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Your third chakra is an important center of power. To understand it, it’s useful to see it in the context of the other chakras, so let’s start with a little review. The first chakra is associated with the earth element, which represents stability. It’s our foundation. It relates to survival, groundedness, and allegiance to one’s tribe. The second chakra is associated with water – an element that’s more mobile and flowing. It relates to our sexuality, creative expression, pleasure, and relationships. The third chakra, called Manipura, is associated with fire, an element that’s always in motion. In many ways, both literal and figurative, fire gives us mobility, power, warmth, transformation, and light. And these are the primary qualities of this chakra.
Moving up the spine, Manipura is the last of the chakras associated with a distinctly tangible element. Thus, it still has a strong connection to the physical body – specifically the digestive organs and the kidneys. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s said that we’re born with a somewhat undeveloped digestive system – we don’t yet have gut flora; we throw up a lot as children; and we often have an inconsistent appetite. But by puberty, our “digestive fire” has grown and this center facilitates the emergence of our will and our personal power.
Classical sources place Manipura directly behind the navel, and contemporary sources often place it at the solar plexus – a bundle of nerves located a few inches above the navel (aptly named for the fire chakra, “solar” refers to the ray-like spread of these nerves). Both are highly significant areas in Ayurveda and acupuncture. There's a major acupuncture point at the level of the solar plexus called Middle Duct or Middle Controller, which relates to the stomach and other digestive organs. Wherever you feel it most prominently, this is the center of your metabolism, where food is “burned up” and converted to energy.
As Robert Svoboda explains in Kundalini, one of the challenges this chakra presents an evolving human is to balance two forms of fire or agni – bhuta agni, the “ethereal fire” which digests ideas and allows us to assimilate them into pure intelligence, and jathara agni, the digestive fire. Will our appetites be exclusively directed toward food and material acquisition, or will we learn to transmute this fire into a drive to learn and understand, to evolve and awaken?
The first chakra is associated almost exclusively with the external world and its ability to destroy us or provide for us. Anodea Judith expresses the “verb” of this chakra as “I have.”3 The second chakra is also rather externally-oriented, as it largely drives us to engage in relationships with others and to relate with the world in a way that gives us pleasure. Judith expresses the verb of this chakra as “I feel.” The orientation of the third chakra, according to Caroline Myss, is slightly more internal, “as our focus shifts from how we relate to the people around us to how we relate to and understand ourselves.”5 Judith’s verb for this chakra is “I can.”
Myss explains that at the level of the third chakra we begin to recognize that every choice we make either enmeshes us more deeply in the “illusory physical world” or invests us in the power of spirit. The sacred truth she identifies with this level of development is Honor Oneself. What emerges through a healthy third chakra, Myss states, is a sense of personal power, self-esteem, discipline, ambition, the ability to generate action, the ability to handle a crisis, the courage to take risks, generosity, and strength of character. She calls this chakra “the magnetic core of our personality and our ego.”5
Myss teaches that we progress through four stages as we grow toward self-esteem and spiritual maturity: Revolution (one or several acts that separate us from group thought and establish our own sense of authority); Involution (self-examination for the purpose of understanding oneself, healing old wounds, and learning what serves us); Narcissism (which Myss defines in a semi-positive light, as a necessary and vulnerable period of self-absorption and perhaps redefining one’s image); and Evolution (a stage of internal growth in which a person’s spirit is allowed to “take charge”).
I like Myss’s writings on this subject because they’re consistent with an ancient notion of the fire element as the agent of transformation. Fire was central to alchemy, and a remnant of this idea still exists in modern scientific notation where the symbol of fire – an upward-pointing triangle, like a flame (the Greek letter delta) – is used to indicate both heat and change. Fire gives us the capacity to refine metals, to burn away the debris, perhaps even to turn lead into gold.
In Ayurveda, it's the fire of our digestive organs (the yang in Chinese Medicine) that gives them the ability to transform food into human. It's really pretty miraculous. In Vedic thought, fire is said to take things from the earthly realm to the spiritual realm. Mantras and offerings thrown into a fire are said to reach the Divine. And because the tongue is also associated with the fire element, when we speak our words aloud they're said to pass through the fire and are thus imbued with the potential for transformation.
