Ep. 39 Dance! Celebrate! Heal! Chakradance

Learn how to Chakradance with Lauren Gayl! Though learning about chakras is nothing new for many,  understanding the 7 major chakras in the context of playing small in life will inform and empower you as you come to understand your own imbalances and decide whether you've been playing small or not.
 
 Certified to teach Chakradance by Natalie Southgate, the founder, Lauren's virtual 9-week course starts June 2nd  (she'll be with you throughout). Her app Dance Celebrate Heal is available on Apple and Google where you can get the details to register or visit her website (link below).
 
 I had so much fun speaking with Lauren. I love all strong women who inspire and have a strong desire to help others. Lauren is a gem! And though her niche is women playing small, this episode does not exclude anyone who wants to find more balance in their life by finding out the root cause of their imbalance.

 TIMESTAMP:
 0:00    Welcome
 1:15    What is Chakradance?
 3:35    Trauma and energy
 5:51    Base Chakra
 9:12    How to do Chakradance
 11:48  Rigidity and grief
 14:17  Sacral Chakra & sensuality
 18:41  Solar Plexus Chakra & playing small
 22:54  Heart Chakra & heart wounds
25:59  Throat Chakra - when you've been told to shut up
 34:35  Third Eye Chakra - instinct & inner vision
 35:31  Crown Chakra - not a place you can live
38:13  Grounding
 40:53  Lauren as a child
 43:11  Chakradance course and app
 47:06  Thank you
 47:29  Closing

Connect with Lauren:
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Get the App on Apple & Google "Dance Celebrate Heal"

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Transcript

Vonne Solis  0:00  
Welcome to another episode of Grief Talk. Everything you want to know about grief and more. I'm your host, Vonne Solis. As an author, life transformation coach, online instructor and bereaved mom since 2005, I'll be bringing you great content that is informative, inspiring and practical. Whether you have suffered a loss or other adversity, stay tuned and tapped in as I cover a variety of topics to help you get where you want to go on your journey to heal and grow.

Today's guest is Lauren Gayl. From an early age, Lauren has been passionate about the impact that words, colours and music have on our inner and outer worlds. This has led her to explore multiple transformation modalities over the years to help people find their truth to become their clearest self. Lauren's most recent exploration has led her to now help people honour and celebrate their life stories and journey to heal and become their clearest self through Chakradance, Lifecycle Celebrancy and Reiki. Welcome to the show Lauren. I am so excited to have you come on the podcast with me. 

Lauren Gayl  1:12  
Thank you. I'm happy to be here. 

Vonne Solis  1:15  
Perfect. So for the audience, you may not have heard of Chakradance. When I first met Lauren, I had not heard of Chakradance. So what the episode today is all about is to introduce you to Lauren, who is one of only a few people in the world certified, I believe Lauren, to teach Chakradance. We're going to find out what Chakradance is right up front. And we're going to go into a little more in-depth discussion on what the chakras are, how the dance can benefit you and how you're going to know if Chakradance is for you. And lastly, how you could work with Lauren. She's got a really exciting new way that people can work with her. So let's get right to it, Lauren. And why don't you start us off with helping us understand what Chakradance is and how chakra dance in general can help someone working with that practice.

Lauren Gayl  2:10  
Sure. So Chakradance was created by a woman named Natalie Southgate over 25 years ago. It's based on Jungian psychology, and the concept of what happens in our inner world affect our outer world and also on the chakra system. And if people don't know what a chakra is, they're, we all have a lot of different energy centers in our bodies from the tips of our toes to the top of our head. There are actually 144 chakras or energy systems in our bodies. Energy centers. What Chakradance does though is it focuses on the seven main chakras that go from the base of our spine to the crown of our head. And it is a form of vibrational medicine movement therapy. And it's based on the concept of when you have healthy, a healthy chakra system and energy is flowing freely through all of your energy centers, you live a happy, healthy, joyful life. 

But most of us have a lot of trauma that has happened to us. 

Vonne Solis  3:34  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  3:35  
That occurs from as early as in utero or can go back generations. There's all this whole ancestral generational trauma. And that trauma lodges in these chakras or energy centers and blocks the flow of our energy and creates pain. Emotional pain, spiritual pain, mental pain, physical pain. What chakra dance does, by using a combination of chakra specific music. Music that's composed to vibrate with the vibration of each individual chakra because they all vibrate differently. So chakra specific music. Guided meditation. Mandala art and visualization. All of this combines together to create an environment that starts feeding your chakra with the energy it needs to balance and heal. And as you balance and heal your chakras you balance and heal your life.

