up.rooted

How Can I Become My Higher Self Without My Lower Half?

I know that not everybody puts any merit in the idea of chakras, or energy centres in the body. That is fine. I find chakras are a useful way of conceptualizing different aspects of human nature, and that is mostly how I use the information about chakras. For example, I sometimes find myself inexplicably drawn to certain colours, scents or foods. I will obsess over them for a while, until I have had my fill, and then move my attention back to my regular preferences in food, smell, and taste. As of late, I have been drawn to first orange, and now red; to spicy, aromatic foods, and to ethnic music and exotic smells. This phenomenon can be explained by Western psychology as a psychological need to fulfil cravings for warmth, nurturing, "spice in my life" or passion. It can be explained by a medical model as a physiological need for an ocular stimulation through colour (that is know even in medicine to affect mood) or a dietary need for certain nutrients that the body craves (maybe in response to the colder weather). In Eastern tradition my obsessions with spicy food, warm colours, and deep, seductive fragrances are explained through the understanding of chakras.  I find basic knowledge about chakras useful, even for people that don't believe that there are balls of energy residing in their physical body. Chakra wisdom never fails to provide me with uncannily accurate explanations for my seemingly random draw to certain things, and matches up very well with what Western science tells me about my "cravings".  And so with that in mind, I invite you to suspend your disbelief so that I can tell you why I believe that many women may be missing their lower halves...

I Call It Chakras, You Call Whatever You Want...

It all started two summers ago, when my friend Rachel gave me a book on chakras to read. Many of the things stated sounded familiar, and upon further inspection I found that the models coincided closely with theories found in Western psychological models. Colour therapy, olfactory (smell) therapy, and nutrition research had proven (through science) what Eastern traditions have known for many years, and have passed on through the tradition of Yoga.  Basic chakra wisdom states that we have seven energy centres running vertically through the body, and each centre has its own colour(s), sounds, smells, tastes, as well as some physical and emotional components that relate to it. 

Top Heavy Women, and Bottom Heavy Men...

The top three chakras are mainly mental/spiritual chakras whereas the bottom three are visceral/or emotive chakras. The middle one,the heart chakra, is the one that integrates the two hemispheres: our physical and mental experiences. Personally, my fascination lies in the realms of the bottom half of the spectrum. I feel that as a woman, I have mastered the realms of the upper chakras. Communication is extremely important in female relationships, and is cultivated from a young age. Spirituality, community, and nurturant tolerance are all the realms of the upper chakras, and I feel my education in these have left me somewhat "top heavy". Also, being a person that likes to live in my head, I contemplate and intellectualize, which adds to the dilemma. When I get together with girlfriends we sit down and we talk (throat chakra). We analyze situations and people, we form concepts (3rd eye chakra), and we deepen our understanding of the world (crown chakra). Men, conversely spend their bromancing time doing activities together that are governed by the bottom three chakras like playing sports, or going for food and drinks. When they sit down for a chat, their communication is often centred around bravado or self esteem boosting conversation (solar plexus chakra), sex (sacral chakra), or action and material security (root chakra). I would say then men's environment centres around the bottom three chakras. 

I Can't Feel My Lower Half!

After reading about the chakras, and how certain blockages or under-activity translate into physical and mental conditions, I realized that most of the problems that I have in my life are considered "lower chakra problems". 

Here is a list of the common "ailments" associated with the lower chakras:

• Self-esteem problems
• Jealousy
• Clingy-ness
• Dealing constructively with strong emotions
• The right to take up physical space
• Problems (or obsession) with securing material possessions
• Body satisfaction
• Embodiment (living in your body, and not your mind)
• Creative flow
• Free sexual expression
• Job satisfaction
• Energy

Any woman reading this is probably saying: "Check. Check. CHECK!" Most of these issues are predominantly female issues. Even if you personally don't struggle with some of these, you will know a woman who does. Some of the problems arise from society, like our problem with taking up space; whether it be through physical presence, intellect, or strong opinion. Our self esteem and body satisfaction is constantly battered by media, even if it was high to start with. Our sexual expression is systematically either oppressed or exploited, neither of which is a bedmate of freedom. Our natural creative flow is ridiculed as being frivolous, and so we put it on the back burner so that we can "make it in a man's world" by being shrewd businesswomen. We suppress our emotions for fear of being told that we have PMS, or that we are just being silly girls. We are essentially, in one way or another, largely cut off from our lower half. 

