(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.)

“Down, and a lit­tle
to the left, please…”

Your first, or Root Chakra, is located at the tip of your tail bone—and the way to reach it is to mas­sage or touch the per­ineum. This lit­tle 2 inch area of the body is criss­crossed with muscles.

In Kun­dalini work, this region of the body is con­sid­ered “home” to “dor­mant ser­pent energy” that, if we are open to it, uncoils itself from the Root and moves up the spine, empow­er­ing the other Chakras.

Here’s a visu­al­iza­tion: bring your atten­tion to your Root Chakra. Imag­ine a red ball about the size of a ten­nis ball, press­ing out­ward from inside of you, from the tip of your tail­bone. Feel the ten­nis ball puls­ing with energy. Cre­ate the image and the feel­ing of pul­sat­ing energy, like a heart­beat, at the Root Chakra. Imag­ine that you can see and feel the warmth of this red, glow­ing ball.

“You mean there’s an album???!!!”

As you take a shower or bathe, spend a moment or two mas­sag­ing your per­ineum. Notice what­ever sen­sa­tions that arise. Breathe as you are doing this.

If you’re a female reader, you cer­tainly know, and have likely done the Kegel Exercise.

For those of you that don’t know, it’s a way to strengthen pelvic mus­cles through exer­cise. In the exer­cise is simple.

Here’s the direc­tions for Kegels, as found on Wikipedia:

“A pop­u­lar way to iden­tify the pelvic mus­cles in men and woman is to stop the flow of urine mid­stream. This is accom­plished by con­tract­ing the pelvic floor mus­cles. Restart­ing the flow of urine is accom­plished by releas­ing the pelvic floor mus­cles. Once iden­ti­fied this way, the pelvic floor mus­cles can be con­tracted and released inde­pen­dently of con­trol­ling uri­na­tion. Kegels are most fre­quently pre­formed in sets.”

You might con­sider Kegels as a West­ern approach to stim­u­lat­ing the first Chakra.

I’ve talked about Horse Stance on the web­site, in the body­work sec­tion con­cern­ing the first Chakra.

It’s one of those basic Mar­tial Arts stances that is essen­tial, and also some­what unpleas­ant to do. (Not to scare you off!) When we teach Body­work, Breath­work, or Qi Gong, we teach the pose, along with the con­cept of “grow­ing roots.”

As you see from the pic­ture, the pose itself is decep­tively simple.

Your feet are no less than shoul­der width apart, and the out­side edges of the feet are almost par­al­lel. Basic-ally, you squat down a bit, as if you’re sit­ting on a horse. One of the keys to doing this post safely is to be sure that your knees never extend beyond your toes. This forces you to sit back. Your back is straight, and your gaze is soft as you look straight ahead. You’ll notice that my arms are extended out in front of me—you can imag­ine that I’m hug­ging a tree. I’ve always wanted to be a tree hugger!

Now to the imag­i­na­tion part. There are two steps.

First, imag­ine that there are roots run­ning down from your sci­atic nerve pock­ets (the dim­ples in your butt,) extend­ing down your legs, out the cen­ter of your feet, and spread­ing down to the core of the earth. This is actu­ally the Mar­tial Arts part of Horse Stance. Believe it or not, if you can firmly focus on being rooted to the earth, it becomes dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to move you—to knock you over.

Once you’ve got the root­ed­ness part firmly implanted in your brain, you’ll likely also notice your body can feel your roots. I’d like to per­suade you that they are actu­ally there but we’ll save that for another article.

Now, and here’s the sec­ond step—breathe. As you breathe in, imag­ine that you are pulling your breath up from the cen­ter of the earth, through your roots.

As the in-breath con­cludes, visu­al­ize the energy fill­ing the sec­ond Chakra—2 inches below your navel, an area the Chi­nese call The Lower Dan Tien. This spot is the core of you, and might be con­sid­ered your “bal­ance point.” This area fills nat­u­rally with energy, as we breathe, but grow stronger and gains capac­ity if we breathe con­sciously.

On the out-breath, visu­al­ize the breath mov­ing up your spine to your shoul­ders, and then cir­cling around your arms, as they “hug the tree.” Repeat.

You knew that was com­ing, didn’t you?

Let me, at this point, stick a plug in.

