Location of the Sacral Chakra: Lower abdomen to navel
Core Issue: Guilt
Age of Development: 6 months – 2 years
Developmental Tasks: Exploration of the world through the senses, locomotor skills
Function: Movement, connection, sexuality, sensuality, fertility, creative energy
The sacral chakra is where our emotions, creativity, and sexual energy come from. It’s linked to our need for relationships and our need for independence and control. This chakra starts to develop during the first and second years of life as we form deeper relationships and gain more control over our bodies. If you feel disconnected from people or like you don’t have control over your life, it can make it hard to connect with your senses and make your ideas happen.
Sacral Chakra: Foundation of Life
The sacral chakra represents our right to feel and to experience pleasure.
Connection to the Physical Body
The sacral chakra is linked to the sexual organs, large intestine, pelvis, hips, appendix, kidneys, and bladder.
Connection to the Emotional/Mental Body
The sacral chakra is connected to our need for relationships with others. It is also connected to our desire/need to have some control over our physical environment (e.g., our relationship with money).
Connection to the Spiritual Body
The energy of the sacral chakra represents the bonds we form with other people, our desire to procreate, and our drive to bring creative ideas to life.
When the sacral chakra’s energy is out of balance, it can develop either an excessive or deficient coping strategy for survival.
Excessive Sacral Chakra
Too much energy stays in the body, making it overactive, dense, and stagnant. Signs of excess imbalance include:
Deficient Sacral Chakra
Too much energy leaves the body, leaving it passive, empty, and feeling useless. Signs of deficient imbalance include:
Balanced Sacral Chakra
A balanced sacral chakra means:
The sacral chakra can face several challenges affecting movement, sensation, emotions, sexuality, and the ability to feel pleasure.
Possible Causes of Complications
Complications can arise from experiences like sexual, emotional, or physical abuse, neglect, rejection, denial of child’s feelings, enmeshment, emotional manipulation, religious or moral severity (opposing pleasure), substance abuse in the family, and inherited traumas (around sexuality).
Physical Manifestations of Imbalance
When the sacral chakra is imbalanced, it can show up in physical issues such as:
Therapeutic Color: Orange Associated Element: Water
Every trauma held in the body affects your whole system–physically, mentally, and emotionally. For example, breaking a leg not only impacts you physically but also influences your thoughts and emotions. When trauma happens it can create a gap between your mind and body and cause issues with how your system communicates with itself, keeping you from healing. When healing, it’s crucial to address trauma comprehensively and work towards reestablishing a connection between what you are thinking and what you are feeling in your body and allow it to be expressed emotionally.
The following suggestions can help to balance the energy of the sacral chakra. It is important to note, that healing requires careful attention and patience, especially when dealing with long-held traumas. It may be uncomfortable as you confront past experiences, but this is a natural part of the healing process.
For the best results, combine several methods that you find enjoyable and practice them regularly. Healing takes time and persistence, so be patient with yourself throughout the journey.
1. Connect with your senses
The sacral chakra is linked to your senses and your ability to feel pleasure through them. When this chakra is out of balance, it can cause your senses to shut down, making it hard to feel pleasure. This can lead to either over-focusing on stimulating your senses or ignoring them completely. Your senses are crucial for good health because they tell your body and brain what feels good and what feels harmful. If they’re not working properly, you can’t understand what your body needs.
To balance the sacral chakra, reconnect with your senses by:
• Surrounding yourself with pleasant scents like incense or sage.
• Looking at beautiful, vivid colors in nature or media.
• Eating healthy foods that taste good and you enjoy.
• Wearing or using soft fabrics.
• Listening to music or sounds that you find pleasing.
2. Create something
The sacral chakra is where your creative energy comes from. When this chakra is blocked, it can make it hard to turn your creative ideas into reality. Creativity is essential for many reasons. It opens your mind, helps you solve problems, improves your understanding of thoughts and feelings, and boosts motivation, confidence, and productivity. Bringing your creative ideas to life is crucial for balancing the energy in this area. This can be as simple as drawing or painting a picture, cooking a meal or baking cookies, singing, dancing, or any other creative activity you enjoy. Doing creative things regularly can significantly help balance your sacral chakra energy.
3. Yoga poses
Yoga focused on opening the hips can help balance the energy of the sacral chakra. Some helpful poses include forward bends, goddess pose, reclined bound angle pose, and warrior poses.
