Jeanne and Jess, both licensed mental health professionals and body-centered therapists, explore one of Jeanne's favorite topics, the subtle energy system, otherwise known as the chakras. They talk about psychology, trauma, energy, and share all sorts of interesting ways to integrate the mind, body, and spirit to bring forth a deeper sense of balance in life.
Continue Learning
Produced by Jeanne Kolker and Jessica Warpula Schultz
Music by Jason A. Schultz
Edited by Jessica Warpula Schultz
Jeanne and Jess, both licensed mental health professionals and body-centered therapists, explore one of Jeanne's favorite topics, the subtle energy system, otherwise known as the chakras. They talk about psychology, trauma, energy, and share all sorts of interesting ways to integrate the mind, body, and spirit to bring forth a deeper sense of balance in life.
Continue Learning
Produced by Jeanne Kolker and Jessica Warpula Schultz
Music by Jason A. Schultz
Edited by Jessica Warpula Schultz
[00:00:00] Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-based mental health podcast. We're your hosts, Jessica Warpula Schultz and Jeanne Kolker. Whether you've tried everything to feel better and something is still missing or you've already discovered the wisdom of the body. This podcast will encourage and support you in healing old wounds, strengthening relationships, and developing your inner potential- all by accessing the mind body connection.
Please know, while we're excited to share and grow together. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for mental health treatment. It doesn't replace the one-on-one relationship you have with a qualified healthcare professional and is not considered psychotherapy.
Thanks Jess. And thank you for listening. Now, let's begin a conversation about what happens when we take an integrative approach to improving our wellbeing. Welcome to insight. Mind, body talk today.
Our theme is going to be one of my [00:01:00] favorite topics, the subtle energy system, otherwise known as the chakras. Welcome. So today, Jess and I are going to be talking about psychology and energy and all sorts of really interesting ways to integrate mind, body, and spirit in our own lives. And also, you know, in the therapeutic relationship.
Yeah, I'm, I've been excited to record this episode. I don't know that much about chakras and yet, you know, you see the information kind of out there. And I have a lot of friends and colleagues who talk about energy flow and I'm excited to learn about what you have to share. Wonderful. Well, I'm excited about this to Jess, but I always want to make sure that we're starting from a place of humility.
So I will start with an acknowledgement. I'm a certified yoga therapist. I've had a lot of years of training in yoga, yoga philosophy, in addition to, [00:02:00] you know, the masters in mental health counseling and my license. And I want to make sure that I'm giving credit where it's due. So I'd like to acknowledge that we're using this knowledge, passed down through the system of yoga.
And these are traditions that date back thousands of years, coming from south Asia. This is a time for us to acknowledge our privilege as white and non-disabled people with access to resources that allow us to study and integrate these important principles. I also want to mention that I use the work of Anodea Judith.
She's a prolific author and body-centered psychotherapist, and she wrote Eastern Body Western Mind, which is a book about psychology and the chakra system as a path to the self. So I just want to make sure that people understand that I'm using, I'm borrowing from these traditions, , that are both, you know, coming from the east.
But also, you know, we're [00:03:00] going to try to integrate that into the west and, and our education. You know, you just, you've got some extensive experience in developmental psychology. So we're going to be talking about, you know, Piaget, Erik Erikson, these other, Authorities who've passed down information about human development.
So I just think it's important that, you know, we start there. Definitely. And I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Of course. All right. So you said you don't really know much about chakras? No. I mean, I'll sometimes ask people, oh, that's a really pretty necklace, you know, and they'll say, oh, this stone is actually opening up, you know, this aspect of my chakra or that, and it's the energy work.
It's always fascinated me, but it's just not something I've really looked into until we were going to record this episode. And so I'm, I, [00:04:00] I love this kind of stuff. I love any conduit, any avenue that you can use to. Discover more about yourself or change, you know, something that may be, feel stuck or that you're working on.
And I, I do believe in the fundamental aspect that our body has this wisdom and that emotions have energy and that there are things that may be our Western minds aren't tapping into, I don't know everything. Right. I never pretend to. So what else is out there in the world that can help us on our path?
