What's in a name?

Me 1 The cold 0.

A few interesting things have happened since I have been doing this evil chakra balancing act. Apart from it feeling quite lovely and energising and centering, I really think it has contributed toward helping me keep this cold at bay. I know that sounds ridiculous, but so does phlegm. Bear with me.

The root chakra, located around about the perineum (aherm), is the grounding chakra, the one which connects you to the earth, enables you to feel at home in your own body, to overcome a dislike of your own body, and proneness to illness. If this is all some kind of placebo, then bring it on. If I am simply using the power of my mind to get rid of a cold, then so be it. This is just about the most encouraging thing I could experience coming into Winter. I feel a calm and a groundedness that I haven't felt for many Winters, being either all CFSey and nearly karking it from the temperature changes, or recovering my health but catching every great godamn thing floating around in this or neighbouring suburbs. Last year, with the great tracheitis curse, I spent half of Spring pulling a new muscle every day for a period of several weeks and wetting my pants from coughing. If I can avoid that kind of infection, leave alone colds and flus, I would gladly flagellate myself naked in Bourke Street for the privilege.

When I started doing this chakra balancing act, I could barely feel my base chakra at all. Now, it is getting stronger. And so am I. My art therapist gave me some literature on the chakras when last there. I was interested to read that the two chakras that have been weakest in me, the base and the solar plexus chakra, have certain foods linked to them to help strengthen them, and I have inadvertently begun eating some of those foods without knowing the linkage (licorice and sunflower seeds). Cool and mystical and spooky spooky spooky.

Perhaps I am heading over to the dark side. Perhaps I am just in touch with my body's own bioelectricity. Seems much safer calling it that than prana. One sounds - well, all Western and rational and scientific and incorporable into the body of medicine and the Body of Christ. The other sounds all Indian and mystical and just plain old demonic. Hallelujah for Western science to make everything safe for us ;)

Hallelujah for different cultures learning how to tune into the body that has been fearfully and wonderfully made no matter where we're born.