See Essay #1

Dear Subscribers,

Continuing the month-long celebration of Ayurveda, I would like to take the water element up a notch or two further. The choice of course is always whether to fan out or go deeper.

My purpose is to help people to understand what they need to know in order to manage their health challenges, not to please everyone all the time, which generally is not possible. However, I wish to say that I really do appreciate hearing from you, and, I am, of course, trying hard on my end to provide material you cannot find elsewhere.

Structure of the Self

Many people think of themselves as bodies but without a physical body, we still exist so really what we are doing is donning a costume that consists of various subtle structures that are "trans-physical" meaning that they are not dense enough to be manifest in the third dimension. These subtle "bodies" are often referred to as auras, but many people seem to presume that auras radiate out from the body whereas, for the most part, auras are the rarefied substance "housing" the body and the light is more or less independent of the physical body — more or less. In short, we build the dense from the subtle scaffolding and within this architecture, there are "hot spots" where energy is anchored and then redistributed. These vortices are called "chakras" and for those who hear it mispronounced, the "ch" is a hard "ch" (more like church) rather than "sh" (like shah) and the Sanskrit word means "wheel". Each of these chakras is associated with an element, a sense, and an endocrine gland; and it is the spinning of the chakras that determines the secretion of the endocrine glands, not the glands flying solo with their own agendas. You can easily prove this to yourself by thinking of times when you narrowly avoided an accident or other crisis. The hormones flooded your system before anything happened so the secretions are a response to perceptions, not realities and this is so important that I will go on a bit on the subject. Since the topic is second chakra now, not the first, I'll take the energy up one rung.

Pheromone enticement obviously follows the same pattern because the excitement occurs as as result of an outer rather than inner stimulus. In short, there is a titillation or provocation that is sensed first in subtle dimensions and stepped down to the point where an endocrine gland is excited and then the hormones are secreted.

Hormones

About ten years ago, a colleague asked if referring to hormone therapy as "reprehensible" wasn't a bit exaggerated. I felt that if there were an even stronger word, I'd use it instead. The one exception is with life-threatening emergencies necessitating the use of adrenal hormones, adrenaline, not cortisone.

Here's the bandstand. Farm animals are dosed with growth hormones that are transferred to humans who consume animal products, including milk and other dairy products. In addition, plastics leach xenoestrogens and there are countless other sources of both foreign growth hormone type chemicals as well as hormone disruptors such as bisphenol-A which is getting a lot of press now since it is found in the sealants and coatings used in canned food as well as many "high end" bottles for personal use, like travel mugs. On top of this, women are prescribed birth control pills and hormone replacements after the Menopause, not to mention whatever they are exposed to in treatment of their medical conditions.

All foreign hormones have to be eliminated from the body because even if they act as catalysts or inhibitors, which is what your own natural hormones do, they are exotic and unnatural and the body goes to great lengths to rid itself of them. As a practitioner, I think we always learn the most from real life situations that are dramatic. I have two such stories to relate.

The first involves a woman with breast cancer who was put on testosterone on the ridiculously ludicrous theory that male is opposite to female and would neutralize the growth of the estrogen-sensitive tumor. She was so out of balance, uncomfortable, aggressive, and unhappy that I took a real interest in helping her to understand how using a male reproductive hormone to torment female hormones is "Me Tarzan, You Jane" medicine and it makes zero sense. As I wrote in the first essay, fire is the energetic opposite of water so excess hormones from the reproductive system are balanced by fire, not more water. It's a tiny bit more complicated than this. In any event, the testosterone was destroying her femininity and causing her to experience feelings that were completely alien to her.

The second case was even more dramatic because it involved a gender reassignment procedure in which a chromosomal female was becoming, as an adult, a male. In a certain way, this situation felt even more tragic to me because the surgical modifications had an unpredictable impact on life expectancy due to the inability to rely completely on the redesigned parts performing as expected. This is not a roundabout way of referring to private parts but the suppression of menstruation and rerouting of urine and so on and so forth places the patient into a situation in which he or she cannot be more than 50 miles or so away from a specialist who understands how the surgeries have been performed. As someone who values health, this sort of gambling with life triggered me. The client consulted me about the acne, but I was unable to think of any protocol that would adequately address the acne without also flushing out the testosterone that was burdening liver function and without which, the face fur would vanish.

