How to Find Inner Peace—the Buddhist Way
Seeking peace but don’t know where to find it? These Buddhist methods can help.
4 Water Meditation Techniques
to Cleanse Your Energy Center
Jon Flobrant/Unsplash
Find some water—in a fountain, a pool, infused in a glass on your nightstand—and balance your energy center with water meditations.
Water flows. It’s adaptable. It explores and fills the contours of its experience. Perhaps when Bruce Lee advised, “Become like water,” he had the second chakra in mind.
Water is the balancing element for the second chakra. Svadhisthana, the energy center of this chakra, is in the sacrum, hips, and lower abdomen, and it’s about movement, sensation, and pleasure.
Is Your Water Flowing or Blocked?
A free and flowing second chakra is apparent in someone who is compassionate and emotionally available. Such a person is friendly and open without being clingy.
With a healthy second chakra, you can express yourself sexually without using others or exploiting yourself. You know you are entitled to be loved and happy.
But second chakra blockages can cultivate explosive emotions and hypersensitivity.
You may feel like you’re inherently flawed, and you might be nursing a fragile self-worth. You overcompensate by pleasing others but discover you still aren’t appreciated. You overwork yourself, never allowing yourself to feel pleasure.
[Read: “Leaning Into the Backside of Your Chakras.”]
The following water meditation techniques help to align and cleanse the second chakra as you meditate on your right to feel good.
4 Energy Cleansing Water Meditations
1. Climbing Water With Ujjayi Breath
Ujjayi breathing is sometimes called victorious breathing or the sound of the ocean. Reboot your energy center with this water visualization–ujjayi breath combination.
Sit in a quiet spot and place your hands on your belly or lap. Perhaps you have a tabletop Zen fountain before you.
As you inhale for a count of four through your nose, tighten the muscles in your throat and neck so you can hear the breath rushing to your lungs. Pause and exhale through your nose for a count of four.
As you continue, envision clear, blue water climbing up your body when you inhale, dropping down as you exhale.
2. Yoga in the Shallow End
Tension from negative life energy can target the hips and lower back. Take your hip-opening poses to the shallow end of the pool. Hold Pigeon pose, then Bound Angle, followed by Cow-Face pose, and Wide-Legged Forward Fold. The water will cradle you.
[Read: “Heart-Opening Yoga.”]
As you hold these poses, emphasize exhalation, releasing all that no longer serves you. Silently repeat the mantra “vam” ten times with each pose for this water meditation.
Then, move to waist-high water. Step to Tree pose by sliding the bottom of your right foot up the inside of your left leg until it rests on your inner thigh. Take your hands to prayer at the heart center. Hold with the vam mantra. Slowly, reach your arms overhead with your hands still touching and tilt into Warrior III. While balancing on your left leg, hinge forward from the hips and stretch your arms across the water, your right leg stretching along the water’s surface behind you. You are a giant capital T.
As you blow bubbles into the water, tell yourself “I’m entitled to be happy. I’m entitled to be loved. Life is good.” Lift yourself back into Tree pose and switch sides.
3. Find a Body of Water
Find some water. It could be a lake, the ocean, a canal, or, when all else fails, a fountain in a park or mall.
With a cup of tea, sit by the water and practice full mindfulness. Notice the light as it reflects on the water. Hear the lapping of the water and the voices of everyone around you. Feel your connection to the earth in your seat and inhale the warm aroma of your tea as you sip.
4. Evening and Morning Water
Have two small glasses of water beside your bed. One glass has a drop of lemon essential oil, the other a drop of peppermint. Does it matter if it is cold? Cold water is great for after workouts, and I suggest keeping your water room temperature all other times to protect your digestion’s integrity.
[Read: “A Fresh Twist on Hydration.”]
Sit on the edge of your bed. All screens have been dark for at least an hour. Slowly sip your lemon water and press your feet into the floor. When you’ve finished your water, place your hands on your heart and slip into natural breath. Repeat a metta meditation: May I be at peace. May others be at peace. May the world be at peace. Use this mantra to silence any whispers before you sleep.
In the morning, as soon as you awaken or your alarm rings, swing your legs out of your bed and sit with your feet touching the floor. Take a few breaths, and then reach for your peppermint water. Sit with your eyes closed as you sip, envisioning the sun behind your eyelids. When you’ve finished your peppermint water, place your hands on your heart and repeat your metta meditation.
When you’re ready, reach forward with your arms, and rise to your day.
Incorporate any or all of these water meditation techniques into your spiritual health practice. Cleanse your energy center and open yourself up to happiness. Like Bruce Lee said, become like water.
Thirsty for more? Explore the spiritual meaning of water.
About the Author
Nancy Next is a writer, yogi, and teacher in SWFL. She is the author of two young adult books: Trash Talk: A Book for Kids and Chill: A Book for Kids (and Others) Who Want to Calm Down. Visit her website www.NancyNext.com.
Spiritual Practices
