Many new age teachers talk about and teach from the perspective of opening the chakras.
For highly sensitive people,
And particularly empaths,
This opening up is not necessary.
If anything,
We are already far too open.
Empaths tend to live life with their metaphorical hands outstretched,
Saying,
Give me,
Give me,
To all the stray emotions that are flying by them.
The challenge is to be able to pull back and not take so much on.
This exercise is about contracting the chakras so as to be more discerning about boundaries and take on less of other people's energy.
Although this exercise talks about closing the chakras,
Staying closed is not the purpose of the exercise.
A door is not a door if it's open all the time.
It's a hole in the wall.
Nor is it a door if it stays closed all the time.
It's part of the wall.
A door is meant to be opened and closed.
Similarly,
It's not appropriate to walk around with our physical hands open all the time,
Nor closed in a fist all the time.
We want to be able to open and close our hands at will,
At appropriate times.
We go into a gym to exercise our muscles by flexing them against weights.
This exercise is about learning to flex our chakras so that we can better expand and contract them as appropriate to our surroundings.
We will go through the exercise contracting each chakra and then at the end,
Allow them to expand again out to an appropriate level.
The chakras are energy systems that have been part of the Indian mystical tradition for thousands of years.
They're spinning wheels located at seven centers in the body.
We'll go through each one in turn.
The first one is located at the base of the spine.
Its color is red and it's about grounding,
Security and survival.
The second is orange,
Located at the pelvis just below the navel.
It's about creativity,
Pleasure,
Sexuality and money.
The third is yellow at the belly just below the solar plexus.
It's about personal power,
Willpower and confidence.
The fourth is green,
Located at the heart.
It's about bonding with others,
Caring,
Compassion,
Love of self and love of others.
The fifth is blue and is located at the throat.
It's about communication and self-expression.
The sixth is indigo,
A midnight blue color and is located at the third eye between the eyebrows.
This chakra is about seeing both the inner and outer worlds.
It's about intuition,
Wisdom and consciousness.
And then the seventh chakra is violet or gold or white and is located at the crown of the head.
It's our connection to the universe,
To the divine,
To being.
When the first chakra is too open,
We get caught up in the material world and forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
When the second chakra is too open,
We focus too much on base pleasure,
Sex money and having a good time.
When the third is too open,
We are too open to other people's power and will,
To the detriment of who we are ourselves.
When the fourth chakra is too open,
We may be overly caring of others,
Again to our own detriment.
When the fifth chakra,
That the throat is too open,
We may be over-communicating and sharing too much of ourselves.
When the sixth chakra between the eyebrows is too open,
We may become spaced out with the knowledge of higher worlds while losing our grounding in the physical world in which we live.
When the seventh chakra is too open,
We may drift off into the ether and forget that we are supposed to be having a human experience in a physical body.
Let's talk for a moment about visualization.
Most top athletes in every sport use visualization techniques.
They're an important part of sports training.
Mental coaches would say they're the key to peak performance in almost every discipline in our lives.
If these techniques work for top performers,
It only makes sense to apply them to ourselves in our everyday life.
With all mental exercises,
It's not about holding a thought.
It's about focusing a thought.
One analogy is to treat the mind like an active child when you want them to sit still.
You are going to tell them to stay where they are,
But sooner or later they'll get distracted and start wandering off.
You bring them back,
They sit still for a while,
And then the process starts all over again.
When your mental attention wanders off from the subject of focus,
Gently bring it back.
Keep repeating the process.
Just bring your attention back to your subject.
Don't worry about having thoughts.
They are natural.
Do not try.
Let it be.
Easy.
The most important part of any mental exercise is that it be done with intent.
With each chakra,
We are going to tighten up the chakra and concentrate its energies.
There are at least three styles of visualization you can use for this.
You can visualize a shutting door,
Locking it with a golden key.
You can visualize a lotus flower contracting from full bloom into a tight bud.
Or you can visualize a ball or a donut contracting into a small tight sphere.
So at this stage,
Stop listening to this and move into the exercise itself.
After the exercise,
Just know that you can repeat this exercise even a few times a day.
Once you're familiar with it,
You can run it from start to finish in a minute or less.
You can repeat this anytime you feel like you're taking on too much energy from the world around you,
Be it from one person or many.
When you're in a safe healing space,
You can use this exercise to open up.
Either when you're working on somebody as a healer or when another healer is working on you.
Just remember to contract it again at the end of the healing exercise.
Many blessings to you.
