

When I am in love or feel love I often feel butterflies in my belly.

When I feel like someone is crossing my boundaries or I'm not happy with myself because I'm not setting boundaries I may feel that in my solar plexus area between my navel and my heart and also in my throat with my inability to speak up for myself or possibly maybe even if I've had a fit or allow myself to say things I don't mean.

Then when my heart hurts and we have these expressions,

You know,

My heart hurts,

That hurts my heart,

I felt stabbed in the heart or stabbed in the back where the heart is obviously.

We have these expressions to me that are a way that we express how we experience a balance or imbalance in the chakras.

And so one way,

And I'm going to tell you some ways that I work with my clients to bring that balance back.

So continuing on with that thought process,

When my heart hurts or I'm sad I literally feel it in my chest.

When I'm not speaking my truth or I don't know how to express myself I literally feel that in my throat.

In my mind oftentimes I can feel kind of spacey and not want to connect when I've been doing a lot of meditation.

So we become balanced or imbalanced in these ways.

Now when I'm working with my clients,

I'm a yoga therapist and I work with people often in the medical field who have no experience with the chakras and to be honest I would send them running for the door if I began to mention it in the way that we often discuss it between yoga teachers and students.

So what I will often do is have them begin to notice where they feel things.

So in their belly I will have them notice how they feel things in their belly and check in with themselves.

Ask themselves,

You know,

How are you doing today?

Look at yourself in third person.

And this little bit of information also comes from the book I've written.

But I will ask them questions or I'll make a statement that says something like this,

I have blank.

Now this is the first chakra and it's about survival and the second chakra is about,

You know,

Feeling,

Desire and passion or greed and manipulation.

So when we're down here in the lower,

That's when we often notice what we feel.

And so I will either have them answer the question with a positive statement,

I have or I feel.

And I will always tell them to use a positive present tense word to help bring them back in balance.

Now sometimes I do it that way,

But sometimes I just have them check in and notice as if they were looking at themselves on a park bench and maybe they would notice that they've been sad lately or maybe they would notice that they've been,

You know,

Having stress or grief or possibly happy.

And then I have them observe that objectively without getting attached to it as if they were watching someone else that they know but not feeling attached.

And what this does is it allows the person to recognize when they're getting out of balance because so much of the time when we are stressed,

We are living so much in our mind of the stress of what happened before,

In the past,

What we could have done,

What we need to do,

How to fix it,

That we're not connecting with what's going on in our body.

And in the field I work in,

That often results in cardiac issues or heart attacks or high blood pressure.

So connecting and noticing how you feel allows you to stop,

Take a breath,

Expand your knowledge about what's going on or your awareness,

And then respond accordingly.

And I will also have them connect to their solar plexus area and their throat into the area of intuition.

And in this area,

In the solar plexus,

I will often have them ask themselves this question,

What do I need?

What do I need today?

What do I need in my life?

Is there something that I need to pay attention to?

And then I ask them to ask themselves the question and listen quietly.

This allows them to set boundaries for themselves and others.

It allows them to become aware of what they need,

Because often we're neglecting our needs because our mind is in the loop and it is focusing on the loop and what we need to do,

As I said earlier.

Then I will have them go into their heart area or the heart chakra and focus on gratitude and compassion.

Quite literally,

When we focus on gratitude or a bond that we have with a person or an animal or a gratefulness for things that we have in our life,

Like a roof over our head,

We begin to produce the hormone oxytocin,

Which is a bonding hormone.

This allows us to then connect to that feeling of love and compassion and gratefulness.

This in fact is very healing for the heart,

As there are receptors in the heart that take up oxytocin and begin to heal the body rather than when the body is running in fight or flight and the stress is up.

This is one way I connect to the chakras without really talking about the chakras so much to my clients who might be a little intimidated by language they haven't heard.

When we get to the throat,

I've usually connected this with the solar plexus as well,

But I ask them to finish this statement with a positive statement,

I speak.

And maybe that's I speak my truth,

I speak what I need to say,

Whatever it is,

Allowing them to balance the throat chakra,

Allowing them to know what they need to speak or say or not say.

Then I move on up to the sixth chakra and I will have them focus on their highest essence of themselves.

And if they're not sure about their highest essence,

We aren't,

You know,

Obviously sitting there seeing ourselves in this godlike state,

But I want them to see themselves when they feel good about themselves.

And so I'll often say,

We know our humaneness,

We know our human condition to be hungry,

Angry,

Tired,

Lonely,

Greedy,

All of those things that we know about ourselves that are the humaneness,

The frailties.

Now see yourself when you feel good,

Loving,

Kind,

Brave,

Courageous,

Happy.

And then I will say,

Answer this statement with a positive present word to yourself,

I see.

Maybe I don't know what they see.

I try not to tell clients what to do,

But I try to ask thought provoking questions.

Lastly,

On the seventh chakra,

Oftentimes this is where we are feeling maybe depression or grief,

But also feeling a knowingness or a oneness.

Both can be true when in balance or out of balance.

And so here I will have them to continue to see their highest essence of themselves and to answer in a positive way.

I know.

I asked them then to picture in their mind what this knowing is,

What this highest essence is.

And I asked them to see it as if they were seeing beautiful scenery or watching a picture show or TV,

To see their highest essence,

To see their highest good and allow themselves to picture that as if they were picturing a Polaroid in the mind and then allow it to go down through the throat,

Down to the body like an hourglass emptying through the body into every cell of their being and every cell taking up that highest essence of self.

I hope that this little talk helps you to understand the chakras a little better and to understand that one way we can connect to the chakras is to notice how we feel things in our body.

When we feel good and happy and grateful,

We often feel connected to Source or Source Energy or the God of your understanding.

When we feel sad or grief-stricken or broken,

Then we're often not feeling connected to Source.

And so one thing we can do is begin to answer those questions we asked earlier or finish those statements,

Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings but to also look at the reverse side of those and to notice what we need.

This has been Courtney Butler.

Thank you so much.

I hope you have a wonderful day.