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Svadhisthana Sacral Chakra: Seat of Pleasure

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Introduction to Svadhisthana Sacral Chakra

We move from the self-protection of Muladhara to an intimate awareness of others with Svadhisthana. The sacral chakra provokes a need to unite with others and overcome our falsely perceived separateness. It is the root of emotional security, pleasure, sexuality, creativity, self-control, and self-respect.

Svadhisthana is associated with the reproductive system and creativity. It is the driver for our innate desire to create. We experience this in different ways – from the creation of new ideas and endeavors, or the conception of a new life.

The color of the Svadhisthana chakra is orange – the color of sunrise, the dawning of a new day, the birth of fresh energy and new ideas. Orange also symbolizes warmth, generosity, creativity, and positive activity, which are all qualities of a balanced Svadhisthana chakra.

Svadhisthana Sacral Chakra Associations

  • Sanskrit name: Svadhisthana
  • English name: Sacral
  • Etymology: Sva = Self, Adhisthana = Seat
  • Location: Lower abdomen, approximately 2 inches below the navel
  • Color: Orange
  • Element: Water
  • Power word: Pleasure
  • Physical associations: The reproductive system, the bladder, kidneys, and lymphatic system
  • Planet: Mercury
  • Animal: Crocodile – Torpor, ancient primal instincts
  • Deity: Brahma – Creator
  • Lotus: Six petals symbolizing the six obstacles to liberation
  • Keynote: D
  • Solfeggio frequency: 417 Hz
  • Nature sound: Running water
  • Seed mantra: Vam
  • Affirmation: I feel pleasure, creativity, and connection with others
  • Crystals: Carnelian, citrine, orange calcite, orange aventurine
  • Essential oils: Orange, fennel, neroli, ylang ylang, jasmine, clary sage, rosewood, tangerine
  • Mineral: Sodium
  • Metal: Tin
  • Foods: Oranges, orange bell peppers, tangerines, carrots, mandarins, pumpkin
Eat orange foods to balance your Svadhisthana chakra

Svadhisthana Characteristics

The Svadhisthana chakra governs our emotional security. It is connected with the emotional layer of the aura. Its element is water, which also governs the emotions. The water aspect of Svadhisthana helps us to meet turbulent emotions and change with fluidity. Svadhisthana’s energy enables enthusiasm for positive change and development on a personal and spiritual level.

Relationships

The Svadhisthana chakra helps us to foster productive and well-adjusted relationships. Often, when there is disharmony within relationships, including the relationship with the self, there will be an imbalance in this energy center. Developing an honest and emotionally balanced relationship with ourselves is the first step to creating such a relationship with other people.

When we can relate with integrity, self-respect, and non-violent communication to ourselves, we are able to bring these qualities into our relationships with others. When we act disrespectfully, dishonestly, and unkindly to ourselves, we will also display these negative characteristics in all of our relationships. Balancing Svadhisthana and developing trust, respect, generosity, and kindness to ourselves is paramount to acting skillfully in all other types of relationships.

The Seat of Sensual Connection and Pleasure

We connect with the world through our senses, allowing us to receive pleasure through taste, touch, hearing, smell, and sight. In some traditions, the mind is also considered to be a sense organ. Svadhisthana is the vehicle through which we process our sensual connection with the world. Instead of a base primal instinct for the elements needed for survival, as is Muladhara, Svadhisthana allows us discernment and self-control in our sensual engagement.

Svadhisthana also facilitates our sensual connection with other people. Our sensual desires and our individual sexuality stem from our Svadhisthana chakra. So, Svadhisthana is associated with sensual pleasure in the form of sexual connection, and also sensual pleasure from engagement with the world through the senses.

