Infertility chakra, Svadisthana, in Fertile Yoga

  On Fridays, my thoughts turn towards Fertile Yoga and infertility. My thoughts meander around, ideas popping up about what I want to teach, communicate and share. Often, concepts of healing and gratitude emerge, whole and complete beings, nourishment and contentment. Thoughts that are infused with color, air and light.

Orange often comes in, the color of desire, the color of the second chakra. Your second chakra exists in your lower abdomen, working with your emotions and desires and is associated with a specific gland, your gonads. Your gonads are your sex glands, ovaries, uterus, and testes. One of the physical dysfunctions of this chakra is infertility. The spleen is affected by this chakra, called Svadisthana in Sanskrit, and while the spleen is a physical organ, it is also known as the "venting" organ. This is the organ that allows us to express emotion.

Sometimes called the sacral chakra, here is one description, "Orange is the color of success and relates to self respect; having the ability to give ourselves the freedom to be ourselves and helps you expand your interests and activities.  Brings joy to our workday and strengthens our appetite for life! Orange is the best emotional stimulant. It connects us to our senses and helps to remove inhibitions and makes us independent and social."

The movement of a chakra is that of a wheel, spinning or rotating. How slowly or quickly, how balanced, how out of control? Interestingly enough, because of where a man's sexual organs or gonads are; located at the root chakra, the most physical chakra, a man's sexuality is often seen and experienced as physical. While a woman's sexual organs are located, higher up, in the second chakra, the sacral chakra, her sexuality is rooted in the emotional. Perhaps a key in explaining the differences between men and women, perhaps a key in understanding the balance established between men and women, the realms of the physical and emotional. While we often see and feel at odds with one another because of different focuses of men and women, can we also acknowledge the strength and power that each give the other?

So what's my point this morning? Keeping the spirit in Fertile Yoga, keeping the heart, breath, compassion and love in Fertile Yoga, begins with allowing all of this to swirl around, resisting to make absolute sense out of it. My trust in the process that begins in this amorphous, cloudy way, that out of this haze, a path to my students will become clear.

Perhaps balancing our second chakra, Svadisthana, letting it spin more quietly, more smoothly, allowing the color orange to glow sweetly, is the point this morning. My focus for class tomorrow begins to become clearer. Forgiveness and compassion that begins for ourselves surfaces from deep within.

I look forward to the journey with you.