Vonne Solis  4:52  
So when you say that I love the fact that the music is composed to match the vibration of each chakra. Do all of the chakras have a reasonably high vibration and they just keep getting higher and higher to, at the crown, where it's incredibly high. How does that vibration work?

Lauren Gayl  5:12  
Okay, so they all have equal levels of vibration. The vibration impacts different areas of our being.

Vonne Solis  5:23  
So kinda like it's sending energy vibration out to different areas of the body that would need healing.

Lauren Gayl  5:30  
Right, exactly. So let's just, I'm so I'm dressed right now for the base chakra. Let's just think about the base chakra. The base chakra is, is where we start out the journey. And it's all about safety and survival. Okay, because if we aren't safe, we can't do anything else.

Vonne Solis  5:51  
Right.

Lauren Gayl  5:51  
And so the base chakra is, the vibration of the base chakra is designed to anchor us to the earth. To ground us in our bodies. And to allow us to feel safe enough to be in the world.

Vonne Solis  6:17  
So presumably, we all need to work on,  well do you describe it as, it wouldn't be healing the chakra but it would be healing us through the base chakra to feel safe?

Lauren Gayl  6:29  
Healing the chakra and then that heals us. Think about it as energy. Let's say that you have an outlet for your life. And there's a, there's a fuse box that goes on and off. If that is stuck in an off switch,

Vonne Solis  6:48  
yes

Lauren Gayl  6:48  
all the energy in the world can't get to your life. 

Vonne Solis  6:52  
That's right. 

Lauren Gayl  6:54  
So that's what happens to chakras. When we start out our chakras are open and energy is flowing. And we have this great connection to joy and source energy and everything is flowing and then things happen. 

Vonne Solis  7:12  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  7:13  
Trauma happens. Something shuts down. 

Vonne Solis  7:16  
Yeah. 

Lauren Gayl  7:16  
Pain happens. Something shuts down. Fear happens. Something shuts down. And all this energy gets stuck. 

Vonne Solis  7:23  
Okay.

Lauren Gayl  7:24  
So what Chakradance does and there are other things too, but I think Chakradance is the most elegant, subtle way of doing it I've ever experienced. Chakradance starts opening those chakras and all that energy is released. And all of a sudden, there's flow.

Vonne Solis  7:48  
Which I'm sure can be felt fairly quickly. Is that right?

Lauren Gayl  7:53  
It really it really depends on how stuck things are. So what I provide people is a chakra health check. Where they can take a quiz, and I advise them to take time and answer the questions instead of just saying yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And there's a very, it becomes very clear, is this chakra balanced? Because some people's base chakra or other chakras are very balanced. Not everybody is completely traumatized. 

Vonne Solis  8:21  
That's good to know. 

Lauren Gayl  8:22  
So, you know, so is your chakra, what what does life look like if this is a balanced chakra? What does life look like if this is an overactive chakra, which is out of balance? Or an under-active chakra, which is out of balance. Then you take a look at your life and see, oh, wow. These certain things are happening in my life. Like I never feel safe. I don't have enough money. I am constantly eking out an existence. Well, that's an unbalanced Base Chakra.

Vonne Solis  8:59  
And a lot of people feel that Especially now, but they've always felt that. A good percentage of people. And I've even felt that in my life. I would imagine a lot of us have felt that. Had periods where we have felt that.

Lauren Gayl  9:12  
So Chakradance is done in a darkened room. 

Vonne Solis  9:16  
Okay. 

Lauren Gayl  9:17  
And it's a candlelit, darkened room of sacred space. And this is a very internal dance. Your body is going to tell you how it wants to move for that chakra. There's a saying, well I have a saying. Standing, sitting or laying on the ground, anyone can chakra dance. There is no one move for everybody's Base Chakra. 

Vonne Solis  9:45  
Okay.

Lauren Gayl  9:46  
 Your body tells you how it wants to move. 

Vonne Solis  9:48  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  9:49  
I mean, I've had people in my live classes sit in a corner and stare at a wall because that's all their body's allowing them to do at that point in time, but they have deep feelings just doing that.

Vonne Solis  10:02  
You could be sitting staring at a wall and the body, the chakras still responding to the vibration of the music.

