The Chakra of Truth

The fifth chakra is about truth, communication, discernment, judgement and detoxification. Its Sanskrit name Vishuddha means purification (1). The element associated with this chakra is sound, which makes sense given that its locaton, at the throat, is home to the vocal chords from which we talk, sing and speak our truth. 

The fourth chakra is at the heart centre, in the middle of the chest and at the centre of the chakra system. It is the seat of unconditional love, kindness and compassion. The element associated with the heart chakra is air. When the two chakras meet, sound is amplified as it travels freely through the air, as though carried on the wind, and the air is filled with the echoes of sound.

When we combine the two chakras symbolically, we inject love into truth and truth into love. Sometimes revealing cold hard truths can be the most loving thing to do. What if we need to know something about ourselves to move forwards in our self development? On the other hand, what if injecting love means hiding the truth? What if it means witholholding what you are thinking or feeling to be the kindest, most grateful person you can be? That is where discernment is our most useful tool: trial and error, attuning with your heart space and judging each moment, and each relationship with care and compassion, learning when it is best to speak out, or not. Ahimsa comes before satya in the list of yamas, implying that non harming is more important that telling the truth. Not everyone is on a yogic journey, and not everyone is prepared to hear the truth. In that case it is more helpful not to speak your mind.

When I think of the fourth chakra meeting the fifth, I remember the chapter on Satya in Sharon Gannon’s bok ‘Yoga and Vegetarianism’. It is the perfect read for Vegan-uary, a hard hitting, yoga centred text on becoming vegan. Gannon recognises that the unheard calls of the mother and baby animals, which are separated soon after birth, are embedded in the meat and dairy that we eat and drink. When we eat meat and dairy we ignore the pain and suffering that the animals have had to live for and the suffering they go through at the moment of death; we ignore their voices. In essence, we silence all the farm animals and ignore the truth about the animals that we eat. We turn a blind eye to the separation that all the animal families undergo. We ignore that they live in unnatural conditions, that their life spans are cut short, and that they are so unhealthy and crammed in together that they are fed large amounts of pharmaceuticals just to stay alive. The untold story of the 80 billion farm animals that we kill every year is lost under a mountain of lies.

In fact, we are told so many lies in the media, many people cannot tell the difference between truth and falsehood. In our fight against climate change, the sceintific facts about climate change are brought into question because those motivated by money are preared to tell big lies that hide the truth. If there is one chakra that is standing in the way of a more enlightened world, or, rather, a healthier, cleaner, non polluting world, I think it is our fifth chakra. Without truth, people cannot make informed decisions, without discernment, they cannot see through the lies that are published in the media.

So as we approach the fifth chakra from the fourth, we challenge ourselves to be honest and to add to that the power of love. To live from a place of truth means to be truthful to yourself about how you are treating the other beings on the planet. To cleanse this chakra, listen to the animals, give a voice to others, and avoid meat and dairy as much as possible. By reducing the amount of meat and dairy that you consume, you are releasing vibrations of kindness out into the world, and into your own body, creating a culture of honesty, and an expectation of truthfulness. Your words will hold more weight, you will have a kinder relationship with yourself, and you are more likely to say what you mean and mean what yousay.

(1) Anodea Judith (2004) Eastern Body Western Mind. New York: Random House

Finding Your Voice

The third and final moon focussing on the heart chakra really emphasises the need for self care and taking your yoga practice at a pace that suits where you are at this moment. It is no use performing peacock if you end up in tears.

With the winter solsitce last Thursday/Friday your energy may be low, or combined with the waxing moon, are you feeling emotional, or overwhelmed? I find these to be exiting times of setting intentions for the New year, where do I see myself this time next year, what have a I got to do to get there?

At the junciton where we move from th silence of the heart, into the fifth chakra associated with sound, we chant So Ham, a reminder that sound comes from the wave of the breath moving in and out the body. So ham is a simple, humble chant that mimics the swooshing, cleansing sound of the inhale and the reflective, perhaps ambivalent, sound of the exhale. For many people finding their voice can be intimidating. By warming up the breath with a simple chant, it is one that almost anyone can do, and so build confidence gradually. 

By working on the arms in challenging arm balances like crow, and side crow, the nadis in the arms are awakened activating both throat and hear chakras. Shoulderstand is the ultimate fith chakra opener. The more I practice chakra yoga, the more I become aware of the message that each chakra brings. At times, the throat chakra can bring too much truth and you have to be ready to carefully exit the pose. On the yin side of things, I have been practicing deer pose, a gentle twist with open hips and hugging a pillow; ii nourishes the heart space and sends signals of love to the self. Although yin is rooted in chinese medicine, it can be chakra focussed and I am enjoy the challenge of designing yin routines to match the yang flow through the chakras. 

