Sanctuary for Heart Magic

YOUR PELVIS AND YOUR SENSE OF SELF

All the things the pelvis holds

Most people don’t think much about their pelvis, that is unless it hurts. The pelvis is many things. It is our root within our body. Physically it holds our organs and provides a base of support and stability. Contained within it are portals into and out of the body. We all grow within and are born coming out of the pelvic region. It is composed of a center bone called the sacrum (also known as the sacred bone) and 2 innominate bones (ie. hip bones), one on each side of the sacrum. Our sexual organs, bladder and lower intestines live in this area. The lower part of our parasympathetic nervous system resides here along with all of the nerves that supply sensation and movement to our legs. You could say that our legs are extensions of our pelvis.

On an energetic level this area contains the developmental centers of our felt sense of physical safety and emotional well-being. When we inhabit this location within our body we are able to feel emotionally, sense physically and have clear gut instincts, all while being rested in an inner sense of stability and support. Collectively this becomes the base for our sense of self. It gives our identity something to rest into as we develop and grow as a self. It stabilizes who we are to ourselves and within the world. Without this base we are disconnected from the ground below and the root within, not really knowing who we are or feeling a strong sense of belonging. This region of the body also contains significant energetic and emotional charge. This part of ourselves and the energies associated with them are frequently misunderstood or disregarded, which can result in experiences of fragmentation, shame, violation or abuse.

The tensions, muscular imbalances and instabilities in our pelvis, which effect how we sit, walk and stand in the world, often go beyond the mere physical misfiring of nerves or faulty biomechanics. Not to say those things aren’t in play, but without recognizing the entirety of what this area of the body contains is to see a partial picture. You can strengthen the pelvic muscles all day long, align the bones and find just the right way to balance your weight when you walk, but if you don’t address the feelings of inner instability, lack of belonging and not being able to feel or sense who you are, then you don’t change the inner architecture of this part of the body. That means whatever you do to try to correct the physical imbalance won’t last. The muscles will keep “misfiring”, the bones will “slip” out of place, and some other part of the body will start compensating and creating tension. For full resolution you have to do all of the work. This means working with the inner energetic patterns that creates the biomechanical dysfunctions.

YOUR SELF-IDENTITY

Roots in your body

Now we see that the pelvis is the physical foundation for our sense of self. In a basic way if the pelvis feels wobbly then we feel wobbly, if it feels strong we feel strong, if it feels unstable we feel unstable, if we can’t rest into it we don’t feel supported or safe. Often times the pelvis twists, rotates or shifts. All of these movements can indicate different things. Sometimes we might rotate away from something in order to not feel it. For example if someone tells us that we aren’t good enough or we feel that story internally, we might rotate our pelvis in just the right way in order to not feel the intensity of that emotion. We may shift our pelvic weight over to one side of our body moving out of our center of alignment when we are being overly accommodating or fear that we might upset someone or be viewed negatively. We might twist or constrict the muscles or ligaments in the pelvis when we feel confused or uncertain about our relationship or role to another. These are just some examples of how we unconsciously create tension patterns within our pelvis.

When something doesn’t fit into our sense of identity we tend to bind tension and resist. We might defend ourselves to others and try to explain or prove ourselves in order to be clearly seen and understood. Most of us have two buckets inside of our mind. In one bucket is all the things we think we are. In the other bucket is all of the things we think we aren’t. The thing about these buckets is that a lot of the content within them is unknown to us. The only way we can see what is within is to investigate our reactions to life. When we go into defense in regards to something that someone said to us, usually it is because it lingers partly true. We believe it, but we don’t want to believe it, so we defend or we withdraw, which is still a type of defense. If someone says something to us that is not true about us as we know ourselves to be, or is absolutely true and we accept it as who we are, we typically have very little if any response to it. This gives us a whole wealth of information about what we have put inside of each of our identity buckets.

I believe the bigger truth is that we are all everything, however there are certain things we identify as and want to identify as, and certain things we don’t. This is due to the negative and/or positive definitions we have around what we believe those things mean about who we are at the core. As we resolve our identity conflicts we resolve our pelvic imbalances. With this the greater our self-sensing, self-feeling and self-confidence becomes the more we can sit and stand inside of ourselves with ease and stability. We less easily shift, twist or rotate away from ourselves. We become more solid in what we are and what we aren’t, in what works for us and what doesn’t and what roles we want to play and which we don’t.

Our pelvis is the base of support for the rest of ourselves to grow, expand and eventually fly. It gives us roots within our body so that we can stay tethered as we explore the vast inner and outer terrains of our lives. We come to know that we can’t not belong when we belong to ourselves. Safety is generated within our body and we inhabit the physical plane while simultaneously being in connection with our multidimensional self. Our identity begins to extend beyond just the ordinary roles and labels that we’ve come to know. The box of possibilities for who we are and what we can be is limited only by our resistance to what we believe we are and aren’t. Within the roots and stability of our pelvis lives the rested fertile ground for our soul’s expansion and the deep sense of feeling that we can never leave home.

Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, DC, MSAc, L.Ac

Network Spinal Chiropractor & Heart Coherence Specialist at the Sanctuary for Heart Magic, a Mentor for Heart-Led Healers at Soul Luminaries & the Writer of The Everyday Divine.