Source transcript supplied with the recording; paragraph breaks added for readability. Transcription may contain errors. Statements about energy and symptom associations reflect the presenter’s perspective, not diagnostic findings.

Hi, I’m Tracy Rowe. This is my dog, Una. She wanted to sit up here, so that’s cool. I wanted to talk a little bit about how I came to want to develop this class. So the concept of chakras is something that I don’t take as being imagination. I see it as a very, very real thing. So I’m going to disclose a little bit of a weird thing about me. When I was a little kid, long story short, I noticed that people had these energy centers in their body. Because I could always just kind of see energy as a kid. And still can. But as a kid, of course, it wasn’t something anyone else seemed to be paying any attention to. But I could just see it. And I had the good fortune as a child of when other people didn’t see things, I didn’t assume that they weren’t there.

I just go, okay, they just don’t see it. So I knew there were these energy spots in the body. And I could see how they were connected to each other. And I could see how sometimes they would be kind of bright. And sometimes they’d be kind of dark. And I was able to move energy around a bit and help people with pain and things like that. But I didn’t know, I’d never heard of chakras. I didn’t know what they were. In my late teens, very, very early 20s, maybe 20ish, 21ish, I’d heard the term chakra. Like I heard it bandied about. But I didn’t know what it was. So I didn’t pay any real attention to something about chakras. Okay, I heard that word.

Then one day I was walking along the street and there was a piece of paper. Like you know how sometimes if you say pero in the wind it kind of goes flaps along the road, right? And you know, being a person who didn’t want litter. And also because I thought that was kind of interesting, I went and I picked it up. And it was a diagram of energy system and it said the chakra system. And I immediately just started crying. Because for the first time in my life I was like, oh, other people see that too. Like it’s an actual thing and that’s what a chakra is. Oh, there’s a word for that and everything, right? So to me the idea of chakras just doesn’t seem like far-fetched.

Because I knew about it before I knew there was a word for it. So that’s, there you go. So that’s where I’m coming from. So if that’s too out there, this just might not be for you. And that’s cool. But that’s where I’m coming from. As I’ve now for push in 30 years, I think, I’ve been a psychotherapist. And one thing I began to observe working with people was that when they are, and I work from a somatic perspective with EMDR and POTS informed work. And just body awareness in the work that I do. So one thing when someone, something’s coming up for someone I’ll say like, well, where are you feeling that in your body? And over time I began to really observe that if they were feeling shame, they would feel it here.

If they were feeling a fear of rejection or a wound about rejection, they would feel it here. If they’re feeling anger, they feel it here. I mean, they’re just on and on. There’s just all these very consistent patterns that people, or if they’re feeling overburdened with responsibilities, whether theirs or someone else’s, they’ll feel it in their shoulders. There’s just these very consistent things that other folks have observed other than myself. But since I’ve observed it firsthand, it’s like, wow, it’s so consistent. So it also tells me that not only are the chakras a real thing, and that our bodies are consistently holding certain kinds of things in consistent places.

That to me gives it an objective reality. It’s not like some people feel shame and it’s in their elbow. You know, unless there’s a physical injury that also has something to do with their elbow, that they might be holding something traumatic in their elbow, it’s not going to be, you know, that can happen too, right? If it’s an injury and there’s a trauma around the injury, they might hold some of that trauma in their wounded part, physically wounded part. But consistently people hold their stuff in inconsistent places. And so that began to make me more and more think about, then let’s explore learning about ourselves and about what’s going on with our clients, if you have clients, based on where they’re holding things.

And then, and that’s good information, that’s good information. But then also helping them to learn how, helping ourselves and other people learn how to do what they can to open up those chakras, chakra systems so that they can do what they’re there to do. Ideally our chakras, if everything is in perfect balance, then each chakra should be about the same size in terms of, in our imaginal realm. I say imaginal, which doesn’t mean the same as imaginary. Imaginal meaning the images that are in our psyche that are giving us information that is very real information. But that isn’t visible with our typical faculties, you know, so that’s imaginal. But for people to be able to work with their system so that the chakras are each clear and flowing, so that the energy can flow from the center of the cosmos, however you imagine the cosmos, and from the earth energy, from the center of the earth, however you understand that, coming up in, and that those flows are happening in a perfect balance.

There’s all sorts of different beliefs that people have that cause those blockages. Our beliefs are the things that cause blockages or not. Whether it’s our own beliefs or beliefs we adopted from somewhere else, or beliefs that we took on as ancestral burdens, wherever it is, it’s some kind of a belief. And navigating and negotiating with those beliefs is what allows us to shift and be able to allow that flow to happen. So that’s why I felt like this would be a really useful thing for people to work on their own healing, their own energy flow, and helping other people too, with learning how to do that for themselves. It is possible to do energy work on other people, but my, what I feel like is part of what my task is in my work, is to help people to learn to do it for themselves.

