“Call me. It’s important,” she specified in her voice mail.
R. hated to talk on the phone, so I knew it had to be important.
When she picked up on the first ring, I got scared, as R. didn’t race to the phone for anyone, not her husband, her friends, or even her clients. R.’s phone aversion mirrored my aversion to processed foods. If I were starving on an island and had no choice but to eat dinner rolls from Perkins to stay alive, I would relent. If R. were stranded on an island and needed to make a phone call to get off the island, she would possibly relent. Yet there is no guarantee. But I digress.
“I know what’s holding you back from moving forward in life and having everything you want,” R. said excitedly.
“Tell me,” I say. “Please! Tell me!”
“It’s your root chakra,” R. says, matter- of-factly. “You‘re too rooted. You have worked so hard to build roots to compensate for the roots you didn’t have when you were younger that you can’t get off the ground. You’re stuck.”
I quickly do a mental scan of my life, including my well-publicized hang-ups, my hyper frugality, my decision to stay with jobs and relationships well past their reasonable end points. My intense rigidity with food. When I trace these behaviors, they all lead back to my need to feel grounded and secure, which is what the root chakra, located at the base of the spine, is all about.
“You need to let go a little,” she says. “Once you let go, you’ll see a big shift in your life. Treat yourself to a night out to dinner or at the least, a glass of wine.”
“So, if I have a glass of wine, I’ll get a book deal?”
“Absolutely,” R. says.
“I took the kids to Perkins last night for dinner,” I offer. I suddenly feel very proud of that decision.
“Oh my God, you ate at Perkins?”
“Of course not. But I let my kids eat Perkins.”
“OK, well I guess that counts.”
All I needed to do to get that book deal is booze it up on occasion and let my kids eat at Perkins? Who knew?
“You need to do things to unroot yourself. Like wear a color other than black, for crying out loud!”
“Oh my gosh! It’s like we have been communicating telepathically, because I wore my new red pashima wrap to work today. Wait, and there’s double points in that because not only was it color, but it was an impulse buy!”
“You made an impulse buy?” R. gasps. “Like something you didn’t need for absolute survival? Now that’s real progress!”
“So, between the Perkins dinner, the red scarf, and the impulse buy, I’m like well on my way to a book deal, right?”
“Well, yeah!”
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the chakra system, the yogis believed that there are energy centers that reside in specific areas of our physical/mental/spiritual bodies that are responsible for the reception and transmission of certain life energies. There are tens of thousands of these receptors all over our bodies and seven major ones that run up the spinal column. They are responsible for such energies as survival, pleasure, personal power, compassion, communication, and intuition.
For me personally, I have spent a lifetime creating the illusion of security in different areas of my life – yet ultimately, no amount of security can make me feel secure and no amount of “security” can provide security, because as we all know, life can change on a dime. My hyper healthy diet is no guarantee that I won’t get sick, and as far as my extreme frugality goes, who’s to say that the stock market and the banking system won’t topple tomorrow. We just don’t know.
We have so very little control that we scurry to find things that give us the illusion of control. Being smart with finances is one thing, but stopping all of my disposable spending is not necessary. The same with food. Will the one Perkins dinner roll kill me?
This brings me to the phrase on my belly this week, as prescribed by my transformative coach E. It’s quite fitting after my girlfriend's deconstruction of my root chakra:
A picture is worth a thousand words, or a thousand chakras, I should say!
Namaste, Divas!
Are you rigid in certain areas of your life?
What would happen if you let go of this rigidity?
What does having a balanced life mean to you?
Have you said hello to your root chakra lately?
