Manipura Chakra

FIRE CHAKRA

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”  ~ Buddha ~

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."  ~ Samuel Beckett ~

The Fire Chakra is located in your stomach and is also known as the Solar Plexus Chakra. This chakra deals with willpower and your own personal power. This chakra’s color is yellow and the corresponding stones are amber, cat’s eye and citrine crystal. 

The fire chakra is blocked by shame and is opened by learning to accept yourself exactly as you are. The definition of acceptance is: in human psychology acceptance is a person’s assent into reality without attempting to change it.

When the fire chakra is blocked you may feel as though you have no real sense of self. You may lack confidence in yourself and lack the strength to follow your ambitions. Low self-esteem, addictions, codependency, and a lack of self-control are also common symptoms. The physical symptoms of a blocked fire chakra are ulcers, poor digestion, arthritis, fibromyalgia, as well as difficulty gaining or losing weight.  

Clearing the blockage of your third chakra is difficult work. Again, you will be coming face to face with yourself and your own coping skills and behaviors. If you suffer from addictions or compulsive behaviors this is the time to find help. Twelve-Step support groups are the easiest to get involved with and are also the cheapest and most effective solution to addiction problems. Most cities offer many different groups at many different times of the day. All Twelve-Step groups are free and require only that you show up and be present. You do not have to share until you are ready to share. Millions of people around the globe have found relief from their addictions by attending these support groups.

Support groups are offered for almost every form of addiction: alcoholism, narcotics, nicotine, over-eating, codependency, gambling, sex, and a litany of others. If you cannot find a support group in your city for your specific addiction, try attending an open AA meeting. The principals of the Twelve-Steps are similar for all addictions. There are also on-line meeting forums and chat rooms. This is a good place to start as well. But, one-on-one human interaction with someone who has also faced addictions is an invaluable resource.

In this chakra will we be working with your shame. You may already have some ideas of what your feelings of shame revolve around as it may have come up for you when you were working with guilt. A reminder, guilt is when you feel badly for a specific action. Shame is when you feel badly about who you are.

The goal of this work is to let go of your shame and learn to accept yourself exactly as you are. To be able to accept one's self is the only way that we can be true to ourself. Accepting ourself means caring for ourself, taking care of our body and our mind, and learning how to meet our own needs in healthy ways. Accepting one’s self means that we become authentic and genuine about who we are and that we own our own lives. We no longer make excuses for our behaviors; we acknowledge them and then accept ourself, flaws and all.

Being honest and authentic with ourself is the key to this work.

When the fire chakra is open you feel connected with yourself. You will begin to truly know who you are. Your compulsions and addictions are beginning to dissolve, as you no longer need your old coping skills. The angry and judgmental voice in your head is quieter. You no longer replay all of the old negative tapes about yourself in your head. You feel content just being you. You want to make yourself happy. You can answer the question, “What do I want?” You accept yourself and your past. You no longer feel the need to control other people or rely on others for your own personal happiness. Your desire to self-medicate will diminish. 

Journal Work:

Ask yourself: What am I ashamed of? How have I let myself down? What are the biggest disappointments of my life? 

These are big questions. In the last chakra you worked on your guilt, which usually involves the ways that you have harmed others. Now you are working on your shame and that usually has to do with how you have harmed yourself. In what ways have you not lived up to your own moral code? In what ways have you gone against your own intuition? What behaviors do you have that hurt YOU?  

This is the crux of it. This will be a turning point in your chakra work and in your life. Can you accept yourself, exactly as you are today? Can you accept yourself despite the mistakes that you have made? Can you change your behaviors so that you no longer harm yourself? What do you need to do to accept yourself? How do you put your needs, wants, desires, and hopes at the forefront of your life? What are you willing to lose to find yourself?

For each of us the answers are so different and varying. Only you can know what you need to do. And it is ok to not know what you need to do right now. Your journal work will help you. Your journal work will guide you. Do you need to go back to school? Do you need to move? Do you need to get married or divorced? Do you need to find healthier friends? Do you need to remove a toxic person from your life? Do you need to apologize to someone? Do you need to get addiction treatment? How do you get the life you have always wanted? How do you love yourself enough to put your needs as a priority in your life? How do you RESPECT yourself?

