B l v c k G o l d e

The Solar Plexus Chakra, located between the navel and solar plexus, is the core of our personality, our identity, of our ego.

The third chakra is the center of willpower. While the Sacral chakra seeks pleasure and enjoyment, the third chakra is all about the perception of who you are.

The gift of this chakra is sensing your personal power, being confident, responsible, and reliable.

The third chakra is the center of your self-esteem, your willpower, self-discipline, as well as warmth in your personality.

The energy of this chakra allows you to transform inertia into action and movement. It allows you to meet challenges and mover forward in your life.

The main challenge for the third chakra is to use your personal power in a balanced manner.

What does that mean?  It means consciously harnessing the energy of the solar plexus chakra. It means being proactive rather then reactive or inactive.

Beings with excessive third chakra energy react to life circumstances, they have emotional outbursts and are often stressed out.

Beings with blocked or deficient third chakra are passive and inactive - allowing life to pass by while they do nothing.

Strong third chakra reflects the ability to move forward in life with confidence and power. It reflects the ability to make conscious choices to choose and to act.

The message of the third chakra is: You have the power to choose.

Solar Plexus  Chakra at a glance:

             Sanskrit name: Manipura (jeweled city)              Element: Fire              Color: Yellow              Shape: Triangle (downward-pointing)              Petals of the lotus: Ten              Seed sound: Ram              Vowel sound: Ah              Rights: To act              Endocrine gland: Adrenals, pancreas              Physical association: Digestive system, liver, gall bladder              Psychological function: Will              Identity: Ego identity              Developmental stage: 18 - 42 months              Challenge: Shame              Plane: Celestial plane              Planets: Sun and Mars              Deity: Rudra, Lakini              Mythological Animal: Ram              Incense: Saffron, musk, sandalwood              Herb: Cinnamon, ginger              Sephira: Hod, Netzach              Tarot Suit: Wands

Solar Plexus Chakra Affirmations

I love and accept myself.                

I stand up for myself.                

I am strong and courageous.                

I am worthy of love, kindness, and respect.                

I choose the best for myself.                

I express myself in a powerful way.

I am proud of my achievements.                

I honor my self.                

I choose healthy relationships.

I am authentic.                

I direct my own life.                

I appreciate my strengths.                

I feel my own power.                

I am free to choose in any situation.                

I seek opportunities for personal and spiritual growth.                

I am at peace with myself.

Chakra Stones for the Solar Plexus

Here is a list of chakra stones commonly used to cleanse, activate, and balance the solar plexus chakra. Included is the name, color, type of stone, and crystal meaning/purpose of each:

Amber — Yellowish orange — Organic gemstone — Used to cleanse and balance. Increases mental clarity and promotes confidence.

Citrine — Pale yellow — Semi-precious — This “success stone” is used to cleanse and balance. Increases personal empowerment and confidence.

Lemon quartz — Yellow — A stone of optimism used to cleanse, activate and balance the third energy center.

Yellow Jasper — Yellow — Semi-precious — Known as a stone of protection, yellow jasper activates and balances the solar plexus chakra.

Yellow Tourmaline — Yellow — Semi-precious — A stone good for detoxifying the body, yellow tourmaline is used to cleanse, activate and balance.

Tiger’s Eye — Golden brown — Semi-precious — A protective stone, tiger’s eye is good for grounding, cleansing and balancing.

Feed your chakra

Manipura  

 Also called the solar plexus chakra, the Manipura is represented in colour yellow, and is said to govern ego and self-esteem. The chakra seeks to achieve balance in self-esteem issues and intuitive skills.  

 Feed it with:

 grains like cereal, rices, flax seed, sunflower seeds and daily milk products like milk, cheeses, yogurt. Ginger, mints, chamomile, turmeric, cumin, fennel also spice up the chakra.

Symptoms of a Blocked Solar Plexus Chakra

A healthy solar plexus chakra allows you to know yourself and live with confidence and strength. Someone with a balanced solar plexus chakra will be able to set boundaries and be assertive without being aggressive. It allows you to know yourself, judging yourself and others fairly but not critically.

