Ashley and Lauren discuss how our wounds disrupt the flow of energy in our bodies, and why this affects our health and happiness. Tune in to learn all about your energy body, why your root chakra is so important to your well-being, and a secret root cause behind chronic pain and illness.
In this episode
We'd love to hear from you! Send your comments and questions to: ashley@liveatyouredge.com
Ashley and Lauren discuss how our wounds disrupt the flow of energy in our bodies, and why this affects our health and happiness. Tune in to learn all about your energy body, why your root chakra is so important to your well-being, and a secret root cause behind chronic pain and illness.
In this episode
We'd love to hear from you! Send your comments and questions to: ashley@liveatyouredge.com
Ep 8 - Meet Your Energy Body
[00:00:00] Ashley: Welcome back to the show. It's wonderful to have you here. This is Ashley. And I'm really excited to share today's episode with you. This episode is a conversation between Lauren and I about the flow of energy through our bodies, and the ways that energy flow can become distorted through various wounds that we have.
[00:00:30] So we talk about the three component parts of the energetic body. So you'll hear those referenced here in the episode. And specifically we talk a lot about the chakras. So if you're not familiar with the chakra system, chakra is a Sanskrit word that means disk or wheel. And that's because that is the shape that's often described for the chakras in the body. And the chakras are essentially energetic centers in the body. They're places where we tend to have a lot of nerve bundles coalescing, where we tend to experience a lot of our emotions.
[00:01:11] And they're places that as we move energy through our bodies, that's coming from both outside in the environment and from within us when we're moving energy through our bodies, those places tend to hold some of the most potent energy. And when we have wounds, we can carry some distortions that disrupt the flow of energy through those energy centers.
[00:01:35] So just as a brief overview of the chakras for reference, as you're listening to this episode, There are seven chakras in the body. The first chakra is at the base of the body, or the root chakra it's often called. It's at the base of the spine. And it's really that place where we feel our sense of groundedness or rootedness and feeling safe and secure in the world. Our second chakra is the sacral chakra. So that's located right up here in the sacrum, like in the pelvis. And that chakra is where we hold a lot of our sexual energy. It governs our creativity and our ability to manifest out in the world.
[00:02:20] The third chakra is the solar plexus. And that's located up where your stomach is, kind of right where the sternum or the bottom of your rib cages. And the solar plexus is where our personal power is centered. The fourth chakra is the heart chakra. That's our heart center. And that is our ability to give and receive love, to experience compassion and empathy. And the fifth chakra is the throat chakra. This is where our voice is, right. Our ability to communicate and express ourselves and our personal power.
[00:02:57] The sixth chakra is the third eye chakra that's right between your eyes. And that is our ability to vision and receive intuitive information. It's our ability to see the big picture. And last but not least the crown chakra is at the very top of the body. It's at the crown of the head. And this is really where we connect to what's greater than us. So whether or not you're a spiritual person, it's where you're connected to whatever's larger than ourselves. So that's just a brief overview to give you a sense for what we're talking about we're talking about the chakras in this episode. we're not going to dig into all seven of them. There's way too much for us to cover in one episode, but you will hear us referencing these over and over again in today's episode.
[00:03:43] There's a lot of great stuff in here about why it is that the healing of unconscious wounds that we've been talking about in the episodes leading up to this one. Why that's so important in our physical beings and how we are actually moving energy through our physical bodies and our energetic bodies. So I think it provides a really great conceptual framework for what's going on at a deeper level with some of the healing that we're discussing in the show. We really hope you enjoy the episode.
[00:04:18] Lauren: It's important to always start with the bottom three chakras before talking about any of the others, because when we've got wounds to heal, the others will not be functioning properly because the deepest core-est wounds in us are stored in the lower three chakras, particularly the lower two, particularly the first. Because it, it always starts in the first. It's formed first, and all the chakras above the root chakra are formed afterwards. So if you have distortions in the creation of that first one, then you're gonna have distortions all up the chakras.
[00:05:02] You can do little rebalancing of all your chakras when you realize that you have imbalances there. But you can't really heal, in my experience, you can't heal stuff in the upper chakras without healing the bottom ones first.
[00:05:20] Ashley: Wow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love that description that like those chakras are formed first and they're our basic safety security type. And so they're, they're really like primal.
[00:05:34] Lauren: Yeah, The ones that impact us, the deepest and the most profoundly, and the ones that manifest in really unpleasant ways in the external environment. like the ones that we, that are most uncomfortable to live with because the bottom two chakras are about love and safety.
