Keeper of TheWay

Consecrating the Lower Centers

For deeper context — Energy Systems of the Body

The Foundation: When you were conceived, your Essence was brought into physical reality. It is the part of you that is divine, originating from the Soul. Your physical body was formed through the combined genetic inheritance of your mother and father, in accordance with the pattern of Mind and Laws you were born under. It is through this body that your Essence is able to experience the Earthly Kingdoms and engage in the cycles of reincarnation.

The body is part of you, but it is not who you are.

It is made up of animal, plant, and mineral consciousness — the Earthly Kingdoms that together form the living temple through which your Essence expresses itself into the world. These Kingdoms are living intelligences that have developed with you through countless cycles of incarnation, each carrying its own vibration and consciousness. When we die, our Essence returns to the Soul, empowered by the lessons we’ve learned and the growth we’ve attained in this life. The body returns to the earth, and the consciousness of the animal, plant, and mineral Kingdoms are released — to be incarnated in the earth-realm as physical animals, plants and minerals.

Because the Animal Kingdom is the most active and predominant aspect of the body consciousness, this article will focus primarily on the animal natures. Plant and mineral consciousness will be explored later.

Within our bodies exists a multitude of animal natures. These can be perceived at a deep energetic level as four faces — a mixture of animals, much like the mythological hybrids — physically expressing themselves through the head, heart, belly and genitals. These aspects of self that make up the body consciousness have their own character, intelligence, wants, needs, strengths, weaknesses, and natural responses, just as external animals do. Like every living being, they seek safety, nourishment, challenge, rest, and the conditions where they will thrive.

This perspective changes how we relate to the body.

Instead of seeing it as a biological machine or even as a vessel for the Essence, recognize that it is a living consciousness, both part of you and separate from you… it has faithfully served you since the moment of conception and you’ve been entrusted with its care.

The relationship between humanity and the body consciousness is reflected symbolically in the beginning of Genesis.

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 

Genesis 2:19

In Scripture, naming is more than assigning a label — it’s often portraying a transformation. To name something is to Know it.

God brought the animals of the earth to Adam. Adam did not ask what they were called, he did not defer to God’s authority. Allegorically, these verses portray “Adam” becoming personally aware of every instinctive force within the Earthly Kingdom — and he is given dominion over them.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Genesis 1:26

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over…” This dominion over the animals of the earth is presented here almost as if it’s the purpose of humanity’s creation — to act as “god” over the consciousness of the Earthly Kingdom.

How you have treated your body, how you have allowed others to treat your body, every injury and trauma, every experience of shame, fear, grief, or joy — every thing you’ve experienced — has been experienced by these animal natures on a deeper level, separate from YOU and YOUR mental processing of the events that took place.

Your head may have moved on.

Your body may not have.

The inner multitude of personalities interprets through conditioning, belief, memories, and stories.

The body communicates and remembers through sensation.

It remembers contraction… relaxation… whether something felt safe or unsafe.

It remembers whether its attempts to communicate, through sensation and body signals, were acknowledged or ignored.

This is one reason why someone may logically and intellectually understand that an event happened decades ago, yet still experience tension, fear, numbness or emotional reactivity. The head believes the experience has been resolved, while the body consciousness continues carrying patterns that were never fully brought to completion.

The body learns through experience.

Along the journey of TheWay, we continually ask these animal natures to go above and beyond their ordinary state. Fasting, cleansing, using the breath to attain altered states of mind, sacred sex, cycles of refraining from typical tension-release orgasm, elevating our emotional expression, hot saunas/cold immersion, working through fears, bringing consciousness to the natural impulses of the body, and even choosing growth over comfort — in these practices, we are asking the body consciousness to transform. Each one places a demand on the body, and these demands are significant. In many cases, we ask the nervous system to remain open when every instinct inside of us wants to contract in self-protection.

To ask this of the body and be successful, we must first earn its trust.

Just as trust needs to be built to have a relationship with external animals, trust needs to be built between you and your animal natures. Imagine asking an animal to follow you across unfamiliar and potentially dangerous terrain. If that animal has repeatedly experienced kindness, consistency, nourishment, and patience, it will eventually follow willingly… even into situations it doesn’t fully understand. If it has repeatedly experienced neglect, suppression, or continually being pushed without consideration, that same animal will likely resist every step of the way — it has learned that its caretaker can’t be trusted.

Developing Trust within the Body Consciousness: It can be difficult to consider the body in terms of trust… of course you trust yourself… but how many times have you suppressed, judged, shamed, avoided, diminished, or demeaned your body? Whether it be criticism of your appearance, avoiding or being ashamed of your emotions, suppressing your voice, not respecting your natural cycles (energy, sleep, food, menstrual), or becoming frustrated with your body’s limitations.

