Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Our homes and our minds both have the ability to be our sanctuary and personal prison depending on what we may be experiencing in a given moment. As we enter into our 1 year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic I personally have experienced the highs and lows on a daily, weekly, or moment to moment basis. A lot has come up in as I am sure it has for you, and the feeling I notice bubbling up lately is grief. We have been facing uncertainty at an extreme level for about a year now, on top of the organic uncertainty we face by simply having the human experience. Some of us are grieving connection, how we thought work would look or feel, life prior to the pandemic, loved ones, births where limited people were able to be there and you were masked (because there was a deadly pandemic in the same building you were birthing a child), first years of college, high school, or elementary school, canceled or delayed weddings and funerals, jobs, a big move, putting yourself on the market to start dating, your first year as a teacher and you’re doing it virtually, you name it, and the list goes on and on. Your grief is extremely valid.

I have struggled with perfectionism my whole life. If you’re anything like me, your ego carries a dialogue within you that charges up your desire to be the best or do it best. I have noticed in my own shadow work that words my ego creates around this energy that is essentially draining, impossible to achieve, filled with loads of effort, and yet like the dangling carrot in front of my face meant to be endlessly chased. One of the key insights that came about as I looked within myself to work with this energy was a simple yet profound exchange of energy I could create within my body, most especially my fourth chakra, the Anahata or Heart Chakra, which I see as a space that holds shape for the energy that codes my self-esteem. This is the energy center where many of us hold the keys to our self-esteem.

The Third Chakra, Solar Plexus (also called Manipura Chakra), relates to the region of the body that goes from the navel to the lower third of the rib cage. If the physical body were a cell, the third chakra would be the mitochondria. The solar plexus creates our relationship with what we are physically able to achieve. The third chakra may also correspond with our to-do list and the expectations we have on ourselves for what we want, or may not want to get done on a physical level. While anxiety and burn-out may have a way of creeping into any chakra, I often see those frequencies manifest within this region of the body. We can do energy work on “burn out” until the cows come home, but often the body desires much more than meditation to refresh, restore, and transform the body’s longing for relief, space, and nourishment.

I am 100% on board with respecting and adhering to the CDC, WHO, and NIAID’s suggestions for staying home, maintaining social distancing, wearing masks in public, and washing hands. I am choosing to abide by the suggestions made by my governor as well as all of the medical professionals offering guidance, but as a psychic and energy worker, I will admit that I even take it a step further. I have found there are ways I can actually work the energy of my body and its energetic field to improve my feelings of safety, security, and well being during a time like this, and I wanted to share those methods with you. Everything is energy, everything.

Have you ever watched a small child learn to do something for the first time? I was watching a little boy put a brand new puzzle together, and this was the largest puzzle he had ever built. As he was arranging the pieces, I noticed some of them were backwards or upside down, and he was trying to put pieces together that wouldn’t fit. I just sat there silently, internally laughing at the dialogue my ego was having that instantly saw this scenario was just another playfully packaged, yet somehow intrinsically deep life lesson.

Often times we hear the saying, “what goes up, must come down.” As someone who’s had their fair share of traumas, this phrase has been real throughout my healing journey. I call it, doom and gloom energy. It is a fear around things being good, and then not enjoying them when they are good, because you’re too busy waiting for what is going to go wrong and screw it all up! As I have explored this and still explore this within myself and clients, I have come to realize that yes, Newton was on to something when he said "what goes up, must come down", but no, what goes up doesn’t always need to come down with a crash landing. Transitions from one chapter or experience to the next, can be relatively smoothe and peaceful. Rather than a Newtonian approach, what if we looked at this concept in terms of airplanes.

If you google the word “chakra,” the first six images you see share the idea of chakras being seven energetic vortexes located on a person’s body, that correspond with regions of the body physically, spiritually, and energetically. You will also see that all six images consistently show the seven chakras are all the same colors in descending order from the crown chakra to the root chakra: Violet Crown Chakra Indigo Third Eye Chakra Blue Throat Chakra Green Heart Chakra Yellow Solar Plexus Chakra Orange Sacral Chakra Red Root Chakra