[00:05:55] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:05:56] Lauren: And that's, that is primal. I mean, you don't get any more primal than life and death.
[00:06:03] Ashley: Yeah. Which is Safety, security, and love.
[00:06:07] Lauren: Yeah, because love equals life to a child.
[00:06:11] Ashley: Thank you for adding that in cuz usually when I hear it described, it's described as safety and security, but love is that when you're a child.
[00:06:19] Lauren: This whole concept of inner child work is a thing because of what we're talking about that the deepest wounds are from your bottom two chakras, and if you have wounds around love and safety, then a scared child self is living within you. And so that's why the work of healing has to involve the child because all of us have child selves in us.
[00:06:50] Ashley: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:51] Lauren: But it's the scared, the terrified and, sad ones that are holding onto, they have trapped emotions, that are the ones that really need to be cared for in order to heal and release that energy.
[00:07:05] Ashley: It might be helpful for us to explain like how,
[00:07:10] Lauren: how it
[00:07:11] Ashley: Yes. how it manifests. Because you and I have both experienced our entire lives being profoundly impacted from walking around as adults with wounded root chakras and probably most people have wounded root chakras right? Like probably almost everyone. But it's hard unless you have a conceptual understanding of how it ripples out into your life, I think it can be a little abstract to understand Well, why is it such a big deal?
[00:07:41] But it affects, and please chime in, but it profoundly affects your health many times. mean, you're the person to talk about this really, but chronic illnesses can come from that and physical injury too I just wanna mention really quickly. Like I've had a lot of low back pain in my life that was coming from a distortion in my pelvis being like really out of alignment, and I believe that was coming from like a very wounded root charka. It physically creates distortions in the energy in the body that manifests through the tissues so that you can end up with overly tight and constricted tissue that turns into these chronic patterns and ways that you unconsciously hold your body, or it can be like something that's really, truly beyond your control. It can be inside the organs that are down near your root chakra, right? Like your reproductive organs. There's so many ways this ripples out and because like you talk about it, it can affect the chakras above that, it can create all kinds of chronic illness and I, I feel like I wanna let you chime in, but like it really manifests very physically in a lot of ways if you have a lot of wounds there.
[00:08:54] Lauren: Yes. I love that you brought in chronic illness and chronic pain and like being prone to injury. So anytime you're talking about those things, I believe that energetic stuff has to be looked at in order to heal it completely. I believe those, the root cause of most chronic illnesses, chronic pain is in the energetic stuff that we're talking about. But that is manifesting in the physical. It's not like it's being made up in your head ever. Like it's not psychological. It's a physiological change that's happening as a result of the energetic distortions.
[00:09:36] And I love that you brought in muscle. Muscle tensing because that is probably, I would guess one of the most common manifestations of a root chakra distortion or wounding, because when you feel unconsciously, which is key, unsafe in the world, you unconsciously start like literally brace yourself.
[00:10:05] That's how I think of it. It's like you are braced to, for something to hit you, like something is gonna get you at any moment. You are never safe. Something is gonna get you, it's something is right around the corner. You never feel safe. And so, so many people get these tight restrictions and constrictions. So muscle pain and tension in the neck, in the shoulders, in the back are probably the most common. And the hips.
[00:10:35] And the hips, we really don't feel or know until you go and try to do something like yoga. And you're like, goddamn, like I can't move my hips like this. And, or, or you notice even like when you consistently Like this is, that is a, a important place for me where I hold, and even though I do yoga once to or twice a week, I need work in my hips every single time almost like that is the area, and my back. And that just means that I have more root chakra things to heal, but that's not like a stressful thing. It's like, yep, I'm still working on this.
[00:11:15] Ashley: Well, and when you think about the number of people that have chronic back pain, it's a humongous number of people or just chronic pain of any kind.
[00:11:26] Lauren: Yeah. But that's just one way that this manifests. Right? That's probably one of the most common ways.
[00:11:35] Ashley: There's also chronic anxiety and maybe you have a different perspective on what's causing that. But I've struggled with chronic anxiety for pretty much my whole life. And I as you aptly say it, that's fear. And the fear is always related to like, am I safe and secure and loved? And like It it feels very root chakra to me, like that chronic kind of anxiety, not just, oh, I'm anxious about this presentation or this meeting. It's that chronic anxiety, which is also rampant in our society. So many people struggle with chronic anxiety and
[00:12:10] Lauren: Yes. I'm so glad you brought that up. Anxiety as well as depression have root chakra roots in them. It's just this constant feeling of am I safe? Am I loved in the world? And I, I always str, I struggled with this in the beginning because that phrasing, that phrasing didn't resonate for me at first.
