What a journey, indeed!...so much learned along the way... by accident, on purpose, on a whim, after much study, just because...you name it...I was there...and I did pay attention. Here are some anecdotes about my growing understanding of chakras.
Root Chakra Release
2 AM...Saturday night...packing up the last of the equipment from the gig at Comozzi's Saloon. Leaned down to pick up the last green plastic milk crate that held cables. Lifting...I felt the piercing pain like a knife inserted in my lower back. Cold sweat...could not move...alone in the dark. Fear sweeps through as I feel helpless...to a degree. The need to do something takes over and I shimmy to the green Dodge van and set the box inside and close the door. Part of me still worked it seems. Waddle to the captain's chair driver's seat to drive in this big rig with the, thankfully, automatic transmission, back to my home in Santa Margarita. 45 minutes of short breath and shooting pain rising from my core place.
It was Easter weekend and I was to debut a song I had just written for the SLO Unity service about Jesus saying goodbye to his posse while he was hanging on the cross...interesting topic, this one. I found my way upstairs to bed and found a position that was tolerable and went to sleep knowing I would be fine in the morning
I wasn't. It was a solid week before I could really maneuver myself without sharp pain. But, on Sunday morning I planted myself up on the stage on the stool on one cheek and sang my song...When I Am Gone...It was a hit that brought me a reception line of appreciative congregants...wonderful but all I could think about was growing up in chaos...
I knew nothing about chakras but what was happening was a definitive opening of my Root Chakra via the lumbar slip that leaned more towards the emotion laden citadel of typical repressed human pain, the Sacral Chakra, three inches below the navel.The earthquake had happened...the fault had ruptured and I began my journey of reclaiming me.
Third Eye Tunnel
It was Thanksgiving Evening in 1974 in South Lake Tahoe, California. I was part of the band, Flapjaw (yep, that was the name), and we were playing at the Stateline Mexican Village Restaurant on a 4 days a week schedule, living all together in an apartment under the trees. There was 5 in the band and my girl friend from Virginia, Mary, was there, which gave she and I the bedroom while all the rest found a spot in the other three rooms. We had made acquaintances and one member, Gary, had started a relationship with the local woman who was hosting the Thanksgiving gala.
This gig in Tahoe was on the tailend of a long Summer where the band of three at the time had traveled to Boulder, Colorado to seek musical fame. Turned out to be a Summer of excessive substances (for some) and a lot of stress and fear based living for others (me, the small town boy from California). That is why I glommed onto Mary as a savior for the chaos I was enduring. And now, after the failed fame in Boulder, we found our way via the spin by one Stephen Peters (primary songwriter of our group, who convinced us of the good life in the middle of Winter in Tahoe...yikes!
I was unhappy and really wanted out of the whole mess. I have learned how one's inner yearnings, especially strong ones, can magnetize circumstances to force the action (that is called the Highest Good). Now, of course, I had no idea at all of these Celestial inner and outer workings in play. So, there we all were at the Thanksgiving feast. I had navigated upstairs to watch the typical football games on that day (as you shall see in another entry below, football was a big deal for me so I sought its known comfort to soften the intensity...)The small TV was a black and white (remember those?) and three of us were upstairs drinking and watching in the growing darkness. All of a sudden the TV seemed to move into the distance leaving me at the back end of a tunnel. Sensations swept through me centering on my forehead, the back of my head, my heart area, my palms, and my knees...buzzing, heat, annoying, freaky. I got up to go downstairs, stumbling from my perch behind myself, to talk with Mary. I thought that would help it all balance again.
It did not. Within three very challenging days in the nether world behind my head, Mary and I were on a Greyhound bound for Paso Robles to go home to my Mother. I was scared. And, there we were heading right back to the source of the many woundings, seeking safety and comfort. My, how the Universe works.In a nutshell, my Mother hated and blamed Mary, who soon flew back to Virginia with the idea that I would fly out when I was "better" and we would marry. You can guess how all of that turned out.
What began is a process that involved the re-opening of the Third Eye chakra so I could start to access my dormant power of conscious vision. In the long process I sought out the previous elements of comfort, weeding through the fuzzy vision I had...I went to the Junior College to play football again with my high school coach ...for a short time. It was plain that anything familiar from the past was not going to bring relief. The sensations in my body continued (some would say it was anxiety but I knew it was more than that name and all the specific reactions tied to it under the guise of treatment/cure). I started some therapy that only got me a prescription for Lorazepam, one of the classic "just take away the sensations" drugs.My own wisdom guided me to not take it. I was thinking I had to walk into this and see what it was about. Now, that is inner wisdom, as it turns out. I did keep the lorazepam in my pocket and in my hand just in case. Never believed in medication. What I have learned about the chakra energetic systems gives me the reasons why.