Lauren Gayl  10:09  
Exactly. And the guidance, the words. The words of the visualization. What's happening inside of you the more you're engaging your senses in this healing, your body remembers. The body remembers everything. The body holds every pain, every fear, every trauma, every joy. And it's in you. So it remembers. And when it starts to feel the music, because the music is played pretty loudly. I recommend that for the people who work at it at home is to keep the volume up with the dance segments, especially. It starts remembering. Visualizations, you hear things, see things and then in the mandala art, you start releasing everything.

Vonne Solis  11:04  
Yeah. I was watching the video you have on your website. And I saw at the end, people were doing some artistic drawing, and I thought, okay, that's an interesting part of it, too. I believe within every one of us, there is an artist. Certainly a creator. And, and the other thing that came to mind when you were speaking about this was, well, when you think about a little toddler, you know, a baby that's learning to walk. I mean, you know, when they hear music, which, what one of them doesn't respond?

Lauren Gayl  11:37  
They start dancing.

Vonne Solis  11:38  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  11:39  
We all started dancing before we started walking.

Vonne Solis  11:43  
Yep, yep, yep.

Lauren Gayl  11:45  
It gets shamed out of us. 

Vonne Solis  11:48  
Yes. And I'm just going to throw in here speaking a little bit about rigidity, I do want to move through the chakras so people understand what each chakra can help them with in their journey. But I am going to just speak really quickly here to those of us who have become rigid through trauma. And, you know, it can feel really strange to move. And I will be the first to admit that has happened to me. And so I did a little bit of belly dancing. This is as a result of my daughter dying by suicide in 2005, for audience that doesn't know. And today I'm still rigid. And I don't like being rigid, Lauren. I don't. And then you could say to me, well, Vonne, you can do something about it. And I'd say, Yes, Lauren. I can. But it's still very hard for me to give myself permission to move my body. 

And so I think that rigidity comes from a lot of things. But I also think that we get used to it. And that may be associated with the shaming. Just no. You're not going to be free and happy. Because see, freedom of movement to me, and certainly in the dance form, and I was never a dancer. I came more from the musical background. But it gives us permission to be that creative. To be free. And basically be happy.

Lauren Gayl  13:08  
Right.

Vonne Solis  13:09  
For people who are grieving anything, and as you said, we could be coming from a generational trauma. And that's living, that story is living within us. And the body is remembering. And then people do an awful lot of harm to themselves for reasons they don't understand and know.

Lauren Gayl  13:30  
And they tell themselves themselves stories, right? We've always been this way so we've always got to be that way. Or this has always happened in our family. So you know those stories, the base chakra helps heal those stories and breaks those generational stories.

Vonne Solis  13:49  
Yeah. And so I'll also just use the word, the term dysfunction here. Because dysfunction is I think, rooted in stories and habit. And we do know that people struggle to break free from that generationally. So keep that in mind, folks, when we're working through the chakras here, and how this movement could help free you. So Lauren, let's move to the second chakra.

Lauren Gayl  14:17  
So the second chakra is the sacral chakra. And it is the center of pleasure and sensuality and sexuality. Because the next thing you need after you have made it to basic survival is pleasure. And the colour is orange. And, you know, obviously any kind of sexual trauma or shaming or any of the things that unfortunately most of us as women have dealt with this around our sexuality, is going to need healing from there and that's also where our ability to be actually intimate with people, not big, peace, love, but intimacy.

Vonne Solis  15:12  
And I again would offer a lot of people struggle with this and in North American culture. You know, I had a nurse on. We discussed this. It's her actual speciality is sexuality and so on. And it's very frowned upon. We've been shamed culturally in North America. So I'm thinking repressed a lot, and not not healthy for most of us. I would say there's a small percentage that are free, sexually. And I don't just mean you know, intimacy, sex, sex itself. 

Lauren Gayl  15:50  
It's not just sexuality. It's sensuality.

Vonne Solis  15:53  
How many people are sensual, Lauren?

Lauren Gayl  15:57  
I believe that, that we start out these joyous beings and then the muck of life comes. You know, the fear, the pain, the sorrows, the traumas. Our blocked chakras. So we all came here with a spark of joy. And my belief is, all we're trying to do is regain that joy connection. 