Every minute of every day, the consciousness of the body is communicating to you — through the sensory system, through muscle tension and relaxation, posture, breath, and the expansion and contraction of the autonomic nervous system. The body is in continual conversation with you and its environment. When we spend most of our day up in the head, these messages go ignored and unnoticed — except for the ones that scream the loudest, like hunger, pain, the need for sleep.

When we’re disconnected from the body, our breath remains shallow and primarily in the upper chest. This keeps our abdomen and pelvic floor in a continually tensed state, inadvertently fueling low levels of chronic stress. Shallow chest breathing is part of the body’s natural fight or flight response.

Whether we are feeling “stress” or not, if the body is stuck in stress patterns, it will remain guarded. This creates an internal environment where the animal natures are largely ignored, confined in tension, and not given proper energy flow or oxygenation. Under these conditions, we have no right to ask our body for anything more than what is needed for base survival.

To raise the consciousness of the body beyond its instinctive functions, we first need a foundation of connection and trust. This starts with bringing your awareness back into the body throughout the ordinary moments of daily life.

Consciousness begins with the breath {see Sex of the Breath}. As often as possible, return to deep diaphragmatic breathing that reaches all the way into the pelvic floor. Breath that touches the belly and genitals — these areas of the body contain the lower three chakras, which are the primary domains of the animal natures. Increasing blood flow and oxygenation increases energy flow to these areas of the body and sets the foundation for becoming the Holy Ground.

It’s easy to feel connected when we are relaxed and everything is going well. But eventually life interrupts: conflict with a relative, looming work deadlines, children spilling milk across the kitchen floor, the ever growing to-do list. It’s in these ordinary moments, especially during times of stress, that our choices matter the most. When we can remain connected to the body, stay present with our breath, and keep an open heart in the midst of everyday life, we begin to bring spirituality into the “common” and “mundane” aspects of life. Step by step, precept upon precept… we create an internal environment that invites higher consciousness to take root within the body itself.

If sustained awareness of the breath feels daunting, start in small bursts. Those small bursts will naturally expand over time. Opening the heart through gratitude, awe, compassion, or love can be easier to maintain than continuous awareness of the breath. As the heart softens and opens, the breath naturally deepens, creating expansion through the whole body.

Once a foundation of connection has been established, begin looking honestly at parts of yourself you’ve learned to avoid. This might be areas of physical pain, disease, shame, numbness, or tension. It might also include areas of expression — your voice, your emotions, your creativity, or your sexuality. Everyone has some aspect of themselves that they have learned to suppress, hide, or disconnect from.

From the perspective of the body consciousness, imagine having a caretaker that was so ashamed or uncomfortable with you, a caretaker that thought you were so difficult to manage, that they pushed you away and kept you away from people? An animal that you ignore, avoid, suppress, or approach with negative energy, is not going to trust you, is it?

To see this disconnect with the body, look deeper at any area you have difficulty feeling energetically {see Energy Self-Assessment}, or any area that is difficult to hold your awareness inside. Notice places that have experienced trauma, areas of pain or numbness. Parts of your body you feel uncomfortable touching or having a partner touch.

Then expand and look deeper at your patterns of expression. Notice your voice. Do you hesitate to speak honestly? Do you keep your voice small? Are you uncomfortable laughing loudly or singing? Maybe you speak very confidently at work or in your day to day life, but struggle to speak in a way that connects with other people emotionally?

Notice your emotions. Watch where you suppress certain emotions because they aren’t socially acceptable. Watch where you limit your expression of the positive, to prevent a potential negative — ie not sharing good news until you’re certain it’s a “sure thing,” or because of how others might respond.

Notice your sexuality. Are there areas where you withdraw, disconnect, rush, or otherwise prevent yourself from fully experiencing intimacy or pleasure?

Even in your ordinary body expression, look for where you keep yourself contracted, stiff, or small… what is your normal range of movement throughout the day? For the average person, it is quite limited. How much of your regular movement is repetitive and linear? Up, down, back and forth. Look at your posture and body language. Where do you close yourself off? Are there times when your body naturally wants to stretch, sway, dance, or move in ways that you suppress because of self-consciousness? Or have you shut down your body so much that you no longer notice those impulses at all?

Every person struggles with one or more of these areas at different points in life. That is just part of the human experience. The more Light you can bring to these areas you’ve kept in the dark, the more those parts become integrated with the whole. This can be an incredibly difficult process in the beginning as you’re unraveling years -sometimes decades- of conditioning, protective strategies, and deeply ingrained patterns of thought. Every time you bring your attention to the deeper consciousness of the body, instead of abandoning it to stress, distraction, or unconscious reaction, you are remaining present with and developing the animal natures within.

