The opening of the sacral chakra is associated with experiencing sensations, sensuousness, and all the pleasures of physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of life. It brings out creativity by reaching the vast depths of our subconscious minds. How does this happen? Let’s find out.
Your sacral chakra is responsible for your existence. It is how the quality of aliveness comes about. It is associated with fluidity and movement. If you carefully observe, there are many types of movements happening within us: some are gross (breath), while others are subtle (thoughts). But they’re happening at the same time.
When you sit silently, you can hear your heartbeat, and you can feel the flow of breath in and out of your body. The cold air enters your nostrils, flows into the lungs, enters the diaphragm, and reaches below the belly to provide life force to the orange-colored pulsating energy center.
In addition to the above, our mind keeps producing thoughts, creating a never-ending cycle of feelings, emotions, and more thoughts. Your creativity depends on the quality of the thoughts you create.
When you create positive and uplifting thoughts, your creative potential increases manifolds, whereas when you create negative and degrading thoughts, you not only reduce your creativity but also create an imbalance in the sacral energy.
During childhood, our sacral chakra energy is heightened. Have you noticed the excitement and curiosity in children? They are always willing to explore.
The energy forces them to move and create. You give them toys; they’ll create a story out of the blocks. Give them a piece of cloth; they’ll make clothing for their toy figures.
But what happens to us? Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we lose our passion for exploring and creating. It’s because we’re conditioned to seek false security. Fear is the primary mechanism by which society manipulates a child and destroys their natural tendencies to be creative.
These fears get trapped deep within our subconscious and unconscious mind, further creating blockages in the energy system, including our creative part. People who rise above their fears and venture out into the unknown with courage are the ones with balanced creative energy.
When your sacral chakra opens, you let go of the fears and the past conditioning and become more fluid and adaptable, just like water.
In an interview with Bruce Lee that I’m sure most of you must have seen, he says, “Be like water, my friend” – the water is flexible, unbreakable, and becomes the thing that contains it. If you put water in a teapot, it becomes a teapot. You cannot burn water with heat. You can cut it with a knife.
People who achieve incredible feats in life are flexible. They embrace change. Though it might not seem so, they are not rigid with their techniques.
They try out new ways, explore new ideas, and make changes where required. They are not afraid to seek help when needed. They know their strengths and weaknesses and keep their ego from interfering in pursuing their goals.
While the root chakra represents solidity and stillness, the sacral chakra is associated with fluidity and movement. At this point, we transition from a dense (solid) form to a subtle (liquid) form. The energy of the sacral chakra is higher in frequency than the root chakra. But with the introduction of a new dimension comes additional complexity that needs to be understood.
Signs of Blocked Sacral Chakra
#1 – Lack of Interest in Creative Pursuits – The sacral chakra connects to our subconscious, the storehouse of creative potential. However, many of us with blocked energy cannot tap into this vast reservoir of creativity, mainly because we remain trapped within our thinking mind, which keeps obsessing about an imaginary future.
Fear is what stops many people from pursuing creative tasks. The main concern is related to finances. “How will I make a living? What about my debts? What about my future?” We remain trapped in the unending ruminations desiring a happy life and sacrificing today for tomorrow. By the time tomorrow comes, we do not have the same vitality and enthusiasm we had earlier.
Human design is such that we need to be creative to be happy. Satisfaction and fulfillment come with creativity and not with chasing an arbitrary number in the bank account. You experience a rush of creative thoughts when your sacral energy gets unlocked.
It feels like life has opened a new doorway to a place where there is unlimited happiness of abundance and no fear of scarcity. The mind expands, and new ideas flow. Utilizing the power of solar plexus, which we will cover subsequently, you gain the strength to pursue those creative ideas and create a new life for yourself—a life of freedom and joy.
People with blocked sacral energy remain trapped in their traditional ways. Afraid of uncertainty, they become conformists to authority and prevalent culture. The very thought of diverting from the conventional is troublesome for them.
They forget how creative they were as children, how they explored the world with fear. Do you recall how adventurous you were as a child? Sacral chakra brings back the lost innocence and curiosity.
#2 – Inability to Experience Pleasure – The sacral chakra is the pleasure energy center we receive as a gift from the universe. The natural creativity in children proves that fact. However, as we grow and step into the world, we get conditioned and lose our creative abilities, including the ability to experience life’s pleasures.
We mistake pleasure for thrill and excitement, which are also a part of living, but an unconscious chase for re-experiencing pleasures prevents us from experiencing the innate peace that is our essence. Pleasure includes small things like enjoying your morning coffee, dining with family, spending quality time with friends, taking a stroll in the garden, and so on.
These pleasures are mostly free and easily available, but we are never really “present” to others. We remain lost in contemplating future happiness, far away from the present moment’s joy. “If I had more money, I would be happier.” “If I get that project, I’ll be successful.” “I have to do this,” “I have to do that,” and the thinking mind goes on like that forever.
How alert and receptive are you when you are with another person, like your spouse, children, or friends? Balancing sacral chakra will not rain gold and silver or jack up your stock prices. It makes you aware and receptive to the joy of the moment.
