POTTERY AND ITS IMPACT ON CHAKRAS

Dears,

For those of you who are not familiar with holistic healing by which one heals ailments in the body,  our body has many Chakras but the main ones are:

Mooladhara/Root

Hara / Sacral

Solar plexus

Heart Chakra

Vishuddha / Throat

Ajna/ Third eye

Sahasrara/ Crown

These Chakras play an important part in our lives and need to be opened up to experience the best in life in terms of a spiritual uplift.  Pottery is one way to get opened up with the  Mooladhara/Root Chakra as the element is Mother Earth.  Grounding always has to be done with the Earth element. 

Only when the Mooladhara Chakra is strong and opened up well, one can be well grounded and have good financial support and backing.  The Mooladhara  Chakra is  situated at the base of our spine in the body and being so, is responsible for the stability of the entire body , just as for a tree it is the trunk which supports it. So if we are well grounded, we can be considered stable in the long run to manage our daily affairs.  Otherwise we can be confronted with pains, aches and discomforts of all sorts, apart from confusions and meaningless altercations.

Pottery is connected mainly with Mother Earth and hence the link is established  without a shadow of doubt.The individual’s Root Chakra gets firm due to constant interaction of the fingers / legs with clay which also activate the pressure points in our body.  Secondly, Mars is the element associated with creativity. 

Pottery lends a helping hand to extending creativity to build and enhance on one’s Mars element.  Focus , logic and concentration is left brain while creative visualization is right brain. In pottery , you gets to experience both  left and right brain activity, considering that logic and creativity  go hand in hand . There is  an improvement  seen in eye and hand coordination which is the result of focus  and concentration.  

Pottery is  necessarily an  activity involving both hands and thus one gets to become ambidextrous. I was born left handed but eventually became ambidextrous , thanks to pottery. 

The Third eye  or Ajna Chakra governs the  twin functions of focus and vision. Only when an artist is able to concentrate on his / her heart's desire, the manifestation of the art takes place.  The opening up of your  Chakra enhances your  ability to create through visualization and thus , you are able to co create abundance in a perfectly transmitted way.

When you commence pottery classes initially, you may be a novice and may even have doubts on your capability and skills to pursue. But as you pursue your third or fourth class, you connect to establish a strong link with clay and are motivated to go up the ladder to reach greater strides. Your fear gradually disappears, as the support from the opening of the prior two Chakra paves the way for clearing this too with ease.  Self confidence builds up with the opening of Solar plexus which is witnessed by you in pottery as you attempt to learn the nuances to make greater strides in the art . By integrating your skills , you inch your way to learning all that you possibly can  and when you attempt, you are unknowingly  opening your solar plexus too which was all along lying dormant.

With the activation of solar plexus, your will power is enhanced. You want to reach boundaries in life that you never earlier attempted. It is a wake-up call for you and you don’t realise that with Mother Earth’s bountiful grace you can actually get grounded firmly to make a wonderful start to reach out in life with whatever you want to do, without restrictions. When the seat of will power is opened up and ordained to do so, who on earth can stop you from churning out something novel , enriching to the mind,  which is a feast to the eyes?

Your heart Chakra opens up beautifully as you lovingly churn out pieces of art so dear to you. You may even resort to gifting your art to your dear /near ones as a way of expressing your abundant love, or auctioning your art for a noble cause and thus open up to the realms of this Chakra that is positioned in the center of your body.  When this happens you are free to express the joy of life. It will only act in the highest good to heal relationships and promote friendship.

In Pottery you are closeted with your art for hours together  with your hands until you reach a state of satisfaction in perfection and  there are times when your art literally speaks to you to make it in a different way and that is when you communicate by reciprocating by body language of your fingers  to shape it the way it is to be and  unconsciously you are treading on Throat chakra too at an emotional level with the art in consideration. So eventually a connection is established where you talk with the art effortlessly and spend hours to make it come alive, which is why it is said that those in any of the art fields are closely connected to the Divine. Invariably they are Clairvoyant too, who seek the tools to reach God by devotional means or  get stimulated with spiritual service. 

Your intuition or Higher Self guides you in the process as you enter into greater realms with  the cool, processed clay . There are times when you realise that your output is not in conformation with what you had in mind when you set out with hand building exercises in pottery, but eventually it has changed to being a master piece ! This is when the Ajna or third eye gradually opens up. Third eye activation is important in one‘s life and doesn’t come easy, as intuition stems at this Chakra. Your intuition guides you to churn out a master piece.

I vividly recall an incident that happened just after the Tsunami had hit us in Chennai a few years back in December.  I was at a very low ebb  as a result of the same and was in my  pottery cum healing studio at Kattupakkam, with my pottery friend and trainer Mr Raghu Samuel  on the partially covered terrace, overlooking the sky . The evening was  dark with looming grey clouds to match my dull mood  and for no apparent reason , I was feeling sad.  We had done a beautiful piece together and what a shame! The entire piece of art that was standing tall on the table over 2 feet high,  crashed as his body accidentally shoved  the art that was on the table.  Raghu  master felt so bad and tried to apologize , felt so miserable  and regretted that the efforts had all gone waste .  I told him to chill, as by then I had gotten used to handling disappointments.  He couldn't get over it  as he had just planned to call it a day  when this happened.  

Suddenly out of the blue, my hands outstretched with gusto and amazingly went on to make a master piece out of the fallen  big chunk of clay in a jiffy,  before it became brittle and Raghu master  sat silently watching me . He couldn’t believe what he saw.  Neither was i  aware of what it was going to be made into .  I knew my fingers were at play and were being instrumental in  the outcome of what was to follow.  Seemed like a miracle. 

It was gradually transforming into the effects that my subconscious mind had registered.  The Tsunami   !!!  Deep down I held the fear of the Tsunami and my Chakras were using the exercise of movement, visualization, nurturing me at every level in clay-play to accelerate  in  the bringing in and anchoring  of the higher Chakras. After the piece of art  was completed, i felt a lot better and had a good night's sleep !

www.malinipottery.com  has a picture of the piece in the opening page of the website.

 The piece titled ‘KAMADHENU ON THE AFTERMATH OF TSUNAMI’ was a result of Divine grace as my Chakras opened up to intuitively guide me in executing the art.   A master piece is so, not because you put any greater effort, but because you were guided  during the process.    So set aside the ego {E= Edging G= God O= Out },  if ever you think it was your sole effort.  Pottery has taught me many things .

Did you know that this simple hand art had so much in store with your body and is also deemed a stress buster? 

Stretch out, shake your body and visualise … Can we resist life’s experiences?  

Cheers ....Glory be to pottery !

About the author of this blog:                     www.malinipottery.com

Founder Director of Artistic Pottery Training Academy, Chennai, Holistic healer, Tarot card reader , Angel card reader,  Mudra-Yoga - Dance  Fusion Therapist ,  Agnihotri,  Reiki Grand Master  undertaking healings and teaching at all levels,    Freelance writer, Content writer for  Govt  Poompuhar - in art n crafts for their  artefacts  Chennai Airport division ,   Garden enthusiast, HR  Consultant, Soft skills trainer  and Social Activist,  but not necessarily in the same order.

Watch out to check my next blog to see the stark realities of dirtying your hands in clay!