I Am Starting To Feel My Toes...

Since I have come to this realization, I have started to take a decidedly diagnostic approach to my "ailments". When I feel one of the symptoms I have listed above, I go to a website on chakras and try to find out which chakra relates to this feeling. It is almost always one of the lower three. For instance, a few summers ago (when I first got the chakra book from my girlfriend) I was obsessed with the colour yellow, with yellow gold jewelry, and with lemon flavoured and scented goods. When I got the book I went straight to the "yellow chapter" on the Solar Plexus Chakra, and found so many things that coincided with the state of my life at the time. I had just ended a three year relationship in which I had completely lost myself. I had no self-esteem left, no capacity to handle my emotions constructively, and no personal power. As I worked with the techniques and meditations in the book, I built up all of my resources in dealing with the issues of that chakra and it worked beautifully.

I am fully aware that it could have been a placebo effect. In fact, I think the reason it was so effective was because it gave me "something to do" in a time where I felt helpless. Just the action of doing something constructive about my situation definitely led to building a better self esteem and personal power, especially after I had fallen into the trap of expecting my relationship to fulfill all my needs. But since that time I have found that, without fail, it is better to attack my emotional and physical ailments with some sort of chakra diagnosis, then it is to do nothing but wish it away. Although the notions of chakras might seem too esoteric for some, it is just a launching pad for action to change your life.

Attack Your Demons, Don't Try To Think Them Away...

For me, the use of chakra wisdom has been a way to concretely diagnose and deal with the abstract realms of emotions. When I feel anger without any provocation, jealousy where I usually wouldn't, or emotional and physical exhaustion for no apparent reason, I find that being able to refer to a chakra chart helps me to know where to take action. Usually I am surprised to find that many things in my life coincide at one time with the chakra in question. Right now in my life I looked up the Root chakra because I have been physically exhausted and sick. As I read the characteristics of that chakra I realise that I am having cravings for spicy food, I am drawn to all things red, and I am having random outbursts of anger. They all happen to relate to the root chakra. My body already knows what it needs to overcome this blockage. Or maybe it is just coincidence?  If it works, I don't really care either way.

face.value

Talk To The Hand,‘ coz The Rest Of Me Is Expensive...

As a woman, I rarely bother to stop and think about how much it costs to keep up appearances, literally. That is, until a few days ago, when I popped into the drug store to pick up some makeup that had run out. Now, I will start by saying that I am a student, I am perpetually broke, and I am pretty cheap frugal. I start with that qualification, because buying drugstore make up is the economical route to take. Most women I know (bless their real, grown-up jobs) opt for higher priced department store brands or high end, small-batch natural products. I wish.

I don’t use a lot of make-up in everyday life. I’m not trying to be virtuous with that statement, it’s just my lack of skill that discourages me from trying anything more glamorous, because I always end up looking like a drag queen when I try my hand at it. Still, I have a cosmetics bag full of products that I attempt to use every now and then. I consider myself at the low-end of the scale, and still the final price is shocking. This is what I have in my bag, and how much it costs:

Foundation:           $32

Bronzer:                  $32

Glow stick:              $24

Mascara:                 $13

Eyeliner:                 $15

Eyebrow pencil:   $12

Lip gloss x 2:         $30

Lip Balm:                $4

Eyeshadow:           $20

TOTAL:      $182

Most women I know have a suitcase full of various makeup. Imagine the cost of all of that!

All this stuff runs out every 1-2 months. So, even being conservative, it’s about $100 a month to look presentable. Now add to that the rest of the beauty supplies I, and every woman, uses, and at the bottom of the price range you are looking at:

Face wash:      $12

Toner:               $12

Moisturizer:    $25

Eye cream:       $30

Body Wash:     $12

Body Lotion:   $15

Razors:             $20

Shampoo:        $10

Conditioner:   $10 ($30 per liter of each, lasts about 3 months)

Hair product: $15 (3 products @ $10 each, lasts about 2 months)

Deodorant:      $10

TOTAL: $171

Then there are the millions of little things that are purchased every now and then like:

Tweezers: $15

Make-up brush sets: $50-$300

Bronzer lotions: $20

Nail polish: $7-$20 a bottle

Face masks: $20

Perfume: $50-$200

Scrubs: $15

Straightening irons: $100- $300

Curling Irons: $30-$100

Nail polish remover, cotton pads, nail files, foot files: $20

etc, etc etc!

