Feeling some type of way? You may need to balance your second chakra!

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“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” - C.G. Jung

Have you found yourself lost in emotion lately? Sometimes it can seem like we are a slave to our emotional reactions. Whether it’s heartache from a disappoint, betrayal from a friend, or disrespect from a coworker, we have all had those experiences where our emotions get the best of us. Or on the other hand sometimes we can feel “some type of way”  but have a complete inability to connect with what we are feeling. This opposite extreme is just as stressful as the festering and identified emotion swells up inside our psyche until we consciously address it.

Feelings are the way our True Self communicates not only with the outside world, but with our conscious mind. Taking care of ourselves in ways that promote self-gratification is key to living our best lives. Self-gratification encompasses the ability to be fluid in our emotional expression. It also includes experiencing emotion in ways that we can grow from each emotional experience and ultimately experience pleasure. This does not mean we avoid unpleasant emotions and overly attach to pleasure. Instead it means we find ways to integrate all of our emotional experiences using emotional fluidity and intelligence.

When our second chakra is in balance we are able to move gracefully through life with a keen ability to change and flow. Finding balance in this chakra requires taking responsibility for experiencing, containing, and growing from your emotions. It eliminates fearing your emotions or even worse letting them control you. The second chakra symbolizes our basic right to feel and have pleasure, and it is rightly represented by the element of water. The second chakra is called Svadhisthana, or The Sacral Chakra. This energy force is housed  below our navel  and above our pubis bone and includes the sex organs, hips, and lower back. Each chakra is represented by a color, and the second chakra’s color is orange. It’s symbolic element is Water, symbolizing flowing emotion and pleasure only balanced by healthy boundaries and containers.When it is balanced we experience self-gratification. Understanding the second chakra and the concept of self-gratification will help you take your self-care practice to a more efficient level. It can helpful to think of self-gratification using the analogy of water. Imagine your emotions are like water, and your ultimate pleasure is to drink water. Self-gratification is the ability to contain that watery emotion in a glass, and ingest it. Containing the water in a glass represents not letting our emotions overflow and overwhelm us, and drinking it represents digesting what it has to offer you.

Facing our emotions can be a scary thing for many reasons. You may find yourself completely cut off from your emotions due to traumas past, and are terrified of experiencing emotions. The danger in denying our emotions is they fester inside of us if they are not addressed and can unconsciously manifest in some very scary ways. Others may experience emotions in an excessively strong way that they often feel overwhelmed by emotion and hysteria. This is equally as devastating to our well being, because we go through life reacting to life instead of responding to it. We want to develop a way to feel and learn from emotions without being overwhelmed by them. We want to open ourselves to all emotions so that we can ultimately experience pleasure. Therefore one of the biggest obstacles that prevents people from achieving self-gratification is clinging to pleasure. In order to truly achieve a balanced second chakra, we must find ways to integrate our negative emotions and hence open ourselves to pleasure without clinging to it.

Here are some exercises that can help you confront your emotions and balance your second chakra:

• Journaling
• Mindfulness meditation focused on emotional awareness
• Emotion focused psychotherapy
• Hip Opening and closing Yoga poses i.e Pidgeon Pose, Lotus Pose, Forward Bends etc
• Trying to learn a lesson from each emotion experienced (Integration)

In the comments below let me know how you balance your second chakra. 

– Tiffany Shelton, M.A. is a psychotherapist and consciousness expert. Her passion to elevate consciousness goes beyond the message of self-care or wellness, but instead consciously adds to these movements by demanding awakening and insight. Learn more about Tiffany Shelton by clicking here.

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