Raw or partially parboiled, I eat fresh orange peel with food or in sauce and drink, as tea, the water extracts of its rich array of medicinal chemical substances. I am a peels-eating fellow, but I eat orange peel not, as many persons do, for asthma and other respiratory system challenges or for digestive system and infection troubles. The ORANGE colour of the orange peel excites me, rather, for SECOND CHAKRA HEALTH. Orange is the colour of the second chakra. RED is the colour of the first chakra as stated in the second part of this series. In the second chakra region of males and females are such organs as…( kidneys, testes, prostate gland, ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus , adrenals, lower back, hips and the appendix.
Thankfully, my SECOND CHAKRA, like the FIRST CHAKRA, would appear to still bounce in radiant health. Urinary incontinence and urgency are still out of the question. So are dribbling, nocturnal, stones and urinary pain. I catch some night or early morning urine in a clear glass cup to check for sugar, ants and deposits, and have no worries over erectile dysfunction (ED), or male menopause. Aren’t all these worth a New Year Resolution thumbs up for the ORANGE COLOUR again in my diet this year, and why factory-made ORANGE PEEL POWDER or that from my whole orange servings worth a place in my menu list?
I devoted this week to the SECOND CHAKRA to encourage us all to include its health in our New Year Health Resolutions. However, I would detour a little to the FIRST CHAKRA and then re-connect with the SECOND CHAKRA because, in the last column, I left certain things hanging in the air about the FIRST CHAKRA.
Before I continue, I would like to re-affirm:
One: The body and the overself are in a union held together by their uniting energy or radiations. Having been glowed through and made to be alive by the Overself, the body must continue to produce some energy like a motor vehicle fired up by an IGNITION starter. Its chances of meeting its quota of energy in their union is maintained by diet.
Two: The Overself must not shut the door of its energy supply to the union through negative emotions or ROOT CHAKRA blockage of energy to the mud body. This is where colour RED is an important therapy in THE FIRST CHAKRA, as we should soon see. Before then, I would like to recall from the first part of this column my observation that the Ibos of South Eastern Nigeria may be our Nigerian custodians of this natural secret in the preferences for RED COLOURS in their dressing. See how effervescent or boisterous, active and full of life they are.
Many other human populations are like the Ibos when it comes to COLOUR RED. Among native American tribes such as the Navajo Cherokee and the Sioux, COLOUR RED features prominently in clothing and adornments. It connotes life force, energy, strength, courage and connections to its ancestry and tradition. The Chinese symbolise RED with prosperity, good fortune and happiness, especially during weddings and festivals and to exorcise dark entities. For the Indians, RED connotes purity, power and fertility. Thus, brides adorn themselves with RED on a wedding day. Several Africans, too, see red as life, vitality and passion, as we observe in clothing and beaded jewelry, for example.
Intrigued by these commentaries in PSYCHIC and CHAKRA medicine journals, I sought more information from Google and obtained from it the following AI overview:
“In addition to Red Jasper, other red-hued and root chakra-associated stones good for foot treatment include Garnet and Red Carnelian, for grounding, stability, and vital energy flow.
RED JASPER, Known as the “Stone of Endurance” or “Supreme Nurturer,” provides strong grounding, stability, and emotional balance. It helps reduce stress and anxiety, enhances physical strength and stamina, and connects you deeply to the earth’s energy.
GARNET, known as the “Stone of Ultimate Health,” is a highly energising and revitalising stone. It stimulates the flow of energy, helps in emotional healing, and encourages courage, confidence, and passion. It’s excellent for boosting low energy levels and promoting a sense of safety.
RED CARNELIA brings a fiery burst of life, warmth, and vitality, clears energy blockages, boosts willpower, self-confidence, stimulates creativity and motivation. Carnelia helps you feel secure and grounded while encouraging you to take action and overcome procrastination.
BLOODSTONE, a warrior stone with dark green and red flecks, promotes strength, courage, and resilience. It’s an emotional balancer that helps you feel centred and protected from negative influences.
Red Calcite, a gentler red stone, helps in emotional balance and can soothe anger or panic.”
The second chakra
This is a vast Eldorado of health gold mines for lucky fellows, or of health misfortunes for the careless navigator of minefields which the school of power dynamics says may befall some persons. As stated in the first part of this series, we encounter the curriculum of the SCHOOL OF LIFE as it were, between the 8 to 14 age bracket. If the lessons we are to learn in this stage of existence are elusive, they become “carry over courses” for us, sometimes throughout earthly existence.
What are the principal lessons? I always observe three categories…1) POWER DYNAMICS 2) SEXUALITY and 3) CREATIVITY DYNAMICS. The three are multi aceted. I would begin with POWER DYNAMICS, because its shortcomings visibly affect not only individuals but whole populations as well.