So, here my third eye chakra shocked me back into jettisoning the old vision and opening up to the greater me. My forehead frontal lobe needed new attention so it could start to run the show with clarity. The back of the head sensations was a combination of my reptilian brain in runaway mode receiving a greater influx of high vibration through my own seat of God, the medulla oblongata, the place where pure spirit feeds us the bigger picture. The opening activated wounding from all chakras below so I was thrust into a long long journey of real healing release. What a blessing that Thanksgiving Day event was...though it took years for me me to truly grok the significance. This whole experience directed me to a family of choice, SGN of San Luis Obispo, under the loving tutelage of a surrogate father, Robert Simmons. It all put my life on a solid track that still feeds me today.
The chakras have no timetable or sequence of revelatory opening. The moments of living, the depth of the wounding, the current beliefs, and the ability to respond rather than react to the form of the Now...all serve as the conscious and life changing tools that brought me foundation that had not been felt/experienced since the day before my actual incarnation moment. Yep!
Sacral Sensations
Following the "Third Eye Tunnel" event described above began the inner journey of paying directed attention to my physical body...and this was a very profound process on the reclamation of Whole Self. To underscore the foundational idea here, the human body is a communication force with the conscious self...when that part tunes in. Humanity, much of it, has been diverted to believe that anything happening in the physical is first looked at as a problem that must be fixed and gotten ride of. The long time development of dependency on pills for the this and that to "cure" us has left us not only suspect of any "action contact" from the physical body but has also implanted a wash over of numbness and a tendency to ignore the "callings of the body.
The design of the physical is encompassed in the Whole Body which includes the physical, the energetic anatomy, the emotions, the thoughts and established belief patterns, and even one's own spiritual connection openness. The body is designed for self perpetuating health and longevity. Yes, let that sink in. Moments of living happen. We respond in a wide variety of levels. We are designed to process the impact in the now, via the emotional release, the clearing of the energetic, and the reclamation of the clear and balanced state. A back up system in the form of the thematic chakras is also in place, as if the designer knew there would be interrupts and roadblocks to the flowing state of ongoing health. Unspoken words, actions restrained, judgements perpetrated on self, inner blame games, reinforcement of lower frequency beliefs and patterns, all serve to create what I will call inner toxic energetic debris. That debris is held and stored in the chakras.
The chakras have a finite storage capacity. And they will start immediately to send out callings to the conscious self to clear the debris. The callings take the form of pain, numbness, zingers, heat, tingling sensations, mystery aches and pains, etc.. If these callings are heard and the consciousness focuses on them then the energy is allowed to release in ways the body knows by design. When the callings are ignored the storage in increased and the chakras begin to call more frequently and strongly. The more one ignores, the more debris is held and the louder the call will be in intensity. The kicker here is that energy stored and stagnant slows in vibration. The slowing of the vibration changes the form of the substance from energetic to physical. In other words, conditions in the physical develop to become "dis-eases"...and the list of these is everywhere.
Unfortunately, Western Medicine especially, has built a whole system on naming, diagnosing, and "curing" via prescriptions replete with hordes of side effects and the old "let's just get rid of it" surgery. As a result of this long time system of health most people are running scared, fearing death, and being silent about it. And the cycle just goes on and on. And don't even get me started about the 2020-22? cycle of virus that has handicapped the bulk of the world, except for those with the resources. Humanity...geeez...if a greater truth were only known by the masses.
Well, the truth of our design just never gives up. It keeps dialing our number knowing that, at some point, we will answer. When I started feeling the body sensations I immediately thought something was wrong with me. But when I took action and left the circumstances in Tahoe, I started to notice that they were less constant. I noticed also that when I sent my attention to my kneecaps that were buzzing the sensations would often move to my sacral chakra below the belly button. Not knowing about chakras I was simply being the unattached observed. That was critical as I did not attach a lot of emotion and and thought to it. Perfect. I noticed. And sometimes I would feel waves of emotion well up, anger, sadness, tears, heat...and like clouds in the sky, they would show up and have their moments of witnessed release and move on across my inner sky. Slowly I began to pay more attention and consequently started getting more clearing results...in other words feeling more balanced.
And when I would focus on an area that was calling, I would change my breathing automatically. It slowed down and got deeper. Soon I saw a correlation to the breath applied to the sensation and the felicity of the rebalancing taking place. Change happened. Over a period of years I began to develop the experience of the body wisdom and the symbiosis between the chakras and emotions and the capacity to find solid foundation and be in a balanced state of health.