The Pelvic Pulse: Within the Tantric traditions, Shiva represents pure stillness and consciousness: the unmoving center. Shakti represents ecstatic charge: the reflective field of energy arising around and through that center. Spanda emerges through their inseparability — the stillness within movement and the movement within stillness. It is neither generative nor reflective, male nor female, but the orgasmic interplay between them: an energetic expression of what we would call the Third Force.

Natural man perceives and experiences only one-twelfth of reality. The vibration of Mind within the Tree of Life that corresponds to the Earthly Kingdom, or the physical senses. There are dimensions beyond the physical that we can learn to feel and perceive. We create the internal conditions that bring us into alignment with the deeper energetics of reality.

In most systems of energy work, the pelvic floor is understood to be like a pump that can move and circulate energy through the body.

The abdomen and pelvic bowl contain some of the deepest instinctive aspects of the body consciousness — the animal natures connected with digestion, survival, sexuality, reproduction, grounding, and creation. If these lower centers are continually ignored, held in tension, or viewed with shame, they will naturally resist higher consciousness.

The muscles of the pelvic floor are a type of diaphragm, so their natural movement is like a rhythmic wave, moving up and down with each breath as pressure changes within the abdomen. In a complete breath, as the diaphragm descends on the inhale, the pelvic floor gently lengthens and expands. As you exhale, both naturally recoil upward together. This movement of the breath through the core massages the belly and pelvic floor, increasing circulation, oxygenation, lymphatic flow and energetic movement throughout the organs, muscles, and energy centers of the lower abdomen and pelvic bowl. The more frequently this natural movement is done, the more dynamic and magnetized the body’s lower energy field becomes {see Energy Systems of the Body}

Most Eastern traditions, as well as many New Age paths, emphasize using the pelvic floor muscles to pump energy from the Root, up the spine, to the Crown. The spine is an important channel that is generally easier for people to connect with than the Central Pathway — the vertical channel that runs separate from the spine, THROUGH the core of the body, from the perineum to the Crown. Rather than bypassing the organs, this pathway moves directly through them along the centerline of the body. Each organ represents a Sphere of Mind, and as the Central Pathway is developed, a higher current of energy is passing through the body and raising our capacity for higher consciousness.

In the beginning, it can be helpful to intentionally create the movement of the pelvic pump:

• On the inhale, the core expands
• The pelvic floor pushes down gently
• Direct the pressure of the inhale so that it’s centered — through the cervix if you’re a woman or perineum/prostate if you’re a man

• On the exhale, the pelvic floor gently draws in and up.
• Again, feel this movement originating through the center of the pelvic floor
• Make sure there’s a distinctive sense of the muscles drawing IN and UP, rather than simply squeezing and clamping together

The more fluid and wave-like this movement becomes, the more effectively it builds energy and eventually draws it upward through the Central Pathway. If the movement feels choppy, accordion-like, or like a spasm, there is likely tension or weakness in the pelvic floor that needs to be addressed. It can help to practice lying down first, as that puts the least pressure on the pelvic floor — then progress to sitting and eventually standing.

Once the movement becomes more natural, it should begin to feel as though your entire body is breathing together. The sensations in the respiratory diaphragm and the pelvic diaphragm can feel like a wave or the movement of a jellyfish floating through water.

If you have difficulty finding a smooth rhythm, just focus on expanding during the inhale and gently drawing in and upward during the exhale. The expansion on the inhale is just as important as the upward draw because it releases tension and creates the natural rebound that follows on the exhale.

Despite the inward and upward movement, we aren’t trying to push energy up. We’re building energy in the lower centers, pooling the energy into the pelvic bowl and creating the conditions for it to rise naturally.

If you aren’t fully comfortable with your pelvis for any reason -physically, mentally, or emotionally- there will naturally be a psychosomatic block. This is unfortunately fairly common, particularly for women due to body shaming and cultural suppression around female sexuality.

Likewise, if you spend most of your day ignoring your pelvic floor and hips, never breathing fully into your abdomen and pelvic bowl, you are essentially depriving the animal natures residing there of circulation, oxygenation, and higher currents of energy — keeping them in a state of chronic tension and basic survival functioning.

As you regularly connect with the lower chakras of the body -physically and energetically- working through any resistances, while creating this fluid pelvic movement with the breath, you begin to elevate the level of consciousness within these animal natures. They are regularly saturated in Light and energy through the breath, while the muscles gradually relax and regain their natural movement.

From this place of deeper connection with the body, a natural pulsing can begin to emerge THROUGH the body — it may initially feel like a flutter or gentle suction. From a woman’s perspective, when you relax into it and allow the body to flow with the energy, the lower centers take over, and the movement becomes like a toroidal wave up the vagina through the cervix — like a sucking motion that draws the energy up through the Central Pathway.