Dar­bella and I are begin­ning to teach med­i­ta­tion here at the house—and we’re pro­vid­ing two for­mats. We’re doing a seven week course, and a one-day inten­sive. We think the seven week course will be a bet­ter and deeper expe­ri­ence, and the one-day inten­sive will be per­fect for peo­ple who live at a dis­tance. You can click the hyper­links and read more about it.

I’m not going to give you a full descrip­tion of med­i­ta­tion here. Rather, in keep­ing with our topic, I want to men­tion that “sit­ting” is all about root­ed­ness and ground­ed­ness. No mat­ter what pos­ture you sit in, kneel­ing, cross­legged, on a chair, or Burmese, (see the photo) your Root Chakra is planted firmly on the “ground.” Now, sure, the Bud­dha indi­cated that you can also med­i­tate while stand­ing, lying down, or walking—but when I say med­i­tate, what do you pic­ture? Sit­ting, right?

The whole point of med­i­ta­tion is to steady your­self.

Many peo­ple think that med­i­ta­tion is “about” get­ting the voices in their heads to shut up. Good luck, not a prayer. Rather, the inten­tion is to “sim­ply notice” the mind’s chat­ter, with­out fol­low­ing it.

~ Fol­low­ing a thought means that a thought comes into your head, and you turn it into a story, com­plete with video, dia­log, and a prop­erly maudlin soundtrack.

~ Notic­ing a thought requires noth­ing more than see­ing the thought arise, and say­ing qui­etly, to your­self, “Think­ing. Think­ing.” This is best accom­plished through zazen (seated med­i­ta­tion), which, roughly trans­lated, means “Sit­ting still, like a mountain.”

I find that, in my “sit­ting” prac­tice, (the short­hand for which is “sit­ting,”) the more still my body is, the eas­ier it is to sim­ply notice what my mind is doing. The longer I prac­tice, the more I notice that my mind, grudg­ingly, will fol­low the still­ness of my body. The best way to expe­ri­ence this for your­self is to “sim­ply sit.”

The Bud­dha also rec­om­mended walk­ing med­i­ta­tion. As Dar and I prac­tice med­i­ta­tion, it’s often the case that we sit for 25 min­utes, and then get up and do 10 min­utes or so of walk­ing meditation—which could call “Walk­ing Mind­fully.” I’ve heard Ben and Jock describe this as “Tiger Walking.”

There are two ele­ments to walk­ing mindfully.

[cool­player width=“480” height=“380” autoplay=“0” loop=“0” charset=“utf-8″ download=“1” medi­atype=””]
Tiger Walk­ing
[/coolplayer]

I recorded a 30 sec­ond video of Tiger Walking—you can see it on the blog, if it isn’t show­ing up above

The first, and sim­plest to explain, is that the pace of walk­ing changes dur­ing walk­ing med­i­ta­tion. You might start out walk­ing briskly, and after a few moments, slow down to the point where each foot­fall takes 30 seconds.

Sec­ond: This is where the con­scious place­ment of the feet comes in.

To expe­ri­ence this, get up and stand normally.

1… 2… Tree!!!

Root­ed­ness is all about bal­ance. I sup­pose you can do any­thing you want to prac­tice being in balance—walk along a beam, find an aban­doned rail­road track and walk along the rail, or prac­tice bal­anc­ing in Tree Pose.

This is a fairly famil­iar look­ing yoga pose and is sim­ple to get into, yet dif­fi­cult to maintain.

I’ll be talk­ing about danc­ing when we dis­cuss the sec­ond Chakra, as most peo­ple have incred­i­bly tight and locked pelvises. Danc­ing, espe­cially with music that empha­sizes mov­ing the pelvis, is a great way to loosen up.

That being said, Osho in par­tic­u­lar taught his fol­low­ers ecsta­tic dance. When we taught at The Haven, we included this process is the final exer­cise in a week long event. There are many Osho CDs to choose from; we picked “Osho Nataraj Med­i­ta­tion.” It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing idea. For 40 min­utes, you dance. With your eyes closed. The pace of the music accel­er­ates, until you’re danc­ing pretty much as fast as you can—sounds like a movie title. Then the music shifts, and you drop to the floor, and just lie there with your eyes closed, med­i­tat­ing, for 20 min­utes. The final five min­utes you get back on your feet, reori­ent­ing yourself.

I’d really sug­gest going to Ama­zon and check­ing out the Osho CDs, and giv­ing this a “whirl.”