It was in adult life, while paying attention to children at play for the spiritual lessons I may learn from their assumed nuances, that I first realised that my generation as children missed a lot of education. Observe a group of children arguing on a moon-lit night about who, among them, the moon is following about. Every boy and girl believes it is he or she. This is an introduction to POWER DYNAMICS. For it is whoever the moon is following who holds the aces…POWER! What is power and how is it meant to be used?
We did not create ourselves and our world, and so must be subject to the prescriptions for orderly conduct in this orderly world. We need POWER for navigating the world.
However, power is not to be used for selfish or personal ends, but for self-balancing and well being of persons in our orbit. There are several dimensions of this. I would like to mention scenarios in marriage and in work places. In marriage, one party may strive always to strangulate the other with a view to having his or her way on important questions. If the husband, for example, cannot always push his way through and he becomes so emotionally disturbed that he begins to grieve, regretting the marriage but unable to get out of it in his state of powerlessness, his second chakra may become blocked. The blockage may affect important organs in the region. Similarly, a wife who groans under the weight of an uncompromising husband may suffer a second chakra shutdown. Some gynaecological conditions have been linked to this. They may include hormonal imbalances, menstrual cycle difficulties and pain, difficulties with getting pregnant, miscarriages, pre-term births, prolonged birthing process, health weaknesses in offsprings. Many men may not easily link male sexual vitality problems to the second chakra. These may include low sperm count, sperm motility and morphology questions, erectile dysfunction, “watery” sperm, hydrocele, testicular atrophy, premature ejaculation, loss of libido etc.
In an alternative medicine Sex Clinic, these possible second chakra challenges are addressed not only with plant medicines and nutrition but, also, with enquiries about relationship conduct of the spouses as well. The aim of the therapist is to discover if there exists strangulating bottlenecks in relationships which both parties must ease and free by obeying THE LAW OF BALANCE, one of the three basic Laws of Creation. This law teaches us that The Law of Balance upholds equilibrium and peace throughout the universe. Really, isn’t this why we gauge the tyres of our car and run “wheel balancing” checks? Isn’t this why we have pillars and beams in a building? Isn’t it the law of balance which prevents planetary bodies from colliding against one another? We can go on and on. Even between the bosses and their subordinate in offices, do outwardly kingly but inwardly empty bosses not inwardly stand before their subordinates like slaves and consequently suffer emotional pain and blockages when they cannot subdue their subordinates with the authority of their offices? In such cases, the emotional pain they bear when they quiver with fear in the presence of psychically stronger subordinates will eventually block the second chakra. Similarly, the voiceless and powerless subordinate who despises the next day at work under a corrosive boss must lose something in the process. It is his or her second chakra health.
The best way to live is to use power or authority for the benefit of everyone by respecting their humanity and not exceeding the inner boundaries they have set for themselves against intrusion by an outsider. However, this hardly happens as it has become more evident in recent years, with the Monroe Doctrine (1923) appearing to become obsolete in international relations. Even in country politics, have we not witnessed one tribe trying to annihilate another?
Another example I would like to make is of marital or sexual relationships with which many adults are familiar. We are in the realms of healthy expression, respect of oneself and respect of others in intimate relationships. As an expert puts it:
“ Self expression in intimate relationships means being able to communicate your desires, needs, boundaries and feelings openly and honestly with your partner.
Examples of self expression are
1) Sharing what you like in bed
2) Expressing emotional needs or desires
3) Setting boundaries or saying “no” without guilt
4) Being vulnerable and authentic with your partner
Consequences of lack of self expression include
(RESENTMENT AND FRUSTRATION: Bottling up feelings can lead to anger or disconnection);
(UNMET NEEDS: Not communicating needs can lead to unfulfilling relationships);
(EMOTIONAL DISTANCE: Lack of vulnerability can create distance or mistrust);
(PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS: Stress from supressed emotions can impact physical health. E.g. pelvic pain, low libido)”.
Many Nigerians would consider the foregoing as Euro-American conceptions. Did our grand parents self-express in bed? Their generation knew nothing about THE BEAUTY OF THE NUDE OR NO HOLDS BAR. Lights were off and clothes were on. Yet, infertility and other gynaecological challenges of today were infrequent. Or, was their world more diet protecting?
Spiritually, I agree there ought to be boundaries in outer or psychic spaces for sanity to prevail. Couples may live in separate rooms and no one may be on beck and call of the other. They are in a union and not in a merger. The most challenging test for SECOND CHAKRA health today is when a spouse partially or completely withdraws from a union and the other does not let go. Negative emotions build up. If the departing partner is strong enough, his or her aura disintegrates negative emotions spurn around him or her, while the origin is entombed in misery, grief and pain. In all naturalness, are the misery, grieving and pain right and natural? Does any party in a union create and own the other? Can a union not be dissolved when it has served its usefulness to one party? Shouldn’t the discarded party simply accept the right of the other, right or wrong, to move on and recognise that there are thousands or more stars in the firmament and fish in the ocean, as Nigeria’s theatre pride, HUBERT OGUNDE, once sang! There is no doubt that the forceful tearing apart of relationships nowadays causes debilitating SECOND CHAKRA blockages and premature aging and disorders of reproductive organs.