Once you can consistently and rhythmically breathe WITH your pelvic floor, you can try encouraging the body to take over with this natural pulsing by exploring holding your breath for a few moments at the peak of your inhale and keeping your pelvic floor expanded/gently pushed out. Do it in a very natural and soft way, without pressure or pushing, to see if the body will be responsive. You can also try to encourage the natural movement by drawing inward and upward from the deepest center of the pelvic floor and intentionally creating a very soft pulsing motion, then release the intention and see if the body takes over.

The first stage is doing, the next stage is being.

The Purpose of the Central Pathway: When the body starts to take over and continues this pulsation of the pelvic floor on its own, the animal natures are drawing the current up and through the body. The less attention — and therefore less energy — required for the physical mechanics, the more you can fully release into higher states of consciousness, while the body continues circulating the current. This has application in energy work, practicing consciousness, sacred sexuality, and any activity that would benefit from deeper levels of body connection.

It’s important to understand that we are not just trying to move energy from the pelvis to the head. That can be done mechanically by intentionally pumping the pelvic floor. The deeper purpose is to strengthen the natural, bi-directional current of the Central Pathway.

When the lower centers are undeveloped, the upper centers become overused and imbalanced. The current flowing through the Central Pathway becomes a trickle, with energy continually accumulating in the upper body and head, where most people primarily operate… or it’s discharged outwardly through imbalanced emotions and the down-and-out flow of typical sexuality.

To live a consecrated life, we bring ourselves back into the body, nourishing the lower centers with awareness, energy, and sacredness. As the lower internal reservoir becomes increasingly filled and charged, a natural rebounding begins to occur. Rather than pushing the energy upward through mechanical pumping, the body takes over as it gradually comes into alignment with the toroidal flow of higher reality — allowing the energy to descend, gather, and return upward in one continuous movement — expanding into the etheric field and contracting back into the narrow internal pathway of the body.

As we open this narrow path THROUGH the body, every Sphere of Mind, every organ, every spiritual center, and every aspect of the body consciousness is brought into alignment to participate together. As the Central Pathway strengthens, the body gradually shifts from operating as separate and competing parts, to functioning as a unified whole.

A divided body cannot sustain a balanced, bi-directional current. Energy will be dominantly pulled to the head because the lower centers are undeveloped and unable to fulfill conditions of the Good Ground.

When the relationship between the upper and lower deepens, energy that once imbalanced and scattered begins to gather along the narrow path, strengthening the inner reservoirs and allowing the whole body-temple to receive and cultivate higher currents of Energy. The lower centers become empowered, acting as an anchor that draws energy downward through the Central Pathway. This descent creates the foundation for the embodied ascent — as the energy returns upward, carrying with it now the developed and expressed energy of the lower centers.

This is an important distinction. We aren’t just trying to run energy or push energy to the upper centers — we are raising the quality of consciousness that is embodied within that energy.

The lower, feminine centers are domains of emotion, instinct, desire, sexuality, and action. They are often spoken of as though they are obstacles to overcome, or primitive forces that need to be transcended, but these centers contain a divine purpose. The lower three chakras were separated from the upper so that their unique strengths could be developed, refined, and ultimately reunited with their opposite polarities in the upper centers — just as Eve was separated from Adam, representing the feminine principle that is the catalyst for birth into higher consciousness. They contain the consciousness necessary for the cultivation of experiential Knowledge through the application of spiritual principles. The goal is not to escape the emotions, instincts, and sexuality of the lower centers, but rather to consecrate them.

When the lower is neglected, shamed, or left functioning primarily from survival states, any current that rises from them carries those same qualities with it. Survival, fear, emotional reactivity. The problem is not that the centers themselves are “lower,” but that the consciousness expressing through them has not been developed and matured.

When we return awareness to the body, breathe into the core and pelvic bowl, release tension, restore movement, and build trust within the body consciousness, the lower centers begin to transform. The animal natures are no longer operating only from instinct. Their natural functions remain the same, but they become increasingly aligned with spiritual principles — the desire for food, but nourishing food… the desire for sex, but sex that moves orgasmic energy through the WHOLE body… the expression of emotion, but emotion that empowers higher consciousness. The lower centers are no longer functioning primarily from the animal states of survival, instinct, and reaction. Through relationship, trust, the release of blockages and constriction, they become aligned and reunited with the upper centers.

As our spirituality is embodied, as we descend into the body, the lower centers become increasingly magnetized. They become the fertile ground, able to receive, hold, and cultivate higher currents of energy.

When the natural rebounding of energy occurs, the current carries more than just an accumulation of energy from the upper and lower centers. It carries the matured consciousness of the lower-feminine centers upward. The ascent is no longer an escape from the body, but rather, the body is consciously participating in the return.

This is the purpose of opening the Central Pathway — to reunite Heaven and Earth, the Upper and Lower, AdamEve, within the body, so that every level of our being participates in the expression of higher consciousness.