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may/june 2017yogajournal.com.auRelease yourself from old hurt and bad patterns with an emotional-baggage check
that will clear out what no longer serves you and make room for what will.
And your chakras — the seven energy centres that run along your central
channel — are a tool to help you repack. Here, yoga teacher Giselle Mari
shows you how to use your chakras to resolve any negativity holding
you back so you become a lighter, brighter version of you.
WHEN GISELLE MARI graduated college with a degree
in clinical and counselling psychology, she thought
she’d done the work to resolve issues from her
childhood. “It was just me and my mum —
my dad wasn’t really in my life — money was tight,
and life felt unstable,” says Mari. “I was convinced
I had processed how growing up in that kind of
challenging environment impacted my beliefs
about myself and the world.”
Then, Mari started doing chakra work and
realised how deeply rooted some of those beliefs
were — and how that old anger and resentment
were keeping her from the ultimate goal of yoga:
a feeling of oneness (versus otherness). “Workingwith the chakras using asana, mantra, and
observation is an effi cient way to eliminate old hurt
and bad patterns,” she says. “When I looked at
— and let go of — my inner turmoil and pain,
my life shifted for the better. I don’t carry around
that emotional baggage, and as a result, that old
karma isn’t driving how I operate in the world.”
It’s a bold promise, and working with your
chakras is no easy task, says Mari, but the results
are worth the effort. Read on as Mari shows you
how to look at the karmic relationships associated
with each chakra so you can examine any issues that
surface and start to rewrite your old stories into new
ones that serve you on your yogic path.STORY BY MEGHAN RABBITT • SEQUENCE BY GISELLE MARI • PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF NELSON