Heart Is Awash
I was living in San Luis Obispo in a boarding house studio apartment overlooking the backyard of a fraternity. It was downtown by the creek and just a block away from one of the regular places I gigged, McLintock's Saloon. It was in the 80's around the time of the movie, ET. I had a career dancing with being a performer in all the clubs and being a fourth grade classroom teacher in Paso Robles at the very school, Glen Speck, that I attended as a boy. I was being a popular musician who took advantage of the fringe benefits, initiating frequent relationships that were a blend of spontaneous and committed, but which always ended with me setting up being left behind. It fit my script of childhood abandonment so well. Though I had awareness of my process to some degree, I was on the brink of entering the fertile land of the Support Group Network with Dr. Robert Simmons that I spoke of before.
But, I was still invested in loving and leaving in a wounded dance of perpetual chaos and hurt. I would like to say it was a dark and stormy night...but it wasn't. I had just finished a gig at McLintocks where I had to navigate the attendance of two woman who I was "involved with". On that night the band initiated the no breaks policy and we played straight through. One of them left towards the end and gave me one of those piercing looks that gave me chills. The other stayed until we were done. I was needing to be alone so I said so. And I was not very diplomatic about it. In a nutshell, I felt crappy. Went back to the place and downloaded equipment and settled in. Saw some dishes in the sink so I took the energy and put it to work. As I washed the dishes I noticed a sensation in my chest. I gave it attention and that caused it to happen. A tear started to crawl from my left eye.
I really hadn't dried much through the years. When I played football in high school I would sob at the end of the game as we stood in front of the stands singing the school hymn. I was the team captain so nobody really said anything. But I did get looks. To me it was the best thing about the game...the sobbing release after the vicious sport was over. (more on that below) But soon, the single tear turned into a torrent and I sobbed for a good twenty minutes, completely outside of any control. I moaned and had visions of a little boy caught in some terrible situations. I felt like my chest was being wrung like a sponge. I cried myself to sleep. Woke up the next day and sobbed some more. Went to see ET the next night and sobbed in the theater with arms raised out when ET said "go home". Tears...tears...buckets of uncried tears. Words from my Mother, "you have to earn the right to cry", surfaced...WTF?! does that mean...tears flowing for three months off and on. And then the sun came out and I stood in a new frequency.
My heart chakra had reached its saturation point, filled with woundings, pain, uncried tears, disappointments, broken promises, abuse, lies, mistreatments, self pity, yearnings for love in any form that was loving...couldn't take another breath without the release. And then my years with SGN started. I had cleared the space within to now go deep into the depths of the woundings. And back in the early 80's that is what you did. Go into it with wild abandon..."go for the discharge" was the rallying cry of us travelers. If you could get to the tears you were doing good work. And sure, it was somewhat forced and a status symbol of sorts, but my how it changed me and my inner world and my patterns and my beliefs. And it, the crying, has been the salve of my moments of living right up until this morning, where I type at 69 years old. Praise be! That I have learned and continue to apply this design treasure...let the emotions flow naturally...always.
Football from a Solar Plexus
The Cosmos is crafty. When Source and Higher Self and Inner Child come together the unexpected shows up in spades, mainly because it is not under the influence of the constantly being programmed conscious self. In high school in the tail end of the 60's, you played football. It was the king of sports. And I was really good at it. But, not because of talent and skill so much, but because it gave me that full speed outlet to squeeze the pain out of my power center, the solar plexus (of which I knew nothing in 1969). Honestly, I felt alive and vital and conquered whatever was in front of me. It was that feeling that allowed me to face the inner demons of events perpetrated upon me as a small boy. I was vicious and ruthless and strong enough to blow people over. Whatever was in my way I would do the football thing. It was expected. It was celebrated. It was life saving for me...
The power center, solar plexus, is a collection of elements ranging from decision making and choice to taking action to making adjustments to expressing anger. It facilitates one's capacity to interface with others in a loving or in a critical, judgmental, abusive way, depending on its condition and amount of repressed energetic toxicity. It is where we are able to access courage and will and movement and take a stand. It is where we can turn rage into love. It is the place of decisive action. It is where we find and massage our power into confidence and care and a capacity for self care and compassion for others. It is the land of I can take care of myself. It is also where we learn to feel and "be" powerless. It is where I build being controlled by others, abused, helpless, weak, wimpy. We overcompensate because we are so frightened by the the specter of releasing the inner monster that contains the woundings that we never want to experience again.