[00:12:30] Ashley: Yeah. It's only once you get to the deeper layers of it that you feel the love and safety thing more viscerally. I feel like when you're just operating out of that chronic anxiety state and you haven't begun to delve deeper into it, it just feels like this niggling, very uncomfortable, constant feeling.
[00:12:52] Lauren: There are also like a million physical symptoms that can come from root chakra. It's like too many to list, including brain fog, including like anything that you're like, dissociated from, that's becoming a physical symptom, has a root chakra component. And it doesn't have to be an illness. It could just be a symptom.
[00:13:14] Ashley: There's a lot of, um, reproductive system dysfunctions that could be sourced in that. I mean, some of it could be sacral chakra too, but
[00:13:21] Lauren: it's, it's both
[00:13:22] Ashley: it's, yeah.
[00:13:24] Lauren: The manifesting chakra is the sacral and there's a lot of sacral wounding that's causing that. But the wounding from the sacral is also connected to the root. And that's the other thing that it's important to, to mention is that these seven chakras are always talked about individually, but it's just not that simple.
[00:13:45] They're all connected to each other. So if you wanna talk about adrenal fatigue or anxiety or anything involving the adrenal glands, you're talking about the solar plexus. Like you could argue that's where the problem is, but it's actually stemming from fear of your safety in the root chakra.
[00:14:06] And there are also like a lot of complex dynamics between the solar plexus and the sacl chakra. The solar plexus chakra has a lot to do with power and so many of us have fear of power, fear of being powerless and being, and fear under that fear of being powerful. And there, there, that is a very complex wound that is in your solar plexus, your sacral, and your root chakra. but it also. implications in your throat chakra, in your heart chakra, in your third eye cha. I mean, like, it has implications all up. Like that's a very, that's a very complex one that I'm personally working on in, in my life,
[00:14:55] Ashley: That's fascinating the way you're mapping them and the way they're interlinked, cuz you're right. That's not something people really talk about because it's very nuanced and it's complex and people don't like complexity. People wanna hear this chakras for this, this chakras for that, and these other chakras do this and then that's it. It's like an easy map to remember in your head.
[00:15:15] But I love that you're bringing this nuance to it because it it, when you think about it that way, it begins to all, for me, it makes sense how our bodies work. That's how I feel when I think about this, that when you think about energy distortions and the way they can ripple out into all these different parts of the body.
[00:15:36] For me, it starts to make sense how we develop these mysterious problems, health problems in our lives that we don't understand because there's so many different ways that that energy ripples through our bodies, that it's very complex to unwind where it was sourced in because it's winding around all these different pieces of your body.
[00:15:58] And so it's
[00:15:59] Lauren: And you can't visually see any of it.
[00:16:03] Ashley: Exactly. Yeah. No doctor can give you an exam and say, oh, it's here. They can't.
[00:16:07] Lauren: Exactly. Exactly. That's when you need to go to energy medicine as you, as you mentioned. However, I don't remember if I've mentioned this before in this podcast, but most energy practices are temporary shifts, temporary balances: acupuncture, any kind of energy movement that you go to.
[00:16:28] The only one that permanently shifts the way your energetic body functions is by working with your emotional centers. Those chakras, like you put it, it's by doing the emotional work. That's the only way to shift your energetic body permanently.
[00:16:45] And I also wanted to bring in, cuz we're talking about these chakras and if you, if you picture them as like these balls of energy that are circling and spiraling and that's how they're creating energy. I sort of imagine when they have distortions, they sort of change shape. They get more oblong. They have like divots in them. They have little like, sort of strange shapes, in different ways.
[00:17:11] And so they're not moving and spiraling in that rapid fashion that they need to. They start slowing down. They can't get around the ball as easily, and so the energy that is needed. To give energy to the, to the movement and function of your systems and processes in your body start malfunctioning cuz they're not getting the energy in the, in the way that, like the direct and smooth and clean and fast energy that it needs to.
[00:17:44] Ashley: I just, I just wanna interject. I think this is so cool what you're describing because it's on this edge of where science has not gone yet and like you and I are both come from like a biology, science background, like formal training wise. And so you and I both have a lot of background in that, and yet, science has not mapped how these energetic things manifest like at the atom and the molecular level, and then up into the cellular level and then out into the, you know, tissue level and beyond. It just isn't there yet.
