Phoenix from the wasteland

I'm 23 days into working on my root chakra. I've been meditating every night and getting regular sleep. I've given up alcohol and ciggarettes. I feel more energised than ever.

Firstly, I'd like to share my meditation routine. I listen to binaural beats on my headphones to put my brain into gamma and theta frequencies. I begin with two different breathing exercises. Firstly, I take 40 slow deep breaths. While I am inhaling I contract the muscles inbetween my anus and my genitals and relax them when I exhale. Then I conduct the breath of fire for a couple of minutes. This is quick rhythmic breathing through the nostrils using the diaphragm. I then work through my body from head to toe tensing and then relaxing each muscle.

I then visualise red roots rising up from the ground around me. I can feel the parts of my body that have tensions and aches. As my attention shifts from point to point I imagine the red roots connecting with each point. I imagine love and nourishment flowing into me through the roots with every breath.

The second visualisation I do is to imagine my life as a four dimensional life tree. I do this imagining that as I move through 3d space and time I create a 4d tube. Since I return to the same places many times the tube traces out a tree. Places like my bed which I return to become the trunks with all the places I go to from there branching off from it. At some of these places I draw nourishment or lose energy. My aim is to get the tree looking as healthy as possible drawing energy from all the right places. I visualise myself conducting the habits I'd like to introduce into my life. This is how I add positive roots to my tree. Then I imagine myself in the situations where I might be tempted to continue bad habits and I imagine myself responding to the temptation with self discipline and willpower. That's how I prune the negative roots.

The other way I use this visualisation is to move backwards along the tree into my past. I figured that my memories are a major way that I am rooted into this world. So, as I go along I try to find points in my past that contain locked energies or blockages in the tree. I try to go over these points and unlock the feelings that I may have supressed at the time.

Doing all this before I go to sleep has lead to some incredibly symbolic and synchronistic dreams that I will share in my next post. I don't claim to have any knowledge on this subject at all. In fact I am making it all up as I go along. So please feel free to correct me and point me in the right direction.

I'm on a mission to balance my chakras. If you don't know what a chakra is - here is a good article about them at Reality Sandwhich..

Chakras

There is a great quiz here that will give you some insight into the state of your chakras. Here's a graph showing the results of mine.

I'm going to spend a seventh of the year working on each chakra. At the end of the year I will do the quiz again and see if I have managed to balance them. I will post here and describe what practices I have used and also what changes I have noticed within myself as a result of them.

If you have any doubt about the validity of this ancient system then check out these links that look at the scientific evidence for it..

Chakras, Rationalism and Science

The Anatomical Proof of the Existence of the Chakras