A New Series—The Body Speaks

(In the first in this series of arti­cles, I pro­vided you with a handy lit­tle chart that pro­vides the loca­tion, descrip­tion, and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Chakras. Use the link if you want to refer to it.)

In last week’s arti­cle, we began to look at the sec­ond chakra. I men­tioned that the Sec­ond Chakra area, located 2 inches below your navel, is part of a region that encom­passes the lower belly and the lower back.

From a devel­op­men­tal point of view, this “rela­tion­ships area†rests upon the firm foun­da­tion of the First Chakra—the ground­ed­ness chakra. What’s really impor­tant to “get†is the idea that per­sonal, emo­tional, and rela­tional devel­op­ment requires that you “tran­scend and include.†In other words, in order to move on, one needs to have mas­tered each level. Once you are grounded you have the sta­bil­ity to engage in mean­ing­ful and sta­ble relationships.

Pas­sion is as pas­sion does!

This week, we look at pas­sion for life. Metaphor­i­cally,

pas­sion for life is located at the lower back

—from the waist down, exclud­ing the sci­atic nerve pockets.

Con­tained within this region is the sacrum, the triangle-shaped bone that is just above the tail­bone. It is not for noth­ing that the word sacrum derives from the same root as the Eng­lish word sacred.

We might take from this that we are built in such a way that we ought to see our life’s work—our vocation—as both sacred, and some­thing to be pas­sion­ate about.

It is to this sense of sacred pas­sion that we turn our attention.

As we use this series of arti­cles to take a tour through the body, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that our goal is bal­ance.

Here’s a weird thought for you.

In the case of the back pelvic region, the bal­anced state is full bore pas­sion for life.
Given how emo­tion­ally, phys­i­cally, men­tally, and spir­i­tu­ally “dead†most peo­ple are,
this seems almost impossible.

Some weeks ago, I wrote that our soci­eties, through social­iza­tion, attempt to “nor­mal­ize us.†I think it’s a bit more insid­i­ous than that. When you think about it, peo­ple who are com­pli­ant, docile, and calm—to the point of bor­ing—are also the eas­i­est to manage.

Soci­ety does love its sheep.

Most peo­ple are famil­iar with Thoreau’s famous quote,

Pas­sion scares “soci­ety,†and pas­sion scares us. We think of those who have been con­sid­ered cre­ative geniuses, and part of us thinks that their genius hov­ered on the edge of madness—think van Gogh, Gau­guin, Picasso.

Mostly, when con­fronted with pas­sion, we’d like to see it dialed back.

What I’m sug­gest­ing, and what I’ve seen in Body­work, is that our pas­sion for life, or per­haps bet­ter put, the ther­mo­stat for our pas­sion for life, is set way too low. We think “semi-numb†is normal.

I am really won­der­ing what the world would look like if “nor­mal†was
closer to van Gogh than Elmer Fudd.

Let’s take a moment to talk about bal­anced Yin and Yang. The first, and per­haps the more obvi­ous dis­tinc­tion is between the left and right sides of the body—the left side being Yin, the right side being Yang.

As we think about pas­sion for life, level hips indi­cate the per­fect bal­ance between Yin intu­ition and Yang effort. That’s just one exam­ple. In other words, pas­sion for life requires both

Here’s another impor­tant Yin / Yang com­par­i­son. The front of the body is Yin, and the back of the body is Yang.

You could say that the back of the pelvic region, which is the home of pas­sion for life, must be enacted, or externalized.

The front of the pelvis is Yin, and is the home of sex­ual pas­sion, which must be inter­nal­ized, absorbed, and shared. We’ll talk more about this next week.

Let’s return to pas­sion­ate liv­ing, voca­tion, and sacredness.

Pas­sion for life means liv­ing out your voca­tion. I sus­pect that most of us are aware that at some point in our lives we had one or more “burn­ing desires.†As I said regard­ing social­iza­tion, our par­ents and tribes want such “burn­ings†to some­how be inof­fen­sive, so that we can fit in.

For most, our pas­sions and desires were some­thing our par­ents teased us about—and if that didn’t dis­cour­age us from step­ping out of the norm, some gen­tle or not so gen­tle form of repres­sion was applied.

Par­ents have dreams and aspi­ra­tions for their kids, and those dreams and aspi­ra­tions are framed by the lifestyle and cul­ture of the par­ents. Most par­ents freak out when they see the kinds of things that their kids are pas­sion­ate about—that “turn them on.†So they do what they can to force the kid to fit in. They sug­gest that the thing that they’re pas­sion­ate about is just a pass­ing inter­est, or a hobby. Or they declare it off-limits altogether.