When we choose to act, the state of our third chakra influences the likelihood that we’ll follow through to completion and that our intentions will take root in the world. A weak, insecure, or collapsed center has little power, which can make it overly controlling. Playing it safe but still wishing to exert control, it may give rise to eating disorders or the accumulation of a very large midsection. It's a similar case when our personal will is at odds with Divine Will or the will of our soul: if we succeed at initiating the change we desire, it will occur through force rather than power. Myss’s explanation of the Evolution state of self-esteem speaks to this concept of power, and it echoes Gary Zukav’s teachings on empowerment and evolution in The Seat of the Soul. He writes, “When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.”10
How can we manage this power in a reverent way? Zukav asserts that humans have historically approached evolution as a matter of competition for external power – and that the next phase of our evolution will arise from the recognition of authentic power. Here’s a passage on this topic from Zukav (I cut and rearranged a bit, but didn’t change any words):
All of our institutions – social, economic, and political – reflect our understanding of power as external. Anything we fear to lose – a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief – is a symbol of external power. Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence. The perception of power as external splinters the psyche, whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation, or the world.
No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being. We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power.
Our deeper understanding leads us to a kind of power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power. When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning.
Beyond transforming our understanding of power as Myss and Zukav teach, here are some pragmatic recommendations for strengthening and balancing the third chakra:
- Heal your digestion and your relationship with food. Unhealthy eating patterns and digestive problems divert energy from this level of being.
- Learn to manage your stress. Stress, through activation of survival mechanisms, scatters our power and diverts energy away from our center.
- If you have adrenal fatigue, rehabilitate yourself. This requires refraining from using more energy than you have; going to bed before reaching exhaustion; avoiding stressors and stimulants; getting deep, restful sleep; and eating whole, nourishing foods.
- Strengthen your core. Yoga, pilates, and tai chi are excellent for this. Holding plank pose (balancing on your forearms and toes with a straight back) is also a great core-strengthener.
- Challenge yourself to take risks (if this is something that’s difficult for you).
- Practice following through on what you start. Don’t begin anything you don’t honestly intent to finish.
- Cultivate self-discipline.
- Unearth and heal your shame.
Finally, when you feel an urge to act and you're uncertain about it, try asking yourself, "Who wants this?" or "Where is this coming from?" See if you can quiet your mind and allow an answer to come. Is it an urge of your personality, an urge fueled by a desire for approval, security, or control? Or does it arise from a deeper part of you? Wishing you self-reflection, healing, and empowerment,
Dr. Peter Borten
Sources:
- Johari, H. (1987). Chakras. Energy Centers of Transformation. Destiny Books.
- Judith, A. (2004). Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
- Judith, A. (1999). Wheels of Life: The Classic Guide to the Chakra System. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
- Khalsa, G. K. (1991). Energy Maps: A Journey Through the Chakras. La Crescenta, CA: CyberScribe.
- Myss, C. M. (1996). Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. New York: Three Rivers Press.
- Svoboda, R. E. (1995). Aghora II: Kundalini. Albuquerque, NM: Brotherhood of Life Publishing.
- Wallis, C. D. (2013). Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. Petaluma, CA: Mattamayūra Press.
- White, J. W. (1990). Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment. New York: Paragon House.
- Woodroffe, J. G., & P. (1931). The Serpent Power: Being the Shat-chakra-nirūpana and Pādukā-panchaka; Two Works on Laya yoga. Madras: Ganesh.
- Zukav, G., with Winfrey, O., & Angelou, M. (1989). The Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster.
[post_title] => The Third Chakra - Your Fire, Your Power
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[post_content] => I have written so much about what and how to eat, so I thought I’d say a few words about what we might do before and after a meal to enhance the experience.
First, the before-meals recommendations:
1) Set an intention. This applies to food, medicine, and supplements, though I think it especially makes sense for medicine and supplements because you had a specific outcome in mind when you bought them.
I believe there’s some value in stating to yourself what you want to happen whenever you put something into your body. Even if you’re doubtful about your ability to influence your body’s inner workings, perhaps you’ll find it worthwhile to just get clear for a moment on why exactly you’re swallowing something. But if we consider how powerful the placebo effect is – it’s not a matter of being fooled into believing we feel better, but a very real ability to cause our bodies and minds to change – isn’t this worth taking full advantage of?
When I say “set an intention,” I don’t mean you have to have an elaborate ritual (although if you want to light a candle and take your time with it, that’s great). I really just mean taking about 10 to 30 seconds to close your eyes, recognize that you’re about to introduce a new influence into your system, state clearly what you intend to get out of it, and feel grateful.