And that's why I think this is just so interesting. And I honestly coming from a beginner standpoint, I think a lot of our listeners will want to know more about chakras. You know, you told me about when we first brought up the idea of recording this episode, that a lot of is evidence-based like, we're not sitting here talking about foo foo and woo woo.
Even though that stuff can be fun, [00:05:00] we would bring that to a mental health podcast unless we had science and evidence behind it as well. And so that aspect I think is just really cool. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you, and I think we've made it really clear to our listeners that we are, you know, we we're believers in science and the things that we've talked about, uh, you know, polyvagal theory, the way that our bodies hold our trauma, hold our experiences.
The chakra system is just another lens through which we can look through. It's just another way to conceptualize our being because we are body centered therapists. We're not just concerned with the mind. We want to talk about mind, body, and then whatever that other thing is, spirit, soul energy. That is so important when we're talking about healing.
Exactly. Yeah. So let's dig in a little bit on the [00:06:00] chakra system. It was referred to in the ancient literature of the Vedas and the yoga sutras of Patanjali. This system is, you know, thousands of years old. It's just a way for us to, to kind of reconceptualize our experience and a chakra. Actually, that's a Sanskrit word, and I won't talk, I won't speak in Sanskrit very much today.
It's a sacred language that we, we use in yoga. Just for today, I think we'll, we'll just kind of keep it in our Western terms just to make sure that we're honoring this and, and, you know, being very respectful of the system. So a chakra is a wheel or a disc.
It, it refers to an energy center and that can help us to understand this framework of mind, body, and spirit. So chakras, these wheels or discs are ways for us to examine energy. So what is energy? Energy could be like a charge. It could be our [00:07:00] attention. It could be our awareness in yoga. We look at in terms of life force, we call it prana, which is, you know, that the, the force within us that animates us are it also can be our breath, that subtle energy of our breath.
And in yoga, the belief is that we have this energy channel. That is analogous to our spinal cord. So really, you know, that is really the, the seat of our life, right? That spinal cord. And that is our main line of energy. And there are other channels though. There are other channels of energy, of course, in our bodies.
And in yoga, the belief is that we have these two main channels that kind of wrap around our central channel or spinal cord and where those channels intersect with the spine. Those are our centers. Those are seven [00:08:00] chakras. And that's the system we're talking about today is, is the seven main chakras.
There are many other systems that, uh, that would maybe look at minor chakras chakras, You know, locations or wherever we'd like to conceptualize them. But today we're going to talk about those seven main chakras. They store energy, they store our thoughts or feelings or memories or experiences. Our actions only moly.
I know it's a lot, it's a lot. They direct our, our mindset, really our behavior, our emotional health there's. So this is such a rich framework. And that's why I really, I like to talk about this in therapy. Yes. I'm a, I'm a, you know, body-centered therapist and a yoga therapist, but the two can, you know, that that really connects, and this is a way, and I do this a lot with my clients is to do the self [00:09:00] exploration.
Um, Where might there be a, an imbalance in your life and where do you notice that in your body? I mean, it's, that's, it's that simple. And then maybe we can talk about, well, you know, is there something that's happening in your heart center that we can identify and then let's work on, how do we bring that into balance?
And so this is just a framework, it's just a way of looking at our experience. I really appreciate that, you know, when I was reviewing the different shocker chakras. So I say shakra because I'm that much of a layman. I don't, I just walk through the world saying Shakara, but it's chakra. Yes. Of chakra, how each one taps in to just different things that are happening within you.
And it's almost inspirational to read them and get ideas you know, I really identify with that. What can I do about it? Um, that sounds like me, that, heart chakra, [00:10:00] that sounds like something I have been noticing happening, or that feels stuck within. And then there's different ways of pursuing that healing or, or just even thinking about a different.
Well, and these chakras do associate with the nerves along the spinal cord too. So, you know, we talk about how they're located at certain spots, but you know, there isn't really like, I can't like draw a circle on your body and say, this is where, you know, it's look, the locations are fluid and, and different for each person, but there are these nerve bundles along the spine.
