Chakra 101

I'm getting ready to teach a beginner's chakra class with my friend and colleague Deb Bowen, so I thought I'd blog about it! I love studying the chakras and believe strongly that the chakras are the gateway to our intuition. Before each reading, I do a chakra meditation to open my seven main energy centers. It's how I ground, open and connect to the other side.

A bit of background for newbies: chakra is a sanskrit word that means "Wheel." Those lucky ones who can see chakras describe them as spinning wheels or disks. Starting at the base of the spine and moving up we have:

The Root Chakra: Base of Spine. Color is Red. Governs old family stuff, money issues and our feelings of being safe in the world.

The Sacral Chakra: A few inches below naval. Color is orange. Seat of fertility and creativity. This is also where we hold all our body issues.

Solar Plexus: Right above belly button. Cross your arms -- your arms rest protectively over your third chakra. Color is yellow. This is where we feel the world. Governs self-confidence, courage and clairsentience.

Heart Chakra: Center of chest. Color is green. This center is where we hold all our love, trust and forgiveness issues.

Throat Chakra: Base of throat. Color is sky blue. Governs our ability to communicate. Center of Clairaudience.

Third Eye: Center of forehead. Color is indigo. This is where we handle our control issues and work on our ability to trust our intuition. It's the seat of clairvoyance.

Crown Chakra: Top of head. Color is purple. This is our connection to our divine power, our higher self, and our spirituality and faith.

Our chakra wheels spin in the front of our body (where we receive energy) and in the back of our body (where we release energy). All day long we're receiving energy. Think of your chakras like seven filters. They filter out the energy -- ideally they keep the good and release the bad. But often some bad stuff gets stuck in there and muddies up that center which is why we need to continually balance and cleanse these centers. If we don't, the stuck energy will manifest as physical ailments. For example, if I have something to say to someone, but I don't I will get a sore throat.

If, for example, you're worried about money but you don't work on alleviating these fears through acceptance, affirmation, prayer and spiritual tithing, then you'll get lower back pain. Women who have been sexually abused and find it too painful to deal with this (second chakra), will often get lots of UTI's or endometriosis or develop an eating disorder. If you're a type A personality, this will create an unbalance in your third eye and cause painful headaches. Do you see how important these centers can be?

So, try this meditation. Try picturing these seven wheels or fans. I want you to picture seven fans running through the center of your body. Imagine a garden hose filled with white light. Go to your root chakra and see if there's any debris or dust on the red fan here. Turn the white light hose on and clean the fan. See it spinning beautiful and gleaming a beautiful ruby red. Then move up to your sacral and again see an orange fan. Clean it with the white light and see it glowing a beautiful, clean orange color. Continue with the rest of the chakras.

To open your chakras for meditation or intuitive work, picture seven windows or doors. Starting with the root chakra, imagine each one opening. See a red door opening and breathe in the color red. Move up to the sacral chakra and see an orange door opening and breathe in orange. And continue with the rest of the energy centers. Don't forget to close the chakras when you're done with your meditation. Start with the crown chakra and see a purple door closing, then move down to the brow or third eye chakra and see the indigo door closing. Continue down to the root chakra. We open from the bottom up and close from the top down.

If you do this chakra work with the appropriate crystals resting on the corresponding chakras, it will enhance this process.

James Van Pragh has a great CD called Tuning into Abundance that works with the chakras to help them increase your intuition. If you click here, you'll be linked to my site where I offer my own chakra cleansing and balancing CD. Doreen Virtue also has a good morning and evening chakra CD meditation that can be purchased on iTunes.

Begin a relationship with your chakras today. Your health, intuition and sense of connection will dramatically improve.

Win a Reading!

Deb and I, who host Psychic Teachers on Blog Talk Radio every Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., are offering a chance to win a free reading with us. If you go to iTunes and search Psychic Teachers, you'll find our podcast. Submit a comment about the show and your name will be entered for a chance to win a free 30 minute reading with us.

You can find the show online here: www.blogtalkradio.com/psychicteachers

You can find us on iTunes here: search psychicteachers (all one word). Click on our show and under Customer Reviews click "write a review."

Thank you!

Scary Stuff

In the last few weeks I've received a number of emails from intuitive students of mine who've been having scary nightmares. This is so common that I felt it garnered a blog topic. What I'm about to write may anger or confuse some out there who prefer to think of the world in terms that are, well, soft, pink and lovely. So, to you all who hate to read anything negative, I apologize. But here goes, I believe there is a light side and a dark side who are fighting -- over us -- constantly. I know the Course in Miracles and similar writings claim that only love is real and everything else is an illusion. I get that. But when my husband was shot in the line of duty, that was a real bullet that hit him. There was no love there, no illusion. When a client of mine was recently mugged downtown, that fear she felt was real, very real. Yes, when we get to the other side, all of those experiences might feel like a dream, an illusion, but while they're happening to us, they are very real indeed.

So, here's what I have to say to all of those out there trying to open up to your soul purpose, to listen to your intuition, to trust that inner voice: the dark side hates this. You scare them when you begin to awaken, and they will try to scare you away from the light. They do this in a variety of ways. You may have nightmares; you might encounter strict religious people who tell you what you're doing is sinful, wrong and against the bible. Loved ones and close friends may suddenly begin pulling away from you, doubting you and making harsh judgements about the books you're reading, classes you're taking. You may go through your own dark night of the soul where you begin to question and doubt many things about your own life, choices you made and didn't make. Most people return to what I like to call the Land of the Grays. You know, the people who just go through life with eyes half shut -- working, coming home, watching TV -- and never asking the important questions, never reaching out to meaningfully help others . . . just existing. The dark side loves the grays.