Normal Second Chakra Function

Let me get back to what is normal for the second chakra since it has to be functional or we never would have been able to develop physical bodies or pass through puberty into a phase of life in which we can be sexually interactive and procreative. Bluntly, the chakra spins whether or not you give it permission. It has, however, a few characteristics worth noting. First of all, it turns either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the direction of the chakra beneath it. Reversing the direction of the spin through hair-brained exercises is, beyond foolish, but I have had countless clients who engaged in precisely such attempts following some sort of workshop or "initiation". The less said the better, but complications occur when one uses force of some type to reverse the spin of a chakra. Fortunately, few people succeed because the chakras have habits and when the attention is lifted off the chakras, they mercifully revert to normal.

To attract a partner, the other person's chakra has to be turning the opposite direction and this is not a boy-girl thing but rather a function of the basic spiritual path. If the person is on a path of action, the first chakra will spin clockwise and the second will spin counterclockwise. The rotations are opposite for those on the path of wisdom and this probably also corresponds to the dominant hemisphere of the brain and many other personal idiosyncrasies.

Depending on countless individual proclivities, the second chakra may be so dominant that it dictates behavior of the individual or it could be more quiescent. The size and velocity of spin are the basic conditioning factors, but then there are secondary considerations and concerns. These include damage to the chakra from trauma, probably everything from circumcision to loveless sex, as well as use of the chakra. If the chakra is "in the habit" of activity but the partner is away or ill, the chakra has to be able to adjust to the change or suffer. It can adjust in a number of different ways, such as being more physically active but not necessarily sexually active, like taking on more projects around the home. It can also transmute energy into another chakra. Studying, concentrating, and meditating can draw the energy from the second chakra into the fifth or sometimes the sixth chakra. Students do this instinctively or compulsively at exam time when cramming so it is not necessary to become a yogi to move energy around.

However, if the excess energy is neither expended or transmuted, it throttles the rotation of the chakra and causes congestion in the sacral area of the body. This may start with frustration and develop into swelling or unwanted growths. If the reproductive energy is hyperactive rather than hypoactive, there will be a greater or lesser amount of dissipation and eventually perhaps some weight loss or emaciation along with neurologic complications due to the loss of buffer to the nerves since both the myelin sheaths and distance between nerves depends on the nurturing of the water element, including the magical ojas component that I mentioned in the first essay of this series.

Keep in mind that the water energy imparts smoothness and fullness to the physical body so when it is expended to the point of exhaustion, there is depletion of the energies that are used for protection, including all fluids and lipids. To some extent, this has repercussions on the entire body since all hormones require some lipids for their production.

Sacral Center Health

In the world in which we find ourselves today, the sacral center is truly the source of countless problems, not just related to physiological development, fertility, and longevity but also to misunderstandings about the impact of animal hormones, synthetic hormones, foreign hormonal-like substances, foods and chemicals that disrupt hormones, and medical interventions that impact normal hormones such as the components slipped into vaccines that cause infertility and other problems. This picture is actually so complex that it would take many, many posts to cover all the ramifications of taking Nature into our own hands instead of learning to understand and appreciate Nature and work with Her.

With the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson drew public attention to chemicals impacting our environment. The term "hormone disruptor" was coined in 1991 and brought into scientific literature by Theo Colburn in 1993 where, it was asserted, that the damage caused by these chemicals during fetal development is irreversible. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am working with someone in Europe on ways to overcome problems affecting boys with abnormalities that are far more extensive than reproductive system issues since the brain and nervous system are usually also impacted. As more attention is directed to the environment, the list of potentially harmful chemicals gets longer and longer, but the most horrific of all insults to the second chakra was probably diethylstilbestrol, a non-steroidal estrogenic compound given to pregnant women for several decades prior to its ban for use by pregnant women (early 70s.) Here is where the politics of medicine is beyond blood curdling because Bush the Elder and Dan Quayle met sitting on the board of Eli Lilly, the producer of the Thalidomide so one of the first events of their administration was the reintroduction of Thalidomide as a wonder drug for arthritis. However, it had never disappeared from the market because lost sales to humans were made up six times over by what was supplied to animals.

The theory of hormone disruption is actually not as well articulated as it could be because esoterically schooled scientists rarely get published, but the gist of what is more or less accepted is that during periods of rapid growth, both humans and animals are more sensitive to anything causing disorder in the endocrine system. This could lead to abnormal development, failure to develop, miscarriage, sterility, cancers of the reproductive system, and all manner of other completely unnecessary problems. Looked at from another perspective, try to imagine your energy body with its whirling vortices and you, the incarnating being, steps into this complex matrix that is perfectly designed for you and you are happy as a lark with your suit and then someone poisons your physical body and the communication between the chakras and endocrine glands is disturbed. The chemicals that are normally cited are DDT, PCBs, PBDEs, bisphenol-A, and phthalates, something found in soft toys, medical equipment, and carpeting, among other things. Just think that the alleged life-saving procedures administered by your doctors rely on the use of toxic tubing, plastics that are use to contain the blood for transfusions, plastics used in catheters and IV drips, and so on and so forth. The argument is always that the amount is too small to cause problems, but all these nasty substances came into use in the 20th century which was also when the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, and fertility problems began and these are all second chakra issues.

