Natalie Southgate - Chakradance: Move Your Chakras, Change Your Life

Copyright 2018 by Natalie Southgate

Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com

Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk

Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Design by Rhett Nacson

Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

Edited by Margie Tubbs

Cover photo by Tess Peni

Author photo by Yanni Van Zijl

Illustrations by Stefanie Thompson

Music by Dale Nougher and Natalie Southgate

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice nor prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for physical fitness and good health. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

ISBN: 978-1-4019-5093-4

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5094-1

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st Edition, November 2018

Printed in the United States of America

For Paul, thank you for being on this journey with me.

CONTENTS

When I was in my mid-twenties, I was living the high life in London. I had a great apartment, ran my own successful recruitment agency and was happily married. From the outside, it all looked perfect and in some ways it was. Yet below the surface, many things were wrong. My health was beginning to deteriorate, as I lived on a diet of fast food, after-work drinks, cigarettes and adrenalin. I was burning the candle at both ends and pushing my body way beyond its limits. But it wasnt just my physical health that was suffering. I felt disconnectedlike I was just going through the motions. There was a vague sense of emptiness and no real passion for what I was doing. I was stuck in a life that didnt feel purposeful or authentic to me.

Even though I was aware that my life was way out of balance, I didnt know what to do about it. It was like I was stuck on a treadmill, and I didnt know how to get off.

At that time a woman named Linda worked in the same office building, on the floor below me. Most nights, at five oclock on the dot, she would run out the door looking excited to be going wherever she was headed. One day I asked her where she went in the evenings. She told me that she worked at The College of Psychic Studies, where they offered courses and training in energy healing, spiritual and psychic development, angels, shamanism, and much more. As she told me about the College, I felt something light up inside me. I couldnt believe such a place existed.

In my late teens and early twenties, I had explored meditation and reiki, but somehow both things had slipped out of my life. Hearing about this College was like a wake-up call. It felt like a part of me that had been sleeping was beginning to stir.

I still vividly remember the day I stepped through the beautiful doors of the College for the first time. I had a sense of coming home. It was a huge turning point in my life. I spent the next five years running my recruitment agency by day and immersing myself in the College by night. I trained as an energy healer and explored all types of intuitive and psychic development. I later went on to teach workshops at the College and work in its clinic as a healer.

It was through my studies that I discovered the chakra system. Finding the map of the chakras was like finding gold for me. For the first time I felt as though I had found a way of looking at life that made complete sense. It was like finding a treasure map to help me navigate my way through life. I really couldnt believe that I hadnt known about this earlier.

The more I dived into the chakras, the more my life began to shift. I began to question whether I was in the right career, the right city, even the right country. I questioned my lifestyle choices, my priorities, my direction. Instead of looking outside myself, I began to look inside for answers. And more importantly, I began to trust my inner voice.

My hunger to know more about the chakras led me to study Jungian psychology and train as a therapist. Carl Jung was one of the first Westerners to work with the Eastern map of the chakras and, although I wasnt particularly drawn to being a therapist, I wanted to know more. The primary aim of Jungian psychology is to form an ongoing relationship between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind. The basic premise is that the more deeply we know ourselves, the richer, fuller and more whole our lives will be. For me, studying Jung was similar to studying the chakras. So much of what I was discovering resonated deeply. I felt like I was waking up more and more each day. I began to feel more passionate and alive than ever before.

It was at this time that I was drawn back to the thing that had always been the key to my happiness as a child: dance. Although the dance classes I took as a child were structured, we were always given time at the end for our own free-form dance. These were the moments I craved the most, when I could just close my eyes and be moved by the music. The sense of freedom I found as I danced was like pure magic.

As I became an adult, dance had somehow disappeared from my life. I instinctively wanted to reconnect with the feeling it had once given me, so I started going to as many different alternative dance classes as I could find: shamanic dance, trance dance, improvisation dance, elemental dance and so on. Eventually I found that what I loved doing most was turning off the lights in my own living room, lighting a candle, closing my eyes and dancing. It was as if dance had become my meditation, my healing practice, my way of checking in to see how I was really feeling.

I was thirty years old when I danced a dance that totally changed my life. I had been invited to teach a chakra workshop for beginners at the College that day. When I got home, I lit my candle, cranked up my stereo, closed my eyes and danced. As I moved, I began to experience the music in a whole new way. Perhaps it was because Id been working with chakras all day, but I began to feel that different parts of the music were stirring different chakras. I could feel the energy literally pulsing in my body. More than that, I could sense that the images in my minds eye and the feelings surfacing were directly related to the chakra being stirred by the music.

In that moment, I heard the name chakradance and my instant response was yes! I knew absolutely that I had just found what I needed to create the life I had been yearning for. I needed to dance my chakras. And that was how my lifes work and my business was born.

Chakradance

As I explored this new notion that had come to me while dancing, I quickly realised that one of the main keys to Chakradance is the music. Music holds different vibrational frequencies. Just imagine for a moment the difference in feeling between the earthy vibrations of a didgeridoo and the higher vibrations of a lilting flute. Each of our chakras also has its own vibrational frequency. I discovered that if we dance to the right music for each chakra, it balances our energy system. Its like a form of vibrational medicine.