What do you want this new influence to do? Please you with its flavor, texture, and a satisfying feeling in your stomach? Make you feel grounded? Give you energy? Nourish you in the deepest places? Calm your mind? Repair something that is out of balance? Help you feel connected to the world? Build your muscles? Expressing your choice may make a difference.
2) Make sure you’re hungry. I should have said this first, but I wanted to make sure you saw the part about intention. It should be at least two hours since you last ate, and in my opinion, it’s best to avoid snacking between meals (though four or five small meals per day is fine). If it has been several hours since you last ate and you know you should be hungry, but you have a poor appetite, you can try taking some bitters before the meal, such as 15 drops of gentian tincture in a little water. Others prefer blends of bitters with aromatic herbs, such as citrus peel, cardamom, and ginger. Luckily, there is a wide selection of great bitters these days.
3) Make sure you’re not starving. If you skipped breakfast and now it’s lunch time, it’s quite possible that you’re going to eat faster than your body would like and more than your body would like. If meal skipping is a common thing for you, it’s also possible that your metabolism has slowed down, and it will be easy to eat more than your body can readily burn. I recommend not going more than about four hours between meals. If you’re already starving, of course you need to eat, but try doing it slowly. Next time, eat sooner.
4) Let everything go. Stop moving, sit down, and to the best of your ability, set aside anything you’re worrying about. Now it’s time to feed yourself and that deserves your full attention and enjoyment.
After you eat:
1) Set an intention again. You can spare 10 seconds to do this. You just filled yourself up and maybe forgot about that starting intention until now. So, once again, consider what you would like to happen with what you just consumed and state it clearly to yourself. For example: “Thank you for this meal. I intend that all the nutrients will be well absorbed and will go exactly where they’re needed in my body.” Or, “I’m grateful for this meal and intend to be thoroughly nourished and energized by it.”
Once, when I was doing a lot of qigong, I went out to eat with a friend. After finishing my food, while continuing to converse with her, I imagined I was sucking all the energy from the food through my digestive tract into all my cells. It was something I was practicing at the time, it only took a minute, and I thought I wasn’t giving any outward appearance of doing anything. But my friend’s eyes bulged out and she yelled, “What the hell did you just do?!” I explained what I had been up to and was very curious as to what she perceived. She said she couldn’t really explain it, but that it looked like my whole body came alive (I’m assuming she meant more alive). Regardless of what it looked like to her, I was just struck by the fact that my internal visualization had an outwardly noticeable effect. So, try it!
2) Relax. If possible, don’t get right back to your work or something that stresses you out. Give your body at least a few minutes to assimilate what you just consumed.
3) Take a walk. Vigorous exercise right after eating isn’t a great idea, but a walk is fine (after a brief rest), and will assist with digestion, especially after a big meal.
Give these easy practices a try. I believe that even if your food choices aren’t always excellent, you’ll be much better off if you observe these simple acts. Let me know what happens.
Be well ,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Seven Things to do Before and After Eating
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I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the prevalence of life coaches and other professionals who aim to guide others toward reaching their goals or finding psycho-spiritual wellness. He was feeling concerned that there has been a certain commodification of personal growth. While I agreed that this is one facet of how we’ve treated personal growth, I believe that on the whole the notion that we can change who we are has been good for us.
The fundamental issue is that humans suffer. We feel overwhelmed, lost, fearful, confused, alone, angry, sad, etc. This suffering has been compounded by a trend toward disconnection from our foundations. Overall, humans have less of an everyday connection to nature, spirituality, and other humans than in the past. So, there has always been a need for help, and this need has become more acute recently.
Meanwhile, there has also been a trend in the last several decades toward more open discussion on the human psyche, spirit, and potential. We’re freer than ever to speak about our thoughts and feelings, and we explore perspectives from other cultures. We’re more willing than previous generations to see things in a new way, update our customs, change careers, and become someone different than we’ve been. Thus, more than ever we have people who feel a calling to assist others in these ways. Do they deserve to be compensated for their help? I say yes.
The ubiquity of such helpers is a good thing. There are a lot of people needing help. Further, the prevalence of such guides has made everyone up their game. No longer is an exotic outfit or accent qualification enough to be a guru. Consumers are more savvy. And a wonderful byproduct of the expansion of the personal growth field is that it’s not limited to a particular socioeconomic class. There is an incredible abundance of free and cheap resources out there – articles, podcasts, books, videos, and support groups.
If you are able to work one-on-one with a coach you resonate with, there are lots of good reasons to do it:
Accountability: Often we don’t hold ourselves accountable for what we say we’re going to do and who we say we want to be. Having someone else to track us and remind us to stay on course is often all it takes for us to follow through.