TOTAL: God only knows!

I’ll bet that most women have at least $500-$1000 worth of  “beautifying stuff” in their homes. I have 3 full drawers of accumulated paraphernalia that promises to make me a better prettier person.

Most women also recruit some outside help every 3 weeks or so:

Hair cut and color: $130-$300 (The $130 being a Supercuts price)

Manicure: $40

Pedicure: $40

Gel Nails: $40-$75

Eyebrow wax: $20

Facial: $75-$100

How can a student afford all of this? Well, I can’t. I get gel lacquer done every 2 weeks, but I cut my own hair (no joke) and don’t color it. I butcher my eyebrows, and don’t get facials unless my very busy esthetician friend can do one for me after hours, in exchange for some baking. When my feet start to look like a man’s, I grudgingly take an hour every few weeks to fix them up.

I am going to informally estimate that most women spend about an hour a day getting dressed and made up (that is, just choosing and putting on an outfit, doing hair, and applying make-up). They probably spend about an hour a week “in the chair” getting hair and esthetics procedures, and another hour a week driving and waiting to get to and from appointments. We then spend about another hour a day grooming (shaving, plucking, masking, brushing, whitening, painting, poking and prodding in general).

That’s about 16 hours a week that we spend on our looks, and a minimum of $300 a month on products and services. Yes, there are some women that manage with less, and most that rack up A LOT more. But you get the idea! Money aside, if I only had to groom as much as a man, I would probably have at least 10 hours a week of spare time. I could learn a new language! I could start a career in politics. I could volunteer. I could dedicate more than an hour a day to any hobby or activity I want! But instead I am making sure that I uphold the socially prescribed standard of what a woman should look like. Worst part is, as I age, the time, energy, and cost of looking good will increase.

Why am I telling you all this? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to stop! I am familiar with the biological underpinnings of reproductive appeal. I am aware of the social benefit that beauty affords. I am aware that the “choice” to stop beautifying is not a choice at all. That I am trapped in a social construct partly based on biology, but fueled by economics and the ruling patriarchal order, that keeps me glossed and glazed. I am telling you all of this because it was fun for me to calculate “what my face is worth”. And I hope it will be interesting for men to come to understand how much time and money it takes for women to look the way they do. I talk about all of this because, like one of my English profs used to say: “I’m not telling you WHAT to think, I’m just telling you TO THINK.”

biology.monogamy

Mommy, where do monogamies come from?

 Monogamy is a rarity in the animal world, with biology favoring varying degrees of promiscuity as the reproductive tactic of choice. Yet, for this reason, the shaky, but constant appearance of the ideal of monogamy in human romantic relationships proves even more alluring. Sexuality has always played a pivotal role in many facets of human life, including: relationships and reproduction, spirituality and enlightenment, morality and social control, and oppression versus freedom, to name a few. Most societies around the world have high stakes in the understanding of monogamy, since most of them depend on moral constructs based on various degrees of sexual continence to facilitate thriving communities and individuals. 


There are piles of evidence that show that life-long monogamy is likely not a natural biological state for humans, but instead a complicated adaptation influenced by experience, culture, and perhaps even the pre-frontal cortex. Although monogamy is not the predominant mode of reproduction in the animal kingdom, most mammals form enduring mating relationships (mating bonds) with members of the other sex. An influential theory on why mammals form mating pairs was first introduced by Robert Trivers in 1972, and proposed an evolutionary theory that is still popular today. He proposed that because many mammals give birth to helpless, slow developing young, it is adaptive for males to stay with the female to increase the likelihood of successful development of the offspring, thereby passing on both parents’ genes. But mate bonding is a far cry from life-long sexual monogamy.