4. Practice Kegels
Kegels are great exercises for strengthening the pelvic floor muscles, which both men and women can benefit from. The pelvic floor supports your bladder and bowels and affects sexual function. A weak pelvic floor can lead to urinary incontinence, bowel movement issues, painful sex for women, and erectile dysfunction (ED) in men.
To practice Kegels:
1. Find the Right Muscles: Stop urination midstream. The muscles you use to do this are your pelvic floor muscles.
2. Exercise: Tighten these muscles, hold for three seconds, then relax for three seconds. Repeat this exercise a few times in a row.
3. Frequency: Practice a few times a day for the best results.
4. Breathing: Pay attention to your breath throughout the exercise and avoid holding it.
5. Vary Positions: Once you’ve strengthened the muscles, try doing Kegels in multiple positions like sitting, standing, or walking.
By incorporating Kegels into your daily routine, you can significantly improve the strength and function of your pelvic floor muscles.
5. Connect with water
Water is a powerful ally in balancing the energy of the sacral chakra. It offers a simple and gentle way to calm the senses and reconnect with them. Being in and around water has been proven to lower cortisol levels (a stress hormone), promoting relaxation. Additionally, it boosts endorphin levels, the body’s natural painkillers, which enhances overall well-being.
Activities like swimming or taking a soothing bath are excellent ways to immerse yourself in the balancing properties of water. These practices not only support your sacral chakra but also support a sense of calm and rejuvenation in your body and mind.
6. Stay hydrated
Keeping your body well-hydrated benefits your overall health, but it’s especially important for the sacral chakra. The kidneys, which are connected to this chakra, need plenty of hydration to function well. Water helps the kidneys remove waste from the blood through urine and keeps blood vessels open, allowing vital nutrients to reach the kidneys.
Even mild dehydration can negatively affect your bodily functions and zap your energy. To ensure you stay hydrated, make sure you drink enough clean liquids every day, such as water and unsweetened herbal teas.
7. Practice emotional release (deficiency) or containment (excess)
The sacral chakra houses the energy of emotional expression. Emotions are important signals that are there to tell you when things are either going well or poorly. Your emotions do not exist to control you or be problematic. However, when the sacral chakra becomes unbalanced your emotions can feel like they are in control.
With an excess imbalance, emotions tend to be overexpressed with little to no control, while a deficient imbalance usually means that emotions are repressed and expressed very little, if at all. In order for the body to be healthy, it needs to be able to express its emotions at appropriate times in ways that are beneficial. To balance issues with emotional expression, it can be helpful to practice emotional release if you are struggling with a deficiency or containment if you suffer from an excess.
Emotional release – If you feel the need to cry or yell, or any other type of strong emotion, work on trying to let it out. You have the right to express what you are feeling and it is necessary for healthy balance and connection. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t achieve this right away, emotions that have been repressed for years can take a while of working on them to get them to come to the surface.
Emotional containment – If you feel like you are always crying or yelling, or otherwise letting your strong emotions get the best of you, work on trying to contain them. If you run into a problem that would normally leave you in tears, focus on trying to calm yourself instead of giving in to the emotion trying to be expressed. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t do it right away, you are retraining your brain on how to react which takes time.
8. Work on setting boundaries
The sacral chakra is intimately tied to our relationships and how we establish boundaries within them. Boundaries act as the lines that define our personal space, emotions, and interactions with others. When this area is out of balance, it can manifest in boundaries that are either too loose or too rigid.
Loose Boundaries: If your boundaries are loose, you might find it challenging to assert yourself. You may have difficulty saying “no,” share too much personal information, become overly involved in others’ problems, or prioritize pleasing others to avoid rejection.
Rigid Boundaries: Conversely, rigid boundaries can make you appear distant in relationships. You might keep people at arm’s length, avoid sharing personal details, or struggle with intimacy.
Healthy Boundaries: Finding a balance involves understanding your own needs and desires. It means knowing when and how to communicate those needs clearly and respectfully. Healthy boundaries allow you to value your opinions without constant validation from others and to assert yourself by saying “no” when necessary, while also respecting others’ boundaries.
