The Solar Plexus Chakra or, Manipura, is the centre of our own identity. It works with all aspects of our personalities and ego and our sense of self-worth. It also works with our self-confidence and freedom of choice. The Solar Plexus Chakra ultimately helps us choose what and who we are, for our highest good.
Location: The Solar Plexus Chakra is located slightly up from your naval and it opens outward.
Associated Body Parts: This chakra is associated with your pancreas, abdomen, abdominal cavity, lower back, diaphragm, stomach, liver, gallbladder, digestive system, nervous system, metabolism and small intestine.
Essential Oils: Lemon, grapefruit, juniper, chamomile, thyme
Colour: Golden yellow; Gemstones: Topaz, amber, citrine, tiger’s eye, yellow topaz, agate
Symbol: 10-Petaled Lotus; Element: Fire
Mantra: RAM; Tone: E; Type of Music: Marches
Associated Zodiac and Planets: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius, Virgo; Sun, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury
Your identity starts to emerge during adolescence and becomes solidified by the time we reach adulthood. Our Solar Plexus Chakra helps us learn about people and to trust our “gut instinct”. As we grow and expand our identities, our Solar Plexus Chakra grows and expands with us – the stronger our sense of self becomes, the stronger our inner self becomes. Our connection with our inner self can not be affected by pain, loss or trauma and awareness of our inner self creates valuable worth, esteem and power. Our personal power also resides in this chakra and helps us grow a strong warrior archetype; without life challenges personal power can not be developed. We need to have opposition and contradiction in our lives for our inner self and personal power to grow and develop. Without challenges that help create a strong sense of self, we will fail to mature completely.
All new beginnings deal with this chakra and every challenge that we face continues to grow and develop our inner self. Our confidence and self-worth come from being able to meet the world on our own terms and learning from the mistakes that we make help grow our confidence. Our personal power helps us influence people and make changes to different situations. Every time we finish a project or task, a course of action is completed; if we stand by “the under dog”, we add depth to our personal power. However, the ultimate factor to the Solar Plexus Chakra is our freedom of choice. The choice to be ourselves, the choice to love, the choice to respect and the choice to do what you know is right comes from our Solar Plexus Chakra and is a very important aspect of humanity.
When our Solar Plexus Chakra is out of balance we have a hard time trusting the flow of life, we have the urge to dominate and be in charge, we focus on material needs and wants. These people will act out of a need for attention and usually create drama and chaos. When our Solar Plexus is in balance, we have a feeling of wholeness, inner calm and peace. We have an inner tolerance and acceptance of all things and have a nice balance with our spiritual and material world. These people have the ability to act out of love, kindness and respect and this is reflected back to them in their jobs, sense of worth and relationships.
Physical problems related to the Solar Plexus Chakra include indigestion, acidic stomach, ulcers, hepatitis, gallstones, pancreatitis and diabetes.
So, how do you work with your Solar Plexus Chakra? Activities that are great for this chakra include sports, competitive programs, hiking, cycling and qi gong. You could also participate in things like leadership programs, amateur dramatics and meditation.
Wearing yellow and focusing on this chakra, imagining a light-filled wheel that is spinning slightly faster than your Sacral Chakra will help you balance this chakra. Making use of gemstones or essential oils as mentioned in the Root Chakra post will also help. Choose the appropriate gemstones or essential oils from the list above to help you focus on the Solar Plexus Chakra instead.
Mantras that are good for your Solar Plexus Chakra would be something like: “I am worthy of the life I say I want” or “I am worthy of love, kindness and respect, regardless of what I have done.”
And of course, Reiki treatments will work on balancing all of your chakras.
Up next will be the Heart Chakra, which is the centre of the human energy system!