NL: Hi everyone. My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today on the show I have a special guest who's going to be teaching us how to clear and heal our chakras. So before I introduce my special guest today, I just want to remind you that once the show is over, wait until you finish watching the show, just click the link below this video so you can download the free ebook version of my book Never In Your Wildest Dreams. So without further ado, let me introduce my special guest, Michelle Fondin. How are you, Michelle?

MF: I'm great! Thank you, Natalie.

NL: Now we are going to be talking today about your new book Chakra Healing For Vibrant Energy. And our community is a little familiar with chakras and chakra healing so we're really interested in getting into this conversation with you today. I know that in the past that you have worked with Deepak.

MF: That is correct, yes.

NL: And that you're an Ayurvedic life counselor and so tell me a little bit about how you got into doing this kind of stuff.

MF: Oh yeah. So, well actually, I started with yoga at age 18. I didn't know anything about the chakras at that time. But actually, it was my experience with thyroid cancer at age 28. And it was really shocking to have that diagnosis at age 28 cause it's so young and I figured like, I know western medicine can heal me but something else can probably heal me better so I went on a search for alternative modes of healing and I stumbled upon Ayurveda and Ayurvedic medicine and it made so much sense to me. But where the chakras come in in that story is I was reading a book and I found something about the chakras and I looked at the 5^th chakra which is the area of the throat and I looked back at the whole spectrum of my health and my life and I realized that throughout my entire life I had been ailing in the throat chakra. Like I grew up with strep throat, tonsillitis, I had an abscess in my throat at age 17 that had to be opened up cause I literally couldn’t breathe and then the thyroid cancer so I was like "Haa, there must be something to this chakra thing". And I just began to delve deeply into the chakras, especially my 5^th chakra, to help open and align it because I didn’t want to get sick again.

NL: So, like I said, our community is aware that chakras are like energy centers throughout the body. …body as well but we have the ones here. So what we are saying is that depending on where the chakra is you could look at areas in your life and then relate it back to issues with that particular chakra.

MF: It definitely. So for me, when I looked at the 5^th chakra was it’s our source of verbal expression and be able to communicate effectively. And being able to speak your higher truth, so it’s not only about being able to communicate, which you and I do for a living, but it's about being able to speak your own truth, the truth that's inside your heart so it's really linked, you know the chakras move up in energy so what's truthful in your heart, then you're able to speak that out loud. And what I realized is that I wasn't able to effectively speak my truth. I grew up in a very dysfunctional household where I had to be the good girl, be the people pleaser, and I know many of you listening and watching find that that probably was your role growing up too. You had to be the good boy, the good girl, and not speak your truth. So yes, you can really look deeply into how you can heal as things are ailing in each of the chakras, you can look deeper at the meaning behind it.

NL: Right. So how do we know if one of our chakras is blocked?

MF: Well, you can tell by a simple awareness. So you know like if you're practicing yoga which I'm sure a lot of you watching practice yoga, and the yoga teacher says like, "Okay, we're going to go in to this twist Matsyendrasana, bring awareness to your lower back and just notice where your lower back is hurting so you can breathe in to it." Well, the charkas are the exact same way. So you could do a little mindfulness scan of your body and just say like, "Okay, how is the crown of my head feeling. Do I feel like I can breathe easily in that area" You know, moving down to the 3^rd eye and just usually you know which areas of your body tend to get sick or symptoms in them? Like some people are prone to migraines which is a 3^rd eye chakra or the 6th chakra problem. Some people are prone to tummy pain, you know, where they get a nervous tummy, where they might feel agitated or irritated and they get irritable bowels. Well, that's a 3^rd chakra thing. So I think everyone is kind of in-tuned to their body to know where do I get symptoms usually. That’s usually a nice indication of which chakras might be out of balanced.

NL: Right. So you’re talking about yoga. So is that one way that we can actually help to clear these energy centers?

