LEADERSHIP
What every woman must know about her energy body
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nterest in chakras, reiki and energy healing has exploded in recent years, with many of us turning to these modalities for greater wellness and empowerment. What is not as widely covered is how women’s energy bodies differ from men’s. Learn how you can get the most out of working with your feminine energy body—including help for healing from sexual trauma. Rochelle was a new massage therapist having trouble managing enough clients per day to pay her bills. She felt drained after just one or two sessions. Lauren was a health-conscious yoga practitioner who did everything she could to take care of her mind and body, but because she suffered such extreme fatigue during her period each month, she was effectively sidelined from her life for several days. Beth was a long-time meditator, but after the birth of her first child she found that her usual meditation practices provided no relief from the heaviness and anxiety she frequently experienced. Shari was a 50 year old woman struggling with perimenopausal symptoms, questioning the direction her life was headed and fearing she was going backward. What do all these women have in common? They all experienced shifts in their energy bodies, but did not know how to work with them. While an increasing number of yoga classes and energy body workshops help us connect with our primary energy centers—or chakras—most of the time chakra mappings are presented as the same for men and women. But there are differences in how women’s energy bodies function that women can benefit from by understanding. Our energy body serves as the interface between our physical body, our psyche and our spirit. Chakra mappings
14 Lead Up for Women
in particular developed within both energy medicine and spiritual traditions around the world, and in the 20th Century were even viewed by psychologist Carl Jung as a way to map different aspects of our psyche. The chakras offer many doorways into healing and empowerment, and hundreds of different methods for working with them, including yoga, breath work, reiki, guided imagery, meditation, mantras, mudras, affirmations, crystals, and more.
But most chakra mappings and tools do not account for the differences in how men’s and women’s chakras function. While at the spiritual level, the energy moving through the chakras is ungendered, at the interface level between the chakras and the body, there are differences that mirror the physical differences between men and women. Trans and pan gender individuals often will experience the chakra patterns associated with the gender they most strongly identify with, or aspects of both.
By Lisa Erickson
While male-female energy body patterns exist on a spectrum, rather than simply being binary, knowing about these differences can really help fine-tune chakra work. The most important difference is that women’s energy bodies tend to be anchored in their second chakra, located in the pelvis, while men’s tend to be anchored in their first, or root chakra, associated with the tailbone, legs and feet. These two chakras serve as the foundation for everyone’s energy body, and so we all need to work to heal and strengthen both, but the differences in anchoring have real-world implications for women and those who identify as female. The primary difference is that women’s energy bodies are more centripetal and tend to pull in and absorb other’s energies. While anyone can be empathic, women by default tend to be more this way. This is because the second chakra is receptive and “yin” in nature, so having their energy bodies anchored here means women’s energy bodies are more receptive in general. It also means women’s energy bodies are more adaptable and fluid, which can be a good thing when in a positive environment. But it means women need to pay more attention to energetic boundaries in daily life—something most women resonate with as soon as they learn of it. Take Rochelle, the masseuse from above. She could not understand why March-April 2020