And that's where we, we experienced that kind of heightened, intense energy for each of these seven centers. And w when you think about it, in terms of yoga, you know, it makes a lot of sense, the spine. What do we do in yoga? When we, when we do ask that when we do pose poses, we're always moving. Our spines are always, uh, manipulating our energies through those [00:11:00] spinal moves.
And we can target each of these different energy centers in a yoga practice or in just a couple of poses. We can use our breath as well. We can use, um, chanting, we can use dance, we can do all these things to tap into these energy centers. And it's this, isn't something, you know, you can, I can't see that you have, you know, an excessive throat chakra, Jess.
I don't know that, but we could do a little digging and maybe talk about what sort of physical things you have going on, what sort of emotional items or energies are kind of stuck for you. And then we'll be able to talk about ways to, to balance, to heal whatever is, is kind of out of, out of balance in your life.
Yeah, that sounds so cool. There's so much literature on this. I get very excited about chakras. I have a [00:12:00] whole shelf on my bookshelf of books about the chakras. Oh, wow. Oh yeah. Oh yes. Love this stuff. And yes, it is very, very accessible in the, in the realm of yoga. But I really like to take it more into that mental and emotional realm too, so that we can cause you know, what's our goal here.
Our goal is to help people work through, their past work, through their present, and just to try to live in more balance. So this is, this is the way to look at that. Awesome. Where do we begin? Where do we start? Well, sign me up. Okay. All right. So there are seven energy centers and it makes sense that we start with our.
Very first. So we can always think about this in terms of psychology too. This is kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A lot of people understand that w we need the very basic needs of physiology. Right. We need to, um, to have the, [00:13:00] yeah. We need to have this body.
Well, and this is where, you know, you with all this developmental knowledge. Right? What I think you told me your bachelor's is in developmental psych human development, family studies and yeah. So human development. Yes. And this is very much very, very complimentary because a lot of, human development is, thinking about not just, the physiological or the mental, which of course a lot of it is, the cognitive and, and how we grow and learn. But we're looking at our relationship with ourself and relationship with others across the lifespan in a way.
Right. And it sounds like with the chakras there's different aspects and different stages, almost the way that it could compliment, Erik Erikson or Piaget in that we develop and change with time. And there seems to be, some development around each of these zones in the same way that each stage of human development has some very specific things that [00:14:00] show up and that we work through both physiologically cognitively and emotionally.
Absolutely. Yeah. It's a wonderful way to just conceptualize our experience and, you know, I, it just, it sneaks its way in to all, to the work that I do with people. And of course I don't, you know, uh, I don't just like bring it up unless somebody is very interested in this. Typically people, people who come to see me are interested in the yoga, they're interested in the body and the, the, the, just the different approach.
But of course, I want people to, to do the self exploration so that they can. Recognize when something is out of balance and maybe it does, you know, it always goes back to childhood. You know, we always look back at, at where did my, where did, where did things change for me? Where, what, what developmental stage?
Maybe we don't think about it in terms of that, but, you know, where did it, uh, where did something [00:15:00] shift and what can I do to bring balance to that? So well, and that's what I love too, because if we can identify maybe something big that happened to us, let's say age seven or something shifted where there was a divorce or we moved to a new place when we can look at what happened on our, you know, our lifespan, we can then look at maybe what is showing up for us in our system at that time in place, we can go back and look up what chakra is associated with that age or what, um, dance movement therapy, behavioral rhythm is associated with that age, what inner child work is associated with that age.
And that means that there's different tools and paths to healing, because sometimes it feels like, well, how do I even work with that? If that happened to me at seven I'm 41 now, well, here's some ways you can work with that. Right? Exactly. Exactly. So let's look at each of the chakras. So we were going to talk about the seven, the main [00:16:00] seven chakras.
And of course we start with the root. So the first chakra is the root chakra. And that's our very earliest developmental stage. So it's, you know, from, in utero to about one year old and each chakra has a right associated with it, a human, right. And this is our right to be just our right to exist. Um, it's associated with the color red.
Each chakra is associated with the color because each, each wheel or disc, um, vibrates at a certain vibrational level, which is associated with the color. So that root chakra associated with the color red. This is our very earliest years and each of these chackras is associated with a developmental stage up to, you know, adulthood. And then we kind of reset and start over, you know, so our root chakra is associated with that earliest time where we're just like learning our body, you know, as babies.