Healing carnelian gemstone necklace

Symptoms of an Unbalanced Svadhisthana

If we have an unbalanced sacral chakra, we can experience emotional detachment, a lack of self-control, apathy, unsuccessful relationships, lack of empathy towards others, loss of libido, co-dependency, clinging and attachment. We can also notice creativity blocks (writer’s block, for example) and the feeling that life just isn’t ‘flowing’ properly for us. The joy and pleasure have drained from the world, and everything seems gray and gloomy. We may also experience moral or ethical dilemmas that we feel unable to rectify.

Underactive Sacral Chakra

If we lack energy in the Svadhisthana chakra, or it has become blocked, we may feel emotionally numb. We may repress our emotions and feelings towards others, causing an emotional volcano to erupt inappropriately and uncontrollably. A blocked Svadhisthana can cause us to become detached from others and the world around us. We may feel despondent, apathetic, and unmotivated to connect with life. We may also feel unloved or unworthy of love, mistrustful of others, and so build up walls to protect ourselves from the perceived threat of emotional hurt. Loss of libido and sexual inhibition often results from low Svadhisthana energy.

Overactive Svadhisthana

An excess of energy in this chakra can result in over-emotional states – not being able to control our emotions. If we have too much Svadhisthana energy, we may also find ourselves emotionally attached to others, depending on them for emotional security. We may express this excess Svadhisthana energy through unhealthy or obsessive sexual pursuits, and promiscuity. We may become addicted to sex, dating, and anything else that feeds our emotional needs at the time. Jealousy, envy, possessiveness, mood swings, clinging, and obsession are all signs of too much Svadhisthana energy.

Physical Symptoms of an Unbalanced Sacral Chakra

Unbalanced sacral chakra can manifest physically as reproductive issues, lower back pain, digestive issues, impotence, bladder, gallbladder and kidney problems, tight hip joints, menstruation issues, hormonal imbalances, constipation or diarrhea, lethargy, depression, over or under eating, and toxicity.

Signs of an Open Svadhisthana Chakra

When the Svadhisthana chakra is open, we can flow freely through life and are connected to our emotions, and experience unity with others. We are bursting with new ideas, and a desire to birth new creative projects into the world. We are open to new experiences and excited to grow and develop. We can communicate our feelings clearly and without being overly emotional. We experience passion, desire, and intimacy and express this in a healthy way.

How to Open Your Sacral Chakra

There are various ways to balance chakras, and the techniques you choose are mainly down to personal preference or what you feel attracted to intuitively. Sound, color, food, crystals, mantra, yoga, meditation, and energy healing are all excellent ways to open your sacral chakra.

Let’s look at our top three main ways to address an unbalanced sacral chakra that are easy to practice at home. With any of these practices, you can elevate the results by using crystals, colors (clothing and scarves are nice), and essential oils that are associated with Svadhisthana. See the list above for these.

Meditation helps to open your sacral chakra

Meditation and Visualization

As stated in the preceding article regarding the Muladhara chakra, meditation and visualization are excellent tools for chakra balancing. You can directly affect your entire energy system using meditation. During meditation, you harness the prana via the breath and the mind. Remember, everything is energy, including your thoughts and emotions.

Get yourself comfortable, close your eyes, and ground yourself with a few deep conscious breaths. Visualize your sacral chakra glowing bright, radiant orange, the color growing as you focus your thought energy there. Alternatively, imagine the chakra as an orange six-petalled lotus, spinning unhindered, powered by your breath. This visualization technique is a super simple way to begin dissolving energy blockages. It will help to generate energetic vibration that can realign an unbalanced sacral chakra.

Try this relaxing meditation to open your sacral chakra:

Sound and Singing Bowls

Singing bowls are excellent chakra retuning tools. You can purchase one that vibrates at the same frequency as the Svadhisthana to open your sacral chakra. The best frequency for remedying an unbalanced sacral chakra is Solfeggio frequency 417 Hz, and keynote D. If you have a Svadhisthana signing bowl, play it by striking it with the mallet or stick gently around the rim. Or, you can run the stick around the outer edge of the rim to play the bowl and make it sing. Once you have built up some sound energy, sit and allow the sound waves to wash over you. You may also like to place the bowl on the sacral chakra area and play it so that the vibrations directly enter this point. If you do not have a singing bowl of your own, try listening to a Svadhisthana sound bath like this one.