Kids don’t know any bet­ter, and actu­ally lis­ten to their par­ents, so they learn to tighten down and block their pas­sion. From a Body­work per­spec­tive, this involves freez­ing the pelvis, and tight­en­ing the mus­cles that are just above the pelvis.

Shake it ’til you make it!

And, of course, it is so that West­ern­ers are reluc­tant to move their pelvises at all.

I remem­ber a trip Dar­bella and I took to Jamaica, and as we were walk­ing to our room, the bell­boy kept say­ing, to both of us,

“Mon, move your pelvis! You so tight! Walk like this, mon!â€

The key to over­com­ing blocked pas­sion for life is twofold: phys­i­cal, and mental.

Build­ing… passionately.

I’m not sure why, but Jimmy Carter keeps pop­ping into my head.

He took a bit of time out to be the pres­i­dent, but really, two of his pas­sions are bring­ing peace, and serv­ing oth­ers. Which is sort of the same thing.

If you watch him now, 30-some years after leav­ing the pres­i­dency, you will see that he’s pretty much on call when it comes to serv­ing his pas­sion.

He’s often out there, swing­ing a ham­mer for Habi­tat for Human­ity. And he’s still the “go to guy†for bro­ker­ing Mid­dle East­ern peace. Despite being retired, if you get the joke.

Here are a few things to try:

2. Find a Jesuit!

Not you again!!
Sort it out!!!

That’s a bit of a joke, but only a bit. The key is to track down some­one who can help you explore voca­tion. Thus, my tongue-in-cheek Jesuit suggestion.

How­ever…

When I was writ­ing my mas­ters the­sis, I used to “dig in†by spend­ing a week at a time at a nearby Jesuit Sem­i­nary. I wanted the pri­vacy, the soli­tude, and the quiet to do some seri­ous writing.

But, hey, it was a Jesuit Seminary—and that means there were, wait for it… Jesuits! Every­where!

And despite a lot of bad press, most Jesuits are pretty smart.

They are used to talk­ing about voca­tion. They have tools for explor­ing voca­tion. One of their voca­tions is help­ing peo­ple to find their voca­tions, if you will. Now, of course, their prin­ci­pal direc­tion, in the past, was to find more Jesuits. These days, they spend increas­ing amount of times with the laity, help­ing them to explore their vocation—their pas­sion for life.

Fail­ing find­ing a Jesuit under­foot, you might choke back your incredulity and hire a life coach—but please talk to some­one and find some­one qual­i­fied. I’m big on qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and a six-month online course may just not cut it.

I can make one or two rec­om­men­da­tions, if you ask. Inter­est­ingly, I’m not par­tic­u­larly skilled at iden­ti­fy­ing voca­tion. I am incred­i­bly skilled at releas­ing the energy required to fuel vocation.

3. Breathe from Your Belly

Sure! This time you’re prac­tic­ing breath­ing! Right!

Your Sec­ond Chakra is located 2 inches below your navel. You want to work at bring­ing your breath to this place.

The eas­i­est way to learn to do this is to place your hand inside your cloth­ing and over the spot, and then breathe deeply, into your belly. The breath should be deep enough to raise, or move, your hand.

Once you have a sense of what that feels like, imag­ine that your breath is bring­ing energy to this point. You can play around with the “how.†Imag­ine the breath com­ing in through your lungs or imag­ine energy com­ing up from the ground. Doesn’t mat­ter, so long as the energy ends up, on the in-breath, flood­ing the Sec­ond Chakra.

On the out-breath, imag­ine direct­ing the energy. For example,

When I do Body­work, I imag­ine, on the out-breath, send­ing the energy from my Sec­ond Chakra to my hands. If I’m doing some­thing cre­ative, like writ­ing this arti­cle, I imag­ine the energy mov­ing up my spine and flood­ing my cre­ative cen­tre, which to me seems to be in my head. If I’m with some­one who needs sup­port, I breathe to my Sec­ond Chakra, and then imag­ine the energy, on the out-breath, flow­ing up my spine to my heart. From there, I imag­ine the energy flow­ing into the palms of my hands—in Chi­nese med­i­cine this point is con­sid­ered an “out point†for heart energy. And once it’s there, the eas­i­est way to “pass it on†is to give the other per­son a hug.

This is a bit of a snap­shot of the “pas­sion for life†part of the sec­ond chakra region.

For this week, think about cre­at­ing a mas­ter­piece with every­thing you do. Con­tin­u­ally imag­ine the fire of pas­sion flow­ing up your spine. Visu­al­ize the sacred­ness of your life, relax your lower back, and also spend some time mov­ing your pelvis.

I sus­pect you might be sur­prised by what emerges.