Name :=: Location :=: Body Parts it Supports :=: Issues It Powers

Manipura / Solar Plexus :=: Slightly above navel :=: Abs and stomach, liver, gallbladder, small intestines, pancreas, kidney, adrenal gland, spleen, mid spine, etc :=: Persona. Self- esteem, responsibility, decisions, honor, respect, gut instinct, fear, trust, etc.

This energy center deals with development of personality and individuality, decision-making, self-responsibility and self-esteem. Healthy development in this center enables you to trust your decisions and feel safe making them. It also enables you to lead a life that feels fulfilling to you. The more developed this center is in you, the less blocked it is, the higher your self-esteem will be. A person with self- esteem shortages tends to attract relationships and conditions that mirror their low self-worth back to them.

This center is also the source of instinct, or gut-feeling. Instinct is a natural feeling that comes from within, from your soul, regarding what is happening in your life at the moment. It is a communication that is always right and timely. It is always there, but few hear it because of all the mental and emotional interference they carry around them. Low self-esteem and poor decision-making development are especially blocking to these instinctive feelings. A person with low self-esteem and decision-making capability is unable to trust and follow their instincts because they have given away their power to external entities, always wondering whether they will fail in the eyes of others. Instinct from the soul will always guide you toward the right path for you. It cannot be wrong, for it is from a source that defies space and time, the part of you that is closest to The Source, the Creator. Instinct always guides you to take the next greater step. Sometimes this step may be to the unknown, and therefore only those without fear of external factors can follow it consistently.

This chakra calls for yet another move away from group thought, of course. It is a step further towards individuating. Without breaking away from group thought, your self-esteem cannot mature fully because self-esteem literally means moving the power base from external factors and authority to internal guidance and security. External factors always change so the only true security that can last you a lifetime is to be found deep within you. Without internal power, you would be unable to effect your life situations to your satisfaction and comfort on the long term. So moving away from group thought is not a selfish and arrogant thing to do, as long as you don't do it by attacking that group thought. Just as much as you have a right to have your own system, so does everyone else. People do not have to agree with you, and in fact fighting to prove yourself right is a power-eroding battle to yourself and others. It is absolutely pointless and damaging to all involved. All you are asked to do is put your foot down to the universe and claim your own say, no more, no less. Remember, the world will always reflect your internal composition back to you. It is the law of cause and effect.

If as a child and throughout life you avoided or were not given the chance to make decisions and experience your own power, you would not have had the chance to see that you really do have power and to experience that your choices have outcomes. You would not have had the chance to experience the laws of cause and effect. Hence you would now find it hard to believe that you have power and your choices always give corresponding outcomes. The world may look like a random place to you, a place where luck and misfortune plays a role. The truth is that there is no such thing as chaos, luck, accidents. These are human concepts that we came up with to explain what we did not understand, where we did not see the perfect order behind the apparent chaos or luck.

Unfortunately, most of our society today strips its children of the necessary experience of decision-making when this chakra is most active in their growth as a theme year chakra (in their 3rd and 10th years) and much more importantly as the major cycle chakra, which is from their 14th birthday (their 15th year) to their 22nd birthday (the end of their 21st year). This leaves them quite dependent and incapable of making decisions they can believe in and experience effects of. These are the teen years during which children naturally feel the urgency to learn this skill. Now, it does not help that the parent criticizes their decisions and tells them they are incapable of making decisions because they are 'too young to know'. Parents and society in general has tended to criticize the teenage years and put as much control as possible, which is very counter-productive in many ways. Sure, teens need guidance, but exerting no-choice control and telling a teen that they are incapable of making good decisions so they must be made for them is, as our societies now prove by result, not the way forward. A person must have a chance at making their own decisions (with guidance but not interference), even if they may be mistaken, or else they will not learn the cause and effect nature of choices, the power of choices, or even the existence of choice-making ability. The law of cause and effect, of reaping and sawing, is what runs this entire universe. Even quantum physics and other branches of science attest to this. And the years to naturally learn of this law by first hand experience, without interference, is from the 15th to the 21st year, and to a minor extent in the 3rd and 10th year. Failure to do so vastly disempowers a person for they do not believe that their decisions have any effect, they do not believe they are capable of creating their own lives, and this ends up victimizing them for years to come until they learn the hard way that cause and effect is the way of the world. As a man thinketh, so is he. How else can you learn this naturally without experiencing it consciously without external interference and pressure?

And yet another common blockage that develops in this chakra occurs when a person frequently makes decisions based on their fears. When a person's fears dictate their choices, they completely strip this person of a vast amount of personal power and self-determination ability.

Self-responsibility is simply the realization that we are at cause of our world. With self-esteem and decision-making abilities intact, a person starts to see the ever-present link between their choices and their world. They see that they really do have the power to shape their lives exactly. The more they see this, the more they are happily able to see their responsibility over their own selves. And the more they are able to fashion their financial, health and relationship affairs as they wish them to be. When this happens, they stop attracting situations that mirror their low self esteem and power and start attracting those that mirror their internal wholeness and security. With responsibility comes response-ability.