Woman on Fire (25 page)

The rich energetic center in your genitals, reproductive organs, and womb space is known as the sexual chakra and is the home of desire. Chakras are energetic centers in your body. Medical intuitives and many spiritual traditions outline seven chakras in the body (and some pledge there are several more outside of the body as well). The first chakra is your root, at the base of your body at your perineum and anus. That chakra is seen as the chakra of the self, supporting the second, which is the place of attraction and desire—for another or for something greater or outside of yourself. Desire is naturally about relationship and connection. The second chakra is also about emotion. It is the place of the self moving to connect with another and the place where we hold a lot of emotion. This chakra is considered the sexual and creative center of the body. It is
the well of sexual-creative energy we all have to draw from in creating our lives, relationships, pleasure, creative projects, communities, art, sex. It is also the home of finances and money—the sex and money connection is so profound. I find that people run the same patterns around sex that they do around money. They are the two biggest ways we exchange energy, so it makes sense they would both be represented here in the body. They are also the two things people tend to desire most.

If we are blocked in these areas of our lives, it might show up physically as tightness, feeling locked up in the hips, or as ailments of the sexual or reproductive organs. I was speaking to a woman recently about her disconnect from her own desire, and she said one of her cousins told her, “You walk like you have a stick up your ass.” She said she really felt like that, yet she was a bit surprised her cousin could see it. Sometimes when our energy is suppressed, it is visible in the way we move, in our stiffness, in the way we seem cut off from the waist down—or from the neck down (heady and disconnected from the body). There are common physical problems with the uterus and ovaries in particular: ovarian cysts, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, cancer. There is a lot of holding/retentive energy in each of these health concerns. Our bodies often reflect our emotions and the things we are plagued by. Emotion and energy will show up somewhere physically.

When you feel a desire, an urge to do something, or when you feel a sexual desire toward someone or something, where do you feel it? How does it show up? Your body talks to you, and if you train yourself to listen to it, you can learn a lot about yourself and allow it to guide you. Many women are not connected to their own feelings of desire because, again, we are taught to follow the desires of others for who to be, what to like, how to have sex, how to live our lives. If you've spent your life being told what to want, it would be difficult to know what you really desire. Recognizing this fact is a first step in tapping into what your true wants are, both sexually and in
general. It can be a process to disentangle all of those external wants and pressures to tap into your own true desires. No pill will fix that.

Issues with knowing your own desire are usually directly correlated with people-pleasing tendencies. The more you are focused on others and giving them what they want, the more your own desires become obscured, until you can't see them at all anymore, almost as if they do not even exist. It's easy to feel deadened in your desire if you don't know what's even possible.

Building up your own emotional intelligence helps you to befriend your own desire. As you remove the unproductive stories, the people-pleasing behaviors, and the fog of undeserving-ness, you can uncover the desire inside of you that was there all along but went unacknowledged. You can break out of the assumed foreplay-to-intercourse model and see what else is there.

There are many ways to tap into your own desire and to build your second chakra energetically. When your second chakra is activated, desire is activated. When desire is active there is no sitting on the sidelines, no making yourself small. It means showing up and playing full-out. It means tapping into your core drive and essence that propels you to live your life's purpose and rich potential. There is a powerful way you connect in the world. Nurturing your desire supports you to do that.

Whenever your desire becomes deadened, some part of you is dull, repressed, depressed, not living up to its full potential. This is not a natural state and indicates something needs to change. You have to be courageous in stepping in and trusting that any change that needs to happen is what will create more life for you and those you share your life with. Many people come to a crossroads where
they must choose their deep internal desire or choose someone or something else. At the end of the road, it's only you. If you keep forsaking yourself for others or for outside forces, all of it eventually falls away, and what will be left? You. If your spirit is feeling broken and afraid, how can you start to nurture it and stop betraying it?

THE SECOND CHAKRA

• Home of pleasure, creativity, emotion, one-on-one relationships, power, money, control.
  
• Based in water: represents change, movement, flow.
  
• Where first chakra is the “self,” the second is about the “other,” communion, connecting to others one-on-one.
  
• Desire lives here. It is the instinctual pull to expand oneself, merge with another, move to another state of consciousness, a desire to grow.
  

Often when we are feeling stuck erotically, sensually, or sexually, it manifests in the part of our body that involves the hips, genitals, and reproductive organs. We can become conscious of how to use the energy of the second chakra to open ourselves to more pleasure and the experience of desire and connection.

CHANGE:
In keeping with the quality of water that is alive in our second chakra, water where cells are moving and dividing, we learn to let our energy yield and flow, cleanse and change—like a river. How do you deal with change in your life? Are you the roller-coaster rider who holds on tight, trying not to let go? Or do you throw your
arms into the air and scream with glee? Are you able to navigate change in ways that feel healthy and allow you to flow into the next phase of your life/relationship/work with ease? Examining how you deal with change will give you clues about your second chakra. It wants to flow. Being in flow is a state of being many of us strive for because we feel alive and rooted when we are in our flow.