The wounds I carried into the sport in the 60's were long in the making. I had no acceptable outlet for them as a boy or an early teen. So, I redirected into accomplishment. In everything I did I poured my capacity to excel into it. And I did. And each time I celebrated in the emptiness on the other side of the next achievement, I stuffed and stored a little more of the energetic memory into my already impacted solar plexus. I had even gained weight in 5th grade in an attempt to protect my center. We do what we do until we choose otherwise.
I have often felt that without football I would have been in jail, wrapped in the consequences of a crime of passion, a blind rage that blasted out on someone. When I left football and high school I was scared that I would succumb to the hate I felt still there, now growing without an outlet. I turned to smoking pot and using amphetamines for fun and early morning drives to Yosemite just to catch the sunrise. I drank a lot and sought pleasure and distraction. And I stored more in the festering pool of anger that only grew, When, in a relationship in the early 80's, I said something that angered my partner and she attacked me, I "defended" myself, and pushed back, dislocating her shoulder. I felt terrible and decided that I must push that rage deeper and deeper or I would kill...and so it went...until I started to process and cathart in SGN.
I learned, most importantly that there were "safe ways" to process anger, that I could drain the swamp through actions that relied on physical movement and action, that I could use my voice to channel the repressed sounds of the anguish and dismay I had so long stuffed. In short, I was learning indirectly about chakra care...conscious chakra care. And that has become a foundational bastion of all my work, teachings, mentoring, and even my music. It is the way home to that reclamation of the true self, the celestial template that we each carry inside...Amen...
Throat Chakra Silence
The Throat Chakra is the chimney for all the chakras below, 1-4.It is one of the primary exit points of the unexpressed and repressed energy of the kept in place wounds. The voice serves as the prime cleansing tool for our well being.No wonder that humanity has done its best to silence the masses in a host of ways. Consider these common injunctions: "children should be seen and not heard", "please, just mouth the words to the song...don't sing", "raise your hands to be called upon to speak", "shut up!" When a country conquers another, one of the first acts/laws is silence the music or the capacity to freely speak. There are churches that forbid vocal music. Certain vocal sounds are relegated to certain rooms of the house. Current society has devolved into fake news and purposefully spewing lies and propaganda because people will believe it. People have learned to align with propaganda to fit into that brand of normal. One's "word" doesn't mean much anymore. All of these purposeful actions contain the debris in the chakras, which, in my medical model, leads to the manifestation of physical disease in an effort to get conscious attention to get clear.
For some reason I came to this Earth knowing the importance of the voice. I had to navigate a growing up where the voice/expression was curtailed. Mother, for her own wounded reasons, wanted only happy happy in the house...no room for the sharing of hurt or pain...swallow that crap! Random sounds and utterings often resulted in me having to sit in the corner time facing the wall. Listen closely and you could hear me whispering my frustrations. But, my silent times as a boy actually impacted my throat profoundly and actually planted the seeds of how the body works to stay in the state of health.
The more I was directed to refrain from sharing my challenges the more I began to develop periodic throat conditions like swollen tonsils and glands and sore throats. When these occurred I would be taken out to the local army base, Camp Roberts, to experience the painful process of "milking" my swollen glands in my neck. It would bring me to tears (yay!) and I would cry my way back to temporary balance. This went on for years. I somehow kept my tonsils through this all, a miracle, especially in these times when let's just snip it out so they won't bother you anymore was standard faire...yikes!
I learned to process my pain alone outside in our big yard, setting up green army men to bomb with rocks and all the glorious sounds of explosions and the gratification of destroying the enemy (army men stood at the helm of my greatest woundings). Those sounds that were not words were the most balancing thing I could do in these days. Thank you, inner wisdom!
The voice and the throat chakra are pivotal elements for whole being health. And, in some ways, they are the most easily compromised because there is such social, familial, and cultural debris about the spoken word. As stated, the throat is the chimney for the lower chakras. When it is blocked then the release is severely compromised. And that is a sure recipe for increased physical issues and conditions. Bottom ;line is to use the voice to express what is up. The counseling and therapeutic professions gave us the powerful technique of gestalt, way back in the 70's. This method of creating a scenario that acts as if you are addressing the people, places, are things but are simply talking to an empty chair, for example. It is very useful in moving the unexpressed and keeping the throat unimpeded.
The expression of your truth in safe ways via these scenarios is a clarifying tool that will deliver in a growing number of ways. And, remember that the use of sounds rather than words can be even more cleansing because there is no issue with the meanings of the words...just the blessings of sound clearing the residual.
As you can see the conscious use of the chakras is a reliable vehicle for maintaining and even expanding your whole body health. We all have a story with its unique components and events and impact. Your journey has brought you to the now. Relate to your own history through the chakras and start to develop the relationship that will assist you for the rest of your incarnation.
