Intuitive Illuminations from an Inspired Mystic… Using Chakra Mapping to Grow Our Best Dreams As fall pulls our energy forward with new school and work schedules, heavier fuller routines return for many of us. We may feel scattered and yet, at the same time, have certain goals and ambitions that we really desire to manifest. If we feel that we can’t attend to this, it can be frustrating. Many practitioners, readers and therapists refer to this idea as a blockage. This catch all term can refer to an inability to move forward or to explore various aspects of ourselves, our needs, and our desires easily and readily. These blockages can affect our health, bodies, emotions, and goals. The kind of blockage that shows up, as well as where they live in our body, can tell us much about ourselves and our energetic system. We all experience blockages. They are a normal, natural part of life. However, when they affect your ability to manifest your dreams and desires, understanding what they are telling you when they appear can help you to acknowledge them and move through them more easily. Our chakra system represents our vital life energy. We have thousands of these energy centers in our body. However, for this article, we will simply be dealing with the seven traditional ones. These run all the way up our trunk from the center of our pelvis to the middle of our crown. Imagine a wheel of light and energy that revitalizes us as it spins. Each chakra helps us regulate and amplify the different types of energy’s we encounter in our lives. They help us honour our own systems of balance as well.  Each chakra center gives vital life energy to that part of the body and its corresponding emotional system. Our first chakra is our root chakra, it rests at the base of our pelvis. It resonates to the colour red. When it is balanced, it helps us feel safe and protected in the world. It helps us open up our lives to our tribe and connect with the people that our energy and alignment will benefit and be most benefitted by. When it is unbalanced, we may struggle with what safe is, what protection feels like, and who to align with in our lives. Our second chakra rests just below our belly button, this is our sacral chakra. It resonates to the colour orange. When it is balanced it helps us feel connected with our emotional self and our five senses. It helps us feel open to sensual expression. It also helps us become more tolerant to new experiences in our lives. When it is unbalanced, we may struggle with feeling connected to our feelings and our sensate expression in which our taste, touch, smell, hearing, and seeing may be dulled. It may be hard for us to stay in our bodies as well. Our third chakra is just above our belly button, this is our solar plexus chakra. It resonates to the colour yellow. When it is balanced, it helps us know who we are on the most innate level. It helps us move in the direction of our calling and express our authentic or true self easily and readily. When it is unbalanced, we may be more inclined to look outside ourselves for what we should do, or how we should be. Our fourth chakra, or heart chakra, is located just between our breast bones. It resonates to the vibration of green. When it is balanced it helps us love ourselves and others as well. We will have an internalized sense of when to give back to ourselves and when to give to others and we will be less inclined to love conditionally. When it is unbalanced, we may struggle with these boundaries in ourselves and our relationships. Our fifth chakra is our throat chakra, resting on our Adam’s apple, it resonates to the colour blue. When it is balanced it helps us speak our truth in the world and share our creativity easily. When it is blocked, we may not feel free to share our truth or express our creative selves. We may feel disconnected from both of these aspects of self. Our sixth chakra is our third eye chakra, it sits between our two eyes and is connected to our pineal gland. It resonates to the colour indigo. When it is balanced we trust and act on our intuition as a source of greater information and inspiration in our lives. We see that our imagination, intention setting, and manifestation are a powerful conduit to attain our desires. In fact, they work in service of each other. When this chakra is blocked, we may struggle with trusting our intuition. We may not act on it when we feel it, or we may feel unable to see the importance of the connection it holds for us. Our seventh chakra is located at the top of our head, right there in the center of our crown. It resonates with the colours violet, white or gold. When this chakra is balanced, we feel easily connected to source energy.  We feel that everything we do and bring into the world is guided by spirit. We feel we are all connected cosmically and working for the betterment of all. When this chakra is unbalanced, we feel disconnected, perhaps forsaken, passed over or ignored by source. We feel we have to prove ourselves to God and the world to be connected. Knowing these rudimentary core regions can help us gain further insight into our areas of blockage. However, say we have a big goal or dream and we are moving toward it, but there are just certain steps we find ourselves avoiding that are sabotaging our ability to make it a reality. How can we use this information to notice a pattern of procrastination in ourselves and put it to rest so we can get on with the purpose of our lives? A wonderful way to move through these blocks is to make a chakra mapping chart. Get a big piece of poster board and put a circle in the very center of it. Make it around 2 ½ inches in diameter. Now write in the circle what your final goal is. For me, it was to be accepted into my graduate program. It could be anything from completing a certain course of study, getting a role in a play, redecorating a part of your house, or opening a babysitting coop. Just make sure it’s a big goal with a number of steps that feel daunting. Next, draw 6 lines (rays) all around your goal and extend each out toward the center of the paper, making sure that your rays aren’t too close together when you’re done. When it’s completed it should look like a sun in the middle of the page. Make sure the rays of your sun don’t extend too far out as you still have more chart to draw. Look at the image for a sense of this. At the end of your first set of rays, draw a circle a bit smaller than your middle one, like maybe 1 ½ inches in diameter. Next, draw rays coming out from that one, start with a few, realizing as you get closer to the steps you need to attend to, you can always add more. Each of these circles will have a step in your process written inside when you are done. When you have made those rays, draw another smaller circle, maybe an inch or less in diameter, at the end of each of those rays. This is the outside of your chakra mapping chart.  