From your belly button south to your genitals, rearing back your lumbar spine whirls the second chakra, or Svadhisthana chakra. This energy center sparks creativity, allows you to dream about your fantasies, and discover ways to follow your passions. As we glide into 2022, stabilizing and stimulating the second chakra will help us establish realistic goals that nudge us towards our dreams! Learn about the chakras and how you can revitalize the 2nd Svadhisthana Chakra for the New Year.
What is a Chakra?
Seven chakras line up your spine, beginning from the deepest base of your torso (the colon area) all the way up to the light space floating above the crown of your head.
Hundreds of energy lines, or “meridians”, traipse through our bodies. A significant amount of them cross each other along the spine, in these chakra spaces, creating wheels of energy. The energy in the chakra centers may be wildly overactive, stagnant, or hopefully, perfectly fluid.
Chakras are developed from the ground up, each one depending on the foundation of the one below it to form properly. Each chakra relates to qualities that adults depend on in everyday life – safety, creativity, confidence, love, communication, intuition, and connection to a higher consciousness.
The Svadhisthana Chakra
The second chakra controls creativity, passion, joy, indulgence, fantasy, intimacy and emotions.
Beneath the second chakra is the root chakra, or muladhara chakra, which must be healthy in order for the second chakra to thrive. If the muladhara chakra is disturbed, you won’t feel safe to branch off and be creative. For example, if the first chakra is unbalanced and your thoughts veer towards swapping careers for something more aligned with your interests, you may feel shame, guilt, or insignificance. Therefore, please balance the first chakra before you work on the second chakra!
The second chakra develops around the age of 2-3 years old. It’s when toddlers begin to understand their autonomy – they are separate from their parents, and begin to build loving relationships with them. During this time, toddlers challenge their boundaries, learn confidence, adapt to their environments, and trust their bodies. They begin to understand their inner world, and the world outside of them.
If a youngster is neglected or abused in any way during this developmental period, it is still possible to rebalance the chakra as an adult with some work such as meditation, yoga, therapy, and introspection.
A Balanced Svadhisthasana Chakra
Do you find joy in everyday life? Can you appreciate fun times without overindulging and feeling desperate for more? What are you passionate about? How do you sprinkle your passions into your life? Do ideas easily bubble up inside of you? How forceful is your grip on life? Can you simply let go of the wheel, laugh it off, and go with the flow?
When the second chakra is open and flowing, there is a harmonious relationship with yourself, the world, and everyone in it.
With a balanced chakra, emotions don’t control your life – rather, you are aware of your emotions. Simple things in everyday life bring you pleasure – sex, food, hobbies, work – without desperation or greed for more. Your goals are sturdy and tangible, and it’s easy for you to imagine your life unfolding in a variety of sparkling ways.
An Imbalanced Svadhisthana Chakra
Addiction to drugs or feel-good activities, deep dependency on others, promiscuous sex, uncontrollable emotions, and obsessed with drama are all signs that the second chakra is overactive. Getting lost in fantasies, anger, rage, jealousy, and the impulse to satisfy every desire are a couple more examples.
An underactive chakra looks like a passionless, fun-sucking life without creativity or fantasies of any sort. Some more examples are a lack of sex drive, never feeling satisfied, numbness, and feeling stuck.
Physical sensations may be tight hips, dysfunctional sexual organs, and low back pain, kidney problems, and ovarian cysts.
Yoga Poses for your Second Chakra
Obviously, we thrive in fun-loving, flowing, fulfilled, harmonious lives! All which are ingredients brewed in our sacral chakra.
Here are is a quick yoga sequence designed to allow you to release pent uptightness and emotions while stabilizing your hips, which keeps your energy from overflowing and pulled together.
- Hip Circles: In tabletop position, begin to move your hips laterally, back and forth, side to side, drawing big circles and even melting back into child’s pose. Move with your breath, be intuitive, gentle, and open-minded. Bring your awareness to any sensations you feel.
- Anjenyasana / Low Lunge – Step one foot forward and drop onto your back knee. Ground through your front foot, especially the big toe, and keep that knee on top of your ankle! Let your pelvis sink down towards the floor. Bring both hands onto your front thigh for support, and gently move back and forth, flossing your hip flexors. Pull your moola bhanda up, the muscles in your pelvic floor, and squeeze your inner thighs towards each other to maintain integrity and stability through your hips. Avoid “hanging out” in your ligaments! Rather, support yourself with your muscles and foundation as you let the front of your hips open. Reach your arms up, up, and back, peeling your heart towards the sky. Repeat on the other side!
- Malasana to Uttanasana – Step forward and sit down into Malasana. dynamically move through “yogi squat” – feet pressed on the floor, elbows encouraging your knees to open, and a lift in your pelvic floor – to uttanasana, a forward fold. Malasa is a wonderful pose to open up your hips while strengthening your spine and lifting your heart. Bring some playfulness into this little sequence by moving from squats to forward folds on your own breath. Let yourself sway side to side, open your mouth for a lion’s breath, close your eyes and feel. Try grasping your big toes for a couple of rounds.
- Goddess – Stand up and step your feet as wide as the length of one of your legs, toes point out, and knees direct towards your toes. Squeeze your heals toward each other for a bit of engagement in your hips as you lower your seat towards the earth to open your hips, maintaining a neutral spine. Play with shifting your weight back and forth on your feet, lifting one heal up and then the other. Allow heat, emotions, prana to move freely through your body, and keep a gentle ujayii breath.
- Prasaritta Paddottonasanna – Place your hands on your hips, move your feet and knees so they’re parallel to each other, and fold forward with a long spine. Tilt more weight towards your toes, and press your tailbone towards the sky! This opens your hips and hamstrings while lengthening your spine. Let everything go here, stress dripping down your spine off the crown of your head.
- Mandukasana / Frog Pose – come back into tabletop position, and nudge your knees towards the outer part of your mat. Flex your feet to protect your knees, and gradually move your sit bones so they’re in line with your knees. This is a deep hip opener. Bring your elbows down to the floor or on blocks, and hold for a minute or two, steadily breathing.
A few more poses to play with:
- Gomukasana, Cow-Faced Pose
- Eka Pada Rajakapotasana – Half Pigeon
- Setu Bhanda – Bridge Pose
- Uttrasana – Camel Pose
- Virabhadrasna 2 – Warrior 2+ reversed warrior
Throughout these asanas, remember that your aim is never to be perfect! Have fun, go with the flow, tune into your body and your sensations/emotions, and do whatever feels good!
