Sacral Chakra Healing in 5 Simple Steps
Here’s an in-depth look at disturbances that can affect the second chakra, commonly known as the sacral chakra and to how perform chakra healing to restore optimum balance and aliveness in your everyday life.
The sacral chakra, or Swadhisthana in Sanskrit, is located in the lower abdomen just below the coccyx or tailbone. The chakra color of the second chakra is orange, and its element is water. It is associated primarily with emotional responses and regulation and is often referred to as the seat of emotions. It is also associated with the sense of taste and with reproductive function.
Close neighbor to the Muladhara chakra or root chakra, it is one step removed from preoccupations about survival, safety, and instinctual sensory perception of the world. It allows us to creatively deal with what emerges from our experience and develop a response informed by our emotional patterns and intelligence.
Because of its close physical connection with the pelvis area and the reproductive organs, this chakra is also the center of the search for pleasure, whether sensual or through your daily life experiences. Abundant creativity and strongly felt intuition are two additional facets of an open sacral chakra.
“I enjoy life fully” could be the sacral chakra’s motto. An open, balanced sacral chakra allows you to experience intimacy and love freely and fully, to be honest and non-judgmental about your desires, and to live as your authentic self without fear.
A blockage in the second chakra can cause both physical and emotional distress if not healed. Chakras are points in the body that moderate energy, allowing it to flow freely and maintain health and vitality. Unfortunately, the chakras can develop blockages that limit that energy flow. Chakra healing aims at restoring balance and freeing any blockage or kink in your energy body that prevents it from functioning optimally.
Chakras can become either over- or underactive, each leading to slightly different symptoms.
An overactive sacral chakra can cause:
An energy deficiency in the second chakra can cause:
1. Getting lost in fantasies
A common symptom of second chakra imbalance is the tendency to get consumed in fantasies about life’s pleasures instead of enjoying them. For instance, you may lose yourself in sexual fantasies rather than connecting with an actual or potential partner or be obsessed with connecting sensually or sexually with every attractive person who crosses your path.
2. Excessive Indulging and Addictive Behavior
Getting into the habit of satisfying your desires by indulging could also indicate chakra imbalance, especially with regards to addictive behaviors, whether it’s with food, substances, television or games for instance. Knowing how to feel fulfilled and satisfied is part of sacral chakra healing.
3. Lack of fulfillment and insatiable desires
Deeply and honestly appreciating what you have and who you are is part of sacral chakra healing. Delighting yourself in the simple pleasures of life without getting overly attached to them is key in promoting a balanced second chakra.
Pay attention to feel the satisfaction not only in your mind in an intellectual way, but also deeply as a sensation in your body, so the desire and its fulfillment are anchored in a fully rounded experience. This contributes to satiation and healing balance.
4. Codependent Behavior
Healing the sacral chakra often means bringing relationships to balance and harmony. Relationships can carry strong emotional charges and tie into the second chakra easily. Unfortunately, family dynamics are often source of disturbances, especially with regards to the sacral chakra.
To balance and heal this chakra, it’s important to develop discrimination, especially with regards to energy drains from people and bad habits.
5. Negative and Destructive Emotions
Envy, jealousy, anger, rage are characteristics of an imbalanced second chakra. Of course, they are detrimental to our feeling of well-being and disempowering.
If you notice you have tendency to overreact when someone challenges you or has differing opinions by going to rage easily or intense frustration, pay attention to techniques to manage emotions with more awareness and balance.
6. Physical Health and the Sacral Chakra
From a physical health perspective, healing your second chakra can also help heal or prevent more serious problems such as infertility, ectopic pregnancies or multiple miscarriages, prostate and testicular diseases, endometriosis and ovarian cysts.
A blockage of energy in the sacral chakra can be healed with regular practice designed to stimulate the chakra, which allows energy to flow into it and excess energy to dissipate. Chakra balancing can be helped along by a healer, but there are many things you can do on your own as well.
Meditation is very useful for chakra cleansing and balancing. For example, a simple sacral chakra healing meditation consists in envisioning an orange lotus or orange crescent moon in the area of the second chakra in the pelvis area. Hold that image in your mind for a few minutes while breathing deeply.
Dietary changes can also help cleanse your second chakra. Oranges, melons, coconuts and other sweet fruits are good sacral chakra healing food. Cinnamon is also useful, as is drinking plenty of water.
Sandalwood, patchouli, orange, rose and ylang-ylang essential oils can be used as aromatherapy for second chakra healing. These can be used alone, in meditation, and in conjunction with chakra crystals.
