If you’ve been following my chakra series, you know we’re up to the sixth chakra: the beautiful indigo Ajna chakra. For the astute yogi, energy healer, and empath, it may be obvious what was going on with me before this Mother’s Day when my gallbladder decided to have an issue and I suffered from an abdominal hematoma, but it took me a little longer to catch on. I spent the holiday in the ER under the knife to stop the bleeding and, nearly the whole time, I kept thinking about the chakra insights this moment was providing.
Of course, there were all the other staples of an unexpected hospital stay - fear, discomfort, more fear, regret, confusion, loneliness (my husband had to stay home with the kids), and, of course, doubt - but since earning my Yin certification and uncovering some of the secrets surrounding those mystical change makers called chakras - the centers that move and bind our energies - I found something else was present with me in the hospital: the insight to understand what was really going on inside of me and the language to talk about it with you.
In medical terminology, I suffered a hematoma (a collection of internal bleeding not dissimilar from a bruise inside your body) as an unforeseen result of the car accident I told you about earlier in this blog. But, when the hematoma continued bleeding and the blood loss climbed to dangerous levels, the doctors had some decisions to make. Surgery always comes with risk - the risk of infection, reestablishing healthy blood pressure, you name it - so my doctors first put these sandbag sort-of-things on my body to increase the pressure on the internal wounds and hopefully avoid putting me under. When that wasn’t successful, the esteemed doctors and staff of Ohio Health, to whom I am so grateful, scrubbed in and fixed the problem.
Often, in Western medicine, we don’t treat an issue until after there’s a problem. We performed a drastic surgery after my gallbladder sprang a leak; but, in Eastern traditions, it is all about prevention. My energies have been calling for balance, but I just couldn’t see it. Literally. During this entire frightful experience, in the middle of the night and in the ER, I was without my glasses - and friends, I can barely see with them. So, as I was going through this trauma of the gallbladder and was disconnected from my sight, the revelation dawned on me that the real cause behind the rushing doctors and concerned nurses was that my third chakra was blocked.
For the logicians and medically minded amongst us, they may immediately dismiss this connection of mine as self-affirming or simply as a foo-foo metaphysical connection, but I would say to those wonderful people that their world and this one aren’t mutually exclusive: they exist in tandem. Just as the West and East are on the same planet and are both valid and can both proudly say they are part of the Earth, so, too, are the chakras and traditional medicine part of healing the body, and sometimes making it sick.
Consider my blog entry from several weeks ago on the third chakra and see if it sounds familiar … “The solar plexus chakra [The third chakra or Manipura] is located halfway between the navel and rib cage. It is associated with the … gallbladder… [t]he sense it effects the most is our sight and our eyes.” Suffice it to say, as my gallbladder was bleeding uncontrollably and while I was all-but-blind surrounded by strangers trying to save me, I knew that my third chakra needed my attention and over the next few hours and days, I listened.
Just before the operation and as soon as I came to after, I did my affirmations and meditated on healing and unlocking my energy as I covered in my previous blog, and revelations came to me, slowly, but surely.
Friends, all life and struggle is choice. We can drop into the mud when the rains come, we can open an umbrella and curse the sky … or we can walk outside, spin in a circle, thank the skies for healing the earth and stick our tongue out and drink with our Mother. My Manipura meditations from the hospital told me that I am alive and no matter what I can’t do, I need to focus on what I can do - what we can all do: breathe. I can breathe and my breath will save me. It’s hard work to let the world go and hold onto your breath instead. It’s frightening to trust your soul to carry you on its wings through the gales and tempests of this life, but it can be done. As I recorded in my thoughts and revelations shortly after surgery:
“This car accident that happened to me almost 10 months ago continues to wreak its havoc, as we find how one simple motion of the universe, propelling her car into mine, creates this ripple effect in my body and in my mind, but I can always count on my breath to control my mind, to control my thoughts. The breath reduces pain. The breath allows me to know that I’m okay and that this, too, will pass.”
Remember, when you struggle in these moments, both the big and the small - to remind yourself that your intuition is bigger than any one moment and the universe is looking out for you. The universe and your chakras are tools beyond medicine that are speaking to you and, by listening, you may not have to get receive your message as hard as I did this week.
Namaste.