Vonne Solis  16:19  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  16:20  
That joyous source connection. I also believe that addictions are, in many ways, due to people's misguided attempts at regaining that sense of joy because they don't know how to do it any other way. With the sacral chakra, if you're constantly denying your senses, your sensuality, as humans, we need that. We need to feed our senses. But if we're constantly being shamed about it, we find inappropriate ways to do so. By balancing the sacral chakra, you're all of a sudden finding yourself seeking appropriate ways to feed your senses. Which can be so many ways. I feed mine a lot with colour. When I feel lost colour feeds my soul. Music feeds my soul. Think about all the five senses. And there's so many ways to feed our senses. But if we're cut off from them, we just go for the easiest route. The quickest route.

Vonne Solis  17:38  
Yeah. So I'll throw in again, having spoken with this medical professional. So, we were talking a lot about the erotic gaze. And not to have that, you know, misconstrued in any way with erotica, and how that's formed, right at childbirth. And that, and that is filled with sensuality. The love we feel from a parent hopefully, or as a parent, the instant love that is like no other when we first birth a child. And so in terms of that sensuality, and it's being aware and understanding to just really, you know, from that perspective anyway, and I would think that you would agree, just to embrace in the moment, whatever you're feeling, touching, tasting, smelling, hearing. So it would be your music. And whether it's flowers, nature. With you colour, it doesn't matter because we can be enthralled by our senses every moment of everyday if we pay attention to it. Moving into the third chakra.

Lauren Gayl  18:41  
So the third chakra is the solar plexus chakra, and it is all about power. And the colour of the third chakra is yellow. And this is where self-worth lives. Personal power lives. And this is unfortunately, a place that many women have lost touch with. I am really very clear on the market that I'm aiming towards. And it's women who've been playing small in their lives. 

Vonne Solis  19:20  
Okay. Okay. 

Lauren Gayl  19:23  
And that means a lot of different things to different people. But to me, all my life, I've been told I'm too much. I mean, I was six feet tall by the time I was 15. I was speaking when I was eight months old. I've been told all my life, You're too smart. You're too this. You're too that. You're too outspoken. You're too strong. You're too decisive. You're to this. And, and also being pretty smart, it's like you do things too quickly. You make people feel inferior. You do this. You do that. Slow down, stop. Slow down. Be less, be less, be less so that we feel comfortable. 

Vonne Solis  20:04  
Yes.

Lauren Gayl  20:05  
I'm not alone in that. There's an epidemic of women playing small in our society right now. And the symptoms of that are self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, undermining themselves, getting in their own way, sabotaging relationships. And so a lot of this comes from the third chakra. The power chakra. Because we all started in life as these extraordinary beings with all this personal power. And then we are told, and unfortunately, we take on the message, that we are too much. And we need to be less in order to be non-threatening, and for other people to feel comfortable around us and to be loved.

Vonne Solis  21:00  
Yeah. I'm not going to disagree with a single word that you are saying. Except I will add, I think we've always been playing small. And we haven't generationally really learned yet how to break free of that. Even if there might be our newest generation Zoomer, maybe starting to go, Wait a minute. But we have a long way to go. And there isn't one woman I have talked to, some have children in that in that age

Lauren Gayl  21:30  
Right

Vonne Solis  21:31  
and they're still seeing problems. So I'm like, huh? All right.

Lauren Gayl  21:35  
We have to stop playing small. We have so much personal power. And the world right now needs powerful women. And there has to be an amazing way to start reclaiming that power.

Vonne Solis  21:51  
Yeah. And I'm just going to add for me personally, I adore powerful women. But I especially adore powerful women, who are claiming their femininity at the same time. And it is so rare to see. That they feel really comfortable being super feminine. Instead up for the power suit, the power stance, the power expression, the power words, the power everything, and I just go, hmm, yeah.

Lauren Gayl  22:21  
I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't women who that is their personal power zone. And especially women in my age range. You know, we were taught you had to be like a man to get anything that a man had. I think that more and more women are saying no, that's not true. You are no longer the hallmark of how it has to be in order to get what you want.

Vonne Solis  22:46  
Yeah, yeah. Really. All right, moving into, I know it's the heart chakra. But let's talk about chakra number four.

Lauren Gayl  22:54  
Okay, so the heart chakra, you know if we are hurt in our heart, and the colour for the heart chakra can be pink or green. This is where those heart wounds come from when somebody says something to you, and it just, quote unquote, breaks your heart. 

Vonne Solis  23:14  
Yeah. 