The throat chakra is about finding your truth, speaking your truth and living your truth. What do you want to manifest in your life? Are you being true to yourself in the actions that you take? Are you looking at yourself honestly? Are you in demial? More practically, do you speak gently, and kindly? Do you sound authentic when your speak? Do your words match your thoughts?

To love oneself even in face of painful truth is an important skill as a yogi. The road to enlightenment is not always an easy path and cultivating a compassionate, honest friend to yourself, inside your self, is the whole point of meditation and yoga practice. Self care is the means by which you love your self, even when you discover things that are not easy to swallow. Without self love it is almost impossible to progress on a journey of awakening to the self. So find your voice, but first by loving the self.

Happy Christmas

Om shanti shanti shanti

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Chicken Stew

Since turning vegan, there is one thing I have missed up until now: my Dad’s chicken casserole. I finally decided to take the recipe and replace the chicken with ‘This Isn’t Chicken’ chicken. At 22% protein it is a fantastic meat replacement, and the recipe including all natural ingredients fits in with my whole foods approach to cooking. No vegan junk here thank you. So here is a super simple yet effective stew, warming fro the winter and healthy too. Prep time 30min, cooking 1 hour serves 4

Either use one oven proof pot, suitable for frying, see pic, or use a large frying pan then transfer to a casserole dish

1 onion diced, fried in drizzle of oil

1 leek sliced, added to onion in oil

Mixed herbs nd oregano – 3tsps

1-2 carrots sliced in discs added to leek and onions

1-2 packets of fake chicken, add to pot and fry for 5minutes

1 dessert spoonful of flour sprinkled in pot, stir well coating ingredients

Make Half a litre of stock (use leftover veg water or stock cube+boiling water), add to pot and bring to the boil

Preheat oven to gas mark 4, put pot into oven and cook for 1hour

Serve with rice, delicious!!!

Loving Kindness

This moon is all about balancing the heart chakra, a classic yoga focus. If you;ve got things going on for you in your love life it will likely show up in your practice. Are you feeling hurt, or are you free to express your self? The body is a reflection of the mind, and what is happening in one space will be happening in the other. To a certain extent you can soothe the mind by soothing the body, that is the basic premise of yoga. Anyone who has been practicing for some time may use their practice as acounselling tool, to better understand how they are coping with the stresses of life. Hopefully no matter what you are going through, you can use the practice to self soothe, and as each day passes, you will experience more openness no matter what you are faced with off the mat. 

The lesson around this chakr is Loving Kindness, perfect for incorporating a metta meditation, an uplifting, heart centred mantra or some gentle mindfulness techniques.

I have made time for some pawanmuktasana around the arms and shoulders, a forgotten area associated with the heart space. It is said the arms are an extension of the heart space, so the hands and arms need plenty of attention when you work on the heart chakra.

I have also been putting extra effort into the second chakra and opening up the hamstrong at every opportunity. Hanumanasana is the classic heart opening pose: the splitz, which couldn;t be more demandning on the hamstrings and hip flexors. It always struck me as strange that the heart be so deeply connected to the legs, but you can see for yourself if you practice one day with few lunges and standing forward bends, compared to another practice going deeper into these preparatory poses. All of a sudden the heart openers i.e. the back bends become more accessible. 

The scientific reason for this is the connection of the hamstring to illiopsoas muscles, which connect the pelvis to the spine and forms part of the hip flexors. In myofascial terms this is the ‘superficial back line’ that stretches form the foot to the skull. The lower back cannot open without flexibility in the hamstrings and forward bends, including lunges and leg lifts, help with this. The greater the flexibility in the hamstrings, hip flexors, and legs, the more the lower back opens up and the freer the range of movement in the heart space.

My chosen peak pose for this moon is ‘broken bow’; upward bow with one leg extended. The idea of a broken bow symbolises that moment when the hunter stops hunting, allowing the animals to be free, a spontaneous opening of the heart! Broken Bow challenges the idea that opening our heart is under our control. Sometimes we have to let the world, or fate, offer a helping hand. It reminds me of the mantra Let go, let God!

Loving kindness takes many forms, and practicing universa love is one of the hardest lessons in a yoga practice. We can only evolve what loving kindness means and the boundaries it requires over time. By practicing opening the heart on the mat, we can be more ready when life asks it of us.

