Following on from lasts months detailed look on the 1st chakra (root) we move on to the 2nd chakra (sacral). The sacral chakra is located just beneath the belly button and is responsible for your sensual energy, passion, intimacy and creativity. A healthy sacral chakra has a big part to play in a healthy person’s mind, body and spirit as it embraces everything that is wonderful about the world such as nature, sunshine, eroticism, or the appreciation of artistic beauty.
When we experience negative emotions, sometimes, if not most of the time, taking a creative approach to turn things around is very much like thinking outside of the box. Whichever way we take in information or the decisions we make day-to-day either pragmatically or conceptually the creative juices that flow through you do more than what one might imagine, creativity isn’t just about composing music, writing a story, drawing a picture; creativity is when you have a vision and you go forwards in a way that the vision will become a reality so the vision has to be somewhat visible in order to become real, the easier it is the less craftivism needed, however its always the toughest of objectives that yield the most meaningful and pleasurable outcomes.
What we aim for is very valuable to us but we don’t always aim correctly because our vision is not what we think it is. Daniel Simons is a well-known cognitive psychologist who partnered with Daniel Levin to write a book called ‘the invisible gorilla’. He conducted experiments ranging from the phenomena of memory blindness and selective attention. He made a number of videos in the late 1990’s and they can be found on YouTube by typing, ‘Dr Simons studies.‘ In one video containing dialogue from two people there were a few purposeful continuity errors that go amiss with a lot of people that watch it. A more famous one being of two teams of three passing a basketball between each other and the subjects were instructed to count the number of passes that the white team make, a gorilla walks through the two teams, beats his chest like a stereotypical gorilla would and walks off screen. Half of the subjects did not see the gorilla! Our peripheral vision is incredibly blurred, extend your arm out and look at your thumb, the width of your thumb is about the same width as to what our vision can fixate on at a high-resolution. The gorilla in the video wasn’t doing anything to disrupt the two teams from passing the ball between each other, since the subjects were told to count the number of passes they had to do exactly that, why would they let anything distract them and give a wrong answer at the end of the test, nothing got in their way, the gorilla could be safely ignored.
When we have a desire to do something that is valuable to us then we need to be creative, pay attention and think smart. Our desires blind us, that is the price we pay for having a meaningful life. People do not see what you see, we all observe the world in a different manner, what you may think is unflawed and perfect could be seen by someone else as a complete travesty. As we grow from a young age, leave school, go to university we learn what is important to us and we keep them in our core value systems perhaps for the rest of our life but sometimes when we face new challenges, we may have let go of some of them, we need to alter our visions to adapt to new situations. Think outside the box, meditate on your sacral chakra to build new pathways to better your visions and to jump obstacles in your life.
When the Sacral Chakra is Blocked
The main causes for the sacral chakra being blocked could be because of trauma, being a victim of abuse or experiencing illness physically or mentally. Signs of this are apathy, self-deprivation, being emotionally guarded, having a low sex drive, having a lack of desire, lacking passion, and feeling a sense of psychological numbness. This chakra should be meditated on whilst envisioning an orange colour. Mantra’s like, ‘’I allow myself to feel pleasure,’ or, ‘’Creativity flows through me,’’ help to balance the sacral.
When the Sacral Chakra is Overactive
Channelling a heavy load of creativeness or sexual desire is met with an overactive sacral. In this state of mind, it can prove difficult to be brought back to Earth. Excessive daydreaming and the inability to keep one’s feet on the ground reminds me of a certain movie with an archetype that resembles the sacral chakra’s overactive symptoms.
The 1984 movie ‘The Never-Ending Story’ (Spoiler alerts) perfectly epitomises the pleasures of living in a world of fantasies. The main protagonist of the story is Bastion who feels at a loss with the domains of his surroundings who not only has a father who is distant and cold but is also being bullied terribly at school. He finds solace only in reading but then he picks up a book which the story that he reads he becomes in total control of, he hides away in an unused room in his school building missing his classes, when it’s time to go home he stays in his school, locked inside, he continues to read the story. When he becomes aware that what he is reading is being controlled by him he becomes shocked, ‘That’s impossible,’ Bastion shouts as he reads his own psychical scream jotted down on the pages his eyes are set on after being frightened by coming across Morla, the giant swamp turtle who is reluctant to help the warrior Atreyu from saving the universe the story is set in, Fantasia. Fantasia is a concept of Bastion’s imagination, crumbling and perishing as to what becomes known as ‘The Nothing’ and Morla, who is indifferent to the fate of the nothing due to apathy and facing degeneration, the imminent apocalypse from Bastion’s viewpoint when he faces Morla symbolises that ‘He who dares dreams’ must have a certain level of nihilism because in order to sacrifice hope our underlying belief systems need to make total sense of what we must visualise as meaning. Morla is unfortunately no different to many of the people we know throughout our lifetime, these are the people that become unhappy perhaps in older age, resentful and horribly tyrannised by their own mortality that they do not wish to make the world a better place for their peers. Bastion is terrified of Morla because he too is afraid of the unknown but from all the malevolence he’s faced, he still wants to make the world a better place. This is proven as he immerses himself in Fantasia and manages to save it by giving the Empress a new name, however, Morla being the humungous creature that he is, dwelling in the swamps of depression symbolises the mass pessimism of society. Atreyu comes across a ‘luckdragon’ called Falkor who helps Atreyu on his quest to save Fantasia, dragons are often seen as threatening and can be villainised in many stories, however in an archetypical sense they are also seen often as protectors and accessories. When Bastion’s being immersed in Fantasia, he is able to fly the dragon into the real world and even confronts the bullies in the human universe, weak people can turn incredibly formidable when they are protected. Bastion’s guard is fully up when he meets Falkor, but also lets it down when he confronts the bullies because in situations in which chaos processes into order the transition is more frightening than chaos itself. Falkor constantly tells Atreyu that he must never give up against the hopelessness of ‘The Nothing’ and when Bastion meets Falkor his estranged and hopeless reality is protected by Falkor too, so he finds solace in his fantasies. We all have ‘A Nothing’ in our lives, when we think about our personal hopeless entities they may make us feel apathetically attached to them. A key takeaway from the story is that fantasy is far from being a threat to the ability to live in the real world and is the natural and invaluable partner of reason and common sense, provided that one can move easily back and forth across the boundary separating fantasy and reality and provided that the world of fantasy can be constantly renewed by the efforts of new fantasists like Bastion.
Maladaptive daydreaming is a psychological condition that is not widely accepted medically and is not featured in any diagnostic manual as of yet but it can cause a lot of dysfunction and interference for people’s everyday lives that experience it. MDD as its often abbreviated to has been associated with strong urges to daydream and for many hours of the day, people who experience this create plots in their head, they can make micro facial expressions and micro gestures as if they are literally in their own little world, the act of daydreaming is often triggered by real-life events. The plots and characters that they fantasise about they know are not real, it’s the urge and impulsiveness to escape from the sufferings of their world that they find solace in their life. Watch the film and decide for yourself if Bastion is channelling his negative energy in a healthy way.
People with an overactive sacral chakra tend to extremes, which can show up in emotional outbursts, but also through pathological dependencies on other people. They run the risk of losing their authenticity and can no longer be themselves. An important step is to dedicate yourself to the positive and beautiful things in life. The basis for this is self-love and acceptance of your own needs and yourself.