CREATIVITY:
Using your creativity—engaging in the act of making things—is a key way to activate your sexual energy. We were all born to create. Making art, playing music, writing, cooking a delicious meal, tending your garden, building community, or making love—all are acts of creation. And acts of creation activate your sexual energy. It's not solely about literally making babies, although that is a pretty phenomenal act of creation. (Seriously, we can take two cells and create an entire new human being. That's pretty damn creative! Take in the power of that.) So just think, your whole body is made of cells—all with the capacity to multiply and create something new. Our untapped creative power is so massive, we can hardly wrap our brains around what is possible.

We are meant to be creative beings. Where is your creativity stuck? How can you bring more acts of creation into your daily life? (Via art, thought, gardens, your home, communities, relationships, beauty, peace, kindness . . .) How is destruction operating in your life? All things are potential acts of creation or destruction. Your attitudes can foster acts of creation and open you up where you are shut down. Nothing lights people up consistently like fully expressed creativity.

UNION/COMMUNION:
How do you honor others? What resentments are you carrying? How can you work to clear connections to others and create more unity in your life? Are you in the practice of clearing energy of others, especially those with whom you have difficulty? Where are people plugged into you and sapping your energy? How can you release those attachments? What umbilical cords need to be cut? Your core energy can become very depleted by your
unhealthy attachments. What is weighing you down that you can let go of so that you can create more movement and ease in your life and in your body? Think about the idea of divine union and how you can create more communion with yourself, the divine, nature, art, and everything else I've discussed in this chapter. You are meant to feel that unity, and when you are fully aligned, you will.

EMOTION:
Think of it as “energy in motion.” You can only feel it in the body—without a body we would have no emotions. Blocked emotions repress movement and restrict flow. What emotions need to move? Where are you getting stuck emotionally and hanging on? What anger, frustration, resentment, sadness, or grief do you need to release? How would that free you up to feel more pleasure and be open to more connection in your life? How can you feel more joyful and alive in your daily life? When in pleasure, you relax and open. Pleasure helps us expand and open to new consciousness.

ORGASM:
Probably the most powerful way to open your second chakra is to have an orgasm. Orgasms will activate second chakra energy, especially the big juicy ones that come from that intense place of ecstasy, desire, and pleasure. Have lots of those orgasms (either with yourself or others) born out of intense desire and deep connection to yourself. Those are nurturing orgasms, and your energy can be directed from inside out with an orgasmic experience. Every orgasm can be a prayer. Sex educator Annie Sprinkle teaches people to dedicate our orgasms. It's a lovely practice. Dedicate your orgasm to world peace, to a person you love, to someone's healing, to the well-being of children, to something you are working toward. Practice making your orgasms a sort of prayer—“This one is for living my life joyfully every day!” It's your orgasm—dedicate it to whatever you really want to give energy to in the world. If you have not yet experienced an orgasm, the path to learn is part of the opening.

MOVEMENT:
Play with movement and dance, moving “out of your constrictions” to create more freedom in your body, allow emotions to move through you, and feel pleasure. Squat, practice yoga,
and use movement to physically open the second chakra. In your life as a whole, as you get clear on new desires, move toward them.

BREATH:
Learning to connect to your breath more deeply is a good way to connect to your second chakra. What does it feel like to breathe all the way down to your genitals? How does that feel? How does it enliven you? What does it shift in your body? There are hundreds of ways to breathe, and transformational/ecstatic breathwork is an incredible way to shift your energy, open up your chakras, and experience deeply profound release, ecstasy, and joy. I teach many of these practices to the women in my programs—learning to breathe this way is one of the fastest ways to juice up your body and energy and to replenish your well. Breath can bring desire right to the surface, sometimes accompanied by tears.

If you learn to listen, your body tells you what you need to know. Your genitals respond to sexual and nonsexual events around you. The muscles might contract or you could feel a throbbing in your genitals. Sometimes you might even feel a shooting pain or jolt of some sort that wants you to pay attention. Sometimes they will open, flood with fluid, and become aroused. An overall aliveness can take over and you feel like you are vibrating from your core with everything around you. Pay attention to the signals they give you. Your body is full of wisdom, and the more you align with that wisdom, the more guidance you have and the more you are fully connected, present, and in your desire.

I recently attended a wedding of two people in my life who are polyamorous and reflected the expansiveness of their love in their ceremony, making vows for themselves, to each other, and to the vision they had for the impact of their love in the world. The ceremony was so powerful and we witnesses were all deeply moved by
their vibrant love and the commitment they made to outrageous love. At the end, I walked up to light my candle in the fire ritual. I was vibrating in that powerful love energy, and just as I walked out of the ceremony area, I literally felt a huge gush of fluid. It was not my period and I was not peeing my fishnets. I creamed all over myself because I felt so alive and such a part of that love. I shared it with the bride and groom and they were ecstatic that my body reacted so powerfully. Listen to your body. It has an amazing voice.