We have kicked off my annual Journey thru the Chakras in my weekly classes! This is always such a great opportunity for witnessing One’s Self, and checking in on what might be needed now for best healing practices.
I cannot believe that it was March 3rd, 2020, just over a year ago, that I had entered my Second Chakra blog into my website. This week, in May of 2021, we are diving into the waters of Svadisthana Chakra.
It would be two weeks later that would be my last class inside Mind Body Soul Yoga studio in Washington Heights. None of us knew all of what lay ahead. I still feel a little bewildered. No real time to process everything we have been thru and are going thru. Have you? Have you had any time to slow down enough to feel? I am inviting that this week with second chakra, to slow down enough to actually feel what is within me. I hope you will join me in practices! And, if a retreat might be just the thing to slow down, please fill out my survey, which you can find at the bottom of this newsletter.
I want to share two poems that stood out for me with the first chakra, Muladhara/ “Root Support.” Both are beautiful in their own unique ways. I hope you will enjoy.
For all things first chakra, click HERE!
But, before I share them, a first chakra quote from Anodea Judith:
“If we can replace unreasonable fear with reasonable faith, then we have a natural antidote to out first chakra demon.”
For more on Faith, read what I wrote by clicking HERE!
And some first chakra mantras just for you, from me:
“I trust my bodies wisdom.”
“I am here.”
“I am real.”
“I Belong.”
“I have a right to have all my needs met.”
“The Earth provides all I need.”
Enjoy these incredible poems that made me cry deep gratitude tears for First Chakra Essence:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/21/love-after-love-derek-walcott/
LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
THE HOUSE OF BELONGING
By David Whyte
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the gray day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
All my love and ‘root’ support to you,
Shawna
Breathe and Believe.