Wisdom: A great coach has learned some things, and many can tap into a repository of wisdom that goes well beyond their personal experience.
Holding Space: A good coach knows how to hold a container in which their clients can safely experience whatever they’re struggling with, explore and unravel their challenges, and find their way to healing, growth, and evolution.
Seeing Your Patterns of Dysfunction: One of the most useful functions a coach can serve is pointing out what you can’t see, like the way you keep sabotaging good jobs, or how to don’t maintain healthy boundaries in relationships. We can’t fix what we don’t see.
Seeing Your Light: Often we have no problem seeing what’s “wrong” with us; the real hurdle is seeing what’s right. A good coach is there to point out your gifts, your value, your potential, and all the ways you’re managing with grace.
Hand Holding: While this is a role many a good friend has performed, it’s another thing coaches can do for us. Sometimes we know where we want to go, we know what we need to do, but we just feel intimidated. Having someone hold our hand through it may feel like a silly thing to ask for, but if it gets us to do what we’re here to do, it’s an invaluable service.
Wishing you the guide who will coax out your greatness,
Peter
[post_title] => Six Ways a Coach Can Help You Reach Your True Potential
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Your third chakra is an important center of power. To understand it, it’s useful to see it in the context of the other chakras, so let’s start with a little review. The first chakra is associated with the earth element, which represents stability. It’s our foundation. It relates to survival, groundedness, and allegiance to one’s tribe. The second chakra is associated with water – an element that’s more mobile and flowing. It relates to our sexuality, creative expression, pleasure, and relationships. The third chakra, called Manipura, is associated with fire, an element that’s always in motion. In many ways, both literal and figurative, fire gives us mobility, power, warmth, transformation, and light. And these are the primary qualities of this chakra.
Moving up the spine, Manipura is the last of the chakras associated with a distinctly tangible element. Thus, it still has a strong connection to the physical body – specifically the digestive organs and the kidneys. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s said that we’re born with a somewhat undeveloped digestive system – we don’t yet have gut flora; we throw up a lot as children; and we often have an inconsistent appetite. But by puberty, our “digestive fire” has grown and this center facilitates the emergence of our will and our personal power.
Classical sources place Manipura directly behind the navel, and contemporary sources often place it at the solar plexus – a bundle of nerves located a few inches above the navel (aptly named for the fire chakra, “solar” refers to the ray-like spread of these nerves). Both are highly significant areas in Ayurveda and acupuncture. There's a major acupuncture point at the level of the solar plexus called Middle Duct or Middle Controller, which relates to the stomach and other digestive organs. Wherever you feel it most prominently, this is the center of your metabolism, where food is “burned up” and converted to energy.
As Robert Svoboda explains in Kundalini, one of the challenges this chakra presents an evolving human is to balance two forms of fire or agni – bhuta agni, the “ethereal fire” which digests ideas and allows us to assimilate them into pure intelligence, and jathara agni, the digestive fire. Will our appetites be exclusively directed toward food and material acquisition, or will we learn to transmute this fire into a drive to learn and understand, to evolve and awaken?
The first chakra is associated almost exclusively with the external world and its ability to destroy us or provide for us. Anodea Judith expresses the “verb” of this chakra as “I have.”3 The second chakra is also rather externally-oriented, as it largely drives us to engage in relationships with others and to relate with the world in a way that gives us pleasure. Judith expresses the verb of this chakra as “I feel.” The orientation of the third chakra, according to Caroline Myss, is slightly more internal, “as our focus shifts from how we relate to the people around us to how we relate to and understand ourselves.”5 Judith’s verb for this chakra is “I can.”
Myss explains that at the level of the third chakra we begin to recognize that every choice we make either enmeshes us more deeply in the “illusory physical world” or invests us in the power of spirit. The sacred truth she identifies with this level of development is Honor Oneself. What emerges through a healthy third chakra, Myss states, is a sense of personal power, self-esteem, discipline, ambition, the ability to generate action, the ability to handle a crisis, the courage to take risks, generosity, and strength of character. She calls this chakra “the magnetic core of our personality and our ego.”5
Myss teaches that we progress through four stages as we grow toward self-esteem and spiritual maturity: Revolution (one or several acts that separate us from group thought and establish our own sense of authority); Involution (self-examination for the purpose of understanding oneself, healing old wounds, and learning what serves us); Narcissism (which Myss defines in a semi-positive light, as a necessary and vulnerable period of self-absorption and perhaps redefining one’s image); and Evolution (a stage of internal growth in which a person’s spirit is allowed to “take charge”).