And empower people to not always seek outside themselves for someone else to solve things for them, but to learn how to solve our own stuff. And to facilitate and help create space compassionately for other people that want to do their work too, but to not do it for them. So that’s the perspective that I have on that. And in the process of this course, some of the things that I want to introduce are understanding of the chakras, understanding of how to interact with your own, how to help other people become more aware of how to work with their chakra system, and energy generally. And also some techniques that are not too terribly complicated to get in touch with breath and get in touch with the body.

And guided, some guided visualizations, some simple breath work. I prefer, my philosophy is about personal growth is, nobody has time to like be stuck forever. We’re here to do cool stuff on this planet and it’s no coincidence that we’re here. That’s another thing I really do believe. And if we’re just mired down in stuff, we’ll waste our time. And so, and that being said, the process of learning about yourself and expanding awareness is like, you get to do that forever, but you don’t have to do it from a space of being mired down forever. I just don’t want that for me and I wouldn’t want that for other people. So that’s a general framework of what this course is about and what I hope to help people find more access to.

So I’m excited about doing this. I hope it’ll be fun. So thanks so much.

Source transcript supplied with the recording; paragraph breaks added for readability. Transcription may contain errors. Statements about energy and symptom associations reflect the presenter’s perspective, not diagnostic findings.

Okay, so this is going to be the exercise where we’re going to use body scan combined with chakra awareness so that you can start to get a sense of where the chakras are in your own body, noticing any blockages that you notice in your own body. And then we’re going to work on how to, with the intention of your thoughts, how to balance it. So let’s start with just some of the breathing that we talked about in the previous in a previous module. Let’s start with that paying attention to your that spot in your belly where your navel is your navel, your belly button, your umbilicus, whatever you want to call it, but just without even doing anything else, just noticing in to that place in your abdomen where you have a belly button, that place on your belly where you have a belly button, just with your thoughts, not doing anything else, but just noticing into that space.

You may be noticing, I hope you are, will be noticing that the breath just seems to decide automatically without any particular special effort, it just starts to go in there to that lower belly breathing. Another thing to keep in mind is that exhales are something we have to often pay attention to but inhales happen automatically. So don’t worry about counting breaths, inhale and exhale just every once in a while give a big loud exhale, allowing your abdominal muscles to push the rest of that air out. And then just relax while your breath just begins to regulate itself again. And so now, since we’re going to be paying attention to the chakra system, and the chakras move up along the, from the base of the spine all the way up to the crown of the head, be aware of having your posture be comfortable but upright.

As you are doing this, if you want to have your feet flat on the floor that can be really grounding but if you’d rather sit cross-legged, right now I’m sitting cross-legged, that feels really comfortable to me. So whatever feels comfortable but being aware of rolling your shoulders back and having your spine comfortably erect and your neck elongated. And noticing, imagining that there’s a little string on the top of your head just kind of gently pulling your head upward. So nothing strained but just comfortable. And now we’re going to start at the root chakra. So that’s going to be right if you imagine with your mind right where your tailbone is.

Your tailbone, maybe around in and around where your anus is, your rectum, your tailbone, just noticing with your mind, just imagining into that area and allowing yourself to imagine a disc that is red at that location. Very traditionally the root chakra is depicted as red and there’s probably some good reasons for that. Thinking about a red disc and now allowing that disc to become a ball to go from two dimensions to three dimensions. And just notice as you turn in there, how big is it? How big is the ball? Does it easily, can you easily imagine it being red? Do you imagine a different color? Does it seem more like light and dark? Just like there’s no wrong way to understand these things.

Your intuition as you turn into these things will give you a lot of information. So see if you can, if it is red, let it be red. Or check to see if you can imagine it red, but if it doesn’t want to be red, see what else it wants to do. Just let it, let yourself notice how big is that ball. And as we move up the chakras this first round, we’re just going to kind of see what their baseline status is. We’re not going to try to make any kind of adjustments or interventions at this point. We’re just going to see what is it like to start with. And now moving up to about two inches below your navel, two inches below your belly button with your mind’s eye, if you can imagine into that area, that’s your second chakra.

And that chakra is very frequently depicted as orange. So see if it feels orange to you or if you imagine it a different color and see if you can find the disc or the ball, something there on the inside of your body. And again, notice is if it’s a disc, see if you can transform it to a ball moving it from two dimension to three dimension. Notice how big is it? Is it easy to imagine it being orange? Or is it another color? Is it difficult to find it? Just notice if you have any difficulty finding any of these chakras. And then let’s move up to the third chakra, which is about three or so inches above, three to four inches above your navel. It’s gonna be like right about here.