Neurologist Sigmund Freud, who, arguably, brought psychoanalysis to humanity, helped to sharpen and to popularise some of these notions. He said physical surrender was pleasurable and that conjugating parties ought to be free to express their feelings even to the point of telling their partners what he or she should do with them without inhibitions. To not do this and to hold back the fire could barricade a circulation flow, of etheric energy, he reasoned. I cannot immediately recall now if the logic that human conjugation was an ANIMAL ACT caught up with Freud when he was alive. Animal Act suggests that the pleasures are limited to the physical body, their origin and that, to not soil itself, the soul or spirit who owns that animalistic body can impose immaculateness or a semblance of it in such activity. Some persons believed Sigmund Freud went too far in clinical observations of his psychosexual development stages when he outlined how children experienced “shifts across different body areas” and influenced their personality development. If this suggests that the physical body is, indeed, sexually excitable at any stage in life, there are many persons who still believe that the soul or the spirit, as the animating core of the mud body, must dignify these events, however hilarious they may be to the body.
About 20 years ago, I wrote a column titled…THE MAN WHO PUT HIS MOUTH IN THE WRONG PLACE. Self protecting human antibodies in “THE WRONG PLACE” made a nasty mince meat of his gums, tongue and teeth. Prolonged use of Grape seed extract (GSE) and Bee propolis gave him relief. Such persons as this man know the values of setting boundaries for vulturous partners, and, also, of having the off limits respected on the other side. It is a GIVE and TAKE exchange in which a loser may bottle up ruinous emotions. Build ups of such negative emotions are what may grow into blockages of the SECOND CHAKRA which another counsellor describes as follows…
“Self-expression in intimate relationships means being able to communicate your desires, needs, boundaries, and feelings openly and honestly with your partner. Examples of self expression include, but are not limited to,
Sharing what you like or dislike in bed,
Expressing emotional needs or desires,
Setting boundaries or saying “no” without guilt and being vulnerable and authentic with your partner.
Absence of self expression has consequences. These may include Resentment and frustration, Bottled feelings, anger or disconnection, Unmet needs, uncommunicated needs, Emotional distance, and mistrust.
Stress from suppressed emotions can impact physical health ( pelvic pain, low libido).
Creativity
Beyond power dynamics, creativity is another pillar of health balance in the second chakra. We are meant to be creative. That is why the talents of anyone reveal themselves very early in life. Some persons are not lucky. Their talents are repressed or go undiscovered. A singer may be diverted to study law, engineering or medicine. This is a diversion from a natural course of events which may even have karmaic consequences, such as the need to repeat a wasted earth life. From second chakra creativity literature, we learn:
“Creativity and the second chakra go hand-in-hand. Blockages and the challenges are often caused by:
Emotional suppression: Bottled feelings can stifle creativity. So can
Fear of expression, judgment or rejection which can block self-expression. So do lack of inspiration, disconnection from passions or desires, unhealthy relationships, toxic dynamics which drain creative energy
Self-doubt or criticism and Negative self-talk which hinder creative flow.
Some of the signs of blockage include feeling stuck or uninspired, difficulty expressing emotions or desires, struggling with intimacy or relationships, and lack of joy or pleasure in activities.
Herbs and precious stones
Orange is the colour of the second chakra. I said at the outset that I enjoy eating orange peel. I do so for the orange in the colour and for other nutrients. I also sometimes take solarised water. I also drink solarised water infused with yellow ethers of sunlight. (Please see solarisation of water online). There are some herbs and precious metals which may help to boost the yellow wavelength of second chakra energy vortex. For these therapies, I derive inspiration always from the psychic garden of Mellie Uyldert and the creation of health of co authors surgeon Norman Shealy and journalist-cum spiritualist Carolyn Myss. Yellow plants are abundant in nature for second chakra health.
Calendula ( Marigold) supports creativity and intimacy
Hibiscus is anti stress and balances emotions
Damiana supports sensuality and relaxation. In the 1990s, a product named Damiana-Ginseng was my favourite suggestion for frigidity in women.
Ginger rouses creative energy As for precious stones, an expert advises:
“ Carnelia stimulates creativity or motivation.
Orange calcite dissolves emotional blockages and brings joy
Amber cleanses and purifies sacral chakra
Moonstone balances feminine energies and emotional fluidity
Tangerine quartz uplifts energy and enhances creativity.
I concluded this column on Saturday 10 January during the visit of Moriamo Yisa, an acquaintance at Ilupeju Model Market in Lagos. She does not visit empty handed. One of the items in her gifts pack were oranges. The peels of these oranges ended their cycle in a pot of rice which was eaten by my household with other health enablers, including THORNTINA 74 of which I shall soon write.
