Áilín Quinlan: I need to balance my chakras, hubby thinks I’m unbalanced!
Áilín Quinlan tried meditation, but says: “I found I wasn’t particularly good at it.
But it isn’t a doily, I argued; it’s a mandala.
“It looks like a doily to me,” my husband said patiently.
A mandala, I explained superciliously, was a geometric design or pattern that is usually circular and is an element of religious beliefs like Buddhism or Hinduism.
It’s used for meditation, I said, nose in the air.
“Look it up on your phone. It’s regarded as sacred.”
He wasn’t allowed to look at his phone while eating, he reminded me sanctimoniously.
Somebody not too far from the exact spot where he was sitting had banned phones from the table.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said crossly, “Just look it up. I might need it to help me clear my chakras.”
“Your what?” he said. Sighing, he reached for his phone. “Spell the name of the doily thing,” he instructed, before laboriously typing the word ‘mandala’ into google.
“That’s definitely a doily,” he said. “What do you want a doily hanging on the wall for? Ridiculous.”
Well, it’s not like I’m the world’s great Buddhism expert here.
Years ago, a good friend of mine had mentioned chakras. It was the first time I heard the word. My friend had cancer. She’d had loads of treatment and many hospital stays.
She wasn’t long back from a short holiday in New York when she mentioned chakras. She’d seen an expert in alternative medicine who had come highly recommended, and, she told me dryly, this person had advised, among other things, that her chakras needed to be unblocked or aligned. Or something.
At the time, I hadn’t a clue what she was on about and I wasn’t interested in chakras or any other weird hippy-dippy stuff from the Big Apple; I was far more concerned about what my friend’s kindly oncologist in Cork had said about her latest test results.
Now, many years later, the word chakra had come up again.
Because now I’d been ill and now I’d been told that my chakras were in a parlous state. My colours, I learned, were pale and washed-out when they should have been strong, vibrant, jewel tones of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and so on.
Mine, apparently, were paler than pastel.
A friend unearthed an old business card from the bottom of a drawer and sent me off to an expert in the alternative medicine arena.
To my surprise, after it was explained to me what chakras were, I was simply referred to YouTube to try some chakra cleansing meditations for beginners.
I started with YouTube. It was all a bit strange at first, but I found I could do a simple chakra meditation in bed for a few minutes before going to sleep. What was there to lose?
Chakras are the energy centres of the body, running at certain points along the spine to the top of the head.
We can’t see them, but each one is believed to radiate a specific colour and energy and is aligned with an element of the physical body like the heart or the solar plexus, as well as spiritual, emotional and psychological aspects of our being.
Therefore, while an awareness and balancing of these energy centres results in wellbeing and good health, a blockage or malfunction can lead to physical, emotional or psychological disorders.
There are apparently an infinite number of them in the human body but, I learned, the main power points are located at seven points along the spine, beginning with the Root Chakra, which is located at the base of the spine, has a red colour, and is important for energy, feeling grounded and strong.
There’s the Solar Plexus Chakra, which is located in the upper abdomen, is yellow in colour, and is important for personal power, confidence, and being productive and focused.
There’s the Heart Chakra located in the centre of the chest. Its colour is green. It is the seat of balance, love, attachment, compassion and trust. And so, on you go, right up to the Crown Chakra which is at the top of the head.
There are lots of ways to balance your chakras – diet, breathing, meditation, walking in nature, practising yoga, and so on.
Aligning the chakras helps you maintain a healthy physical, psychological and emotional balance.
Later. I read how a sacred design called a mandala could assist in meditation, which I’d found I wasn’t particularly good at. I’d seen a framed mandala for sale. It didn’t cost much. Let’s face it. Any port in a storm.
I stamped out to the shed.
“I Will Be Purchasing And Hanging Up That, ’em, Doily,” I stated.
He looked up from his circular saw. Or his thickenesser/planer or whatever.
“What?” he said impatiently. “What are you on about now?”
He had forgotten all about me and my chakras and my mandala.
Men. Why? Why even bother?
App?
