Saturday

Feeling Green

I enjoy a monthly Journaling Group comprised of fellow healers, counselors, and educators. This year, we've chosen to learn more about energy. How it inhabits the body, and carries memories or emotional imprints in the form of patterned behaviors, much as energy from a battery follows a proscribed circuit of wires. We're looking for ways to rewire, to learn new and healthier behaviors and responses.

With so much information and wisdom available on the topic, we've decided to start by learning and writing about each of the seven primary Chakras, and their basic function in maintaining or healing our life energy patterns. We've decided to look more closely at the connection between energy and story. Chakras are defined as biophysical energy centers in the body, first explored and named by East Indian philosophers and healers over four thousand years ago.

As I work-- and write-- my way up through the Chakras, I've noticed some profound changes in my own relationship to energy. Energy, according to both secular and spiritual sources, fills all living things. In fact, we are made up of energy. Hearing the stories and "ah-hah!" moments of my Journaling peers has also reminded me that we each have the opportunity to combine our energy and our willpower and change the way we live-- change our life story. This was particularly apparent in our most recent Journaling session about Fourth Chakra.

But first, let me recap:
In our first meeting several months ago, we focused on the energy of First Chakra. Located at the base of the spine, this energy point in the body is related to one's sense of security, both physical and emotional. As the "Root" Chakra, this is where we draw most of our energy, find our balance, and work through our day-to-day needs and challenges. The Root Chakra is most often associated with a deep red color.

Second Chakra, or Sacral Chakra, is located below the belly button. The energy of this Chakra relates to our emotional health, sensual self-awareness, and comfort with self. It is considered the "Relationship" Chakra, and in journaling about it with the group, I recognized all over again just how common it is for women to be blocked or uncomfortable with this particular kind of energy in our bodies. Heck, most women I know (and many men as well) are just uncomfortable with their bodies, regardless of the kind of energy involved.

Third Chakra is the personal power and creative life force energy center in the body. It is located over our solar plexus, below our ribs. The color most often associated with this Chakra Energy is yellow. For many of us, this is the most functional of our Chakras simply because there are fewer risks involved in acknowledging our creative energies. We like to paint, or sing, or dance. We see that each person has unique strengths and unique personalities.

This brings us to the Fourth Chakra-- Heart Chakra. This is the month my Journaling Group has chosen to focus on our Heart Chakra, which just happens to be green. It is the center of the seven Chakras, providing a link between upper and lower energies. In our group, we talked about different meanings and representations of the Fourth Chakra's energy in the world. I was surprised to learn that it represents both healing energy and wealth. Deep self-knowledge, as well as the ability to reach out to others. Forgiveness, understanding, and bringing into harmony that which is separate. It relates to generosity, prosperity, imagination, and willpower.

Sitting with the group, I realized it's been a long time since I saw those words together in one sentence-- generosity and prosperity. Imagination and willpower. And in examining my reaction to the idea that love and money might be connected in some positive way, I began to understand just how deeply scarred our relationship with money has become. We often think it controls us, and we begin to fear taking risks and trying new things as a reaction to our perceived lack of control. Many of us are so desperate to find or earn or win enough money to feed our family or avoid foreclosure, more money, any money at all... That we've forgotten how important our own awareness and energy is to the process of creating or maintaining our own well-being. We've forgotten both how to give and how to receive with integrity and intention rather than with fear.

We have forgotten how many forms generosity can take. We have forgotten that prosperity is about something more than money-- but that money is a vital ingredient in maintaining health. Yes-- Money, like healing medicines, promotes HEALTH! The green energy of healing, of the Heart Chakra, is the same energy we can use to change our relationship with money from that of despair and exhaustion to that of determination and awareness. It's a daunting suggestion, but one of the few I've found that acknowledges our personal power to create positive change in our own economic situations. Maybe if enough Heart Chakras are unblocked and strengthened, we can extend that healing of individual financial outlooks and reclaiming of individual dreams and goals to that of our economy as a whole.

As our Group Facilitator pointed out, "At the essential center of Heart Chakra is the statement, 'the story must be healed.'"

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