Some of us have been so disconnected from ourselves that we do not even know our own moral code. We do not know our values. Defining our own values can help us to see how we have gone against our own beliefs. In defining your values you could look to different religions and the “moral codes” that they outline. For example the ten commandments, the eight yoga sutras, and the Buddhist precepts are a good place to look. There are also many on-line questionnaires that can help you define your own value system. This is not about religion or anyone else’s beliefs. This is about what YOU believe for YOU.

Yoga: Boat Pose

Meditation: Chant in Sanskrit is RAM. Chant in English is I ACCEPT.

Body Work: The Fire Chakra is connected to the liver. The liver is large lobed organ that sits tucked up under the front of your ribcage on the right side of your body. The liver helps remove toxins from your body as well as digest fat and produce energy. Continue to stay hydrated to help flush the toxins from your body. Foods that support the liver are: garlic, grapefruit, beets, leafy greens, green tea, avocados, and cruciferous vegetables. Herbs that support the liver are: burdock, chicory, dandelion and most importantly milk thistle. Please remember that the more physical toxins you remove from your body the easier it will be to remove the emotional toxins. The body and the mind are interconnected. They make one whole.

Life Projects: These projects will help you love yourself as you are. They will also help to overcome addictions and other behaviors that may have developed from and contributed to your shame. Most of us have made poor decisions in our lifetimes. And most of us have made these decisions based on the coping skills that we had at the time. The effects of our childhood on our ability to love ourself and hold ourself in high esteem cannot be discounted. Re-Parenting ourselves is not an admonition of our parents. Our parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had at the time. This is a way of connecting with the universal truth of who we are and the humanness of life. We all make mistakes. No parent is perfect. Let us learn to love ourselves by loving not only the person we are today but also the child we once were.

• Find a beautiful and inspiring yellow image and make it the screen saver on one, or all, of your technological devices. The mores devices you do this for the better.

• Add your stone from your second chakra to the jar or container with the stone from your first chakra. Find a piece of amber, cat’s eye or citrine crystal. It can either be jewelry that you can wear or it can be a simple stone for your pocket. Carry this with you while you are working on this chakra. (If you have difficulty locating this stone or any of the different stones associated with the chakras then take a walk in nature and find a small stone that calls to you, just be sure to get a different stone for each chakra.

•  Make yourself an affirmation card with the following words, “I ACCEPT ME! I LIKE ME!” Put this on your bathroom mirror.

• Find a picture of yourself as a child, the younger the better, and hang it somewhere that you will see it every day.

• De-clutter one room of your house.

• Remove one unhealthy food from your diet and add one healthy food.

• Write the 10 year-old version of yourself a letter. Tell this child everything you wish that you had been told. Be long and detailed. What do you want them to know about life? What mistakes do you want them to not make?  What advice would you give them? Find a time to be alone and read yourself the letter aloud. Have the picture of yourself as a child with you.

• Call someone from your childhood just to connect.

• Stand naked in front of the mirror. That’s it. Just be naked with yourself for one full minute.

• Every time you pass a mirror or see your reflection or a picture of yourself say, “I love you”. It is best if you can say it aloud but if it is not appropriate to say it aloud then say it in your head. Do this task starting today and do it for the rest of your life

• Do something good for your body. Get a massage. Take a hot relaxing bath. Go for a walk. Take a yoga class. Or, give yourself a hand massage with olive oil. Do whatever feels good to you.

• Spend some time in nature. Go to a campground. Build a fire. Sit with the fire and contemplate the strength that fire has. Meditate on the power of fire. Contemplate on the many ways that fire can end and save your life. Think about the destruction and rebirth that a fire can have not only on the earth but on you. If you can’t build a fire then you can light a candle and meditate with it. Imagine the flame burning through your destructive behaviors and thoughts.

• Draw a picture of what it means to accept yourself.

• Write a list of things that you think that you may be doing compulsively. Write the age you were when you started doing this. Keep this list. Ask yourself, Why? If you are suffering from addictions, go to a 12 Step group, find a counselor, go to rehab, talk to someone you trust, find on-line support, read a book about recovery or talk to your primary care doctor. It is time to finally get the help that you need.

• Please answer the following question in a journal entry. When you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up? Are you doing that now? Why or why not? If not, how could you make that dream come true?