Lauren Gayl  23:15  
And there's two ways that people with unbalanced heart chakras can be. One is they're supremely codependent. And they'll bend over backwards and kill themselves in order to be loved. And not in a necessarily a literal sense. But in a definite, you know, everything they do is quote unquote for others. It's just their really unfillable need to be loved. The opposite side is very detached. Very cold. Very, quote, unquote, analytical. 

Vonne Solis  23:57  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  23:58  
But also heart wounded. Because what they've decided is, nobody's going to get close enough to me to hurt me again. And I don't need anybody.

Vonne Solis  24:10  
And while we are speaking, like I know, to your niche group, women playing small, I just want to have a nod, a shout out here, that men, males can be feeling all these same things, can they not?

Lauren Gayl  24:25  
Oh, absolutely. And I would love to do a course for men. They're a tougher group to convince, or to have that conversation with. They've not not really been big on the live Chakradance classes because I think they feel more vulnerable dancing in groups, but I think the online course would be awesome for them. These descriptions apply to any gender.

Vonne Solis  24:50  
So the reason I'm bringing this up is because it surprised me when I looked at my analytics, certainly on YouTube, that my largest group is the crossover Millennial and Gen X male. 

Lauren Gayl  25:08  
Yeah, there you go Vonne. 

Vonne Solis  25:09  
Exactly. That's what I said. 

Lauren Gayl  25:10  
I think that's great. 

Vonne Solis  25:12  
Yeah. And so my second largest group is women of basically the same give or take a few years age. And I'm wondering if there's a whole cross generation of men who feel just as lost. I'm gonna say obviously from my own analytics, yes, there are. They're looking for guidance too.

Lauren Gayl  25:31  
Like I said, Chakradance is Chakradance.

Vonne Solis  25:34  
Everyone feels broken about something. So for the audience, if you are male watching this you can benefit too.

Lauren Gayl  25:40  
I would love to do an online group if it made men feel more comfortable that was made up of men.

Vonne Solis  25:47  
Yeah. Well, I saw some males in that video, and I thought a lot of men play small too. So turning to the fifth chakra, Lauren, tell us about that.

Lauren Gayl  25:59  
Okay, so the fifth chakra is the throat chakra. And the colour of the throat chakra is sky blue. And the throat chakra is all about speaking your truth. Living in your authenticity. Your creative self. Speaking your creativeness to the world Speaking your creativity to the world.

Vonne Solis  26:29  
I love that. My belief is so many people are afraid to speak their truth. So many people don't know how to connect to their truth. And when you do find it, it's a whole other story to claim it and name it and then go out there publicly and speak it. And this can be very difficult for practitioners. It can be difficult for just a lot of people. It's very difficult for me. I won't go into it, but even just starting this podcast was a way for me to speak my truth. Have the platform and speak it. And I'm going to tell you, Lauren, because other people might relate to this, I battled for many, many years with sore throats. And since I've been speaking more, the sore throats are diminishing. And I know very well, it's you know, feeling the words are stuck and stuffed inside. And I've been silent.

Lauren Gayl  27:28  
Well Vonne, you've been releasing from your throat chakra.

Vonne Solis  27:31  
Yes. And it feels freeing and wonderful. Because when we can't speak our truth. When we when we don't know our truth, in my opinion, and I'll ask you what you think, Lauren, I think you just feel pretty lost. When you find your truth and you don't speak it, then you feel silenced. You know? You can also feel worthless and undervalued and all that. But essentially, it's up to us to speak. Would you agree with that, Lauren?

Lauren Gayl  27:59  
I agree that it is up to us to speak our truth. And I also agree with you that a lot of people have been sort of beaten into submission, so they don't even know what their truths are anymore.

Vonne Solis  28:14  
Okay, so when you say that, what do you mean by that?

Lauren Gayl  28:17  
Being told to shut up and sit, sit down and shut up. What you're saying has no value. You know, it's not your place to speak, it's your place to listen. So if you're told a lot children are meant to be seen and not heard. Those are things that we're told a lot in our lifetimes. Don't speak your truth. Nobody wants your opinion.

Vonne Solis  28:40  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  28:40  
And all of that that does, it just gets in there and it can come out in a lot of, a lot of ways. If things aren't coming out of your mouth they're stuck in your head. I found that the people that we wouldn't allow any human on the planet to talk to us the way we talk to ourselves.

Vonne Solis  29:01  
Such a good point.

