vituperation

September 25, 2002

When I was in college, my parents went through a major New Age phase.

I lived at home at the time, and was having my own religious phase, which made for some interesting arguments around our house. I had, how shall we say, some very fundamentalist beliefs at the time. I spent a good deal of time reading my Bible, praying for their eternal souls, and alienating most of the people I came in contact with (a gift I still have, actually, but rarely use). My parents, on the other hand, did things like read Shirley Maclaine, listen to people channel dolphins, get rolfed, and have their chakras aligned.

Damn. It’s been thirteen years and I still can’t refer to that stuff without a giggle. Close your mail client, new-agers.

Anyway. Let’s talk about chakras. The word ‘chakra’ comes from Sanskrit, and means ‘wheel’ or ’spinning wheel’. According to my reading there are seven chakras in your body aligned roughly along your spine, and they are supposedly centers of your energy. Each chakra vibrates on a different frequency and controls or affects various and sundry portions of your physical and spiritual being. Your chakras are also different colors, like a rainbow. When your chakras get out of alignment or blocked, you get mentally or physically ill.

Oh. Let me interject something here. I don’t believe this crap stuff, I just report it.

I was reminded of all the New Age stuff - and chakras in particular - Monday, when I was idly surfing around. I followed a link off Metafilter to the homepage of Caroline Myss. Ms. Myss is the New Age guru of the day, warmly embraced by one O. Winfrey, and I spent several minutes looking around her site. She has a section on chakras, but you can only read about your root (or base) chakra. This chakra is located right by the base of your spine, and is responsible for things like depression, rectal cancer, OCD, varicose veins, and identity.

In a nutshell, if you’re searching for your identity (like most middle-agers are), or are depressed (like everyone in the country except me -

Hey, did you know that from May 2000 to May 2001 doctors in the USA wrote 10.4 prescriptions per person in the entire country? And, the most widely prescribed drugs were - drum roll please - antidepressants.

- apparently), it’s obviously your root chakra being blocked.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 2:44. As I rolled over from one side to the other I simultaneously realized that I had to pee. Badly. As a matter of fact, I had significant pain down in the lower part of my trunk, overlaying the pee urge. Burst bladder pain. Ruptured kidney pain. I decided that it would be best to get up and go pee and see if that would help.

It didn’t.

Peeing just got rid of the pee feeling that was sitting on top of the pain. I debated waking Robyn up to bitch but decided that the pain wasn’t really that bad, just uncomfortable. I went back to bed and tried to get comfortable, but couldn’t.

I tossed.

I turned.

I thought about just getting up to work out and decided that the pain was a little much for that. My mind raced as I lay there, hoping for the pain to go away.

Maybe your root chakra is out of alignment, it said, that would explain a lot about how your life is right now. It would also explain why you always pull that one muscle in your lower back. Probably it’s the reason your parents got divorced when you were thirteen. And now it’s totally manifested itself in physical pain, right at the point in your body where it is! I’ll bet it’s turned from its normal healthy red to an ugly black, all sick and out of its natural frequency, yessir. If your root chakra was in line you wouldn’t be hurting, Robyn wouldn’t have fallen in the garage the other day, and Saddam Hussein would likely be…

Then I farted.

It was big, long, and loud. The sheets flapped madly, and when it was over I realized I no longer had the pain down by my root chakra.

Call it a self-alignment, I guess.