The Second Chakra | DailyOM

When we have gained a deep understanding of the body and soul, there often follows a desire to reach out, to grow, and to change. In the Vedic texts, the second chakra, the energy center between the navel and genitals, is the seat of life and the house of change. It is a point where opposites come together in sympathy, guiding us toward a balanced existence. The choices that help us evolve are often a product of the second chakra, which, when charged with neither too little nor too much energy, rejects rigid control and embraces creativity. Associated with taste and sensuality, the second chakra or Svadhisthana (which means sweetness) can be visualized as a brilliant sunset orange. Like its element, water, the second chakra is ruled by the moon.

A weakness or imbalance in the second chakra can lead to feelings of extreme empathy, which can cause you to be ruled by the emotions of others. To fail to focus on this chakra leads to the opposite: an utter lack of emotion and dwindling passions. A balanced second chakra embraces both sides of everything, giving you a healthy understanding of your emotions as well as those of others. Nurturing it through dance, laughter, and pleasurable movement will help you embrace your own sexuality, which is the main aspect of the chakra. Stimulation of the second chakra can be achieved through the use of orris root, gardenia, or damiana incense; practicing tantra yoga; or exposing the chakra to moonstone or coral. These methods of opening and energizing the chakra can be performed individually or in tandem for greater effect.

The second chakra may appear a route to indulgence to some, because of its focus on the feelings of the body, but it is also the dwelling place of the self. A fully functioning second chakra, working in a balanced way with the body’s other chakras, is a source of self-knowledge and understanding.

healingarts | July 7, 2005 |

Lindsey Tanner | Salon

A leading group of pediatricians says teenagers need access to birth control and emergency contraception, not the abstinence-only approach to sex education favored by religious groups and President Bush.

The recommendations are part of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ updated teen pregnancy policy.

“Even though there is great enthusiasm in some circles for abstinence-only interventions, the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy,” said Dr. Jonathan Klein, chairman of the academy committee that wrote the new recommendations.

Teaching abstinence but not birth control makes it more likely that once teenagers initiate sexual activity they will have unsafe sex and contract sexually transmitted diseases, said Dr. S. Paige Hertweck, a pediatric obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Louisville who provided advice for the report.
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healingarts | July 5, 2005 |

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, from Embracing the Beloved : Relationship as a Path of Awakening

This book is not meant to be read in only a linear manner. It often offers an experiential process. It is as much poetry as prose. Absorbed phrase by phrase, image by image, it allows healing to enter the heart, the mind, the body.

We share the process from which we are learning daily for the benefit of all who wish to use relationship as a path of self-discovery. This work is not to be taken lightly. This is a book about co-commitment, not co-dependency. These techniques are not applicable to anything that resembles the old-style dominant/submissive relationships which have for so long perpetuated our all-too-human suffering.

When true hearts truly join there is a mystical union. An inter-connecting of whole human beings which, is the foundation for great insight and growth. It is a collaboration in healing.

Although we often speak in terms of merging, or becoming one, or dissolving into oneness—-this is not a giving up of one person to another. It is not - as the great German poet Rilke fears of such commitments, “a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both of their fullest freedom and development..”

Indeed, if two people attempt only to become one, they certainly may get lost. But if the oneness just beyond such concepts is their ultimate concern–if each heart is committed to the universal heart, our birthright, our original nature–neither stops. And the ongoing aerial act is spectacular.
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healingarts | June 25, 2005 |

Kara Jesella, Nerve.com

Like most children of the ’80s, I had received a reasonable sex education via pop culture by the age of 11. In fourth grade, I asked my mother what Darryl Hall was referring to when he sang “I Want to Play that Game Tonight,” and laughed knowingly when she answered “Monopoly.” I suffered eye strain from repeated late-night viewings of the Spice Channel and was a longtime aficionado of The Joy of Sex. Still, nothing quite prepared me for the copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) I found in my parents’ basement.

It wasn’t the detailed diagrams of the female reproductive system, or the drawings of six different types of hymens that captivated me. Nor was it the righteous, womyn-power assertions such as, “We are learning to live our sexuality on our own terms.” No, it was the book’s explicit, unflinching description of fantasies: real women revealing their most private erotic imaginings about horses (ew) other women (less ew) and men (totally awesome, as I may actually have said in 1986). I read the scenarios over and over in the privacy of my locked bedroom, until I finally left for college, where the logistics of living with a roommate promptly put an end to that.
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healingarts | May 19, 2005 |