Lauren Gayl  29:03  
Healing the throat chakra, I mean, I have actually seen it so much while I've been making these videos. Because I'll get through a video and then I'll do something and I'll do something. And instead of saying oh my God, you're so, all the things that I used to say to myself. And I've been doing Chakradance for three now three years now between myself and facilitating it. What is happening in my head now? Instead of all those horrible things we say it's like, you can do this. You'll get there. That is because my throat chakra is now healed. It never even enters my mind to hear the kind of things that I used to allow myself to hear. And the throat chakra is not just about speaking it's about listening too.

Vonne Solis  29:52  
That's a good point. I've actually not heard that said related to chakras. When you say it's about listening, could you Just expand on that a wee bit? Because most people in my, again, I'm so opinionated, but I think a lot of people think that they're great listeners. They're not! Myself included. You know, and it could be for a number of reasons. I get so excited to talk sometimes and my brain might be working faster than a person I'm speaking with. Not on the podcast of course. And then I want to jump in. I want to jump in. Mostly with my family okay? And I think my son's the only one that can beat me to the punch. And so I've had to really learn to control that because that's not listening. So what is listening Lauren? What does it look like?

Lauren Gayl  30:36  
Well, I think if you're you know, so thinking in terms of the throat chakra, and communicating truth, and then understanding. I guess, the easiest way to put it is, is each each layer of muck that life throws at you, and each area of your energy that gets stuck, creates a belief system. And that belief system impacts how you hear everything. We hear through the filter of our beliefs.

Oh, I love that.

And when you start healing this pain and trauma, many of which are beliefs that have been forced on you, as you start removing those beliefs, you are able to hear from a true place. Like you realize that when people do hurtful things, in many cases, it's because they hurt. Not because they want to hurt you. But if you hadn't done that healing, you couldn't hear it like that. And you wouldn't be able to respond like that, or assist or help, or do whatever it is you're there to do.

Vonne Solis  32:06  
Yeah, so listening is a lot more than just hearing words. It's, I don't want to rephrase it right now, but I did understand it in my way. I'm hearing you. I'm hearing what you're saying and I'm, based on my own level of healing, I'm able to interpret those messages differently than had they been filtered through beliefs that were rooted in pain and all this other stuff.

Lauren Gayl  32:33  
Exactly. Keep in mind, words are only 7% of communication. The other two parts are tonality. How you say it. Like when people always say to you, you know, you're like, why I didn't say anything, but it's how you said it. How you said it. Tonality is, is the hugest part. The next part is physiology.

Vonne Solis  33:01  
So what we're doing when we're speaking the words. Like what the body is doing?

Lauren Gayl  33:06  
What our body is doing. Because we as humans are still fight or flight animals. And were responding to body language and tone of voice more than the words. I mean, I could be saying, bla bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla. And you would be going, Oh, my God. That woman's really angry or she's just. You wouldn't even need to hear the words. If I said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My words, your brain has got all kinds of information going on in there that have nothing to do with what I say. So then you throw all your filters on top of that. 

Vonne Solis  33:56  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  33:57  
Maybe we can't have a conversation at all.

Vonne Solis  34:00  
Yeah, yeah. This is making me want to go have a nice drink of my kombucha right now. Process it all. So interesting. So interesting. I don't know if you can answer this, but what does it mean when people don't have words? People who are really silent and withdrawn and don't communicate well at all?

Lauren Gayl  34:24  
Issues with their throat chakra unless it's biologically impossible for them to speak. Or their solar plexus chakra.

Vonne Solis  34:31  
Okay, so moving on to chakras six.

Lauren Gayl  34:35  
Okay, chakra six is the third eye chakra. And the colour is indigo blue. And it's all about instinct and inner vision. And following our instincts and listening to ourselves.

Vonne Solis  34:53  
Mm hmm. I love that. 

Lauren Gayl  34:55  
Yeah. 

Vonne Solis  34:56  
Yeah, I think that's pretty self explanatory. Now, when we get to the crown, I, we are going to talk about the crown, but I had read a while back that some people work with chakras eight and nine.

Lauren Gayl  35:11  
So, like I said, there's 144 chakras. Some people go with a 14 chakra system. 

Vonne Solis  35:19  
Okay. 

Lauren Gayl  35:20  
So yeah, there's all kinds of, there's all kinds of ways to deal with it. We're in Chakradance we're focused on the seven main chakras.

Vonne Solis  35:28  
And how about you explain what the seventh chakra is?

Lauren Gayl  35:31  
Okay, the seventh chakra, the Crown Chakra, the colour is violet. And it is your connection to Source. Whatever you call it. God. The Divine. I call it Source. That's your higher self. Whatever you want to call it, that that is your connection to The Universe.

