Confessions of a Cake-oholic

(Oh yeah, and what’s cool about your chakras too.)

I was standing in my kitchen this afternoon having a total meltdown over cake. Pretty, pink party cake with sprinkles. I love the smell of cake. I also love cupcakes. (Of course!  Mini cakes!) And pies from farm stands in New Hampshire.  And my sister Sara’s homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, which have gotten me through some tough times in my life. Truly.  They are like life emergency cookies and they taste like love.  Sigh….

But back to cakes and my current cake mania. There was a lovely one on the counter that my husband and daughter made and I really wanted to eat it. The only trouble is that I have gone on a very low carb diet and cake is off the menu.

Every so often I get a bee in my bonnet about a new diet and exercise program. I love extreme exercise (P90X twice!)  If I didn’t have bad knees and hate to run, I would so be a marathon runner or a tri-athlete. It sort of pisses me off that I am not 25 anymore because I really used to be able to do that stuff. Now I have a 25 year old attitude, but 45 year old knees. D’oh!

I love crazy, extreme diets too. South Beach, Detox diet, I have done them all. The sad thing is that I just lose and gain the same six  pounds over and over again. When I am on the down side of those six pounds, I feel pretty good. When I am on the up side, I feel like dog dookies about myself.  The funny thing is, I am pretty sure I am the only one who notices!

So I decided to try and drop 10 pounds on the general idea that I would feel better about myself and be healthier if I did.  I am trying South Beach/Atkins again, cuz for me it is the most effective, if I can get through the first four days of sugar and carb withdrawal. It’s fairly horrendous and I feel sorry for my poor family. Not eating carbs makes me CRANKY.

My husband couldn’t care less about my six pounds, or my crankiness either for that matter.  He doesn’t notice when my jeans are tight and I am feeling muffin topish. He thinks I am The Goddess no matter my waistline looks like, Goddess bless him.

This was our conversation.

“I MUST HAVE CAKE!”  I was panting and drooling a bit, you know showing the whites of my eyes and generally looking like a totally psychotic and probably violent looney toon.  It was like PMS on steroids. It was cake withdrawal.

“OK,” said he. “How big a piece do you want?”  He looked pretty calm, but I was wondering if he was getting ready for emergency cake application procedures, like maybe with a plunger or something, to get that cake into me as fast as possible, and thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

“NO!  I can’t have cake! No carbs!” I was pretty much incoherent at this point, since not eating carbs makes your brain go funny.

“OK,” he said, still looking calm.  The man get brownies points (yummmm, brownies….) for keeping cool headed in the midst of the storm.

“I am getting fat. I have belly rolls. And bacon!” (You know that nasty back fat that you get?  Bacon.  Nice for pigs, but not so much for me.)

“Well, that means there is more of you to love,” he answers, totally nonplussed. I honestly think he means that.

“Argh. Grrr. Snort!”  I said.  I didn’t have the cake, and took a walk in the garden instead. I am pretty sure all the world powers dropped back down to Defcon 2. Disaster averted.  Whew!

Seriously, I know only I care about my diet and my annoying six pound swing.  But it bugs me and so you have it.  I am really in two minds about this.

On one hand my inner Purist loves to be free from toxins, to feel clean and healthy on the inside. I know if I stick with it for a few more days, the carb craving will go and I drop my 6 pounds and feel better in my clothes. I will feel clear-headed and lighter and my blood sugar issues will go away. It’s really good for me to eat like that.

And my inner Hedonist vehemently objects.  Life is supposed to be fun. Eating cake is fun!  So is ice cold, carb laden beer and corn on the cob with butter.  Cherries and chocolate. Ribs from the grille.  10 year old single malt Scotch, the peatier the better. You know, the kind that tastes like band aids.  My fave. So is apple pie and Auntie Sara’s cookies.  Life is supposed to be fun and juicy and I work hard so I REALLY enjoy the sweetness of life. And cake.

You see the problem here.  I am sticking it out, moving through the discomfort of the detox, knowing it will pass and I really will feel better.

To cake or not to cake. It’s of utmost importance. It’s a survival issue!  I believe it!  Ok, that is my confession as a cake and carboholic. It IS a survival issue.

And how does this segue into my planned blog about chakras?  It really doesn’t. I just needed to get the cake rant off my chest.  And so onto our regularly scheduled blog about chakras.

There sure is a lot of talk about chakras these days. We all know we have them, but what are they?  I always thought they were little spinning wheels of energy in pretty rainbow colors. So what? What does that have to do with you and your life?

What indeed?