A guaranteed approach to living a miserable life is the idea of “sacrificing your today for a better tomorrow.” People who believe that end up sacrificing their entire lives because there’s no tomorrow. The problem is that we want instant success in everything.
This unconscious chase of the thinking mind to get immediate success, fame, admiration, and an obsession with the hustle culture brings pain and suffering. Allowing things to be as they are and moving forward at your natural place awakens your pleasure center. We grow slowly but enjoy the process. We learn to see life in totality for “what it is” rather than how our ego-mind projects it.
#3 – Low Self-Esteem – You experience confusion and rejection. You carry the burden of expectations and responsibilities handed over by society. Maybe you had a knack for art, but someone, somewhere down the line, you were told that you would make more money in some other profession.
You decided to forgo art to please people around you. It’s not your fault. That’s how life unfolds for most of us. You may be a doctor, engineer, data scientist, lawyer, or whatever, but you’re unhappy. You don’t get along with your peers.
You try hard to gain their acceptance but face rejection frequently. You don’t talk about it and keep the emotions buried underneath, which causes more problems. People with low self-esteem exhibit passive-aggressive behavior where they mock people in the guise of a joke. They are self-critical and also criticize others.
They fear approaching people thinking they are better than us. They unknowingly seek validation from others – social media is living proof of this. Hostility, aggression, embarrassment, loneliness, and substance abuse are common in people with low self-esteem.
Poor self-esteem causes insecurity that leads to jealousy and resentment. Such people feel the need to control others compulsively. They do it to calm their anxiety and feel better about themselves. This behavior usually hurts the person on the receiving end, and the relationship eventually breaks. With the energetic alignment in the sacral chakra, we realize our true identity.
We experience a sense of acceptance of what life has given us. The need to change for others or conform to traditional beliefs disappears, along with low self-esteem, as there is no desired future projection of any image.
#4 – Stubbornness and Rigidity – Dysfunctional sacral chakra makes us rigid. After a particular point, rigidity manifests as recurring pain in the body. Adaptability and flexibility are the keys to balanced sacral energy. A classic indication is muscle stiffness in lower body regions like legs and hips.
While exercises like stretching and strengthening stiff body parts help, the pain comes back till the psychological component of the ailment is not addressed. That’s why the sacral chakra is represented by the water element. Water is flexible. It finds ways around obstacles by meandering. It assumes the shape of the container.
Sacral Chakra Helps In Sexual Healing
Entering the realm of duality, the mind starts creating desires, leading to new feelings and emotions. One such strong sense is sexuality which provides for the source of creation. Your sexuality is sacred. It is the mechanism by which we create awareness of the other.
A blocked sacral chakra causes sexual dysfunctions, creating further physical and psychological issues. Sexual suppression often leads to an imbalance in the sacral chakra. This suppression usually results from cultural and religious beliefs. It is one of the major causes of pathological behavior in humans.
Sexual energy is highly potent, and it should not be contained. It has to flow. It can cause severe problems in the areas it accumulates. Therefore, maintaining the flow of this energy is crucial.
A healed sacral chakra liberates us sexually. You allow and enjoy new sensations and build healthy relationships. People who deny themselves sensual pleasures create trauma for their mind-body complex resulting in frequent experiences of anger, sadness, irritation, restlessness, and general emotional upheavals.
The Real Pleasures of Life
By nature, humans seek pleasure and avoid pain (Freudian pleasure principle). However, when the sacral chakra is blocked, the pain can be mistaken for pleasure.
For example, addictive behavior, like consuming drugs, drinking alcohol, playing video games, craving attention on social media, eating junk food, overindulging in sex, compulsive spending, etc., gives temporary pleasure but creates problems later.
These addictions damage the body and mind and also create a financial mess. Therefore, you should not seek pleasures that rob you of the vitality of life. Engaging in creative work requires effort, and delay in gratification is the best way to channel energy.
Experienced meditators use sexual energy as the catalyst to expedite the fulfillment of their goals. Instead of engaging in sexual acts, they use this energy in their work, spiritual progress, or whatever they are trying to achieve.
This process is also called transmutation. However, this is an advanced concept, and I would not ask you to indulge in it unless your sacral chakra is fully functional.
A functioning sacral chakra will help you identify things that provide the real pleasures gained by performing rigorous action.
For example, you feel much better after a thorough workout than sitting and watching a movie on television. While watching television may feel better “in the moment,” it leaves you with a bad feeling afterward.
Emotional Regulation
Emotions are the way consciousness creates an experience. Therefore, pleasures and sensations are all extensions of emotions. When we emote, there is a movement of energy. An unobstructed movement creates the sensations of pleasantness, whereas an obstructed flow creates unpleasant experiences.
Emotions are not bad. They are there for a reason. They allow us to understand our inner state. When the chakras are blocked, we experience symptoms such as anxiety, depression, sadness, grief, and more. However, when the chakras are open, we experience joy, happiness, fulfillment, abundance, and bliss.
When we suppress or repress emotions, we restrict the flow of energy upwards to higher chakras. Repressed emotions accumulate in our unconscious as a part of the shadow and wreak havoc on our lives. Therefore, opening up the sacral chakra helps to release trapped emotions.