[00:18:22] But I love the way you are describing in this detail, the way that the energy moves and sort of what that looks like, rippling out. It's just, it's exciting because you're, you're drawing together the energetic and the scientific things that just haven't been written down in papers yet, but I personally believe eventually they will be. I mean, it might be a hundred years from now, but I believe eventually that, that those things will be married in some way, shape, or form. But I just wanna thank you for describing this in so much detail. I'm sorry for interrupting you. I just think it's really cool because I don't hear a lot of people doing this, talking in this level of specificity and detail about what energy distortion looks like. It's usually a little wishy washy.
[00:19:10] Lauren: Yeah, and that's always frustrated me. I've been just obsessed with making sense of it myself, and I can't say that I'm giving some scientifically correct definition. But this is a, this is like a way of understanding it I think that works and and it works because there's some element of truth to it. I mean, I think that's the best I could say. And this is quantum physics, like they are working on this, but this hasn't been proven. I mean, what I'm saying.
[00:19:37] Ashley: Yeah. It hasn't all been demonstrated and, and retested and all that stuff cuz we're just not at the point of being able to yet.
[00:19:46] Lauren: But I did wanna just explain too, that in addition to your chakras, your entire energy system has three parts. One part is your chakras. The other part is your energetic meridians, which is what acupuncture works on. If you think of it as the communication between all of your systems. So if, if you imagine the way energy flows and communication flows between your brain and the rest of your body, it's, it's sort of like that. It's like the communication roads.
[00:20:23] The third part is your biofield, and that's that space that stretches out beyond your body and goes out typically six feet from the sides of you. Your biofield varies somewhat in terms of size because of how large or how expanded or contracted your heart chakra is at, at any given time. So it can get bigger and more expansive as your heart chakra opens up. And that happens from healing the bottom chakras.
[00:20:57] So those are the three parts of your energetic system and so energy comes down into your body from the universe, from above you, through the top of your head, through that crown chakra and it goes all the way down into the earth and it goes deep into the earth and then back up into your body and circles around your biofield and through all your chakras. It, it's like just goes in this cycle.
[00:21:30] And so, some people have found that wounding can be trapped in your biofield as well. And it can show up as these like tangles outside of your body, and what that does is it traps energy outside of your body so that you can't access the body in your chakras to create energy for your body.
[00:21:56] So things that manifest as fatigue. One of the reasons for fatigue is because too much energy is getting trapped outside of your body, so your physical body can't access it for physical energy.
[00:22:13] Ashley: Yeah. That's cool. That's a really cool conceptual model.
[00:22:17] Lauren: I like being able to actually visualize it because I personally have not found explanations in science for fatigue.
[00:22:29] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:22:30] Lauren: Understanding mitochondrial dysfunction is not very helpful for me in a visual sense. Like, I, I can't, I don't feel, it's not visual. It's visceral. It's like, I, I can't feel that,
[00:22:46] Ashley: It's almost too micro, right? Like you need something that your conscious mind can connect with in a way. Extending your consciousness out into the way energy flows through your biofield and your body like that feels powerful because it's like you can be more conscious of how energy's flowing through you and I agree with you. It feels more viscerally, connective.
[00:23:11] Lauren: It feels like there's, yeah, we have more control over it. Like it's, if this is doable, like this is a system. Energy flows all the time.
[00:23:19] Ashley: And we are energetic beings. Like we, we viscerally understand energy flow, I think.
[00:23:24] Lauren: Yeah. And so because it's always flowing to me, it feels empowering that there's always an opportunity to shift that because it's always moving. Whereas when you get into the physical body and understanding those very specific...
[00:23:42] Ashley: Right? you can't consciously change what your mitochondria are doing. You can maybe shift it at the energetic level, and emotional level, and then that level will change.
[00:23:53] Lauren: Yeah, it feels outside of our control. And then we look to supplements as like the only method of shifting, stuff like that, you know?
[00:24:02] and,
[00:24:02] Ashley: mm-hmm.
[00:24:02] Lauren: and medication.
[00:24:04] Ashley: Yeah. To access that cellular level activity.
[00:24:07] Lauren: So it feels more empowering to understand the energy body to me. I hope it's helpful for everybody else.
[00:24:15] Ashley: I think it is because it's not, it's not the way that all of us are taught that like our bodies and illness work, and so we're all focused on different pieces of our bodies and health when we're trying to seek optimal health and vitality. And so we're really unfocused and often unaware of the way energy's moving through our systems.
[00:24:42] And so when we're unaware of it, we don't have any ability to shift it. We're completely missing that piece, even though it can often be really powerful. And then I guess talking about how to shift the way energy's moving through your biofield and your body and all those layers is a I guess a different conversation.
