How to tell if you have an imbalance in your second chakra..
Firstly, what is the second chakra?
The second chakra, aka pleasure chakra, is one of the seven main energetic points along the central energy line in your body (called the sushumna nadi) and is located in your lower abdomen underneath your belly button. The second chakra is associated with desire, sexuality, creativity and emotion.
In our modern society, the second chakra is continually disregarded and shhhh’d up as we plow through our days tasks and the ensuing monotony. So, more likely than not, yours could use a little fine tuning and recalibration.
If you’ve been going through your days feeling disconnected to joy, having a hard time bringing any creative ideas to fruition (or even thinking of them at all), incapable of having conversations surrounding emotion, avoid pleasure to prioritize duty (including a general disregard for sex) or have become a little stiff in your physical movements or thought processes, chances are you have a deficient second chakra.
Inversely, if you’ve been feeling clingy, overly emotional, hypersexual, have trouble maintaining healthy boundaries with friends, colleagues or partners, or find your work ethic slipping, chances are you have an excess in your second chakra.
If you relate more to the under-active description, poses that help to open you mentally and physically are going to be your best friend. These can be: cat cow rounds with some slow fluid hip circles, a deep wide-legged forward folds, legs up the wall in a v-shape or adding a few gentle rocks in a happy baby. Feel it out
If you relate more to the over-active description, poses that foster containment are going to be your best friend. Try some standing postures with longer holds to move that energy up and out and to simultaneously help you ground down to cultivate a sense of autonomy and self- connection rather than seeking it elsewhere or putting undo emphasis on your personal relationships. This can be dancer pose, or tree, or opening one leg out to the side while grabbing your big toe, urdhva Hastasana or even just regular old mountain pose. Feel it out.
A balanced second chakra will make you feel more in charge of your emotions, open to change, connected to things that make you feel passionate and alive, have healthy boundaries around your relationships and sex life, have fluid creativity and move with rhythm and ease.
Seek inward and feel it out, you can always come back to balance with movement.
xx