Podcast Episode 36 - Working with Sacral Energy

If you know anything about the sacral center, you know that the sacral center is also related to your reproductive health, your life force, your pleasure, your creativity, and things like that. As we discuss creativity and life force, I'm also going to be diving into some of the things that I've experienced health wise over this past year that have really impacted and affected my sacral energy. They're very much related, but if you have any triggers around sexual health, around medical trauma, around anything related to that, please note that I will be discussing those. I don't want anyone to be triggered and I tend to be a detailed storyteller, but I want to make sure that I can tell my story. I've spent a year or so not talking about this stuff because I was denying the relation and denying the fact that the things that I was experiencing physically were really just exacerbated signs of me being out of alignment in my design, in ways where I was being a little bit more stubborn than I should.

So with that, let’s dive into the sacral center. The sacral center is defined for all generators and manifesting generators. Around 66%, two thirds, of the population has the sacral center defined. There are a lot of gates in the sacral center and a lot of potential for definition. This center is about creativity and life force and pleasure. It is the largest motor center in the body, and it generates a lot of energy.

The sacral center works like a battery. Energy goes in, energy comes out. If you are creating something or working on something or pouring energy into something that's really satisfying and really delicious, you'll find yourself feeling more energized and feeling like you absolutely have the energy to complete that task. When you are out of alignment, you will feel like you are forcing things. You will feel like you are in a position that you don't love, but you know that you have to do it. You will be shoulding all over yourself – I should do this, I should do that, I should do this. You're probably frustrated when you finish your work as well. You're not actually satisfied. 

The sacral center is really connected to that reproductive health and life force energy. I've noticed that people with a defined sacral center, especially women, working with your hormonal cycle can be really helpful as you're kind of working with a creative cycle as well. There is a week where you kind of take a step back and you don't do too much, and there are weeks where you're very social and productive, and some weeks that are great for critical thinking and overseeing plans. There are ways that you can really work with your sacral energy.

But let's just talk about my experience and my journey with sacral energy. My conscious sun is in Gate 34.6. Gate 34 is the only gate that I have defined in my sacral center. It directly connects to my throat center. I have 34.1, 34.4, and 34.6 defined in my sun and my Pluto placements. Both of my Pluto placements are here in 34. So, this is a big deal for my chart, because 70% of my conscious personality is this sacral energy. It's this creativity. It's this mutation. It's this strength that I have physically and mentally that I bring to things. It's empowerment. It's this essence of yes, you can absolutely do things your way, and if you do it your way, you'll probably have the energy to actually get it done, so that's the best way to do it. That's what my energy feels like to people.

In its shadows, my biggest shadow is force. If I get a vision, it's difficult for me to let go of the image that I see, of the plan, of the process that I want to experience. I'll latch onto a story. I'll latch onto it happening a specific way, and then I try and force it. I will work hard on it even though it's difficult. I'll convince myself to keep pushing in an area where it doesn't need me to push. It needs me to take a full step back and stop pouring energy into it, so I can see where my energy actually wants to go.

I have been working with my human design chart for six years now. My design is what led me to start a business. I started following my intuition, sharing this information on the internet, and it grew and grew and grew into what it is today. Early 2021 is when I was really pushing myself to burnout. When we went into lockdown in March of 2020, I was in the last semester of nursing school. Having class online allowed me the opportunity to pour my energy into my business. I'd wake up, I'd have my classes, I would get the few things that I needed to get done done, and then I had the rest of my day, the rest of my time, in quarantine to work on my business. 

That's when I started creating courses and when I really started writing more content and coaching and teaching. It grew so quickly that between March, when I went into lockdown, and September, when I ended up quitting my full-time nursing job, everything changed. I was doing what I had to do for my nursing degree, and I had this business that I was obsessed with and could not spend enough time in. I just wanted to pour more and more and more and more energy into it. On top of that, we decided to move, because I'd gotten a nursing job and wanted to be a little bit closer to it. We found a house, bought our first home, and were doing renovations to the house. While we were in the throes of that, the nursing job that I got wanted to move up the start date two months sooner. I was going to be starting August 10th instead of mid-October. 

We closed our contract on Friday, August 7th, and then we moved in over the weekend, and then I started this new job. At the same time, I had just launched my human design certification program for the first time, and I committed to creating modules every single week. There were textbooks to write. There were slides to make. There were outlines. There were videos to record. There were quizzes to make, quizlet decks, assignments, all the things that go into a program. 