This is the template you will use when you fill in the goals you need to attend to, as well as the chakra that is being balanced as you follow through with the goal. Now think about what steps you need to take to get from here to there. Do this by thinking about the first thing you need to attend to in order to set the ball in motion. Write these smallest goals in the smallest circles that are found at the outside edge of your chart.  I have found that often these goals are about gathering information, tools and expertise. My first step toward the realization of my goals was obtaining my high school and college transcripts. If you were redecorating a house, perhaps your first goal would be gathering and comparing paint swatches for the rooms in your house. So, write this goal in one of your outside circles. These are the ones farthest from the center of your paper. Now, think about what other small goals you have to follow through with to get to the middle circles. If your goal was redecorating the house, you might need to look into decorating styles to find a style that matches your taste. Each of these goals will fill in your outside small circles. Now, fill in each consecutive circle with another step in your goals. I also put the dates that I accomplished each goal to help me feel like I was building energy and momentum. This is where the chakra and recognizing your blockages part shows back up. Get a set of markers or coloured pencils and ask yourself, the first goal you have completed or desire to complete ‘What chakra will or did it help you to balance?’ Now, go back to your outside circles, the smallest ones. Go to your first circle. Did following through with this goal help you feel safe, connected and as if it was okay to show up bigger? Remember, that’s your first chakra. So fill this circle in with red. Or did it help you feel more joyful, more alive with all your senses? That is your second chakra, so fill it in with orange.  Or did it help you feel more like yourself, more like you were doing the work you were called to do? That’s your third chakra, so fill it in with yellow. Or perhaps it helped you open up to more love and support in your life. Fill it in with green for the heart chakra. Maybe it helped you feel like it was easier to speak up, and to share your own truth in the world? Fill that circle in with blue for your throat chakra. By now you are probably getting the hang of this… Did completing this goal help you feel like your intuition was awake and alive? Fill it in with purple for your third eye. Or did completing the goal help you feel connected to greater source energy? Fill it in with gold for your seventh chakra. After you have completed all the tasks of your chakra mapping on the outside circles, you are ready to move to the middle suns. Follow the ray inward with a pencil and you will find this middle set of suns. These circles will usually be “doing” circles. They will be things like, figuring out which colour goes with which room, or finding that perfect easy chair that will go with your new palette.  But they don’t all have to be concrete steps…they might be taking the time to relax as you’re doing the outside work. Whatever they may be as you attend to them, write each of these middle goals in each of these suns, as well. By now, you should be building an even stronger sense of momentum as you accomplish each of these isolated tasks and revel in the sense of completion that accompanies it. And your house, or resume, or brand name should be feeling much less like a blank slate and more like a known quantity! You can now go through each of your circles from the outside to the inside, and as you complete the task, fill them in with the corresponding chakra colour-this is the one that you sense is at the crux of the matter. If you’re inner critic gets triggered, notice it, set it aside and keep filling in all of your little energetic suns. Watch your chakra map come alive. Realize it is a totally unique living record of your energetic journey. You will likely notice your blocks too…these are the places you’re repeatedly procrastinating. You will possibly note, as we all do when we choose to tackle the big stuff in our lives, this part is harder. These parts may take longer to address, they may take more support, or a different kind of support to complete. These are the circles that are not easily filled in. These are the tasks we are not attending too. Be gentle, but firm with yourself as you attend to these as well. As you ask these centering chakra questions, notice if there is a particular set of tasks and chakra colours that you are blocking on filling in. You may be putting off the tasks associated with this particular chakra. When I was getting ready to go back to Grad school, I noticed that the tasks having to do with my first and third chakra, I was habitually avoiding. When we habitually avoid, we are self-protecting. But we are also limiting ourselves from connecting with a greater sense of who we are, who we could be and what we have to give back to the collective. Also, when we muster up the courage to move through our blocked energy, there is a huge energetic payback directly on the other side. That energy can now be re-channeled for more and different types of soul work. And realize finally that achieving big goals and creating big changes in our lives is a process, not a product. So don’t be hard on yourself if it takes you time to move toward that center goal. Realize you are doing a part of your life’s work, and there may well be a huge before and after feeling when you do get to your center goal. So, celebrate each step of your awareness and becoming! Remember, this is big stuff! The more we can gain deepening awareness and grow our own empathy for ourselves and our journey in the world, the more we are able to make lasting change in our life as we witness our dreams become a reality. September’s gem is Vivianite. This stone ranges in color from blue to green. The energy of this stone conveys love and a greater inspiration for life. This is a goal-setting stone. Vivianite helps us to clarify intent, right-mindedness and clarity of your deeper work. It gives you the strength to carry on through great adversity. Jenny’s Gem affirmation is:  I am in this process now and I see my goals and desires so clearly. I know that as I attend to each individual step, while giving myself and my goals the loving care we are so deserving of, I will see my dreams manifest before my eyes. I am seeing this daily in so many ways. Views:]]>