Overcoming Body Image Issues by Balancing the Sacral Energy Center

The silent, ongoing dialogue with the mirror had been in progress for years. It wasn’t another diet, exercise program or positive affirmation tape that finally made a difference. It was when I realized that my body image war was all about a stuck, heavy, almost frozen feeling just below my navel. The sacral center. The more I treated that energy as if it was important, the more I started to feel disassociated towards the excess fat in my body.

The sacral chakra is known to most of us who study metaphysics as Svadhisthana, the swirling orange pool of creativity, desire, emotion and pleasure. It is the rule that regulates our way of living in our body as a living, feeling entity. If it’s balanced, you walk the world with a permission to be in your skin. Shame or low self-esteem fills the void when it’s blocked or spinning wrong. You disconnect. You armor up. You make your body a problem to solve, rather than a house.

For years, I treated my body as a rebellious worker who didn’t work up to the mark. The sacral energy, however, lay there unused, spilling out in bizarre ways: emotional eating, followed by punishing restriction; creative work, followed by complete shutdown; relationships where I was too much, or not enough. Sound familiar? Many of us here in this metaphysical realm discuss the higher chakras, crown chakra, third eye chakra, and so on, and we’re all quietly suffering in the lower chakras where the real mess is.

The Quiet Sabotage

The sacral blockage manifested itself physically for me as well. Persistent lower back pain for which no chiropractor could provide a clear answer. When I felt exposed, digestive problems flared. The complete lack of pleasure in eating without considering the price of food. These weren’t random. The sacral center is literally located in the pelvic bowl. When we ignore our bodies, the energy stagnates. Shame turns into stress.

You can meditate on orange light for months and five minutes later you’re pinching your thighs in disgust. The sacral energy center is not a place that is conducive to spiritual bypassing. It desires embodiment, not transcendence.

I recall one time sitting in a workshop where the teacher asked us to do hip-opening poses and say “I am worthy of pleasure.” Half of the room was crying. The other half seemed to be in a rage. Pleasure was a risky thing. If you’ve been at war with your body for years, it’s a betrayal of the old survival strategy to let it feel good. The plan that said: remain small, remain critical, remain safe from judgment.

What does imbalance feel like?

Self-hatred is not always obvious when it comes to an unbalanced sacral center. Sometimes it’s numbness. You live your life doing things, and you feel like you’re not really connected with how you’re feeling. Food has no taste. Sex is mechanical. Movement is forced. Other times, the whole system goes haywire; compulsions, emotional outbursts, creative jams, etc.

I’ve seen other seekers pursue the chakra of the root chakra or the solar plexus chakra, and hoped it would solve their body image problem. Assists on the margins. But it is at the sacral that you befriend the animal in you. The soft parts. The hungry parts. The parts that desire to be touched and seen.

Here’s the harsh reality: A lot of our body image issues have nothing to do with looks. It’s about control. The modern world takes away so much of our energy that we cling to what we can control, our look. We make the natural current of desire and pleasure in the sacral into a book of deficits. Calories. Likes. Measurements. While the energy center is crying out for simple, stupid joy.

These practices really made a difference.

Water suddenly became a significant factor. Not only drinking it, but being in it. Long baths where I felt the heat on my skin rather than thinking about all the things that weren’t right. Swimming without the intent to look athletic. Water is the element of the sacral. There’s something about that all-embracing flow that begins to chip away at the armor.

The use of mirrors was also helpful, as was movement without them. Dancing in my living room, with the lights low, terrible music, no technique. The first dozen times was embarrassing. My body wanted to freeze and criticize. However, it took persistence to overcome. At some point, the thinking mind surrender and the hips take over. That’s sacral talking back.

Another door that I didn’t expect was creativity without purpose. I began to create really bad pots. Ugly bowls that were unable to hold water. It wasn’t the product. It was allowing my hands to create something without judging it to be a reflection of my value. Each of these one-sided mugs carved out the notion that my body was for beauty.

There’s the emotional aspect, which is messier. I needed to begin to feel rather than think about it in my body. When I felt shame, I knew that it was a familiar feeling and I learned to put my hands under my belly and breathe into it like a scared animal that needed calming. Not fixing. Not explaining. Simply observe the feeling as it passes.

The Contradictions we carry

Now the hard part: When you balance the sacral, it doesn’t mean that you now love every inch of your body. There are still days when old voices call out to me. The difference is that they’re not in charge anymore. They are not climate, they are weather. They come and pass very soon.

There’s something weird I’ve noticed, too. My sacral energy began to flow more freely and my relationships changed. I was less available to those who treated the bodies (mine or theirs) as projects. More attracted to those who could laugh about cellulite or belly rolls without making it a tragedy or comedy routine. There’s a peaceful freedom in knowing that most people have their own sacral wounds and don’t care about yours.

When the Body Keeps the Score of Shame

For years I looked at my body as if it was the enemy, only to find out that it wasn’t the thighs or the stomach that were the issue. Shame that never got to move. When you push your emotions away, they don’t go away. They simply seek shelter and your body is a very tolerant landlord.

The lesson was learned early by most of us. Anger upset people. Sadness was inconvenient. Desire felt selfish. So we swallowed it. We got good at it. Then one day you’re 30-something looking in the mirror and you think, “If I could just change this thing about myself, everything would be fine. The mirror reflects all your unprocessed emotions.

The sacral area is the most affected. It’s where the emotion should go, where the pleasure should go, the creativity, the desire, the whole river of being alive. When you dam it up, things get heavy. Your nervous system begins to see joy as a threat. Food becomes numbers. Movement becomes punishment.

I’ve witnessed this in myself and in so many others: those who suffer with body image issue often struggle with receiving pleasure too. A sincere compliment feels like a taunt. Rest feels lazy. Space begins to feel like it’s unsafe. For so long the inner critic has been in charge that kindness seems like a trick.

Then something shifts. Not in one big moment, but in these little, almost idiotic moments. You actually taste your coffee, rather than inhale it. You hear a song you’ve heard a thousand times and suddenly it’s different and your throat tightens. You cry at a commercial and you don’t judge yourself for it, you just let the tears flow. The sacral energy begins to flow again and the body ceases to be a problem to be solved.

Balance for me is not about being always confident or loving every inch of myself in the mirror. That’s still a dream come true some days. It feeling of being in my body rather than outside of it, watching and correcting. I used to believe that freedom would come when my body would change. It began the day I ceased to use it as a repository for all my feelings I didn’t want to have.

Living With a More Honest Body

I don’t have a perfect ending here because this work doesn’t end. Bodies keep changing. There are always more and more excuses to unplug. When things get tight, it’s not so much about getting to that final healed place, but about coming back to that orange swirling center again and again.

I sometimes find myself holding my breath around my belly button. Now I laugh a little though. Hey, old habit. Then I shake it out, listen to music that sounds like crap and is good, dance my ass off like nobody is judging me. The flow of energy begins. The shame is loosened. Not because I made my body. Because I didn’t give it up.

When you still don’t like your reflection, remember that it may not be higher up the chakra ladder. It might be lower. Messier. More human. The sacral is not about perfection. It seeks to be present.

That’s a difficult thing to do. And more valuable than we realize.