At this point there were about six weeks where we're working on this house, and we are both just so stressed because I was doing all the things I have to do for my job. Every waking moment that I'm home, all my energy wants to go into my business, into this creativity, into the thing that I'm super excited about. But then I have so much frustration with everything else in my world that I have to be doing in order to even think about doing the things for my business.

I was very, very stressed, and I know I thought that I had everything that I wanted. I had a stable career. I had the fun side hustle that was doing amazing. I had the new house, but I was so stressed. I was recording for like 12 hours on the weekend to try and get all this content done. Then it came to a point where I realized that I had to quit that job. I had to quit the job, and I thought about phasing it out over six months, maybe going part-time, and everything in me was saying no, you just have to leave. You just have to quit tomorrow. You cannot work another minute in that position.

So, I followed that response. I rode that emotional wave, and I made that decision. I made the switch. Spending five years working towards this degree and to leave it very suddenly when I don't really have enough experience to easily get rehired in the future, was a very scary decision. It was terrifying for my husband, but it was for my life satisfaction, my happiness and that's so important to me. I have to prioritize my satisfaction in order to thrive.

That decision happened in September, and then of course, because I've made this big, giant, life changing decision, I felt like I had everything in the world to prove. I felt like I had to show everyone that if I can create this part-time, I have to create something even better full time. I have to show people that when I do have all my time to put into my business, I'm going to. There was part of this ego shadow as well, but then there was also this sacral energy and this sensation of do I deserve this opportunity? I felt like I had to make the most of its energy, but also because I was so excited about my business, it was so easy to get so lost in it.

I started working so much. I had two masterminds. I had private clients. I had the certification running. I was creating content nonstop for social media as well. I had other offers that were coming out. I was going at 110%, easily 110%. I was creating and putting out so much, and looking back, I can see the fear of the decision that I had made, the fear of I know I made this, I know I trust this, but I feel like I'm burning the boats and I really have to make sure that this is going to be stable. There was pressure that I was putting on my creativity at that point.

I started to feel off in my body for a couple of months. I was working out more regularly again because the gyms were open again, but I didn't feel like I'd been working out. I felt tired and heavy and just wrong. Something felt off in my body. Fast forward to January of 2021, in the middle of a launch, we opened up the cart for the big SSCC launch. We open a nine month support container, a large, large class. We had a huge wait list. It was an absolutely insane time and a lot of very big business growth that happened, and I ended up in the hospital with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that I should have seen the signs of a couple of days sooner. 

I ended up having emergency surgery, lost a fallopian tube, realized that the birth control that I was on was not effective for me, and I needed to switch to something new. That surgery and experience was very shocking. I was thinking that it was maybe a ruptured cyst, and I know that the recovery for that is that you rest, maybe some heat, take some ibuprofen; it'll dissipate in a couple of days. But this was not that. This was emergency surgery. This was blood loss. This was essentially a miscarriage. To hear that I was pregnant without even knowing it was a very shocking situation and a very big moment that brought a lot of things into perspective. Do I want a family? Are my chances lower now? Are there things that I need to be aware of? Am I taking care of myself well enough to have a child? How could I not tell that this was happening in my body? It just brought up so many questions.

Since the sacral center is related to the reproductive health and the reproductive system in the body, my mind was going to how am I this out of alignment in my body? How am I this out of alignment with my creativity? What genuinely felt like and the perspective that I have is my body was ready to create something, my energy was ready to create something really, really big, but I was blocking it. I think about if I had actually become pregnant at that point and thinking about having a child right now, I'm not ready for that. That sounds terrifying. That's not where I am in my life. I know that the timing was intentional, and I know there are a lot of lessons to happen there, but that really initiated a year six and a year seven for me in numerology.

So, 2021 was a year six, which is about relationships. It's about connection, community, caring for other people, nourishment, family dynamic. That was a huge question for me all 2021. I was thinking about that. I was healing that in the background, and at that point it really hit me that I really loved my business, but I wasn't allowing myself to enjoy it. I was creating out of obligation. I was creating out of stress, and I was creating at such a high capacity that I had burnt myself out from going so all in with my energy and pushing so hard.

In the beginning, I wasn't doing anything else but working. It's been a while now where this has been a problem, but I will just get lost in my work and I will jump in before I tidy up for the day or before I do chores or before I eat breakfast, and then suddenly, the whole day has gone by and I've done nothing but work. That's an amazing thing that I can get lost in my work and I can focus so much, but the thing about sacral energy and the thing that I've noticed with the gift of strength is not necessarily giving yourself the strength and pulling more energy out of nowhere to keep pushing, to keep forcing. You actually find strength when you know when to push and when to rest, when to give yourself more nourishment, when to give yourself more downtime and more peace, so that you can naturally come up with that energy again.

