The Second Chakra (Swadhisthana) is the chakra for initial and sustained attachment to other people. Beginning with the vital maternal chakra cord to the mother (and paternal cord to the father) we get our human needs met through meaningful and emotional relationships. Feelings flow through these, our Second Chakra cords, attaching us to both healthy and unhealthy people alike. Here also lies the etheric support for our addictions, and our repeating relationship patterns.
This energy center of human consciousness that emerges from the spine like a flower, and terminates in a six-petaled structure above the pubic bone. Its function is to provide an emotional connection to other people, as well as to the self. It accomplishes this by linking emotional reaction with relational attachment. The second chakra energizes relationships with desire (“I want it”) or with aversion (“Get away from me”).
The second chakra draws energy up from the Earth prana accumulated by the first chakra (see Muladharachakra here) as well as being stimulated through food and other sensual delights. Visual appeal, tactile pleasure, pleasant sounds such as music, delicious tastes … all the human senses help to create aliveness in the second chakra that may then shared with others, or turns towards nourishing the self within.
In addition to its functioning as a sensory center that forms initial attachments to others and then shares pleasure with them, the second chakra can also form attachment to unhealthy relationships, or can become addictive. The same mechanism designed to connect us to healthy people can also attach us to unhealthy and toxic individuals. The childlike and pre-verbal IQ of the second chakra may be unable to discern the difference between all these options for relationship until later in life.
If the second chakra develops well we are able to form healthy relationships with others that provide companionship, and with whom we can share pleasure. This is one of the reasons the second chakra is usually characterized as the sexual chakra: the center for longing and desire. But healers who work with the chakra system also acknowledge Swadhisthana’s place in building a healthy immune system, especially the necessary response to danger. Second chakra healing work usually includes additional support for the gastrointestinal immune system (GALT) – especially Peyer’s Patches – and the adrenals. These are the specific lymphatic and endocrine glands linked to the second chakra.
The vital energy created in the second chakra flows through all parts of the human body, to provide the fire that burns within us, to both create and maintain life. Unless we learn how to form attachments to others both in infancy and in later life, we will not develop into fully functional people. The second chakra keeps you emotionally healthy, and your energy field charged with prana. It also tells you what you don’t like, or warns you of potential danger. If something doesn’t “feel” right, or doesn’t “smell” good, it probably isn’t right. We refer to this as our “gut instinct”, the common experience of intuitively knowing something hidden about people, or sensing something about a situation that may cause us problems. This chakra also accesses the Enteric Nervous System, a primitive webbing of nerve cells intertwined throughout our gastrointestinal tract.
In Relational Energy Healing we work with an important part of the functioning of the second chakra: how it forms non-visible cords of attachment – chakra cords – to significant people in our lives. This is how we get our basic human needs met (infant survival), seek emotional nurturance (companionship, sexuality) and how we sustain long-term relationships. Healing in these areas can be enhanced by work on two important second chakra connections: the chakra cord to the mother, and the chakra cord to the father. It is these two earliest connections (or substitute connections to other caregivers if the birth parents are absent) that most heavily influence our adult emotional life. Here is the matrix within which we will grow our emotional reality. These influences are often the unconscious and yet deciding factors in many of our life choices. The experiences with our parents, and the download of DNA/heritage patterns from their family line, flows into our second chakra from the moment of birth. Many of the emotional challenges that we deal with stem from the non-conscious impact of family patterns downloaded into our emotional system. An important part of personal development is to see the difference between our own feelings and longings as separate from the issues in our family.
Of course, resolving family karma is always grist for the mill for personal development, and also is a part of our spiritual journey. Often when we clean the chakra cords, and clarify the emotional patterns laid down by our DNA/heritage, we can come to release the past more quickly, and make relational choices that are much more in alignment with our authentic self. We can come to live our lives for ourselves, and not live just as an extension of an ancestor’s karmic pattern.
At a practical level this means strengthening and clearing the second chakra as an energetic organ (so that if functions well), to heal trauma if present, and to support any lack of development in second chakra development. Then we can move into cleaning the chakra head of lower astral influences that may be feeding off any unresolved past emotion. One example is sentimentality - which is any lingering feeling state disproportionate to a real situation – as well as any other emotion pattern that keeps a person locked into the past. These emotional habits can be energetic food for the lower astral world. We all deserve to have our second chakras be in-the-moment, to be clean of history, and able to fully serve us in the moment.
The addition of chakra cord cleaning and repair work in Relational Energy Healing is built upon other work done on the healthy functioning – or healing – of the second chakra. By directly addressing the cord connections to significant others we inventory those relationships so as to make vital in-the-moment decisions about are lives. Are you in a lingering relationship that no longer serves you, and saps your life energy? Are you with an addictive person who you can’t let go, or with someone who won’t let you go? These are two examples of where cord work can help you move forward. The cords of connection can be reset when they are living in the past, and not rooted in the present. This process is supported and enhanced by good psychotherapy.
We grow as human beings through relationships, and through the ending of relationships. Chakra cord connections into (or from) the second chakra provide the basic attachment functionality of our personality. They transmit the consciousness in how we make – or end – relationships. They energize our desires, and support our immune systems response to danger. The second chakra cords are the way we grow into our humanity, but they may unconsciously hold the consciousness of how we unknowingly restrict our potential. The pleasure and pain of human relationships rests on this, the “root” consciousness system flowing out of (and into) the second chakra. If you want to grow a healthy plant you have to nourish the roots. Human beings are energetically rooted into other people, and into family karmic patterns. Our strengths and problem-solving skills flow from our emotional functioning. We all know that if we don’t heal the past we will revisit it, again and again. Let’s get to the place in our unsatisfying relationships where enough is enough … let’s heal them, or move on from any restrictive, self-abusive habits of our past. Let’s embrace our full emotional potential now, and not die an unfulfilled life.
Related post: The Third Chakra.