Seitan Bourguignon

I wish there was a catchier name for this delicious dish, but good for Halloween! If you want to impress someone with just how satisfying and rich vegan cuisine can be, this could be the recipe you’ve been looking for. Made in exactly the same way as the beef classic, seitan bourguignon, uses seitan marinated in tamari sauce and ginger, a delicious high protein food from China and Japan. Cooking time 1hr 30min, serves 4

6 shallots diced

2 drizzles of oil

mixed herbs, oregano, bay leaf, salt and pepper

12 medium sized mushrooms chopped

jar of seitan marinated in tamari and ginger (or add plain seitan with Tamara sauce and chopped ginger)

spoonful of flour sprinkled so it coat everything

glass of red wine (non alcoholic red is fine too)

generous squirt of tomato puree

stock cube

Add the ingredients to a frying pan in the order listed above, gradually incorporating each item. Prepping and frying takes about 30min. Turn the oven on to gas mark 4, find a casserole dish and pour contents from the frying pan into the dish. Oven bake for 1 hour. Serve with rice, mash potato, or Yorkshire pudding

Enlightened Activism: Love Doing What You Do

Another moon, another theme! As the third ego merges into the fourth chakra, the heart, we begin to see a magical combination. When loving kindness influences all our actions we are said to be liberated, or enlightened. 

What is enlightenment? For me, it is freedom from pain thrugh a deeper appreciation of each moment. Contradicting the old adage, sometimes, what we don’t know can hurt us. For me, having greater insights into how my mind, and the minds of others worked, actually liberated me from quit a lot of suffering. Many yogis turn to the yamas and niyamas to guide their actions and to become an enlightened being (for a list see, Healing Ourselves to Healing the Planet). Ahimsa, the first of the yamas, is non harming. It sounds simple, don;t hurt people. But what if it’s more than that? What if it’s animals and the earth too? Over 80 billion animals are killed every year to supply us with meat, dairy, leather and other products. A vegan diet is the best thing you can do for the planet and all the creatures living here.

Tapas is the third niyama and it means austerity, or suffering. Often performing activists tasks is enlightenng because just by setting aside your valuable time to do something for others, you are creating the kind of heat, or tapas, within the body that purifies karmic seeds and creates enlightenment. A vegan diet means you are performing an act of kindness every time you eat. Performing acts of kindness creates a brdge between the ego and the heart chakra; they can give you pride in yourself as well as others, helping you to literally stand tall and love yourself that bit more.

When we meditate we are usually working the physical muscles that help us to sit up tall, our core, shoulders, chest and hips all get a work out by the lotus poses, which naturally open the body. The kundalini energy can pass from the base of the spine up through the sushumna through the points of the chakras. The connection between third and fourth is particularly potent, where the lower forms of the ego are said to meet the chakras of higher wisdom. If we do not know how to work the diaphragm when we breath then we will stop the flow of energy from the base of the spine, from rising up into the heart space. This month, I have combined twists with heart openers to bring a greater awareness to this area of the body and to tone the muscles around the diaphragm.

Not all connections between the third and fourth chakras are positive. In Eastern Body Western Mind, Judith Anodea reflects how conditional love from one’s parents, or indeed anyone, creates a situation where the third and fourth chakras are ‘at odds with each other’. If we are on the receiving end of conditional love, we find ourselves either able to love only bu surrendering our own will, or asserting our will with the expectation of rejection. We therefore need to go through a process of reintegration where we imagine a world in which both willpower and love are possible.

When the chakras are aligned we are able to achieve a state of enlightenment. When the third and fourth are connected, love informs our actions toward others and our own self is nourished by the love that we feel. Love isn’t something that is outside of us that we ca commoditise or use to control others, it permeates our being and nourishes us. So go ahead, love doing what you do.

Isometric contraction: working with the tensegrity of the body

Lots of fancy words in the title of this post, but what do they all mean? Tensegrity is a portmanteau (oo there’s another one – it means combination!) of tension and integrity. It’s what makes the body parts move in tandem with each other. The foot bone is connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is connected to the hip bone etc. Our bones are tied together with the muscles and connecting tissues, and its al l wrapped up in fascia, a gloopy sticky mucous found under the skin thathelps defend the body from harm.

When we practice yoga, we challenge the body to move smoothly from one pose to the next, or even from one breath to the next. The movement of the body, particulalry in vinyasa flow, relies on the different parts of the body working in a harmonious whole. Exted the hand and the arm moves, extend the arm and the shoulder moves, and so on.

The contraction of certain muscles, depending on which pose you are practicing, will be different. The muscles usually work in pairs while one set contracts, the other relaxes. Concentric contraction occurs when the body is moving, an the contracting muscle shortens. Eccentric contraction sees the muscle lengthen, even while its under pressure. Isometric contraction is where the muscle length does not change. This occurs in yoga when a posture is being held. 