Examining your boundaries involves reflecting on what you are comfortable with and what crosses your limits. It’s about understanding how you communicate these boundaries and ensuring they are respected. Taking steps to establish and maintain healthy boundaries is crucial for healing and balancing the sacral chakra, supporting healthier relationships and personal well-being.
9. Address addiction issues
Addictions can be widespread, from substances like drugs and food to behaviors like gambling and sex; Even excessive music listening can become an addiction. Anything that is used on a regular basis to avoid feeling pain and stress can be considered an addiction. Addictions are used as a way to attempt to regulate the nervous system when things feel out of control. However, relying on these habits to numb pain or stress prevents your body from healing.
To balance your sacral chakra and promote healing, it’s crucial to examine any avoidance habits and replace them with healthier alternatives. This can mean looking at how you handle stress, how you view yourself, how you spend your free time and who you spend it with. The key here is to be gentle with yourself and go at a pace that feels right to you. You may not be able to give up drinking or smoking marijuana overnight, but it may be possible to lessen the amounts while slowly replacing them with healthier habits that are also able to help your nervous system feel regulated and good.
10. Explore your sexuality
Sexual energy comes from the sacral chakra. Sexuality is an important part of life and is an expression that binds together many of the issues experienced by this chakra such as emotions, pleasure, sensation, and movement. It is the ultimate relationship connection. Unfortunately, sexuality has been incredibly misunderstood and rejected by our culture as something to feel guilty for, hindering our ability to find balance within the sacral chakra. However, we all have a right to feel good and to experience healthy sexuality without feeling ashamed of it.
Because of this, it is important to address your feelings and beliefs surrounding sex to find balance. Is it a subject you are comfortable with or not? How do you feel about your own sexuality? If you have a partner, you can try exploring new sexual positions or any fetishes you both find enjoyable. If you aren’t in a relationship, you can try experimenting with different forms of self-pleasure. If doing so brings up any feelings of guilt or shame think about them and question why that may be.
Affirmations are powerful tools for changing how you think about yourself. They help replace negative self-talk with positive statements that support healing.
Aromatherapy uses certain scents to create a focused connection with different parts of the body through the sense of smell.
Some scents that work great for the sacral chakra include Myrrh, Orange, Sandalwood, Tangerine, Vanilla, and Ylang Ylang.
Color therapy uses the different wavelengths of light found in color to establish a connection to specific areas of the body.
The color orange vibrates at the same range of frequency as the sacral chakra. Because of this wearing the color orange or bringing it into your surroundings can help balance the energy of the sacral chakra.
Food is the most powerful medicine. It can affect different parts of the body in specific ways.
Some foods that are great for the sacral chakra include foods that are orange in color (e.g., carrots, sweet potatoes, apricots, mango, oranges, and peaches). Nuts and seeds (e.g., almonds, flax, sesame, walnuts) are high in Omegas and are also great for balancing sacral energy.
Music therapy can be beneficial for a wide range of physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs. It can help with emotional processing and expression, reduce stress, alleviate anxiety and depression, promote relaxation, manage pain, and support overall well-being.
Music therapy can be used in various ways. You can try listening to specific songs work through feelings like anger or to transition to a different emotional state, such as happiness. You can also try using music that promotes relaxation/reduces stress levels or music that will increase your energy level depending on your desired outcome. Including dancing and/or singing can also help you feel better both inside and out.
It's important to pick music you like and that helps you feel how you want to feel in the moment.
The sacral chakra is positively influenced by music that features fluid sounds, gentle rhythms, and melodic tones. Songs that convey themes of sensuality, emotional expression, and creativity are also beneficial, as well as those that encourage the emotional expression of guilt.
Some suggested songs include:
Popular Song Suggestions:
Making sounds creates vibrations in your body, which helps reconnect your mind and body. Different sounds create vibrations that can target specific areas.
To focus on the sacral chakra, try vocalizing the vowel o (as in sew), or the mantra Vam. Pay attention to how these vibrations resonate in your lower belly area, where the sacral chakra is located. This practice can help to stimulate and harmonize the sacral chakra, promoting emotional balance and creativity.
Sources: A Handbook of Chakra Healing Spiritual Practice for Health, Harmony, and Inner Peace, Govinda, Kalashatra; Anatomy of the Spirit the Seven Stages of Power and Healing, Myss, Caroline; Eastern Body Western Mind Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self, Judith, Anodea
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