Mental Health Balance: Part 1
Why it pays to understand your energy body
Rub your hands together for a few seconds, then place them, palms facing one another, about 2-3” apart. Concentrate, pulsing them back and forth. Do you feel that pull? A slight resistance? Heat? It might take some practice, but eventually, you will start to feel a resistance, almost like there is an invisible ball between your palms.
Welcome to your energy!
You are energy, with a physical body and an energy body. As your physical body has systems and organs, so does your energy body. We call them chakras.
Chakras are energy centres within your energy body, they allow energy to flow within and throughout your body. You have 7 main, larger chakras as well as many other smaller chakras. Often, they are described as disc or spirals because, as the energy flows throughout, these centres will spin.
All this energy? It’s all yours. It’s *your* energy. It’s what allows you to function, to be. As your physical systems and organs can sometimes be out of whack and need extra support, so can your chakras. When you are holding onto something, such as guilt, shame or fear, instead of releasing and allowing, this can cause the energy flow to be suspended, not flow as freely.
The longer this “kink” in the flow of your energy happens without any form of releasing, the more it will start to affect our physical body, whether it’s actual physical pain or emotional pain.
Often, we release without even knowing what is happening, without awareness. Viruses are an amazing rebalancing and releasing tool, as is yawning and crying. Sometimes people get really sleepy during a certain period of time, or release in sync with the moon energy or other earth energy. All this is natural and can occur so wonderfully well. When the energy body is ready to release, you just have to allow it to do so.
But sometimes, we get stuck. We don’t want to release, we hold on. Gut issues often can be linked to holding onto emotional trauma, whether it happened this lifetime or in a past lifetime. Heartburn and sore throats can often be caused because we aren’t speaking our truth, and in turn, the throat chakra, the centre of communication, will not flow as easily.
The root chakra is our centre of community and family. It grounds you and allows you to feel safe, that your basic needs, such as food and shelter, are met. When we have a chasm with our family, or if our basic needs were not met during childhood, and we start to feel ungrounded, unrooted, it can lead to a root chakra that isn’t flowing as properly, bringing these issues back up in our present life.
Let’s say that you were a child who grew up hungry, never knowing when your next meal would be, and always having to move from place to place because rent was never paid on time. Today, in your life, you might get triggered when your bank account goes below $1000. It would bring back those feelings you had when you were a child. You might go in panic mode, live in anxiety, worry and fear until that $1000 threshold was met.
Another huge impact on your root chakra is your family and your ancestors. Often times, when a soul reincarnates, they come back to the same family. With so many past years together, there will be a lot of trauma, family issues and karma that have been shared together. Family issues come up so often with so many of us, we get triggered, we fight, we make up (sometimes). Being around them sometimes causes a lot of past issues to come back to the surface.
In both of the examples above, the flow of energy in your root chakra will be affected. The longer this occurs, the more it will start to affect you, physically and mentally.
All is not lost, however! Simply bringing awareness to the root (pun completely intended) of the issue will often allow you to release and allow the energy to flow once again. The more you understand why you’re triggered, why you’re unsettled, why that anxiety is coming up, then more you’ll be able to release, allowing the energy to flow once more.
Stay tuned for Part 2 released next week when I’ll dive deeper into the connection between your mental health and other chakras, with more tips on how to ensure the energy flows within and throughout.
*This article was originally published for Connecting the Sound magazine in 2020
