Is it worth evaluating connections between lower back pain and one's approach to creativity, control and honesty in personal relationships?
Most books that detail the effects on people who grow up with drinking parents mention lower back issues. I endured two injuries to my back early on, one when I fell down a flight of stairs at ten years old and then pulling a muscle playing basketball at twenty. My back was never the same. I became one of those “bad back” people at too young an age. My back now injures easily. It’s important that I always take care of it.
continued...The lower back is located within the region of the second chakra. The second what? Chakra.
A chakra is a geographical region in the body. There are seven, mapped from the tip of the head to the base of the spine. Each has its own energy, force, or personality. The second chakra’s region includes the sexual organs, large intestine, lower vertebrae, pelvis, appendix, bladder, and hips. The color associated with this region is orange.
This chakra system is very, very old: “Chakra,” the word, comes from the Sanskrit language, and means “wheel” or “disk.” The earliest documented idea of charkas dates back to pre-2,500 B.C. and to the Hindu people of India. The chakra energy system is new to the West, but yogis have related to it for centuries.
The link between lower back pain and the second chakra is that the second chakra relates to forming personal relationships and developing a healthy sense of control over one’s environment…both of which are issues that children of drinking parents often battle.
According to Caroline Myss ("Anatomy of the Spirit"), the primary fears tied to the second chakra are: “fears of loss of control, or being controlled by another, through the dominating power of events or conditions such as addiction, rape, betrayal, impotence, financial loss, abandonment by our primary partner or professional colleagues. Also, fear of the loss of the power of the physical body.”
In "Anatomy of the Spirit," Myss lists these intellectual/emotional issues related to the organs of the second chakra region:
Creativity
Blame & Guilt
Money & Sex
Power & Control
Ethics & Honor in relationships
And these as the physical dysfunctions linked to those organs and issues:
Chronic lower back pain
Pelvic/low back pain
Sexual potency
Ob/gyn problems
Sciatica
Urinary problems
Myss writes of the second chakra and relationships: “So long as we focus on trying to control another person and forget that that person is a mirror reflecting back to us our own qualities, we keep conflict alive within ourselves.” Meaning, I’d say, that being controlling is like being the bellows to a fire--you just inflame conflict, your inner conflict.
A balanced second chakra, according to Liz Simpson ("The Book of Chakra Healing") allows these positive qualities to emerge in a person:
Expressiveness
Calm and feelings of trust
Taking care to honor the trust others place in you
A sense of being in-tune with your feelings
A heightened creative state
Tips for Second Chakra balance
• Nurture your creative urges, don’t waste time attempting to fight creativity
• Focus on yourself, your ideas and goals, not those of others
• Be absolutely honest in your relationships, always, in the simplest possible way
• Practice patience, confidence, creativity and trust in your sex life
• Release yourself from any power that money has over your decision-making
• Totally release your urge to control things, control is not insurance
• Again, completely indulge your creative impulses--even attempt to exhaust your creativity...you cannot exhaust it!
RESOURCES & BOOKS CITED:
Holy Crap Indeed!
My then boyfriend and I were walking on our street and he brought up money and was I going to pay all of my share of the bills and rent next week and my back (which has previously cracked and fused vertebrae) just kind of seized up and bent me almost double. I was working so hard and making so little, and he had me splitting the food down the middle, and most of the food bill was for stuff he ate that I didn't. I did actually marry him a few years later after a lot of work for both of us, and he's been buying ALL the food for about 3 years now. Talk about a wake up call on my feelings around money and control and power (lack of all three), plus I was an artist who was not able to work in that field at all.
Posted by: Tk | 03 June 2009 at 10:43 AM
HOLY CRAP. So I do yoga and at the end of every practice I must endure the peace and tranquility of shavasana... and my lower back makes it so hard - i have to ease through it and be careful before I can really relax. And then there are the issues with the hips. Ah, the hips... the bane of my existence, the vanity they contain. During hip-openers, I tend to have panic attacks. I know people talk about camel and backbends releasing things from the heart center, but my issues reside in the hips. I swear - half- pigeon for five minutes is sheer anxious torture. I could go on and on. The yoga instructor once said, in the middle of a hip-opener (a warrior pose) that it's important to notice the thoughts that come out of the hips, that we hold judgment and shame in those places and often the tension there comes from the stress of self-loathing. I almost fell over, because I had just started on a train of hideous, negative thoughts. And don't even get me started on the resonance with the creativity, control, money, and sex... YIKES. I need to focus on the second chakra!!! Who knew?
This is all so incredibly fascinating. On so many levels - its Jungian... Thanks!
Posted by: Karen | 17 June 2005 at 07:00 AM