But then if we think about going [00:17:00] back to early adulthood, when we've moved through the seven chakras, we kind of start over and we had re-establish identity and reestablish safety and move out and find our way. And so then we kind of go through these phases again in our lives developmentally. So it's, there's a lot to unpack here.
So with that root chakra, Some things that can interrupt the development. You know, we might call these traumas would be, you know, birth trauma, abandonment, neglect, difficulty attaching to an attachment figure, a caregiver, um, made major illness or surgery, an abusive environment. And also that intergenerational inherited trauma, which we talk about in our, , inner child episode.
It kind of aligns with, like we said, with Erik Erikson a nfancy to 18 [00:18:00] months, the conflict is trust versus mistrust. Right? How safe or not am I. Can I trust, you know, can I connect,
so trust versus mistrust, that's a wonderful way to conceptualize as the root chakra. We have to trust ourselves. We have to trust our bodies. So that's a lot of work that we might do in therapy is how do we gain that trust back?
What are some healing practices we can do? You know, of course, I always go to yoga. You know, I think that's a nice way for us to build trust with our bodies is to actually connect to mind and body yoga means to yoke, to yoke mind and body, to, to unite. So that's a one way that we can help with that root chakra, just to, to practice grounding, you know, just the act of feeling our feet in, uh, wherever we are, whether we're in a yoga practice or a meditation, or just out in the world, um, and consider what those traumas were that I listed, [00:19:00] um, that are associated with the root chakra.
So, you know, neglect for attachment, um, abuse in those years. Well, that's going to disrupt our ability to be intuitive with our bodies. We've talked in this podcast about interoception the, the process of actually knowing what's happening in our bodies. And if we've experienced a trauma. Uh, well really at any age in our childhood or adulthood, it can interfere with that interoceptive process.
It's all self-awareness, it's introspection, you know, people ask me about, you know, how do I know which chakra is imbalanced? Well, you know, there are, there are physical ways for us to kind of saw some of that out. But, uh, you know, I can't, I can't tell you, you have to do that introspective work, it's much more effective when somebody does the introspection and does the digging themselves and the books that I [00:20:00] use, you know, Anodea Judith, and there's another author, Brenda Davies, she's a psychiatrist.
Um, and she wrote The Seven Healing Chakras, uh, You know, assessments galore in those books of where you can really dig in and look at, you know, all your developmental stages what's going on, what has gone on in your life so that you can really take control of the journey yourself, which I think is so much more powerful than having somebody tell you where you're imbalanced.
That doesn't work. I agree. I agree. So chakra 2. Yes. Yes. Our sacral chakra. So this is just a, so if we're thinking about physical locations, so our root is like our feet legs and the very base of our torso. Okay. So the sacral chakra. It's just under the belly button. So underneath our navel and it is the color orange and it's associated with our right to [00:21:00] feel.
So imagine we're moving up that developmental channel, we're getting up to, you know, six months to two years now, we're starting to develop the, you know, the capacity for, um, for emotions. definitely, you know, I have to share an antidote real quick about the color. So as I was researching for this episode, I decided to really look into chakra 2 sacral and chakra 4 heart because of the inner child association.
And that's something I'm really passionate about as a therapist. So I'm researching. And I like to color code things with, you know, pretty pens and things like that. And then I get to this certain article that tells me that the color for sacral girl is orange and the color for heart is green. And out of the five colors I have all over my paper.
I wrote an orange about sacral and I [00:22:00] was holding a green pen in my hand. And writing about heart is the universe likes to play. I turned to my husband and I ha I was like, you often hear this, like, when I'm doing, he's like, oh, it's all in tune. Look at that. You know, it's like subtle energy. Wow. I, I, anyway, so there you go.
I loved it too, but one more time. So going back to sacral. You know, it lines up again with, Piaget, another huge proponent in child development and really just about human development, where we've learned about the different stages, um, major characteristics of our developmental changes and this aligns right with the stage for children when they really start to get to know their world
and they start realizing how their actions can cause things to happen around them. They're separate from other people. And I think [00:23:00] in a way, when we look at that emotional. You know, that sacral chakra texts more about gaining insight into our default reactions, looking at our deeper emotions and, and learning to express ourselves and set healthy boundaries.