Daddy, are opportunists a kind of fish?
Female mammals must carry and nourish a fetus from their own bloodstream, undergo childbirth, and then provide additional metabolic investment in the form of milk. In contrast, males only have to produce a teaspoon-full of tiny sperm. This discrepancy in reproductive costs means that the best mating strategy for females is to be very selective in mating with males that have ample resources to raise young, physical prowess and dominance for protection, and hearty genes to be passed to young. Males, who will increase their genetic productivity by mating with as many females as will have them, will be non-discriminating. The imbalance of reproductive costs points to humans as being mildly polygynous, and certainly not naturally (that is to say, biologically inclined toward) monogamy. In the animal kingdom, there is ample evidence that most species, even those thought to be monogamous, engage in extra-pair copulations under certain circumstances. This phenomenon has even been noted in many types of birds, once thought to be the poster children of monogamous fidelity, as first cited by David Lack in 1972. One example is the osprey; also know as fish hawks, whose females will mate on the sly with other males in return for food when their mates don’t bring home salmon. Or barn swallows, whose females will have “affairs” with males who have deeply forked tails, which is a sexually desirable trait in male swallows, and thereby ensure long-term reproductive fitness through producing more attractive offspring.


 Mom, what is a biological tendency?
It seems that males invariably want more females than they can afford, or they want desirable females who are already mated to somebody else, and females want sex with males other than their mates, even at great personal risk, if the potential gain is sufficient. But, to say our biology favors a degree of polygyny is not to say that humans throughout history have been polygynous. In fact, only a few well-positioned males (that have enough resources and power to protect and raise many offspring, and fight off competition) could succeed at polygyny, and only a few attractive females (possessing the markers of youth and fertility) would be selected. Therefore, biologists have often called monogamy a strategy for the humble.  Monogamy is a mate-bonding pattern in which enduring bonds are formed between one male and one female. Monogamy is thought to have developed in those mammalian species in which each female could raise more fit young if she had undivided help.


Can I have a monogamy of my very own?
This brings me to my final consideration: Why do we strive for Monogamy in a culture where there are no environmental pressures that make it an arrangement of convenience? Why do we strive for monogamy when parenthood can be planned, is a choice, and not the sole purpose of life? Why do we strive for monogamy when we have a myriad biological tendencies that would like to see us copulate indiscriminately, in the case of males, and opportunistically, in the case of females? Barash and Lipton (whom I have paraphrased in this post) summarized it better than I ever could:

“ People are not condemned to be nothing more than genetic catapults, fleshy means by which DNA makes copies of itself. Harnessed to conscious human understanding and directed toward particular goals, understanding our biological selves can make a “miracle”- something of transcendence, harmony, and great beauty, nothing literally supernatural, but rather something memorable in which nature, with human help, surpasses it’s apparent limitations. To the technologically naive, an airplane is a miracle, at least in part, because a heavy, flying, man-made object is so profoundly “unnatural”. But airplanes work, and wonderfully well, in large part because they take gravity into account.” 

 In the case of society as it stands today, in the West at least, monogamy is most definitely like the airplane. It may not be natural, but it is how we travel further in our human potential than we have ever gone before. When we are not expending large amounts of energy constantly trying to mate, we can transcend our biological inclinations, and enter the realms of self-actualization, social cooperation, and enlightenment. To me, the mundane human experience of mere competition and survival that is offered by a purely biological outlook is nothing more that trying to fill an endless void. More, more, more; that is all your animal brain is concerned with. But conversely, in order for monogamy to fly, we must take biology into account.


Thanks! I will love it, and hug it, and feed it, and pet it...
 For some, monogamy is about mastery and control, for others about understanding and transcendence, and yet for others it is a moral endeavor. But lest we forget, it is also highly adaptive in a time of rampant sexually transmitted infections and overpopulation. If the mind is the next frontier, then our biological tendencies are the terrain we must understand to be able to delve more deeply into who we are, where we come from, and who we answer to. The most important aspect of humanity is that despite being an animal, we are so much more than that. Humans are the only animals that are not content with mere survival, and thus, using animal research to understand human sexuality will never be sufficient. Doing what comes naturally doesn’t always apply to us, since we find many "unnatural" things desirable and rewarding. Mastering a musical instrument, for example, takes time, energy, and effort, especially if it is to be done well.  If protracted monogamy is rare, so are good musicians. But both can be beautiful, as well as achievable. And monogamy doesn’t require talent, or perfect pitch. It requires knowledge, determination, and a belief that “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp”.

 References:

Barash D.P., Lipton, J.E. (2009). Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Connection Between Sex, Evolution, and Monogamy. Bellevue Literary Press: New York