And that chakra is often depicted as being yellow. Notice is it big, is it small? And as you move through these chakras, notice if you notice any particular discomfort in any of them, any resistance, any tension, any surprise that your chakras feel surprised that you’re noticing them just kind of really start to notice what’s there. And that chakra is often people might feel a deficit there if they’re having a hard time having motivation or moving forward with goals or identifying goals. Moving up to the now I’d like to move up again to the heart chakra. And the heart chakra is often depicted as being green, or sometimes pink, depending on the system, but but often to pick up often depicted as being green.

And you might notice that just like a rainbow, we’ve got red, orange, yellow, green, because it’s like how rainbow colors, how those visible spectrum how the spectrum of light will bifurcate in a rainbow. So we’ve got green, it’s often depicted as green. And that’s the center chakra because you’re going to have three chakras below and three chakras above. And that’s right there. That fourth chakra is right in the center and it’s the heart chakra it’s going to be associated with the actual physical heart, the lungs, breathing, respiration, all those things. And see if you can notice a disk. Notice it does it feel expanded there? Does it feel constricted there?

Does it feel blocked? Is it easy to imagine it being green, or some other color or is it difficult? If you can find the disk, see if you can allow that disk to go into three dimensions and be a ball right there in the center of your body. And then moving up to the throat chakra, just noticing the throat that’s often depicted as blue. So you can see blue and yellow make green, red and yellow make orange. That’s kind of how you can kind of also keep an eye, you know, be aware of what this is depicting. And again, colors are not people who say are colors important in chakras? And the answer is always yes and no. They can be useful information. But if you don’t see colors, that’s fine.

There’s other ways to perceive things and colors can be distracting for some people. It’s not really everybody’s different, or there’s a lot of different ways to do things. But noticing to that throat and at the very center of the throat, you can maybe even imagine at the back of your throat, seeing if you can find a disk or any little spot there. And see how big is it? Can the energy expand past your throat or does it stay tight? When you start to give attention to your throat, does it feel scared and close up? Just notice what you notice in the throat. There’s a lot of stuff often that happens for folks in their throats. And we’ll talk about that when we go through the scan.

This is just the first checking in what you got kind of scan. Now going on up to the middle of your forehead, often referred to as the third eye or the pineal gland. But imagine not just on the surface of your forehead, but imagine on the inside if you went in halfway into your skull. Look, look there and see if you can imagine into that space. And that the color depicted in this area is often described as indigo or violet or purple. But see if you can kind of get a sense of what’s there. And as you do that, you might notice, see what happens as you start to notice into that part of you. I start to notice a lot of things going on with my regular eyes when I do that.

But just notice what you notice. And that’s an area often associated with intuition. The third eye being able to see past the things that people see, see easily into the realms they see less often, right, the mystical realms. And then I’d like you to go up again to the crown of your head. And you can imagine if you’ve ever seen like on the fontanel when a baby’s their little fontanel closes, that little space. And right before and before it closes that is that place right there where the skull doesn’t all the way close yet, right when you’re first born, and then it finally does that right that spot where that closes, that’s the seventh chakra right there.

That’s where it starts and that chakra. Imagine that one rather than being entirely like inside of your head. Imagine it being like a crown that kind of goes above your head a little bit and, and I often for me, I it’s hard for me to think of that one as any other color than just pure white. And it is often depicted that way. But that’s, that’s the only way I can see it or think of it. But just check in there. And if you notice when you give some attention to that spot at the crown of your head, notice if you notice any tension in your head or any weird feelings or if it feels super open and great, or if it feels strange in some way, whatever it is, just give some attention to that.

What is it like for you? Okay. All right, so that was the first pass through those, those seven chakras to kind of do a check in on what what’s there. Um, so next I want to talk a little bit about what those chakras represent, or the parts of our psyche, the parts of our mind that tend to be stored in those parts of our, our energy field. So at that root chakra, like the name implies, it grounds us into the earth, we can really focus on that chakra to connect to earth. Then the next chakra up is going to be sexuality, creativity. And like ultimate creativity, because those are the that’s where the organs of the body that where we can, where men and women can combine their stuff to make a baby, right.

So the ultimate like, cricket creation, how creativity happens there, right, the ability to make a person. But also, not just that, right, it’s also the creative inquiry into thinking creatively, being able to explore something you haven’t explored before. I think there’s a lot of mystery in that one, in that chakra, it’s kind of it’ll get activated by things that feel kind of exciting or wondrous. And then the chakra, that third chakra, that’s where we have when people talk about a guy to, he’s got a fire in his belly, right, or he’s got butterflies in his stomach. Those are descriptions of sensations that that chakra is about these all these kind of phrases that are cliches that people use, like fire in your belly and broken hearts and my throat is, you know, I, my, I’m swallowing my words, all those kinds of things are they are very literally depictions of what happens in our bodies.