And that's what, you know, two year olds, two year olds are all about here is setting healthy boundaries. Well, I need to do things for themselves, you know? So it's just, it's interesting how you right. Is very complimentary. Yeah. And, and if we think about traumas that occur at that developmental stage or at that chakra, it could be, you know, not being able to, to identify with our feelings, um, maybe some enmeshment, you know, this is where it's often, this is associated with sexual abuse as well.
So what do we do with that second chakra?
How do we heal? Well, it's all as, you know, let me say yoga again. Of course. Cause I think that's a very healing thing, but all movement and [00:24:00] movement therapy, emotional identification and releases, um, working with boundaries, like you said, you know, treating any addictions, really engaging in healthy pleasures and digging in to that inner child work inner child.
so. Our brain, we have a right hemisphere in the left hemisphere. A lot of people hear about this because the right brain is, you know, more creative and the left brains associated with logic and reasoning. But what some people may not know is that the right brain is much more online, really through ages zero to three, and left brain shows up, you know, an earlier childhood, but we're really dominant in our right brain as children. And the right brain is all about the body and sensory. That's how we make sense of the world up until that point. And when I think about inner child work, and I think about going deep. Until looking at our default reactions and gaining insight into our [00:25:00] deeper emotions.
I think that that does mean we bring the body and sensory more to the table to do that deeper inner child work. And that brings up mindfulness and mindful awareness and kind of bearing witness to our bodies memories and bearing witness to what happens in our sensorimotor processing system, which we don't just process things through our thoughts and feelings, but through our body and through our nervous system.
So working with their inner child through this chakra comes down to listening and really providing for our inner child and protecting our inner child through those boundaries and, and gaining insight into what we need and how we can provide for ourself and how we can protect ourselves.
That's great. That's wonderful. And that's, this is lifelong work, this inner child work, you know, we're talking about like, reparenting our two year old [00:26:00] that we could spend a little time on that, but we got to reparent ourselves at every age too. It's, you know, there's lots of work to be done. Yeah. It's fact it's fact, but the best part is, is we can do that.
You know, I mean, what a blessing to be aware that it's possible to have that healing and change. It's it's there. And it's, I think the chakra system is so accessible because there are just really simple, tangible things we can do to really focus on those areas. Yeah. You're talking about doing some really deep work, um, re parenting our inner child, which takes a long time.
And with chakras, we can also look at other tools too. There's, we can use essential oils that help to balance those chakras. Of course, meditations, visualizations, colors even just, you know, all right, I need to balance my, my second chakra. I'm going to wear orange today.
I'm going to use that orange pen today, [00:27:00] like little nods to our subtle energy system, just to, just to work on bringing that balance in ways that are both big and small. So we've laid the groundwork with these first two chakras. Now we're going to move through the next five. And of course, each one is very important and has a developmental stage, but we're just going to look a little bit more closely at how they stack on top of each other.
All right. So we've built up one and two. Now we're up to three, our solar plexus. It's above the navel, but below the heart rate, kind of at the. Your well, your solar plexus, you know, it's, it's yellow, it's the sun, it's our, it's our power center. The right here is the right to act, you know? So this of course think about a three-year-old they're all about that.
Right? So, you know, two to four years old is that developmental stage for our third chakra. And when we think about traumas, you know, shaming, uh, [00:28:00] controlling abuse, um, uh, a child who now has to act as the parent. So those can be some of those traumas that we can see there. So, so what do we do with that third chakra?
There's a lot of ways that we can help balance that out. So again, here's that inner child work, but also, you know, working on. Relaxation working on balancing out that heat from the solar plexus solar. Right. So we might want to go a little more lunar here. So we want to think about stress management, um, exercise, building up our, our ego strength.