But when you cross over to the light and become a lightworker, they flip out. What you need to know is that what I described above -- the nightmares, the judgements, the fears -- will end. Once you make it clear to yourself and the world that you're a lightworker, that your life is dedicated to God, eventually they'll get the message and back off and move on to easier prey.

Know this too -- the light side is fighting for you too. Every time I was called to open up to my abilities, something frightened me away. But something -- God, my angels, my guides -- always called me back. Eventually, I garnered the strength to push through all that mumbo jumbo and claim my rightful path. The dark side still tries now and again. They'll throw an angry skeptic across my path, have someone tell me I'm a bad person for communicating with the other side, but that's all they can do. Once you firmly declare what side you've chosen, you have their protection and strength to draw on.

So please, if you feel called to open up to your intuition, don't be afraid. Every time I've asked God for advice, a sign, a feeling of His presence, I've always felt that support instantly. Be a lightworker, take the focus off yourself and place it on helping others by serving the light side.

Attracting Financial Abundance

I'm putting together notes for a class on financial abundance because so many of my clients are suffering in this economy. It's important to know and believe that this lousy economy will not be here forever, and in the meantime there are many things you can do to increase your ability to attract good luck, abundance and peace of mind. Here are a few strategies to try:

Crystals: Carry in your purse or on your person three crystals: citrine, rose quartz and green aventurine. The green aventurine helps us attract money, the citrine helps us to keep money and the rose quartz helps us to do all of this with an attitude of love.

Numerology: The number 8 is the number of financial power. Draw the number 8 on a piece of paper and carry it in your wallet.

Feng Shui: If you stand inside your house with your back to the door, the opposite left hand corner is the money corner of your home. You want to make sure that there are symbols of abundance here. I've known people to place a replica of a treasure chest here. You can keep cash here in a red envelope (attracts positive chi), place a bamboo plant here (green represents money and bamboo is a feng shui symbol for good luck), place a crystal money tree here, place money affirmations here (every time I spend money it comes back to me ten times) . . . the ideas are limitless. Make sure there is NO CLUTTER in this corner and keep it very clean. If your laundry room or bathroom is located in your money corner, tie the drain pipes with red ribbons to stop the good chi from being drained out of your money corner, keep bamboo plants here and keep the toilet lid down.

New Moon: The phase of the new moon is a great time to affirm and manifest the abundance you wish to see come into your life.

Tithing: Anonymous tithing is a wonderful way to increase not only joy in your own life but also a sense of fulfillment. It makes you think, "I do have enough to give, to keep, to spend, to share, to save. All is well." It's important that your way of giving back is done anonymously so you can keep your ego out of it. The key to tithing is to give wherever your soul was nourished that week. If a friend really helped you out, anonymously mail her a gift certificate to her favorite restaurant. If you got a really good massage, send the massage therapist a nice gift or an extra tip. If a drive thru worker has a great smile, give him a tip and tell him to keep up the good work. You get the idea. This is different from random acts of kindness. There's nothing random about this exercise. Anonymous tithing makes you think about where your soul was fed that week, about where in your week did you feel grateful, uplifted, and then deciding to return this great feeling and keep is going. Try this for a month and I know you'll see a positive difference in your life.

A bad economy stinks, but feeling powerless with our money situation is worse. Suze Orman has a great statement about money. She often says if you don't have enough money, make more. We all have the power, the capacity, to make money. I remember one summer, my classes at the college where I taught English were cut due to budget restraints. So instead of sitting home and complaining, I started selling my homemade cookies to local coffee shops. I made just as much as I would have if I'd taught that summer. We all have hidden talents and gifts we can put to good use.

Try the techniques recommended above, get creative about your abilities to make money, and see yourself attracting more abundance to your life.

Ethics

I want to take a moment to talk about the ethics of giving a reading to better prepare you for receiving a reading. I spoke with a client today who lost her child. She had two "psychics" tell her that her son had not successfully crossed over. This poor woman believed these quacks all this time until today when her child came through with lots of validations and mentioned the incorrect information from the other two readings. This made me so mad. I've learned as an intuitive that people believe whatever I say. This scares the hell out of me because I'm never 100% right -- no one is. If people believe everything I say, they'll get some of it wrong. People put too much trust in a reader which is why I wanted to focus this blog on the ethics of being a reader.

I want everyone reading this blog to think about this: anyone can claim to be psychic. You don't need a degree, a certificate, a license, nothing. That's a scary thought. So how can you tell if you're sitting in front of a fake? Well, there's lots of obvious ways -- none of the information makes sense to you, the information is vague and would fit anyone, the reader asks you a lot of questions. But here's another tactic fakes use -- negative information. A lot of readers claiming to be psychic use negative information and fear tactics to make the client think they're getting a good reading. I've had clients tell me that other psychics have told them that they're spouse is cheating, that something bad is coming up in the next few months, that a health concern is imminent. Scary things. So if you walk away from a reading feeling scared or anxious, disregard what doesn't feel right and keep the rest.

How can you get a good reading? Get referrals, ask your friends, make sure you're seeing someone who's legitimate. Go into a reading with a healthy bit of skepticism. Secondly, don't "feed" the medium. You want to tell the reader when she's right and when she's wrong, so she'll know if she's reading your energy correctly, but you don't want to give her information. Watch your body language. If you cross your legs and your arms, you're closing your energy. If something doesn't resonate with you, just doesn't feel right, don't receive it. Take notes or record the session because often something that doesn't make sense to you will become clear when you get home. I call this "psychic amnesia." A lot of people get that "deer in the headlights" look when loved ones start coming through with validations and they forget simple things like names and dates. So just write it all down and come back to it.

Why should you get a reading? If you need clarification on a decision or problem you're dealing with, if you need validation for an issue occurring in your life or if you'd like to hear from loved ones on the other side. Those are the best reasons for seeking out a legitimate intuitive.