I realized that I was in this forceful shadow of wanting it to grow faster. I wanted it to grow as fast as it possibly could, and I was so in love with the labels that said I have four motor centers defined, so I'm a super energetic person. I have so much energy to give. I have so much energy to put out there. I essentially felt like I had no limits, and then suddenly, I am out of commission. I can't think. I'm on pain meds. My body hurts. I can't move off the couch from the surgery. To go from full force to that was quite the shock.

I started looking at wanting my work to be sustainable, and what sustainability means to me. I started looking at how I can support myself. How can I structure my business to where I don't have to do everything? I can only show up for the things that I really like. That brought up a lot of relationships and trust dynamics and things that I had to work through there. Can I trust other people to see the vision that I see and also create in a way that is satisfying to me? Can I trust myself to delegate? Can I trust myself to communicate the vision?

I started learning about all these different areas that I can give and I can serve and I can guide that aren't just me being the primary creative. It's not just me alone on Canva for hours and hours and hours until the thing comes through. I needed to restructure my business to create sustainability because it was not sustainable for me to be running two masterminds and having 15 private clients and creating courses nonstop and being the marketing and making all the social media content and working on growing the business and delegating and all the things. I had overextended myself.

Yes, it scaled to a multimillion dollar net revenue and churn rate very, very quickly, but I did it in a way that was not sustainable. As soon as I got there, my body crashed. My creativity said you've created something that you want, that is attainable, that you are capable of, however, you can't force it. Just thinking about an ectopic pregnancy, it means that the fertilization has happened in an area that's not supportive of life. It's not an environment that's going to allow cells to grow more. It's not going to create life force. It's something that's an idea, but it's prematurely attached. It's prematurely attached onto something to grow, so it's in the wrong environment, the wrong place, and it's just a little bit too soon. That's the energy and the message that I was getting from my body, from that ectopic pregnancy, but also about my business and seeing these correlations between my internal health experience and the things that are actually happening in my business. That life force energy is so connected.

I have realized that I was blocking my health and blocking my natural creative flows. I hadn't quite made this connection consciously, or I hadn't felt ready to do something about it until more recently. Over the last year, I've been working with my sacral energy. One of the first things I did was I tried to add in more fun and satisfying activities that were not work related. Before, I would be watching TV and I would be on my phone. I would be responding to Dms. I'd be writing down ideas. I would be responding to clients, and I would be doing things for work even though it was dedicated time for me to be stepping away from work.

I needed something that was going to help me turn my brain off and create satisfaction and pleasure for me that wasn't watching TV, because it just wasn't working. In May of 2021, I started reading. I finished over a hundred books that year, and I'm at about 110 for this year, so hopefully I can hit my goal of 120 for the year before it ends. I have read every single day since then. It's been 500 and something days consecutively of reading something every day, and specifically, I've been reading for pleasure. I've been reading stories and fantasy and romance and psychological thrillers. I've been reading things where I can get lost, and I can step away. It's active enough that my brain is engaged, but it's also passive enough to where I'm not thinking. It's a relaxing space. It's not work related, and it's deeply, deeply satisfying.

I added in more pleasurable activities and learning about romance and reading all these novels, I've been able to learn about examples of different romance dynamics. I've been able to explore those, and that's helped me to learn more about how I like to feel, how I like to be treated, how I like to be talked to, things that make me feel loved, things that don't make me feel loved. That's been really good for me as well, because it's taught me what I do find satisfying and what I don't find satisfying. Specifically in my relationships, of course, related to things like sex as well, but in that area, I've been able to give myself more satisfaction because I know what I like. I know what I want.

The first intention was I wanted more satisfaction in my life, and I wanted more satisfaction to come into my world from outside of my business. I love my business, but if my business is the only source of major satisfaction in my life, I will get consumed with it, and it will be this all consuming thing. Mani gens and gens are told that we're here to work. We need to have this creativity. We need to just keep going, and the job satisfaction is huge. It is, but there is such a thing as too much.

There is such a thing as too much creativity, too much output, too much of this obsession, and I need boundaries so that my obsession can be healthy. I need structure. I need other places in my life where I'm satisfied so that when I am obsessed with something, when I am lost in that creative flow, I'm doing so and I'm not going to end up in the hospital. I'm not going to burn myself out again. I'm not going to completely ignore taking care of myself just because I'm feeling inspired that day. I need to put boundaries in place so that my business is sustainable, and in order to do that, I had to add in other areas of satisfaction for myself.