We can also find a lot of anger here at that third chakra. So we might wanna work on releasing that anger or managing it, you know, maybe the help of a therapist or a group. Um, and then working on shame, of course always goes back to shame, right? So that's a big one. , well, Piaget talks [00:29:00] about same things, autonomy versus shame and doubt, we're looking at how can we kind of live in to following our gut, right. Doing what we need to do and setting down those feelings of shame or working through them, or working on developing our confidence versus doubting the.
We're making right. And I think a lot of times that initiative is that exploration, that exploration is what leads to the confidence. You know, that it's okay to fail, but let's, let's go out. Let's, let's see what happens. Let's try something new. And that kind of comes back again into feeling like we're independent, that we can rely on ourselves that we're there for ourselves.
And that makes a lot of sense that that's also the solar plexus. Yes. Yeah. It looks like you're rubbing your stomach. Right. That was like hovering over my solar plexus and like, mm. [00:30:00] Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's a really important and easy one I think to work with because when somebody comes in and they have a lot of anger or they have excessive drive or they, you know, are addicted to work and I'm constantly on the go boy, let's, let's work on that.
Let's, let's bring some balance into that area. And it's a, again, a pretty tangible thing you can work on, but we have to do that exploration first. We have to do that introspection.
And that's, a, that's a big thing to remember when we're talking about chakras, that when they get imbalanced, they can be excessive or deficient. They can, we can have too much of this energy or too little.
So then our healing practices are going to be to balance. So " like increases like" if we're workaholics, we're not going to, you know, try to exercise a bunch more or do things that really create more heat. We're going to try to bring in some cooling centers. So it's all about that thought of it that way.
I've, for some reason, my mind was always like you're deficient in these and you've got never even [00:31:00] dawned on me that it would be the other way as well. Right. That we've got to find that balance from the other end of the pendulum. And this is a great way to start talking about the heart chakra, which is number four, because we can have as therapists, we see excessive imbalances in the heart chakra, right?
So heart chakra, number four, it's obviously located in the heart center and here is our right to love and be loved. Right? I love the heart chakra. It's green and it's it's associated with the ages four to seven. And of course here, our traumas are, you know, rejection, abandonment, loss, criticism, grief.
Divorce death abuse. So we can have an imbalance one way or the other here. So often, you know, we think about, we don't really think about, in the work that we do. Well, maybe we do sometimes people who have just very little connection to [00:32:00] their heart chakra and, and that deficiency and, you know, maybe people who are, uh, perceived as cold or unfeeling, what we as therapists often see is that access in the heart chakra, people who are clinging, people who are holding on people who are maybe loving and not having it reciprocated, you know?
So it absolutely can be access or difficult. The idea of being connected. Right. And how connected are we or are we living in a state of disconnection? Maybe if someone is in dorsal vagal or shut down, there's a disconnection to others, but also maybe some disconnection to ourselves, maybe some dissociation or some numbing. And I think when you get connected to that heart chakra, it can help direct that love back to ourselves, back to our body and address those tendencies may be to isolate or to disconnect from ourselves and from others.[00:33:00]
Yeah, it's a rich, rich territory to mine, especially in therapy. And when we're doing that introspection as well. So what, what do we do to heal the heart chakra? Well, I like to think about compassion. Yeah, joy, gratitude, I think about, you know, the inner child work, this is where for me communicating with your inner child really, can you really take center stage?
That idea of. That mindful awareness, noticing the wounds of our inner child bearing witness to them, grounding in our adult self, and then being able to be there for that little us once hurt or left or abandoned and, really reparent in that capacity. That's, that's beautiful. And I think that's that's, those are like the big things, right.
That we work [00:34:00] on. Uh, Kind of our lifetime work and heart chakra. I mean, this is, this is big. This is why people tend to come to us is because there's there's pain there and you know, how do we, how do we work with that? And of course, you know, we all have our different approaches to it. I, I really like people to even just start with breathing.
When we think about the heart chakra, it's our lungs there too. Right? So like just doing deep breathing to get us into parasympathetic, like you said, you know, when we're thinking about polyvagal, we want to get into that place where we can be, uh, regulated so that we can do this really difficult work. So it could be something as simple as breathing exercises to get us in our bodies.