Vonne Solis  35:56  
Yeah. And again, we won't go deep in that. But for people, audience members here who are working with meditation, I can't think of one meditation that you know doesn't, well, there might be a few that doesn't really kind of start with opening the crown. Doing something with the crown, anyway, chakra. And it is really important.

Lauren Gayl  36:17  
That said, people living your life in your crown chakra. 

Vonne Solis  36:22  
Yes. 

Lauren Gayl  36:23  
You can't function in the world.

Vonne Solis  36:24  
Okay. Well, this is what I want to hear is, is

Lauren Gayl  36:28  
You have to have an equal connection to the earth. 

Vonne Solis  36:33  
Yes. 

Lauren Gayl  36:34  
As to the crown, as to The Universe, in order to be present in this plane of existence. Yeah, there's no one chakra that's more important than the other one.

Vonne Solis  36:48  
Yes. Okay, thank you for saying that. Sometimes life can get really tough and we want to kind of live it more from, you know, the higher realm. When my daughter died, I was already working with angels. I had just started working with angels a few months before she died. So it was natural for me to go that route. And I became an Angel Therapy Practitioner. Certified with Doreen Virtue. The whole bit. And I did that practice for many, many years. But in those first few years of incredible suffering, you know, I more or less, I functioned at a very basic level. Very base level doing what I needed to do to survive.

Lauren Gayl  37:29  
Right. 

Vonne Solis  37:29  
But the thinking was way up here. And my third eye opened at that period. So it was a very, very beautiful experience. But many, many readers I saw during that period of time, they would always say to me, you need to get grounded. You need to get grounded. And it would drive me crazy.

Lauren Gayl  37:49  
This is what keeps you able to do that.

Vonne Solis  37:53  
Yes, but I didn't see it at the time.

Lauren Gayl  37:55  
Also, it's really easy to hide here. 

Vonne Solis  37:59  
Yes, yes. 

Lauren Gayl  38:01  
To hide here and tell yourself, you're doing higher work so nothing here matters.

Vonne Solis  38:10  
That's it. Or you're or you're running from that.

Lauren Gayl  38:13  
That pain here. Where the pain lives.

Yeah. So I'm really glad we're having this little tiny offshoot conversation about this, because we don't talk about it a lot. But I never really understood what these practitioners were telling me, you know. What they meant by being grounded. What did they mean? What did they mean? What did they mean? And I got it 10 years later when I faced the pain and the trauma. And I spent a couple years just doing the physical stuff. And then I started working in 2018 on integrating it all. And so you're right. So you need all of it, all of it. No, too much of any one thing, but all of it integrated beautifully.

That's why the whole concept that the base chakra is a lower vibration, no. It just happens to be lower in your body because it's there to connect you to the earth.

Vonne Solis  39:06  
Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. So I haven't been one that, you know, stayed doing a lot of work with chakras, because I just do other things and stuff. But they're very important and, and I'm so grateful I made that connection in my life. So grateful, because when any healing happens then, it happens in tandem with other things to bring me balance. And it's not to say, Oh, I've got it all together. Of course not. And that's the other piece I wanted to say about staying safe and looking for our number one thing to feel safe and secure. And when something does trigger us, it's really important to have all this kind of information and a practice to get yourself back out of it. Because I don't think any one of us is expected to you know, have this really um, blissful life every minute of every day. Stuff happens. 

Lauren Gayl  40:04  
They say life is a school. 

Vonne Solis  40:05  
Yeah, of course. Okay, so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful description of each chakra and how we can think of the chakra in terms of energy and how it can help us. So that answers all of that. I wanted to ask you a little bit as we probably are coming to the top of the hour here, Lauren. But I did want to ask you a little bit about yourself as a child.

Lauren Gayl  40:33  
I've always been fascinated by the impact of colour, words and music on humans.

Vonne Solis  40:42  
How did that even happen?

Lauren Gayl  40:47  
I really don't know how to tell you that.

Vonne Solis  40:50  
No, but I mean, like from a very young age?

Lauren Gayl  40:53  
I started reading when I was three years old. I was colouring in my dad's school books when I was little. I've always been into music. I've always wanted to sing. And as I grew older, I mean, I wouldn't say that as a child that was fascinating me about others. But, you know, I was engaged in in, I've been engaged in creative activities from the beginning of me. I don't know how not to do those things. And the one time I didn't do them, I became very, very ill. And I realized that that's intrinsic to who I am to stay alive. But as I grew older, and I started studying a lot of, well, you know I was an artist and art major. So we studied a lot about the impact of colours and that colours are just vibration. 