I started with adding something in instead of taking something away. The goal was to work less, but the reason I wanted to work less is because I wanted to be living more. I wanted to be playing more. I wanted to be having fun and enjoying the life that I had created through my business. I didn't just want to have the numbers be my main source of satisfaction, so I detached myself from looking at the monthly numbers as intensely as I had been. I took off the payment processors from my phone. I took off notifications from my phone. I unfollowed everyone on social media, so it was really just me and my ideas and my creativity so I could show up, I could create from an inspired place, and then I could leave this work world.

The reading was really helpful. I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned a lot about communication. I've learned a lot about my desires. I've learned a lot about love. I've learned a lot about things that are actually very supportive of this next phase of business where I'm talking more about relationships and interpersonal dynamics. It makes sense and it was aligned. It was a great place to start.

The second and next step was honoring my energy in the moment. I have had to work really hard on this, but I've been working hard on really working with my energy. If my energy says I'm tired today, I am tired today, and I am going to rest. I'm going to respond to that tiredness. I'm going to do what I need to do to feel energized. If I force something, I'm tired for days. Whatever it is that I forced into creation usually isn't that good. It's usually mediocre at best, and we're not looking for mediocre. We're looking for extraordinary. We want epic. We want delicious. We want sexy. We do not want mediocre content. What I've noticed is if I am tired, if it's just not happening that day, if I take the day off, the next day, I am excited. The next day, I am fired up. The next day, I am creative. The next day, I am energized to be there, and I get the things done really quickly. I've really had to work with honoring my cycles. I've been working with my body a little bit more to learn about what kinds of movement my body is craving today. I've actually found myself working out less and resting more. If my body needs a nap, my body needs a nap, and so I'm not going to shame myself for that.

One of the things that I've learned about satisfaction and denial I actually learned from I believe it was Intuitive Eating. In this book, it talks about cravings and how if you crave a ‘bad food,’ you crave chocolate every single day, if you have the story in your head of if I let myself eat this whenever I wanted it, I would eat it all the time and I would not be able to control myself. This cycle happens where if we label something as bad, anytime we're doing it, we're not allowing ourselves to actually enjoy or receive what's happening. Your body is chemically blocking your ability to receive the oxytocin or the dopamine or the feel good hormones and neurochemicals that are being created. Your body is rejecting your ability to receive those, so you don't actually get the sensation of "I satisfied that craving." It's literally this denial mechanism where you will deny yourself the satisfaction because you're shaming yourself in the moment.

Let's say you feel like you shouldn't be eating chocolate. You think chocolate is the entire reason that you don't feel the way that you want to feel in your body. Every time you eat chocolate, if you're saying, "I shouldn't be eating this; I am so bad. I shouldn't be eating this. I have no self-control," your body is not going to be able to have those thoughts and simultaneously produce the neurochemicals that elicit the response of, "I feel good." Your state is made up of multiple things. It's made up of your thoughts, your physical body, and your emotional state. It's made up of all of them, and therefore, if your mind is saying, "I can't have this, it's bad for me," of course that's what's going to happen.

I do this with rest. I think a lot of us are conditioned by society that says that we have to always be working and always be productive. If I feel tired, if I'm shaming myself for feeling tired the entire time, I'm not actually resting. I am not actually giving my body what it needs. All I'm doing is prolonging that feeling of "I'm tired, and I don't want to be." Because I'm judging myself for being tired, I can prevent myself from actually being able to rest. I've had to work really hard on not judging myself in the moment when I'm resting. What that looks like is if my body is saying that I'm tired and my body just wants to keep reading and wants to get lost in this book for a little bit more, if I let myself do that and I let myself do that without judging it, I will actually enjoy myself, and then I will feel energized when I'm on the mend.

It's switching the thoughts from "I'm really lazy. I should be out of bed by now. I shouldn't be reading. This is a ridiculous amount of time. I'm wasting good daylight on a book that I can just read at any point." I switch this lazy narrative to one of gratitude. Instead, I will look at it and say, "You know what? I have freedom of choice right now. I could get up and go do work things. I could get up and go do house things. Those are actions that are available to me, but I also have the freedom to listen to my body right now. If it's noon on a Tuesday and I still want to be in bed, the fact that I have the freedom and I have no obligations that I have to take care of in this immediate moment, and the fact that I have been able to give myself this level of freedom is amazing. I am going to exercise my liberties. I am going to exercise my freedom, and I am going to rest. I am going to enjoy the heck out of this day in bed that I am giving myself."