And then it can be that really complex work of reparenting the inner child. So let's move up the ladder here. So we're moving from the heart to the throat. Chakra five is our throat center, pretty obvious where that's located [00:35:00] and the right there is to speak and to be heard.
So ages seven to 12 years old, this is where, you know, we're developing that voice and some of the traumas can be mixed. Messages, lies, verbal abuse criticism, having authoritarian parents, having maybe some alcoholism in the family that there's some secrets. Um, so anything associated with communication really lives there.
well, and practicing using our voice is a big part of. Of doing that self exploration. You know, we, we talk about speaking our truth and that means, that means that we have to know what that is and that we have to be able to feel safe enough and confident enough to articulate it.
And so it's that right to speak, but also to be heard. So, you know, often it's just, you know, asking that we're heard and using, [00:36:00] using our words, we do a lot of communication practice in therapy, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships and couples work. So there's so many things we can do.
That's very corrective just to have the. The relationship with the therapist where you can use your voice and not be, um, you know, shamed or afraid that it's going to, you're going to say the wrong thing. That's, you know, I guess they're appealing. Yeah. So healing. Yeah, because I mean, sometimes, you know, I explained therapy is one of the places where exactly you get to first maybe practice that skill.
Maybe this is the first time in the space. You can speak your authentic truth and it is held and there's a safe container in which there isn't judgment, or you don't have to edit or alter it what you need to express so that other people are okay. And yes, I think practicing. You know, I dunno how many treatment plans I've seen where [00:37:00] speaking your inner truth is one of the main goals, because so often we quiet or a voice and we shift what we need to say or who we need to be in order to have that approval or that support of others.
So I would say heart chakra and throat chakra show up a lot in my therapy sessions at night. That's right. Yeah. You talked about, you know, having a dialogue with your inner child. Well, that really needs to come from both, you know, heart and throat. Cause we need to be able to, to speak that, but also to hear and to listen.
And that's another, you know, when we've got an excess throat chakras and people who really like to hear the sound of their voice, you know, myself included, uh, maybe sometimes need to work on a little silence here and there so we can practice maybe some silence and meditation, some discernment. In our speech, you know, passing it through those gates is this [00:38:00] necessary?
Is this kind before we speak? So there's so much here that we can dig into, especially when we're looking at our therapeutic relationship. all right. Love it. Moving up, moving up to our third eyes. So chakra six, our browse center located right between those eyebrows at the forehead. And that is our right to see and be seen.
So here's the adolescents, we're teenagers. We're starting to see the world, for what it is. And there can be a lot of traumas there. Uh, we maybe see things that don't make sense to us. Um, we see hypocrisy, we might be invalidated, um, you know, for, especially growing up in a traumatic environment, you know, the things that we're seeing and witnessing can be very detrimental to our growth.
So healing practices maybe, you know, going within meditating, um, that's one of the, you know, big things we can do for [00:39:00] that third eyes to meditate, to, you know, hold that deal awareness.
I know one of your coping strategies is calling. Ah, yes, I do love to color. I like, um, to get myself was actually coloring just recently again, you know, I pick it up and I set it down, but I had the urge last weekend. So I pulled out my coloring books and I started, you know, just coming up specialization.
It's very, it's a very visual thing to, we can see it. It's tangible, drawing, coloring these artistic things. It's a way to help bring balance to that because, you know, we are, we are looking at, we, we take in a lot, there's a lot of input through our eyes and you know, how do we discern all of that while sometimes we need to just, we need to just play.
Uh, yeah. Which is kind of interesting because when things start getting a little bit too much, that's when I find myself at, you know, MSCR and pottery class or signing up for that [00:40:00] weaving class or those coloring books. I love it. Yeah. I mean, and that's too, when I think about developmental stages, like adolescents, that's a time when we really express some creativity.
And I think then we cycle through this again in our lives at certain points, you know? And, and it can be very useful to stop and think about, you know, am I being seen, what am I seeing? How do I bring some balance to that? Yeah. And so we're getting into those higher chakras now that are a little bit less, um, you know, we're, we're thinking about the Maslow's hierarchy.
