“vam vam vam….” was our mantra for the second “sacral” chakra today. As we went through our asana practice this morning, Jackie broke down what this chakra involves. It is where we store our emotions, our feelings. Yesterday, we did the root chakra, which is the color red. It is instinct and inheritance from the “tribe” or our ancestors as Jackie says. The root chakra is our “right to be” chakra. The sacral chakra is “our right to feel”. Repression runs deep in my family, and I feel that over the years I have immensely improved. To say the least, I cried through every hip opener yin pose. I did not cry out of pain. I cried from “letting go” and feeling that which I have pushed down. This chakra in balance allows for the acceptance and embracing of pleasure with a balance of a firm hold on boundaries. This balance is a constant struggle for many of us including myself. When Jackie said “you can not heal that which you can not feel”, I let go. I moved deeper into the pose, and I felt it deeply in my emotions as that which I have been denying bubbled up.

I wonder if I do these poses all the time if I will be clear as a bell and unbelievably happy. It almost seems that I would be. All the emotional weight to bear, I realize that I put in my second chakra, the orange chakra. Any dreams or hopes unrealized or “unbirthed” as Jackie said, reside in this second chakra.  I am one to keep my eye open for opportunities and grab on; however, once I am there, at times, I struggle to accept change or failure.

The “demon” of the root chakra is fear. Yesterday, I faced that I fear getting “stuck” or “settling”. Where I am from, people do not leave. When I was younger, it seemed that they all settled and denied the world of its adventure and treasure troves of knowledge and experience. However, as I age, although I still hope that these people would travel and embrace the world with its differences and similarities, I find I miss the grounding of those who stayed home. I am realizing that just because one stays home, it does not mean she is settling as long as it is an informed choice versus an unwillingness to face the unknown.

The demon of the sacral chakra is guilt and shame. Again, I feel like I have moved passed my fundamentalist christian background that taught me that guilt is basically the emotion of choice. The push that we must be perfect and anything less equals guilt, shame, and repentance. The more I do yoga, the more I embrace non judgment and compassion. However, I know that I am guilty of moving from one extreme to the other when I went from completely denying the world to fully embracing it without full knowledge of what that could entail.

I resonated so strongly with the need for this chakra to “let go” that I felt I must write about it in order to hold on to this emotional release and revelation.