They say you should be my sacred place.
They say you should be my own abode.
Why, then, when I visit do I feel like I am
stranded on an island far from home?

~

The sacred place that houses the waterworks of the urinary system and, for me, a reproductive system centred on a womb from which menstrual blood and vaginal fluids might flow and a baby and its afterbirth might be born.

Traditionally the sacral chakra is the locus of sexuality and desire. So it’s a strange one for me to approach as someone who is asexual and has been struggling with secondary amenrrhoea on and off for over five years. Is the latter caused by exuberant exercise, being on the lighter side, living with autism and anxiety or stress about not earning a living from my vocation? Or has my womb shut down simply because it knows it is pointless putting energy into being active when I have no desire for sex or for children? 

In one shamanic journey my reproductive system appears as a grandfather clock that has stopped. In another I am shown two playing cards – a Jack of Diamonds and a Jack of Diamonds falling from my ovaries. “You’ve had your last chance,” they tell me suggesting I may never see a period again. 

I learn that excess cortisol caused by stress inhibits the release of gonadatopin-releasing hormone in the hypothalamus, which fails to move to the pituitary gland to instruct it to make follicle stimulating hormone and lutinising hormone to tell the ovaries to make an egg and bring about ovulation. Because no egg is released the ovaries fail to make oestrogen and progesterone. Thus the reproductive cycle shuts down. Yet I’m not that stressed at present. The inertia of my womb remains a mystery.

Yet my kidneys are healthy. I follow the cleverness of my nephrons – filtering, reabsoring, secreting, excreting, making sure there is enough glucose, protein and vitamins in my blood and removing urea and uric acid. Water reuptake and thus thirst and needing to pee carefully regulated by the hormones aldosterone and anti-diuretic hormone.

My relationship with my urinary system is good and it thanks me. The only thing I drink these days is water and only when I’m thirsty. It hasn’t always been that way. When I was drinking a small bottle of vodka every night to get to sleep it sent me cystitis and a kidney infection and made me cut down. Caffeine went due to panic attacks. Hot chocolate due to lactose intolerance. Beer and wine due to IBS and lifestyle changes. Finally herbal teas because of my rosacea. I feel healthier. Water feels good all the way down.

Let’s return to desire. What’s desire detached from sexuality? The desire to create, the desire for spiritual connection, the desire for mystical union with my God, my Beloved, my Husband outside the limits of sex and romance.

I also associate the sacral chakra with the watery subliminal realm of dream. The animal who appears here is a seahorse and I recall that in seahorses it is not the female with the active womb who bears young but instead the male.

~

Location: sacrum / Colour: Orange / System – Reproductive and urinary / Nerve Plexus: Lumbo-sacral / Endocrine: Ovaries and Testes / Sense: Smell / Realm: Dream / Element: Water / Qualities: Sexuality and Desire / Animal: Seahorse