We're moving up more to like that, you know what he terms self actualization, well, more into that like spiritual connection, you know? Yeah. So that, that third eye is very, very much related to the crown, which is the next one. And that's located at the crown of the head, or maybe even just a little bit above that seventh chakra.
[00:41:00] That's our right to know. Um, and to learn. So this is when we were in our early adulthood, you know, we start to know ourselves, but again, I think this is one that develops, you know, throughout our lives, of course, as they all do. So some of our traumas at that crown chakra might be, um, you know, education that doesn't really allow us to be curious, things that are forced upon us, perhaps forced religiosity, um, having our beliefs invalidated, maybe just having to be blindly obedient, um, maybe be, you know, being fed disinformation lies.
There are many abuses that can occur here. And the ways that we can heal them is to do our own learning, to, to study, to meditate, to do self introspection reflection, maybe examining our belief systems, you know, through therapy or with a spiritual guide. And then one that I think is really important is to develop our own [00:42:00] inner witness.
So this is the work, right? This is the work of. Of that dual awareness of being aware of what's happening with our minds, our bodies, and then being able to, to witness that from a place of compassion, but also some detachment
The powerful change I see within my clients, or I see within loved ones who utilize the knowledge that is out there in the universe to create change for themselves.
I mean, I don't know if there's any greater transformation and it's so powerful when it does happen. I mean, it's, it's really something special to behold and this is. a lot of other therapeutic, uh, theories, you know, have, have different ways to conceptualize this. You know, it feels very young in to me, you know, that this is we're talking about, like this kind of collective unconscious that we tap into.[00:43:00]
And just that interconnectedness that is, that exists with the crown chakra. And if we all took time to develop that and to, to have those, you know, what I would consider like, you know, spiritual relationships with self that's that's when we can be those units of peace, when we can integrate all of these, our mind, our body, our spirit, our energy, and be that, you know, walk through the world as that unit of peace that can then connect with others and we make that change. We change ourselves so that we can help change the community that we live in. When people are, you know, looking inward and bearing witness to what's happening inside of them and developing that insight to see their role in what they can change.
You know, that wisdom, the looking back on our life and seeing, you know, the failures and the successes, [00:44:00] and developing that insight in to understanding the role we've played and what we've experienced, and also the insight of how we can change and how we can look at our, maybe our default reactions and grow.
Be different and then experience our world differently. Right? This is just one way, this is a path to self, a path to discovery. And you know, like you said, yes, you're learning about other, you know, external things, but you're also doing this internal work. That's so important.
And that's, that's what this is all about. That's why we're here talking together because that's what we do is as we help other people on that journey on that path to self, and this is just one other way that we can look at it. And it's a way that I think makes it makes a lot of sense to me. So I love to use.
So as we've gone through this journey, we talked about all the different [00:45:00] colors associated with each chakra. And I wanted to just mention that we, we left off with green at the heart. Our throat chakra is blue or third eye is often like a deep indigo or purple.
And then our crown sometimes you'll see it as purple. Sometimes you'll see it as white, like this white light at the crown. And I think just like, kind of thinking about our energy as this rainbow is just a really uplifting way to conceptualize this, but it also kind of reminds us of the mystery, right?
Like rainbows didn't wait to exist until we understood why they exist right now. We totally know why rainbows exist after a rainstorm, right. Sun, all that stuff. But they were existing long before we understood the science. So when we think about the chakra system, It's maybe this esoteric conceptualization, that's kind of out [00:46:00] there way to think about our experience, but we're digging into it now in these different ways that can kind of help us understand the mystery.
That is our experience. So I just, I really love that image of the rainbow. I think it really is, you know, a reminder that we don't know at all, a reminder that we don't know at all. I appreciate that. Well, thank you, Jeannie. I hope you listeners enjoyed this episode as much as we did.
Well thank you, Jeannie. I really appreciated learning more about this and I'm really excited to kind of see where it goes and do even a little bit more exploration. Thanks Jess,
Thank you again for joining us on Insight Mind Body Talk, a body-centered mental health podcast. We hope today's episode was empowering and supported you in strengthening your mind-body connection We're your hosts Jeanne and Jess. [00:47:00] Please join us again as we continue to explore integrative approaches to wellbeing. Until then, take care.