Mantra Chanting 

Each chakra has its own seed mantra. The seed mantra for the Svadhisthana chakra is ‘Vam.’ When you chant a mantra, the sound waves reverberate internally throughout your body and entire energy field. You are retuning your chakras from within. To open your sacral chakra, try chanting the mantra ‘Vam.’ Put some meditation music on (if desired) and begin as you would for meditation; take some slow deep breaths to ground yourself. Then let the mantra rise up out of you in a natural way. There is no right or wrong way to practice mantra chanting.

If you feel shy at first, ensure you are alone when you begin your practice. If you are not used to mantra practice, it can sometimes feel a little silly. But once you realize and experience the tremendous effects of this heart-centered healing practice, you will lose your inhibitions. Mantra chanting can calm the mind, retune the energy field, and enable deeper spiritual connection and insight. Because the mantras are ancient cosmic sounds, they connect us to the universe and Divine source energy like nothing else. If you feel you would like guidance in this practice, try this guided mantra practice and see how it makes you feel.

Yoga for Svadhisthana

Some people feel more able to access energetic shifts through physical exercises. Yoga is an excellent way to connect with and alter your energy centers. It is a holistic practice, working on body, mind, emotions, and prana.

To open your sacral chakra, you can try these yoga poses:

  • Balasana (Child’s pose)
  • Natarajasana (Dancer’s pose)
  • Trikonasana (Triangle pose)
  • Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana (One-footed king pigeon pose)
  • Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-leg forward bend)
  • Baddha Konasana (Butterfly pose)
  • Bhujangasana (Cobra pose)
  • Garudasana (Eagle pose)

If you are an experienced yoga practitioner, you can practice these postures as a sequence in any order that feels right to you, holding each pose for 5-15 breaths, or as long as feels comfortable. If you are new to yoga and you do not know how to practice the postures on your own yet, try this beautiful guided yoga practice to open your sacral chakra.

Natrarajasana (Dancer’s pose)

Self-Care is Essential

Remember, the first step to harmonious relationships is the cultivation of a loving relationship with yourself. This means spending time on yourself, working out what you need, what’s missing, and practicing exquisite self-care. None of this is self-indulgent.

As we have learned from our deep dive into the Svadhisthana chakra, the most fundamental part of relating to the world and other people is relating effectively with yourself. Therefore, it is decidedly unselfish to spend time working on yourself because this will directly affect your relationships with others. To affect change, you have to start with yourself; it has to come from within. Svadhisthana is a superb place to start.

Conclusion

With this definitive guide to the Svadhisthana chakra, you can open your sacral chakra and restore balance and harmony. Blockages or imbalances in one chakra can sometimes affect the chakras directly above and below, so it is wise to do a whole chakra rebalance after working on a single chakra. Try this sound bath for a seven chakra tune-up. You can use this as often as you like, and we encourage you to work with your chakras often for balanced wellbeing.

You now know the signs of a balanced and unbalanced sacral chakra, and some easy ways to open your sacral chakra. We hope you found this information useful and encourage you to act on it rather than just read it. It is through action that we affect transformation. Bring some of these techniques into your spiritual practice and watch your creativity, relationships, self-control, and sensual connection transform. As always, please do leave a comment below if you have any questions and we will be delighted to help.

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  1. […] Svadhisthana governs creative problem solving and our ability to think outside the box. If this chakra is blocked, you are likely to feel stuck in a rut with work or career, and unable to find a way to better your situation. If you have been conditioned from a young age to think negatively about money, your sacral chakra will have been affected because it is your pleasure center, and you will not associate pleasure with money.   […]

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