Truly understanding the chakra system can really help you unlock the mystery of YOU.  You are an amazing, complex creature, you are.   You are completely fascinating, with all your unwritten history of beliefs, experiences, thoughts, feelings and past lives all recorded on those disks we call the chakras.  They hold the groove of your wounds, to be sure, but they also capture your core soul quality, your life’s purpose and you at your absolute best.

And the coolest thing is that we can access those parts of you by working with your chakras.

Chakras become fascinating when we realize they are an elegant system to help you understand your own nature.  In the Healer Training Program, we teach that the chakras are actually seven levels of consciousness- that is seven ways of being, how we actually ARE in the world. The elegance of the system never fails to inspire me.

When you realize that your chakras develop along with your brain and as part of your human development, it makes even more sense.

A very basic overview of your chakras looks something like this.

Chakra 1- Your body and your health, plus everything solid in your life.  What blocks it is fear.

Chakra 2- Your feelings and emotions. Pleasure and pain. Guilt is the wound here.

Chakra 3- Your will and sense of Self. Your self esteem. Shame is the “demon” of this chakra.

Chakra 4- Your heart and your relationships. Self love. Grief hides out here.

Chakra 5- Your voice, communication and expression. Your creativity.  It is blocked by lies.

Chakra 6. Your mind and how you see things. Your intuitive self. It’s wound is Illusion.

Chakra 7- Your connection to God and the infinite. Your ability to connect to the infinite steam of the universe. It is blocked by attachment.

As you can see, these qualities and states of consciousness are the stuff of everyday life. Our chakra system is like an energetic computer that holds the current state of our relationship to these ways of being.

Lets break it down and explore your first chakra.

Chakra 1, located at the base of your spine, represents your body and everything in the world that is physical and solid.  It is formed from the moment of your conception to about 6 months old.  And if you have ever held a newborn baby, you have met a first chakra. They don’t really do much. All their energy is focused on creating the matter of the body. They eat, sleep, poop, cry, grow-  repeat.  They are functioning on the level of the physical and in particular the survival of that little body.  That is your first chakra!  It also represents all the stuff in your life that you can touch, like your car, your home, your stuff, money etc.

You have first chakra issues of you are sick or in ill health, or if you are living at a survival level.

We have to deal with our chakras sequentially, they are a hierarchy of needs. We have to take care of our basic needs before we go onto the other areas of our lives.

If you were wounded at all in your conception, birth or early baby months, you may have some issues in your first chakra. Maybe you weren’t wanted as a baby or born the “wrong” gender, like your parents wanted something in particular and you weren’t that.  Other first chakra traumas include adoptions, feeding difficulties, hospitalizations and abandonment issues.  These all create traumas that are held in the first chakra. Also past life traumas that are carried over into this life often show up here.  The basic message of this wound is that it is not SAFE to be in a body. Getting in that body is a BAD IDEA, and the last time that happened, it did not end well for you.

When we have wounds at these basic developmental stages, our chakras hold that pain and we have either “excessive” or “deficient” energy in that chakra.  An excessive chakra runs too much energy through it, and a deficient one has a lack of energy. The goal is to have a balanced chakra.

An excessive first charka will have problems like this:

  • Overeating
  • Hoarding or material fixation
  • Lack of energy
  • Fear of change, deep need for security
  • A general feeling of stuckness and heaviness.

Deficiency often presents like this:

  • Disconnection from body, underweight
  • High anxiety and can’t settle
  • Trouble with focus and discipline
  • Poor boundaries
  • Financial trouble
  • Problems with daily life, paying bills, getting to work, getting things done

But of course you have a gloriously balanced first chakra so you are:

  • Healthy and full of vital energy
  • Well grounded and comfortable in your body
  • Have a sense of trust in the world and feel safe
  • Stability, prosperity and a solid comfort in living in the world

So look around at your life. Look at your body and your health. Where are you with your first chakra? Your chakras are not just the spinning wheel things, they are your life!

Wherever you are, the good news is that it is fixable.  As we heal the traumas and unkink the blocks in the chakras, we start to feel better and to resolve those areas in our lives that have been stuck.  If you want to heal first chakra issues, here are some ideas.

  • Counseling and energy work to identify your issues, beliefs and feelings
  • Anything to reconnect to your body, like exercise or yoga
  • Check in with your body everyday
  • Eat right, get plenty of sleep and lovingly care for you body.
  • Breath, be outside and get some sun
  • Massage and lots of healthy, nurturing touch
  • Reclaim your right to exist and be here
  • Take Lisa’s Very Groovy Chakra Class
  • Healer Training Program!  We spend a whole weekend on each chakra and nothing is better (IMHO) on getting your chakras in order.

Well thanks for listening to my rather rambling blog today. Me and my first chakra are going to drink some tea and pretend that there is no such thing as cake!

The Zen of Dog

Are You An Empath?