I will set up my environment. I will light a candle. I will get a fun drink. I will set up the pillows the way that I want to. I will maybe change into something more comfortable. I will get everything that I need and I will sit down and read that book, and anytime that I come back to negative thoughts, I'm going to spin it into being so grateful for that. I'm going to be just grateful for the peace, grateful for the moment that I've given myself, and that's going to allow me to not just be satisfied with that experience, but really feel recharged from that restful activity as well. I know there will be a point where my body is antsy and ready to go and on fire, and then I get to respond to that and move on with the next portion of my day.

But the sacral center only knows what it means right now. It only knows what it means in this moment. It doesn't know what it means tomorrow. It doesn't know what it means in 20 minutes. It doesn't have a predictable awareness; it just has momentary truth. If right now your energy is saying that you need to rest, then that's exactly what you need to do. You can be proud of yourself for listening into your body and going against the conditioning, because that takes strength. That takes courage and bravery and strength to go against your conditioning and to go against the shoulds you have in your mind and give yourself something that feels like an indulgence. So, say yes to yourself. Give yourself the satisfaction that you need. Add in more rest.

This has been what I've been doing for my creativity over the past couple of years. After I experienced major burnout, I've had to rest and recover and start learning how to really change my relationship to rest. I had to learn how to relax, because there's a difference between resting and relaxing. I see resting as recovering from something, and relaxing is really just soaking up the moment and the fact that you don't have anything to do and you don't have to put energy out. You can just receive; you can just sit in satisfaction and peace.

So, I've been working with creating only when I'm in alignment, really trusting my creative energy, and what's come up for me is a deeper level of health issues that I have to address and deal with in this next phase of my life. I've been doing a lot of these activities that have taken a lot of work and have taken a lot of mental effort to work with and to decondition and to change my behavior patterns, but the deeper level is that I'm still not as energized as I know I can be. I'm still a lot more tired than I know that I should be, and at this point, it's not me judging my energy levels in the moment, it's genuinely that I'm recognizing that my body needs more focus on my health.

Specifically what's been going on is I have not been tolerating the new hormones. I have not been tolerating the birth control that I switched to. It has been a year and a half that I allowed myself to not tolerate this, having bad side effects like nausea and morning sickness for a week or so every single month. It's affected my appetite. It's made me extremely tired. It's made me a little bit brain foggy as well. It's definitely affected my energy levels and my health. I've realized that the next level of really being in alignment and really experimenting with genuine creativity and the big sacral energy that I know I have as a six line life's work in Gate 34, the big sacral energy that I have, I have to stop poisoning myself, and I have to stop putting false hormones in my body because that is interfering with a lot of things.

At this point, I know that if I really want to be creating the way that I want to be creating, if I want to build the business and the legacy and the content and the message that I want to create, the really big sacral energy, the really big vision that I have, this next phase, I cannot force it. I cannot let this crumble prematurely because I am pushing it to happen too soon. I really have to be taking it slow and taking care of the body that is housing this big energy, because my sacral energy is defined consciously. It is a conscious channel. It's in my head. It's in my mind. My body is an unconscious projector. This unconscious projector body is channeling this big creative sacral energy, and that means that I have to be taking care of the body in order for that soul to really be coming through, in order for that big work to really happen.

In this next phase, I will be detoxing from hormones and working with my cycle. I also will get to know my creativity in an authentic way that I hadn't realized. Since I have been on these hormones for 8-9 years now, I don't really know what my creative cycle looks like. I've known part of it, but I don't know what my uninhibited creative cycle looks like, and I'm really excited to start working with that in a more all natural and more healthy way. I know that this is also going to hopefully increase my appetite, increase my energy levels, and allow me to physically feel better so that I can be the energizer bunny that I know I am, and really have all the motor centers defined and really channel that in a healthy way and in a sustainable way.

So, that's my goal. This is something that I've been working on the last year and a half. Now it's time to take this experiment to an even deeper level and work with my creative cycles as well. I'll be sharing some of the behind the scenes and the things that I do as this journey evolves, but that has been my journey with working with creative energy and really working with my sacral. I hope you learned something about creative energy, and I hope that if anything you just start giving yourself permission to rest more because I feel like as a society we could all use that lesson.

Interested in a beginners guide to interpreting the details of your human design chart? Check out DECODED! 

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