Since the ban on DDT in the developed world, levels in the human bodies have been dropping but the levels of other endocrine disruptors is rising. PBDEs are flame retardants and are neurotoxic. They are in carpets, computers, televisions, and countless other consumer products and levels in breast milk are 40 times higher for North American women than for European women, this despite the alleged oversight of countless agencies that are supposed to protect the public, everything from the EPA which actually has a screening program for hormone disruptors to the FDA. When I post this email to the archive on ingridnaiman.com, I will include lists of common disruptors, but it is too long for an email. My point here is simply to emphasize that your hormone balance is supposed to be determined by the chakras, not by exotic industrial compounds and pseudomedicines that are finding their way into our private ecosystems.

The Correction

What we are learning as attention to these problems is taking place is that levels in the body will decrease if exposure is reduced, meaning the body has the power to eliminate the intrusive chemicals, but thus far, the effects on fetal development seem much more obstinate. Part of the research that I envision entails use of Ayurvedic herbs that first detoxify the body of inorganic residuals and then use of tonifying herbs that restore the reproductive system to normalcy. In my long and interesting association with the husband-wife Ayurvedic team of Drs. Smita and Pankaj Naram, I have heard of delayed development of secondary sexual characteristics that were perfectly corrected, even as late in life as age 40. However, I have yet to come across anything suggesting that severe deformities can be corrected. My belief is that we were meant to be perfect and would be were it not for factors practically beyond our control. Therefore, I am optimistic that as the environmental movement picks up more and more momentum, we will shift our relationship to Nature and ultimately to ourselves and correct the problems created by misguided chemistry.

Since I plan to continue these essays, I would like to wrap up today's post by saying that normally we detoxify before tonifying. Morrnah Simeona used to say that all healing begins with removal of the obstacle to cure, which in the case of this chakra often involves hormone disruptors, but there are mitigating circumstances in which the patient is too feeble for detoxification in which case, one uses tonifying herbs from the outset, usually very gentle, demulcent herbs, herbs that are a bit mucilaginous and slimy and that swell up when moist. Most of these herbs also have the ability to absorb some toxins. Therefore, while soothing dry and irritated tissues, they simultaneously absorb toxins. In fact, this is exactly how Dr. Christopher's herbal bolus works. This formula includes classic demulcent herbs like chickweed, mullein, slippery elm, and marshmallow root as well as some detoxifying herbs. Licorice is another very useful herb for both detoxifying and tonifying since it is mucilaginous and tonifying. However, the preferred food-herb in Ayurveda is very often milk or ghee, often used as a carrier for herbs, like the Shatavari Ghee we have in the Ayurvedic Bazaar.

If you look at the herbs for women, you see that Vadik Herbs is aiming at reducing the vata derangements that undermine the female reproductive system, but these are not quite as detoxifiying as some people need since the vata is often a secondary effect of deranged or low pitta. Probably this is more obvious to me than to newbies, but I should probably devote some essays to formulation so you can appreciate the rationale behind the formulas:

http://www.ayurvedicbazaar.com/female_reproductive.html

Some people will, for the reasons noted, want to start with detoxification:

http://www.ayurvedicbazaar.com/detoxification.html

One of the best selling formulas in the Ayurvedic Bazaar has been Male Rejuv. It is described by the producer practically exactly as I have explained in this essay: "It uses historic principles for regulating nervous energy and increasing the production of male hormones and sperm." You see, it does not say this is an herbal substitute for a certain pill that if named would land this essay in the spam filter. Now, if you study the ingredients of the four products we carry for men, you will see that Banyan includes saw palmetto, a demulcent, with licorice and the detoxifying herbs such as gokshura. Now, compare that formula to Vadik Herb's Prostate Rejuv and see that the Vadik Herbs formula is just a bit more aggressively detoxifying and not quite as tonifying as the Banyan product.

http://www.ayurvedicbazaar.com/male_reproductive.html

As said, I need to take the time to explain formulation, but it's time to part now.

Thanks for your interest in my writings.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2009

See Essay #3

Introduction to the Dhatus
Essay #1 || Essay #2 || Essay #3 || Root Chakra
Chyawanprash || Ayurvedic Herb Import
Hair Color || Energetics Behind Vision || Air-Water Balance

Dosha Balance Questionnaire || Articles on Ayurveda || The Ayurvedic Bazaar

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