If you’re receiv­ing reg­u­lar mas­sage or Body­work, ask the per­son to spend a ses­sion work­ing on your legs and feet. If your Body­worker is a Rolfer or Deep Tis­sue per­son, you may well have already had this expe­ri­ence, as legs and feet, deeply worked on, is part of the régime.

The odds are, this is going to hurt.

One of the more har­row­ing things that Dar­bella and I did, many years ago, was hike the North end of the Bruce Trail. This is a rugged piece of Ontario, com­plete with warn­ing signs and everything.

Dar injured her foot, and hiked out in a fair amount of pain. The last day, as we hit the “end of the trail,” we got to what we call a slab beach. I assume there was sand some­where down there, but the beach was cov­ered with foot sized slabs of rock, rock that had been smoothed by the action of the water. You stepped on a rock, and it moved—it shifted underfoot—not the best for Darbella’s sore foot. I found the con­stantly shift­ing rocks just plain irri­tat­ing. I noticed that my toes were cramp­ing, and I sus­pect that this was because I was try­ing to “grasp the ground” with my toes.

I sus­pect a lot of peo­ple do this as a mat­ter of course. In other words, if you are feel­ing unsta­ble and dis­con­nected, you’ll do any­thing to hold on. This plays out in grip­ping with the toes, and rock­ing back and forth try­ing to find bal­ance. This is the source of the foot and leg pain you’ll feel if you take my suggestion.

You can also do this with a friend—not the walk­ing and falling down part, but the mas­sage part—by get­ting some mas­sage oil, and work­ing deeply and thor­oughly down your partner’s legs, right from where the leg con­nects to the lower body, all the way down to the toes. Work “all four sides” of each leg—as high as you can go—all the way down to the toes.

Spend a day in silence. You may have to set this up—go away some­where, per­haps out into nature, per­haps to retreat cen­ter, or you can come here!

Silence and ground­ed­ness are not exactly syn­ony­mous, but they are surely sec­ond cousins. There is noth­ing more directly con­nected to the moronic mus­ings of your mind than your mouth. Clos­ing the lat­ter seems to con­fuse the for­mer, and a con­fused mind, after scream­ing, “This isn’t fair! I hate silence! Please, please, please, start run­ning your mouth again!” will sul­lenly sur­ren­der and slow down its end­less spinning.

As inner and outer silence descends, you begin to notice your­self. You start to pick up on your body. You become aware of your breath, going in and out. You can feel again. All of this height­ens the sense of ground­ed­ness, pur­pose­ful­ness, mind­ful­ness, and belong­ing. All of these are Root Chakra issues.

This exer­cise likely could be included for all the Chakras.

I’ve bla­tantly stolen this con­cept from David Schnarch, author of “Pasion­ate Mar­riage.”

The book is really about relat­ing from a sta­ble, secure, open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble rela­tion­ship. He sug­gests, as an exer­cise, “Hug­ging until Relaxed.” Rather than fish out the book and find the descrip­tion I did a Google search and came up with an arti­cle Schnarch has posted to the web.

“I sug­gested they try some­thing called “hug­ging till relaxed,” a pow­er­ful method for increas­ing inti­macy that har­nesses the lan­guage and dynam­ics of sex with­out requir­ing either nudity or sex­ual con­tact. Hug­ging, one of the most ordi­nary, least threat­en­ing ges­tures of affec­tion and close­ness, is also one of the most telling. When they hugged, Betty com­plained that Don­ald always leaned on her–making her stag­ger backward–while Don­ald accused Betty of pulling away from him, let­ting go “too soon,” and leav­ing him “hug­ging air.”

“I sug­gested that Betty and Don­ald each stand firmly on their own two feet, loosely put their arms around each other, focus on their own indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence and con­cen­trate on qui­et­ing them­selves down while in the embrace–neither clutch­ing nor pulling away from or lean­ing on each other. I never tell clients how long to hug, but few ini­tially can take more than four or five sec­onds before they expe­ri­ence a kind of emo­tional “jolt” when the con­nec­tion threat­ens to become too inti­mate for com­fort. Once both part­ners can learn to soothe them­selves and main­tain their indi­vid­ual equi­lib­rium, shift­ing their own posi­tions when nec­es­sary for com­fort, they get a brief, phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence of inti­mate con­nec­tion with­out fusion, a sense of sta­bil­ity and secu­rity with­out over-dependency.”

Give this a try.

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Click here to go to the online arti­cle, and leave a com­ment or question!