Rather than holding a weight, a yogi works with the natural weight of the body. Let’s imagine trikonasana. The torse is reaching forwards, the spine extending through the crown of the head. The arms are extended from the shoulders in opposite directions. Both arms and torso intially extend thrugh complementary concentric and eccentric contraction, but once in the pose, isometric contraction takes over. There is very little movement, apart from the breath, instead the main work of the muscles is holding the body in place. The torso is parallel to the ground, as gravity is working on the weight of the head and upper body, the waist is like a pivot between the legs and upper torso. Liekwise the arms are being held in place, extending outwards, upwards and downwards, slicing through gravity and relying on the tensegrity of the arm muscles to open the heart space. Isometric contraction means that the muscles are almost static in position, but they are working against gravity to stay in one place. 

The transition into trikonasana feels much like dancing, and I think it is because of the tensegrity inherent in it. The legs are rooted into the ground, the front arm extends forward parallel to the floor, and the head follows. This is a perfect example of tensegrity at work. All the parts of the body follow the same narrow line, not wider than your foot width apart. Legs are active, which draws the abdomen in. The arms are active opening the chest. To finish it off the head turns to face upwards, and the gaze leads, drawing the head with it. Holding the pose, torso suspended in air, relies on half the muscles being isometrically contracted, and that is whre you can appreciate the tensegrity. The body is active, yet unmoving, working yet poised.

Bean Soup

On the search for a low calorie, high nutrition soup, I designed this beauty, which is high in calcium, iron and protein. Prep time: 1hr, serves 6.

Onion (large)

garlic chopped (4 cloves)

Celery chopped (6 sticks

Mixed herbs, bay leaf (3 teaspoons)

Tinned tomatoes (2 cans)

Kale chopped (200g bag)

Butter beans (2 cans drained)

Hot water

I fried the onion, garlic and celery, added the herbs, salt and pepper, fried til translucent. Then I added the tomatoes, kale and hot water and Brought to the boil. After about half an hour, I added the beans and allowed to bubble for another half an hour.

This is everything you could want from a soup. Now that the autumn breezes are here, it’s a welcome soup to cosy up with. At only 250calories per serving you can add bread with no guilt and know that you are getting a third of your RDA of iron, calcium and protein munch munch munch

Take Back You Power

This moon I am working on the third chakra:the Ego, straight up. The solar chakra is home to the ego self, which drives us forward. Sometimes it does not know what to do; it reverses, or takes short cuts, avoiding what is being presented to us, determined to go down a path of our own choosing, instead of a path that is suggested by someone else. The ego doesn’t like doing what is told. How many times do you find yourself acting out against your best interest because you can’t stand doing what someone else has told you to do?! We all do it. Part of life’s lesson is to learn the tell tale signs that you, yes you, have taken a wrong turn and, instead of admitting that you are wrong, carry on blindly down the path to destruction. Hopefully the results aren’t too disastrous, but our pride can get us into all sorts of scrapes. 

‘Take Back Your Power’ was a lesson taught to me by a yoga teacher some years ago, and I am still working with what it means. The meaning has resonated with me along the path as I find myself regaining control over certain aspects of my life, places were I have been out of control, acting like other people would prefer me to act instead of me putting my foot down. Instead of listening to others, balancing the ego can also be about standing on your own two feet, ignoring what others expect of you, and asserting your right to live your life how you choose to. This can mean hurting, or at least rejecting, the help of well meaning others.

What a difficult balance this is to strike! Free will is what makes life worth living, but as we search for approval and success in the eyes of others it can also be suffocating. Sometimes what we want to do is not what anyone else wants us to do.

‘The electron spins both ways’, this is my personal favourite lesson of third chakra work. No matter how much we want things to go one way they can equally be found to be going inthe other. Unlike molecular physics, we believe that we have a choice in how our lives work out, when we see two paths ahead, only one can come true. At least that’s how it looks. But thre’s always more to it, everything happens for a reason and they say every cloud… Also, just because one door has closed now doesn’t necessarily mean it will never reopen, you just never know.

The philosophy of yoga teaches us that ‘Thy will be done’ not ‘My Will be done’, challenging that part of us that wants to do things ‘my way’ every time. In a chakra of contradictions, where the ego and divine meet, how about surrendering to a higher power? The key to fidning happiness in the third chakra is to master the art of acting powerfully, while surrendering to what may be; it’s important to learn to assert oneself, but to renounce the fruits of one’s actions. There is control, but without attachment. There is power, but with humility. There is courage but with temperance. This is how we learn to take back our power.