Sacral chakra healing stones include citrine, carnelian, orange calcite, and other orange stones. Moonstone can also be used because of this chakra’s association with water and the moon.
Yoga for sacral chakra healing should focus on hip opening poses like Upavistha Konasana, or Open Angle Pose. Baddha Konasana, or Bound Angle Pose, is another simple but useful pose. Yoga practice for second chakra healing should be slow and relaxed rather than fast or overly challenging.
Since the sacral chakra’s element is water, getting outside and relaxing near open water can help open your second chakra. Lakes, rivers, streams or the ocean are all useful. If possible, wade in or dangle your feet in the water to help the energy flow. Taking a bath or a shower can also contribute to balancing your chakra while providing the relaxation needed to keep your emotions flowing.
One of the main challenge for healing the sacral chakra is about maintaining balance. One can be easily taken by second chakra passions and sensations. But can you fully recognize and appreciate the experience in the moment?
It’s sometimes difficult to fully welcome the pleasure of life’s experiences and sensations and maintain balance. The attraction to the source or cause of experience has a strong pull and one may have tendency to grasp the source of pleasure. This form of attachment might get in the way of a “healthy” flow and turn into insatiable, obsessive or hoarding behavior. To heal that type of imbalance, it becomes important to stay conscious or aware as one engages in the experience.
Often, people play on emotions to manipulate each other. Second chakra drains can come from imbalanced family dynamics or power plays at work or example. In relationships, a lot is communicated through emotions – happiness, sadness, joy, disappointment, etc.
When emotions are not fully expressed or expressed indirectly, such as in passive aggressive behaviors, the field might become obscured and the second chakra comes out of balance.
Some of us might also feel shame and guilt around pleasure due to strict education, contradictory values, or a traumatic experience. Repressed sexuality can lead to serious imbalances in the second chakra, whether it “shuts down” or becomes overactive.
The energy of your second chakra can be shut down or blocked as a result of sexual repression, whether this movement of contraction has been influenced by the actions of someone in your life or is self-imposed. Chakra healing is important to restore a healthy image of sexuality and pleasure.
Working on trust around sex and sensuality with your partner or sharing your concerns with a trusted friend or professional could be helpful. Going step by step, starting with small experiences of pleasure might pave the way to healing big wounds.
Healing the shame or guilt in the second chakra helps refine your appreciation of the simple of life, as well as less ordinary experiences. Instead of numbing yourself by either blocking or saturating your experience with overwhelming sensations and emotions, you may enjoy the pleasure provided in the moment in full awareness.
The 2nd chakra magnetizes by the force of emotions, but also its energy that is half way between the survival preoccupations of the first or root chakra and the expression of will of the third or solar plexus chakra. Ideas and visions, when dressed up in human emotions and can come to life more easily. As such, the second chakra magnetizes experiences based on its state and the direction provided by the other chakras. Attraction and repulsions are strongly linked to the sacral chakra.
Healing the second chakra therefore consists in being more mindful of one’s thoughts and intentions, as well as being more aware of the types of emotions arising at specific moments.
Self-inquiry is a useful tool to heal the sacral chakra. By understanding our emotions and reactions, we can better defuse the unconscious programming ruling our actions. This allows to choose how we react and see our emotions as useful indicators rather than being ruled by them.
Ask yourself the following questions to assess your second chakra:
“The skill of learning how to enter into the sensation of enjoyment is required.
To experience pleasure is one thing, but to recognize the experience as enjoyable and then enter into the felt sense of appreciation of the moment-now that is an art.” Source: David Pond. Chakras for Beginners: A Guide to Balancing Your Chakra Energies.
“Through work on the Svādhishthāna Chakra we are able to bring our basic instincts under control, transform them and ultimately transcend them.” Source: Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda. The Hidden Power in Humans – Chakras and Kundalini. International Sri Deep Madhavananda Ashram Fellowship.
When properly balanced each of your 7 Chakras work together to create an optimal life. If you are like most of us your energetic ecosystem could use some help. Take this 2-minute chakra test to know which of your chakras may be the weakest.
Lizzy is editor in chief of Chakra Magazine and chakras.info. She is trained in several energy healing modalities including Reiki and Healing Touch. In addition she has spent many years studying ancient traditions such as the chakra system and Tibetan spirituality. She merges this knowledge with her passion for sharing information through journalism. Her mission is to offer accurate, up-to-date, reliable resources about topics that matter to readers with regards to the chakra systems.