They’re not just metaphors, you know, they’re really actually quite real. expressions of what happens. So but in that, so a lot of times, if a person is having a blockage there in that third chakra, it’s going to be a fear of doing something if you’re a failure, right, a fear of Oh, what if I don’t succeed? Often a lot of times people will will experience shame feelings there. And not like the same as a conscience of like, right and wrong, I did the wrong thing and now I feel bad about it. It’s not like that. It’s like that shame wound that people can feel of I’m not good enough, no matter what like this, I’m not good enough. That will just blurt into our conscious into our minds.

I’m not ever not based on any legitimate evidence, but just, you know, a wound that, that until it’s healed seem to be something people everyone has that that fear of not being good enough until it can get healed. But it seems to become standard equipment for some reason. And then up in the heart chakra, right, that that that is definitely a place when people are feeling that they’re afraid of loss, they’re afraid of losing a friend, they’re afraid of losing connection with people, they’re afraid of being hurt and rejected, they will feel it there. Or if it’s a wound about rejection, they will feel it there. It’s also a place when it is open, that when it is open and not encumbered by attachment to outcome attachment to whether or not you know, whether or not like caring about people fearless of whether or not it’s gonna you’re gonna be rejected, right, which we can tell you that we’ll talk about that later on when we talk about like, the idea of compassion versus sympathy or empathy, but, but it can be the place where you can just feel fully open.

And it’s it becomes safe, it’s safe to be open. When you realize that you don’t have to hold other people’s crap. Again, we’ll talk about that in another module. But it can be very unsafe to feel open if you feel like being rejected or hurt will be a mortal wound, right? So people can be very if people have been wounded, they can sometimes go and hold let nothing in, right? So we can have a very closed heart or an open heart, right? And those, again, sayings that people use, but they’re very literal in what they mean. So then we’re gonna move up into the throat. Noticing in the throat. Again, people will have a very blocked throat, if they are afraid of saying the wrong thing or being punished for what they say or being misunderstood or, or that for whatever reason that their wound is that it isn’t safe to speak up it isn’t for whatever reason, it isn’t safe to be speak up.

And if they have a lot of fear of expressing anger for fear that the anger will be punished, it’ll be tight in the throat and also very tight in the jaw. The jaw will be very tight because the anger gets stored up in there. So unexpressed anger can often you know, show up in like, jaw tightness, teeth grinding, which can also lead to a lot of headaches from the teeth grinding, so that can be something to people’s fear of their own anger, fear of expressing their anger, shame around having anger battle, you know, ignoring stuff doesn’t make it go away, y’all. So it’s like it gets stuck in there. So that’s another thing when people are holding in this area, you want to find out, well, okay, what are you afraid to say?

You know, what are they afraid to express? Then moving up into this, a lot of times when people have a very closed or fear of their own intuition, it’s going to show up as migraines. Because that third eye is like, no, don’t let anything in, weird stuff is weird, you know. So it’s like letting, becoming more or less fearful about just seeing beyond the slow vibrating couches and tables, you know, be able to see beyond that. That’s my dog. She’s concerned about me pounding on the slow vibrating chair. And then up, then we’ll go up into here and that’s going to be your divine connection in the way that the root is your earth connection and all of that healing of earth energy.

And then this is your divine or cosmic connection. So the more that and again, this will also fear of fear of that it would be scary if there’s something beyond you, you know, that you might be connected to something lovely beyond yourself, people can will have him block that off, maybe that they’ve had religious trauma where they believe that the divine is out to get them in some way or that, that the divine Supreme Being of the universe is really trying to catch them messing up all the time is kind of, you know, if that can, then they will often maybe have a block there. So there’s different reasons why people have blocks. And there’s different reasons why they open.

One of the things you might find too in when you look at imbalances, because sometimes one chakra will be really open and it’s coordinating chakra will be really closed. So it’s almost like, oh, it’s okay for me to think about the divine, but it’s not okay for me to think about the earth. Or Oh, it’s okay to think about money, but I’m not allowed to care about people or what ever, you know, there are these different kinds of like, it’s scary, too scary to care about people, because they could hurt me, but I can care about success. Right? Or, oh, it’s only okay to care about people and I can’t care about success. Right? So the so you can find out a lot if you notice what chakras feel safe and open and which ones don’t, you can get a lot of sense of what it is that you or someone else might be feeling unsafe about, because we will shut down a chakra unintentionally, it’s happens very, you know, it’s something we do with our very sub sub sub liminal thoughts.

But we can learn a lot and as we work through what it takes to open things up, we can find out what what fears and issues are stored in each of these. And that’s part of how we can use awareness of the chakra system to also discover roots of issues and eventually come into a space of balance where each chakra can hold its own power. And that they can and that energy can flow freely through. So that’s, that’s, we’ll return to more of this in another module, but that’s a good starting point. So thanks so much. We’ll get back to more material in a little bit.