[00:25:01] But it, it's sort of things that we've talked about, right? It's like all this, it's the healing. We've been talking about healing for the duration of this podcast pretty much, you know, and like how to get at this unconscious stuff. And this is just more understanding some of the layers that are, that are going on under the surface.
[00:25:20] Lauren: Because the truth is, and we're not used to thinking about ourselves this way, but like you said, we're energy beings. But that means our energy system is actually first in terms of priority in like of, of influence, of how we function. The energy is actually the most important, but it's been completely annihilated through a certain period of time.
[00:25:42] And we're just getting back to what was a really ancient, the most ancient medicine was energy medicine. And we're just getting back to learning how to use it. And it's difficult because in our modern of looking at things. It's not really conducive to learning energy because you can't see it and feel it. You can feel it, but it's subtle.
[00:26:07] Ashley: It really gives more of a, a visual, like you were saying of what's actually happening as we are working on you know, healing unconscious wounds that are manifesting in our chakras and in our biofields.
[00:26:21] And like, to me, this really kind of roots the topics that we've talked about so far on the podcast in more of a big picture, conceptual framework for why it is that shifting those wounded parts of ourselves those unconscious parts of ourselves, how that like shifts our energy body, our physical body and like how that facilitates the flow of energy through us. And helps our life to become better.
[00:26:56] Lauren: The way in our view to work with the energetic body is through emotional work.
[00:27:04] Ashley: .Mm-hmm.
[00:27:05] Mm-hmm. .
[00:27:06] Lauren: Just understanding that the emotional body and the energy body are a lot of times one in the same. And when on this podcast, like as we're talking about emotional healing, what we're really talking about is healing your energetic body so that the energy will flow better and your physical body and your mental health will flow better and your life will flow better.
[00:27:28] Like if your energy system flows well, your whole life will feel more in flow. Because you'll feel more connected to the earth, more connected to other people, more connected to the universe. And when you're connected to those three things, did I say connected to yourself? I meant that should have been first connected to yourself.
[00:27:51] When you're connected to those things, your life just flows. And I'm not really speaking from personal experience, experience in like a general sense, but I've had experiences like that as, as I do emotional healing. I'll have things that just like, and I know you've had this experience, like things just flow and I never, and they just work..
[00:28:15] Synchronicities start happening. Serendipitous things start happening. And you start really feeling and noticing those things. And I never had that before. I don't know about you, but like
[00:28:26] Ashley: I feel exactly the same.
[00:28:28] Lauren: My entire life and everything I did in it felt like it was hard and I was fighting. I felt like I was always pushing against energy trying to make something happen. And so
[00:28:41] Ashley: Yes.
[00:28:42] Lauren: That's the exciting part of doing emotional healing work. Even though it can feel overwhelming at first, and it can suck at moments. But actually having healing experiences starts to create this flow that like, the joy that comes from it is hard to explain, but the healing process is long.
[00:29:05] It's this, it's this arc of you just you start having more moments over time. You get more and more moments of flow and things working and things being easy and then like as you start going through this process of transitioning the way we think about life. It's like, oh wait. We've been trained that life's supposed to be hard, and I'm being shown that it doesn't have to be hard.
[00:29:32] And then it's like you we're prone to think like, is there something wrong? I'm like, not working hard enough. But when you're in flow and in alignment with yourself and the universe, and the earth, like the life can become easy.
[00:29:50] Ashley: Yeah, thank you for framing it this way. I really like how you're taking what we've talked about with how energy flows and healing at the cellular level and energetic level, and how you're extending that out into how this can transform your life overall.
[00:30:12] I think we're actually at a pretty good place to wrap because we've just given an introduction to the chakra system. I really like how you gave a primer to the three parts of our energetic bodies: the chakra, the Meridian system and the biofield. And then as far as how to work with the chakras themselves and like these parts of our energetic systems, that could be a whole a set of future episodes that we put out at some point. But I think that this is really awesome. So.
[00:30:45] Thank you so much, Lauren. And thank you everybody for tuning into the show today. You can subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so to make sure you don't miss any episodes. And please do keep telling folks you know about the show. If you can think of anybody else you haven't told you think would enjoy the show we would love that. We are still trying to grow this show and reach as many people as we can.
[00:31:08] We want to wish you a wonderful holiday and ending to the year. We hope that you get some time to reflect and to celebrate the year you've had. And we hope that you have a very happy start to 2023. We will be back in your feed on the 1st of January in the new year. So we will see you then. Thank you again for tuning in. We'll see you on the next episode.