Travel, Family and the First Chakra

The kids and I traveled to Michigan last week to visit family and I had the opportunity to witness some great first chakra communication and gain new awareness.  The first chakra, located at the base of the spine and connected to the physical area of elimination, is energetically about acceptance and release (elimination) as well as habits, patterns and our physical identity and survival.

Several days into the trip, I realized that my bowels were not performing in their usual manner…in fact, I hadn’t had a bowel movement at all.  I didn’t feel overly concerned nor physically bloated but I was having a lot of lower back pain which I attributed to the seven hour car ride and hotel beds.  At this point, I simply observed the situation with a “hmmm, isn’t this interesting.”

Since the first chakra is connected to habits, it isn’t uncommon when one travels and is out of their normal routines for the bowels to be a little thrown off.  This is especially true if the diet changes and less fruits, vegetables or whole grains are eaten.  Knowing this, I made a mental note and a conscious effort to eat more veggies.  Several days later and no change, I took things a step further and did a yoga set called “kriya for lower spine and elimination” which did the trick and slowly got things moving.

That could have been where things ended.  A physical change with a physical stretching remedy.  But being who I am (an exploring mind) I wondered what else might be there for me to see or hear.  Sometimes I ask these questions before my meditation time; this time I chose to simply ponder over several days, along my beach walks and kayak trip, and allow my inner wisdom to share.  And what showed up was around acceptance, specifically around my relationship with my sister but also reflected in the larger sense of accepting people for who they are and trying to find the place of connection which honors both people’s truths.

Over the years as I’ve become healthier inside and out, I feel like I’ve been able to hold this space of mutual honoring better.  And I do think on the surface I was doing that well on this trip.  Yet, as I looked more closely, I accepted that there was still some judgement on my part.  The judgement didn’t show up in outright criticism but rather took the form of sharing thoughts about her with other people.  It wasn’t quite gossip but it also wasn’t neutral observation.  There was a thread of something else in the conversation…emotion, discomfort, drama…I don’t exactly know but it didn’t feel clean.  What I do know is that the fact that I needed to talk about it to several other people meant there was something I was still processing in our relationship, still in the transition of acceptance without resistance.

As this last piece of awareness settled in, my body returned to it’s normal flow and my back pain fully dissipated.  I still don’t have all the answers of how I want to move more completely into acceptance, but I got the message and for today that was enough.