I like Myss’s writings on this subject because they’re consistent with an ancient notion of the fire element as the agent of transformation. Fire was central to alchemy, and a remnant of this idea still exists in modern scientific notation where the symbol of fire – an upward-pointing triangle, like a flame (the Greek letter delta) – is used to indicate both heat and change. Fire gives us the capacity to refine metals, to burn away the debris, perhaps even to turn lead into gold.
In Ayurveda, it's the fire of our digestive organs (the yang in Chinese Medicine) that gives them the ability to transform food into human. It's really pretty miraculous. In Vedic thought, fire is said to take things from the earthly realm to the spiritual realm. Mantras and offerings thrown into a fire are said to reach the Divine. And because the tongue is also associated with the fire element, when we speak our words aloud they're said to pass through the fire and are thus imbued with the potential for transformation.
When we choose to act, the state of our third chakra influences the likelihood that we’ll follow through to completion and that our intentions will take root in the world. A weak, insecure, or collapsed center has little power, which can make it overly controlling. Playing it safe but still wishing to exert control, it may give rise to eating disorders or the accumulation of a very large midsection. It's a similar case when our personal will is at odds with Divine Will or the will of our soul: if we succeed at initiating the change we desire, it will occur through force rather than power. Myss’s explanation of the Evolution state of self-esteem speaks to this concept of power, and it echoes Gary Zukav’s teachings on empowerment and evolution in The Seat of the Soul. He writes, “When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.”10
How can we manage this power in a reverent way? Zukav asserts that humans have historically approached evolution as a matter of competition for external power – and that the next phase of our evolution will arise from the recognition of authentic power. Here’s a passage on this topic from Zukav (I cut and rearranged a bit, but didn’t change any words):
All of our institutions – social, economic, and political – reflect our understanding of power as external. Anything we fear to lose – a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief – is a symbol of external power. Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence. The perception of power as external splinters the psyche, whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation, or the world.
No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being. We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power.
Our deeper understanding leads us to a kind of power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power. When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning.
Beyond transforming our understanding of power as Myss and Zukav teach, here are some pragmatic recommendations for strengthening and balancing the third chakra:
- Heal your digestion and your relationship with food. Unhealthy eating patterns and digestive problems divert energy from this level of being.
- Learn to manage your stress. Stress, through activation of survival mechanisms, scatters our power and diverts energy away from our center.
- If you have adrenal fatigue, rehabilitate yourself. This requires refraining from using more energy than you have; going to bed before reaching exhaustion; avoiding stressors and stimulants; getting deep, restful sleep; and eating whole, nourishing foods.
- Strengthen your core. Yoga, pilates, and tai chi are excellent for this. Holding plank pose (balancing on your forearms and toes with a straight back) is also a great core-strengthener.
- Challenge yourself to take risks (if this is something that’s difficult for you).
- Practice following through on what you start. Don’t begin anything you don’t honestly intent to finish.
- Cultivate self-discipline.
- Unearth and heal your shame.
Finally, when you feel an urge to act and you're uncertain about it, try asking yourself, "Who wants this?" or "Where is this coming from?" See if you can quiet your mind and allow an answer to come. Is it an urge of your personality, an urge fueled by a desire for approval, security, or control? Or does it arise from a deeper part of you? Wishing you self-reflection, healing, and empowerment,
Dr. Peter Borten
Sources:
- Johari, H. (1987). Chakras. Energy Centers of Transformation. Destiny Books.
- Judith, A. (2004). Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
- Judith, A. (1999). Wheels of Life: The Classic Guide to the Chakra System. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
- Khalsa, G. K. (1991). Energy Maps: A Journey Through the Chakras. La Crescenta, CA: CyberScribe.
- Myss, C. M. (1996). Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. New York: Three Rivers Press.
- Svoboda, R. E. (1995). Aghora II: Kundalini. Albuquerque, NM: Brotherhood of Life Publishing.
- Wallis, C. D. (2013). Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. Petaluma, CA: Mattamayūra Press.
- White, J. W. (1990). Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment. New York: Paragon House.
- Woodroffe, J. G., & P. (1931). The Serpent Power: Being the Shat-chakra-nirūpana and Pādukā-panchaka; Two Works on Laya yoga. Madras: Ganesh.
- Zukav, G., with Winfrey, O., & Angelou, M. (1989). The Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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