MF: Yeah. Definitely. So there are yoga poses which are optimal for different chakras. For each of the chakras in specific. Each of the 7 chakras in particular. And so there are ones that correspond let’s say to the root chakra, the base of the spine that you can work on to ground yourself because that base chakra is all about grounding and it’s about keeping you rooted to the earth. Because we’re living such frenetic lives and we’re always out and about and drinking tons of coffee and caffeine and we’re kind of rushing rushing rushing from one thing to another thing. We’re not so grounded. So that’s an example of doing grounding yoga poses to help bring you back down to the earth so to speak. So things like lotus flexion, so sitting in lotus pose with both shin bones on the floor, that’s an example of a rooting pose.

NL: Right. So we’re talking about movement as one way or different poses. But what are some other things that they can do to help clear these energy centers?

MF: So, mindfulness meditations. There are certainly guided meditations that you can do and in my book, I have the guided meditations. Meditation is great for all of the chakras. Let me just tell you that if you are not meditating I would say, for me, that is the number 1 practice, you should be meditating. But also the Ayurvedic practices. I talk about the different Ayurvedic mind-body types, the doshas, which are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha and each of the chakras has a dosha specialty if you will. So you can really balance that chakra that corresponds to that dosha with certain dietary practices for example, and lifestyle practices. And there's optimal exercise and dietary measures, it's not too extreme. In Ayurveda, you don't go to either extreme. But it's just like tweaking, there are certain foods and there are certain ways of eating that are more optimal to your mind-body type and you can really utilize that for the chakras as well.

NL: Right. And is there a difference between men and women when it comes to our chakras?

MF: Yeah. So you know the chakras, it's kind of cool because of the energy of the chakras, since it's a symbiotic energy that starts at the base and moves up through to the crown of the head. They alternate in masculine and feminine energy so there's that Yin energy, which is more feminine, lunar, and passive. And the yang energy which is more masculine and forward moving. Right, so let me give you an example, the second chakra which is the sexual and creativity chakra is a yin energy, is a womanly energy because of the womb of creation right? Women are designed to create, give life, give birth. So that's a more feminine-like chakra whereas the third chakra, the solar plexus is a yang energy, so the solar, the sun, the more masculine moving energy. So what I always say to men and women is that, if you are finding imbalances that are maybe sexual in nature like for example, a woman who might be having fertility problems which, as a prenatal yoga teacher, I see a lot of women having a hard time getting pregnant. I said look at your second chakra, look at the area of that second chakra and see maybe you're living too much in yang energy, maybe you're living too much in masculine energy and you need to honor the feminine, that yin energy to open up that second chakra.

NL: Right, of course. So is there like a daily practice that we can all adopt that’s going to help us keep these energy centers clear?

MF: Yeah. So as I mentioned meditation but another thing that I like to do are sounding. And some people feel really uncomfortable using chants or sounds. But the sounds for each of the chakras that are also in the book and in the audiobook especially. Because I do those mantra sounds in the audiobook which is, you know, you can hear them. You know, at the end of your meditation, it's a really good idea if you're really focusing on opening and aligning the chakras. You can just chant each of the mantras sounds for each of the chakras one at a time. And sometimes I like to do 7 ohms for the crown chakra. And you know, since everything is energy and vibration anyway, then when you chant when you use those sounds, and they are primordial sounds, they don't mean anything. Some people get weirded out, they think like deity names or something like that but the chakra sounds are just vibrational frequency sounds and you can use them at the end of your meditation and just chanting those sounds that help open and align. Another thing I like to mention is that wearing crystals that correspond to each of the chakras are really a good idea. For example, the rose quartz is a great crystal to carry around for your heart chakra to open and align your heart. And if you're a woman and you wear a bra, I was taught by my yoga teacher that you can take a rose heart crystal and put it in your bra and wear it close to your heart and just carry it with you throughout the day.

NL: How wonderful. Though it sounds like the practices and things that we can do are really easy to implement. Can anyone do it?

