How Are YOUR Lower Chakras Doing?

People usually see me as a spiritual coach with a talent for real-world integration.  But as a “spiritual coach” people often think that my work is limited to the upper chakras.  But the truth is that you cannot bring anything into solid form in the physical world without those lower chakras.  And the people I work with are often advanced spiritual seekers who have really mastered those higher chakras already.  What they are having problems with are:

• Making Enough Money
• Grounding and Trusting Themselves With Their Power
• Balancing The Light and the Dark in Their Energies (Or Even Admitting There Is Darkness)
• Being Spiritual And Sexual at the Same Time (i.s. Not Having To Give Up Sex To Be A Spiritual Teacher)

I’ll be doing a blog post each day this week about one of these topics, but today I want to talk about the last one on the list- sex.

In the USA, we have a fundamental disconnect that was passed down by our Puritan ancestors and perpetuated by the modern church.  We avoid connecting spirituality and sexuality unless we are talking about a very specific kind of sex – Tantric or spiritual sex.  The problem with this approach is that it implies that you can’t be spiritual and sexual at the same time.  And that’s just crap.  

Gasp!  A Coach That LIKES Sex?!!?
I’m an incredibly spiritual person – my life is all about connecting to spirit and being in the world in a spiritual fashion.  I’m also an incredibly sexual person – and this is something that most coaches in the marketplace would tell you that I shouldn’t say.  Heaven forbid the person that you come to for spiritual guidance should be also firmly grounded in her body such that she *gasp!* actually ENJOYS sex.  Why one earth would you want that?!!?

Sex ≠Spirituality – Or Does It?
There are a bunch of reasons why people don’t put sex and spirituality together.  The shame about sex that comes from the vast majority of the Christian church’s teachings is one reason.  Another is that when individual charismatic spiritual leaders have put these two together, they ended up sleeping with their followers and formulating cults rather than spirituality.  But despite all that, I think that ultimately, at the core of the issue, is a fundamental misunderstanding about spirituality.  

Spirituality Should STAY In The Body
Most people think that being spiritual is about getting out of the physical realm and into the the spiritual one.  They think that they have to disconnect from the “real world” and step into their spiritual selves.  And sex, being so firmly rooted in the physical can feel like a barrier to spirituality unless you know how to connect the two.  But the reality is that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.  You don’t need to leave your body to have a spiritual experience – in fact, I would go so far as to say that you SHOULDN’T leave your body to have your spiritual experiences.

The Benefits Of Embodied Spirituality
The reason I say this is because your energy field has a direct effect on your physical body, and when you leave your body to have your spiritual experiences, your body misses out on the energetic benefits of those experiences.  If you doubt this, think about it from the opposite angle.  People who are being physically abused will often disassociate from their bodies – spiritually leaving the body until the trauma is over.  This is to protect the spirit from the body’s trauma.  If leaving the body insulates the spirit from the physical experience, then wouldn’t leaving the body for a spiritual experience insulate the body from the spiritual experience?  It’s only good logic.  

Clearing Trauma On The Same Level It Was Created
Many of our wounds and traumas live in our physical body.  You can talk about them all day, but if you don’t clear that physical memory, you won’t get past the trauma.  Even working at an energetic level isn’t doing the whole of the work – because it’s stored on the physical plane.  Staying fully in your body while having your spiritual experiences can help to clear those traumas faster and more efficiently.  Sure, the physical body is an illusion, but if you’re not evolved enough (and most of us aren’t) to not let the illusion of the trauma impact you, then you aren’t evolved enough to clear it without involving the body too.

Maintaining Your Body
Your body is the carrier of your spirit.  That body needs maintenance in the form of food, exercise, laughter, touch, and, yes, sex.  It also needs your energy to occupy the space of the body or else the body will die.  Your spiritual energy is literally the fuel for the body.  And yet, with all of the media teaching us to hate our bodies, and the Puritanical shame around anything sexual because it is pleasurable, and the confusing dichotomy of tasty sweets vs. our programming around not eating sweet food, we have learned to distrust our own pleasure, and by association – our own bodies.  

At War With Ourselves
In fact, in some cases, we are at war with them.  We deny ourselves what the body craves.  Sometimes, this is healthy – as in when we are trying to break an addiction to sugar, alcohol, caffeine or other substances.  But sometimes, it’s just being mean.  “I know that person looks like a tasty morsel that you’d like to devour, but that would make you a slut, so sit down and behave.”  There is no acknowledgement that the connection might be a beautiful encounter (or a raw animal sexual one – which is also nice), no acknowledgement that the shared sexual experience might be just what both people need.  You don’t even get credit for the calories you’d burn in the process of having that wild animal sex.  And you wonder why you substitute other forms of pleasure and then don’t understand why you can’t stop doing them.  

The fact is that sex is complicated when you’re not comfortable with it, and very simple when you are.  

When you’re not comfortable with sex and your body the questions can be infinite, such as: 

• Am I a slut if I have sex with this person?
• Am I too fat?
• Am I any good in bed?
• What if I’m too good – will they think badly of me?
• Am I a bad person for wanting sex?

And my personal favorite – I have to rise above my base desires – don’t I?  No, you don’t.  That’s leaving your lower chakras in favor of the upper ones and that doesn’t serve you anymore than staying in the lower ones and avoiding the upper ones would. What you have to rise above is being ruled by your base desires.  When your desires run you, then there is something that you are hiding underneath those desires that you need to look at.  But when you can take or leave those desires and you decide, “YUM, I’m going to take it” – there’s nothing wrong with that.  

When you are comfortable with sex and your body, the questions are simple.

• Are we both consenting adults who want to do this?
• Am I being safe and respecting my body and my spirit? (Safe sex, not setting unrealistic expectations, etc.)
• Will anyone be hurt by this choice?  (Including me)

If your answers to the first two are yes and the last one is no, you’re good to go.  

A Healthy Chakra System
A functioning second chakra is required to have a fully activated energy system.  Sex isn’t the enemy of that process, it is a pathway through it.  It’s not the only pathway, obviously.  But it is the least acknowledged stumbling block that I see for many people – particularly ones who have been on a spiritual path for a while and have bought into the ascetic form.

How’s YOUR Second Chakra?
So let me ask you this today – how is your second chakra doing?  Is it active and vibrant?  Or are some of your fears, beliefs, programming, shame, etc. getting in the way of you fully embodying your energetic?  If you need help breaking through those issues, I’m here to help.  Sign up for a private session with me.  Or, if you’d just like to activate the chakra first, my 30 Days To a More Luscious You program is ideal for getting that chakra moving again.