Chakra

Chakra Balancing Tips

Posted May 25, 2012 by Jo Crawford in Chakra  |  6 comments

by Jo Crawford on May 25, 2012

You do not need to meditate for hours to align your chakras and bring them back into balance.

Here are some tips to bring a little chakra loving into your everyday life:

Root

Go outside, find a nice grassy patch and kick your shoes off.  Wiggle your toes into the grass and earth underneath.  Feel yourself supported by the earth beneath your feet.  Repeat this whenever you feel ungrounded.

Sacral

Get out your art supplies and have an art date with yourself.  Use as many colours as you can and fill the page with lines, shapes and squiggles.  Stick your creation on your fridge or above your desk for at least a week as a reminder of how fun it is to create.

Solar Plexus

Place your hands on your belly and take a few deep belly breaths to fill it.  Slowly and gently massage around your bellybutton in a clockwise direction.  Allow your belly to gurgle as it settles once more.  Repeat whenever you feel nervous or anxious.

Heart

At least once a day hug your partner, child or a dear friend.  If you do not have huggable people in your life, get some cuddle time from your pets.  Repeat this open heart connection through touch whenever and wherever appropriate.

Throat

Put on your favorite song of the moment and sing along loudly and with vigor, as if you are a contestant on The Voice or Idol.  Singing in the shower and in the car during traffic jams is especially encouraged.

Third Eye

Pull a card from your favorite oracle or tarot deck.  Write down the first words and phrases that come to mind as you gaze at your card.  Pay attention to your emotional responses to the colours, images and patterns.  Repeat this as a daily practice to hone your intuitive awareness.

Crown

Massage your scalp with your fingers or a scalp massager.  Close your eyes and let go the tension you hold in your head.  As you relax you will feel an opening at the top of your head as your crown chakra unfolds.

Keep it simple and enjoy!

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Heart Chakra Earth Art

Posted August 11, 2011 by Jo Crawford in Chakra, Creativity  | 

by Jo Crawford on August 11, 2011

The heart chakra is the one chakra we all “get” as it is where we locate our feelings and emotions. When our heart chakra is unblocked and open, we can give and receive unconditional love with ease.

This morning as I walked home from a coffee date with a friend who was visiting from out of town, I was thinking about how good it feels to have open-hearted talks.  There is nothing quite like feeling resonance as you share your heart truths.

As I passed through a neighborhood park, I stopped to sit on the grass for a while and made this improv earth art piece out of the grass flowers (weeds?) for my heart chakra.

What I love about earth art is that is completely intuitive, and a lesson in being present, in that you arrange and craft beauty with what nature presents to you.  It is a fleeting form of art – a breeze or a curious dog’s nose will erase my flower heart by the end of the day.

But for now, the simplicity of my earth heart remains.

 

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Sacral Chakra & Solar Plexus Art

Posted August 7, 2011 by Jo Crawford in Chakra, Creativity  | 

by Jo Crawford on August 7, 2011

The sacral chakra is the energy center for our sexuality and creativity.    Once this chakra is cleared, you will feel a surge of life force flowing through you.

The solar plexus chakra is our source center of power and will.  It is literally the fire in your belly that motivates you to get stuff done!

When I meditated on how to express these two chakras, my sacral chakra called out for a sweet words in haiku form and my solar plexus wanted to radiate a message of permission in layers of yellow.

Sacral Chakra Haiku

Untilled soil awakes
when watered and nurtured;
Life emerges once more.

Solar Plexus Chakra Collage

 

 

 

 

 

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Root Chakra Collage

Posted August 3, 2011 by Jo Crawford in Chakra, Creativity  |  2 comments

by Jo Crawford on August 3, 2011

The root chakra is our base chakra and correlates with our base needs for nurturance and security.  Our flight or flight responses are often activated by root chakra fears about home, money and safety.

When I sat down to create a collage piece to express my root chakra, I expected to be confronted with my conflicted feelings around money and stability.  Instead the well-known theme — to me that is — of knowing my place in the world took form on the page.

The map in the background is of Cape Town, South Africa, my birth place and where I was living before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997.  The tortoise screamed at me to be part of this collage – making the message of taking home with you wherever you go obvious to my conscious mind.

I have been pondering my place in the world and what home means for years.  When I first came to the U.S., I did not expect to stay here for very long.  I was following a boy I was smitten with and had no guarantee that relationship would pan out.  So I  packed up my flat in Cape Town and put my belongings in storage with the intention of returning permanently within two years.

The relationship did not turn out so well and my life in the Bay Area took many turns.

Two years turned into five, and then seven.

On one of my annual trips back to South Africa, I finally sold off what was left in my storage unit.  It was time to come to terms with the reality that I had emigrated and that the Bay Area was my home as well.

Since that realization I have felt more at ease with living here.

A few months ago I had a very vivid dream of an encounter with a tortoise that culminated in it grabbing onto my right arm and biting me.  I know enough about shamanism and power animals to know that when an animal bites you in a dream you better pay attention!

I turned to my dreamworker friend, Katrina, to understand what medicine this tortoise had to teach me.  Beyond the obvious messages of slowing my pace and finding my home within, we hit on a gem.

Tortoises are indigenous to my homeland and were common visitors in the garden of my childhood.  Katrina felt that this tortoise may be an ancestral messenger and ally.

When she said that, I got goosebumps all over so I know she was onto something deep.

I’m not sure what my ancestors of blood or land have to tell me with that dream and now this collage, but I take comfort in them being present in my root chakra work.

As Azi and I ready ourselves for children, finding home within myself has been a poignant theme.  While my children will be American, I will always have a dual experience of home in my heart.  I always want to root myself and my family in this awareness of ancestral wisdom, place and belonging.

 

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