MF: Yeah. Definitely. Anyone can do it. You don’t even have to have training in this. You don’t even really have to believe in it for your chakras to open, you just have to bring awareness to your body and if you don’t like the word chakra, you don’t think that energy healing is anything real, like think of the breath, we don’t see air, we don’t see the breath yet we know it’s there because if we don’t have it we’re not living. So I like to even say, instead of just mindfully saying like I’m going to bring energy to my throat chakra you can say I’m bringing breath and air and awareness to my throat chakra and you’ll be amazed when you start bringing more awareness to the areas of the chakras they open up and then you become a believer.

NL: Yeah. Right. So other than your own experience what have you seen as a breakthrough some people have had just by applying some of the practices that you explain in the book?

MF: Yeah. So I'd like to tell the story about one of my students who came to me for an Ayurvedic consultation. It was a man, he was 53 years old at the time, and he had just come out of a nasty divorce and he had a heart-attack and he had a stint put in, and this guy, man, he worked out 7 days a week, he was in great shape, and I was saying to him, "You know, what is going on in your heart?" And this is before I knew about the divorce and he just said, "Well, nothing. I don't know what you're talking about" and he's like "the heart-attack has nothing to do with what's going on in my life". And I said, "let's just explore it a little bit". And so through exploring it with him, like, he got in to yoga, he got in to meditation, he turned vegan, he turned his life around because I think he had an epiphany that in fact, even though he had this heart-attack and he thought it was completely unrelated to the rest of his life to the emotional life or his energy level, he decided to take a leap of faith and he turned his daily routine around completely and like incorporated all these practices and he was so incredibly healthy after that for years after that.

NL: Right. And so when we are talking about adopting these practices, do we have to do all of them?

MF: No, you know, you don't want to overwhelm yourself. I know a lot of Americans are super type-A, and so going like I'm going to go buy the book and I'm going to do every single thing and we try to do everything and then we get exhausted and then we do nothing right? So adopt one practice at a time and just see if it makes a difference in your life. I have the YouTube videos of all the yoga poses out there. You can even start with just the yoga poses if yoga is what you're in to or the audio tracks, I have the guided meditations for each of the ones, and if you want to go the easy way out, you listen to the guided meditations daily. And they are just, each chakra has about a 3-4 minute guided meditation which is relatively simple. So yeah, what I like to say is less is more, so the less you can integrate and when it starts to work stick with it. And if you want to add more, add more. 

NL: Right. So what are some of the benefits that people can expect to see or experience once they’ve got everything clear and everything’s you know, in great working order?

MF: Okay. Well, that's kind of a mixed question because it's hard to know, we're constantly going in balance and out of balance. We all have peak experiences or peak moments where we're feeling fantastic and great and on top of the world. And you know those moments because you've had them. You've had them where you're watching a sunset and everything in your life is going right and you feel wonderful and on top of the world and you feel like you can take on the world. But then, you know, you go home and you get a phone call and life happens. So I just believe that through energetic healing especially through the chakras, it just helps you so that you're living at higher levels of energy each and every day. It's not that something magically is going to happen that you're going to be floating on a cloud because that just doesn't happen. It happens moments, you have those peak moments but also when you're living energetically at a higher level, coincidences start to happen in your life, synchronicity starts to occur, people start to appear out of nowhere to help you and to help you live your life purpose. It's just amazing how that happens. 

NL: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today. I knew we’d have an awesome conversation. 

MF: Thank you, Natalie.

NL: Where do we send people if we want them to connect with you and get their hands on the book?

MF: Sure. So you can go anywhere to get the book, Barnes and Noble's books have it, any of the other independent bookstores, Amazon of course, on my website, michellefondinauthor.com. And you can see my videos on youtube at michellefondinauthor.com too.

NL: Wonderful. Well, thank you again for joining us. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

MF: Thank you, Natalie, it's been a pleasure. Thanks.

NL: Listen, if you are watching this video, I encourage you to share the video. Please get the word out there by clicking the Facebook and the Twitter share buttons on this page. Don’t forget to click either the banner to the side or the link underneath the video so you can go through to Michelle’s website. And after the show is finished click the link below that so that you can download the free ebook version of my book Never In Your Wildest Dreams. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously, and love without limits. Thanks, we’ll see you soon.