I recently wrote about how, if you take into account the ideas that come from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theories on achieving flow along with Candace Pert’s findings about how human emotions originate in the exact locations of the seven main chakras and that “our bodies are our subconscious minds,” you can utilize the chakras to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell your untold stories.
This is achieved through the Writing Through the Body™ method, which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.
For example, the Sacral (second) Chakra rules Partnerships and Creativity. The Sacral Chakra relates to how your protagonist connects with and responds/reacts to others in one-on-one relationships, as well as their impulse to create. The Sacral Chakra says I FEEL.
By considering how your characters’ connect, react, and respond to others, one on one, you can begin to uncover important that will begin to inform your story’s trajectory.
Below is a brief explanation of the Sacral Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.
Second Chakra – Sacral Chakra
Location
Just below the navel
This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.
Primary strengths
Self-value without the need for exterior validation, healthy psychological boundaries, confident creative expression
This is about who your character is drawn to in one-on-one relationships, how they behave in those relationships, and respond to the words and behaviors of them. It is also about how your character self-expresses, creatively.
Primary fears
Not being important “enough” to another (jealously, anger), happiness and pleasure (self-sabotage, pessimism, creative blocks), loss of body through death or illness
This is, in some ways, an extension of the Root Chakra, in relation to feeling secure in the world, and can surface when allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another. This vulnerability can also create fear/blocks in creative self-expression.
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Writing exercise
Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Sacral Chakra as they relate to all your characters.
Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible.
Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters.
Example: Your protagonist is a painter and is experiencing a creative block. You have just remembered (for them, through your writing) a seemingly harmless comment someone from their past made about one of their paintings, and it draws up some kind of pain in your protagonist. Why?
Questions to begin your exercise:
• Hold one of your character’s one-on-one relationships in mind. What is the overarching tone of that relationship? What makes it so in their shared history (no matter how short) and their individual histories).
• Does creativity—in any form—figure into this relationship, or cause strife in it?
• How adaptable or rigid are these characters, and what are their personal boundaries like? Are they equal in this, is one better than the other, or are then unaware and enmeshed?
Let me know what you discover in the comments.
As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…
Happy writing!
Johnnie
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