I think what it all comes down to and especially how it integrates with Chakradance is, colour, words, and music are all vibrating. 

Vonne Solis  41:48  
Yeah.

Lauren Gayl  41:48  
And they're all energy vibrating. 

Vonne Solis  42:04  
Yes.

Lauren Gayl  42:04  
We are all energy vibrating. Everything we see is energy vibrating. 

Vonne Solis  42:13  
Yes.

Lauren Gayl  42:14  
All is just vibrating at different speeds. And so the fascination of how the vibrational impact of words. The vibrational impact of colour. The vibrational impact of music. And then you take all of that and put it together in something created, in this case by Natalie Southgate Chakradance, and the power is unbelievable. And the healing is unbelievable. Colour has always been used for healing. Words are used for healing. Music is used for healing. Because it moves energy. That fascinates me.

Vonne Solis  43:01  
Oh, yeah, so cool. So Lauren, tell us about your course that's coming up. And also your app.

Lauren Gayl  43:11  
So the course that's coming up is called Chakradance to Heal Your Life. A nine week course. It's an online course. And it is a beautiful deep dive into the chakras each week. So the first week is an initiation week and we go through all seven chakras. Then there's a week of each chakra and then the final week is an integration week. And each week there is a seated meditation to chakra specific music. There is a dancing meditation. There is a mandala art part. And there is a chakra activation meditation. 

Vonne Solis  43:58  
Okay.

Lauren Gayl  43:59  
So, and then each week there's a video of me describing, that's what I was in the process of doing here for the base chakra, and a beautiful self-reflection exercise. A questionnaire to ask yourself before you do these dances. So in addition to the audios and the PDF and the video, there will also be a Heal Your Life community within the app. So that community is going to is going to be from that cohort that it starts at the same time. So everybody will start at the same time on June 2nd. And every day, I will be in that community responding to posts. People can post their mandalas there. They can talk about their experiences if they choose. One of the best ways to integrate this is to write about it. So, writing there or your journals is great. And then we'll also have several zoom courses during this sequence of the nine weeks. So it's very robust. People will, I give tips about how people can create sacred space in their own homes, and which is really important. My job basically is to hold space. Hold sacred space for them virtually.

Vonne Solis  45:22  
So Lauren, what is the name of your app and where can people find it?

Lauren Gayl  45:26  
The name of the app is Dance Celebrate Heal. Three separate words. And they can get it either in the Apple app store or the Google app store. There's some great information in there about Chakradance. Some of the other things I do Lifecycle Celebrancy, Distant Reiki healing, but yes. There's a lot of information on Chakradance. The video that you saw is in the app. Very soon, we'll have all the details on the class.

Vonne Solis  45:55  
Okay, that's perfect. Now, for people that don't have the app at this time, can they still connect with you on your website Lauren? 

Lauren Gayl  46:05  
Yes.

Vonne Solis  46:06  
Okay. And the name of your website again?

Lauren Gayl  46:08  
The name of the website is gaylcreativearts.com. And Gayl is spelled, you can see it there under my name, G a y l.

Vonne Solis  46:20  
Yep. I'll make it super easy for you, folks. I'm going to put a link to Lauren's website. And she's also got a lot of information there as well. Check out her app if you're interested in the course. So your first course starts in June. And then are you going to be running them frequently after that did you say?

Lauren Gayl  46:40  
Well, it's a nine week course. Probably. I think I probably will end up launching them every two and a half months or so.  I have another course coming up soon called The Goddess series.

Vonne Solis  46:53  
Ooh, nice. So in other words, the question is, you're always actually having some courses for people to participate in, so if they miss out on one, they can get in on another? 

Lauren Gayl  47:03  
Right. And the whole cycle will start June 2nd.

Vonne Solis  47:06  
I'm so excited for you, Lauren. I want to thank you so so much for coming on my podcast and sharing all your wisdom. you know about chakras. Chakra dancing. And you know, just really, all the other messages related to that for people's wellbeing. I really do appreciate it. 

Lauren Gayl  47:29  
Well thank you for having me.

Vonne Solis  47:29  
You're very welcome. So, once again, thanks, Lauren.