As a yoga teacher and an eating disorder survivor, I saw this book in the self-help section of the book store recently and thought “I have to have this.” The subtitle is what got me: “A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing yourself from Disordered Eating.” I had recently gained weight and been struggling mentally with that, so I thought this book might help.
And it certainly did. The thing I loved about this book is that the author is not only a yoga teacher as well, but also a licensed clinical social worker with a PhD, so every aspect of her writing was well thought out and researched. She incorporates all of aspects of her knowledge in a layout touching on what she calls the nine phases of recovery: feeling broken, building compassion from the outside in, embracing your power and independence, becoming embodied, discovering self-compassion, approaching recovery with self-compassion, believing you are worthy of healing, finding healing and wholeness, growing into self-love. Within each chapter/phase, she includes her research findings, and she offers journal prompts and reflections as well as physical yoga practices all to help process disordered thinking, let go of it, and promote self-love, compassion and healing.
I folded down the corners of each of the pages with the practices with the plan to return to this book whenever I’m feeling down about my body. Having tangible things to do to help process these thoughts is incredibly helpful and makes this a book worth returning to over and over again.
Twice a year, I give myself a literary-based reset. Around my birthday and New Year’s Day (both the starts of new years), I reflect on where I’ve been the last year and where I want to go in the next year, and I rely on a book to inspire me to make move toward those goals. For my birthday this year, I read Chakra Healing, hoping it would, in fact, help to heal me further in a spiritual way.
A lot of my spiritual healing and growth happened in the years immediately after my dad died after I moved away far from home, landing a job I didn’t love. I underwent 200 and then another 300 hours of yoga teacher training and spent two years learning much more about myself than I ever did previously in therapy. Learning about the chakras was one of my favorite parts of that teacher training. The chakras may sound a little “woo-woo” to those outside the yoga world, but there is a scientific component to them. The chakras are the energy centers of the body, the locations where many of our nerves and energy lines intersect. Combined, they work as a force. Even those who don’t know what chakras are inadvertently talk about them all the time. Anytime you find yourself saying something like “I had a gut feeling” or “my mind and my heart want two different things” or “I have butterflies in my stomach,” you are referencing different chakras. Gut feeling = third chakra. Mind = seventh chakra. Heart = fourth chakra. Butterflies in stomach = third chakra.
Michelle S. Fondin’s book Chakra Healing for Vibrant Energy was perfect offering for resetting where I want to be. It not only refreshed my memory of what I learned about the chakra in my yoga teacher training, but it went even deeper, not only explaining the meaning of each chakra but also offering tangible things one can do to revive the energy in each chakra. Each chapter focuses on a different chakra and explains where that chakra is located in the body, what it controls, how to know if that particular chakra is off-balance for you and what you can do to re-balance it. In reading her book, I learned my second chakra (the sacral chakra, which focuses on ease) and my fifth chakra (the throat chakra, which focuses on how you speak and use your voice honestly and appropriately) are the most out of wack. Those imbalances, according to Fondin, show themselves in the form of being reactive, getting bogged down in dark emotions and talking too much, replacing speaking by yelling or crying or speaking to convince rather than inspire. I love that the book points these out.
All too often, self-help books tell a person what to do. But the author it writing this advice blindly, without knowing the reader’s personal and particular problems. But this book, unlike many others, states: “hey, if this is what you’re struggling with, do this. But if this is what you’re dealing with, do this.” That the suggestions are so implementable — journaling! dietary changes! meditating! — the book feels like it truly does help. It suggests focusing on one chakra at a time — maybe one a day, or one a month, so you can do a fully body healing over seven months. I love that idea and think I’ll re-read the book in bits here and there so I can do a deep dive on each chakra, giving myself more time to grow and focus on the healing I feel I really need.
Lara's Book Club 