 Since it plays such a fundamental role in self-confidence, an imbalance in the third chakra can cause many problems. Some common symptoms of blockage include:

Low self-esteem

Inability to set or maintain boundaries

Codependency

Lack of self-control

Depression or anxiety

Addiction

The solar plexus chakra is also important for physical health. It is closely tied to digestive health, but a blockage can cause an issue with other systems as well. Common physical symptoms of a blocked third chakra include:

Ulcers

Poor digestion, gas, nausea

Hypoglycemia

Diabetes

Asthma and other respiratory problems

Arthritis

Organ problems, especially in the liver and kidneys

Nerve pain and fibromyalgia

Difficulty gaining or losing weight

Solutions for a Blocked Solar Plexus Chakra

Clearing the blockage in your third chakra and allowing energy to flow freely through it will help return you to health. It is best to try to do daily healing work because falling back into old patterns can allow the blockage to form again.

Working with a Reiki practitioner or other energy healer can be a good way to start your healing journey. They will be able to help break up the blockage and can help locate other blockages or imbalances in your energy.

At home, meditation is the most effective way to break up a blockage. Everyone possesses healing energy, and you can harness it using visualization. The third chakra is associated with the color yellow and with fire, so imagine a golden healing flame just below your navel. As you breathe deeply, feel it dissolving any hurt or pain you are storing in your third chakra.

Surrounding yourself with things associated with Manipura will help as well. Wearing yellow, eating yellow foods, and wearing gold jewelry or gold and yellow gemstones can help open your third chakra. Spending time in the sun and doing yoga exercises that strengthen your core are also good for healing Manipura.

I’ve barely seen anything on tumblr about the blackout in Washington DC

There’s been radio silence from the city since 1am local time, tweets about it are being deleting and suppressed

IT’S TIME TO STOP USING SINGLE-USE PLASTICS!!!

We recently sparked conversation amongst the Tumblr community about our global plastic usage when we first introduced our reusable straws. While we were aggressive in pointing out that change needed to be made, some of you stressed that plastic usage went beyond just straws. We took what you told us in wanting more products that could assist in lowering our plastic usage and have come up with a solution for another plastic culprit: single-use produce bags.

While grocery stores worldwide are phasing out single-use grocery bags at the till, produce bags still remain. On average, 4 bags per family are used per day, adding up to a staggering 1,500 short-lived bags per year!

The average plastic bag is used for a whopping 12 minutes! That same bag will take centuries to degrade and may cause irreversible damage to marine life and our oceans. Making the switch to reusables will make a difference - in the health of our planet and the long-lasting freshness of your food.

They are not just for produce either. You can store travel items and almost any household item. Perfect for toys, fruit, coins, medicine, cables, cosmetics, accessories and much more. Use them to keep things together during grocery shopping, camping, fishing, garden harvest, beach, and travels. 

We hope you’ll join us in our effort to continue the conversation surrounding the reduction of plastic use and keeping our oceans clean. 

Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King enrolled their children in children’s acting workshops that were taught by a man named Walter Roberts….when  Walter’s wife gave birth, as a thank you for teaching the King children…..Coretta paid for the hospital bill…..

GET IT SIS.

For more than a year, Vox’s Sarah Kliff has been investigating hospital price-gouging in America, collecting hospital bills from her readers and comparing them, chasing up anomalies and pulling on threads, producing a stream of outstanding reports on her findings.

In her latest installment, Kliff digs deep into the famously bizarre world of ER bills and points out some of the most egregious ways in which these are rigged.

For example, if you are injured and also financially precarious, you might travel to a more distant ER just to be sure that the hospital you’re visiting is in-network for your insurer, but that means nothing. “In-network” ERs often staff “out-of-network” doctors, and there is no way to find out whether the doctor treating you is covered by your insurer until you get the bill: one of Kliff’s readers got bills for $8,000 from an out-of-network surgeon who treated his broken jaw at an in-network hospital.

And much of the care you receive at an ER is subject to bizarre price gouging: one of Kliff’s readers was charged $238 for two drops of the generic eyedrop ofloxacin which retails for $15/vial; the routine pregnancy test that ERs administer to women of childbearing years can cost up to $465, enough to buy 84 pregnancy kits at the pharmacy; and one Seattle hospital charged $76 for a squirt of generic neosporin. Not all hospitals gouge on all drugs, and many of these drugs are not being administered for urgent health problems – a halfway honest hospital could advise a patient, “We charge $238 for this eyedrop, why don’t you pick up a bottle for $15 next door and administer it yourself?”

Finally, Kliff uncovers wild variability in the “ER facility fee,” which is a cover-charge you’re assessed just for walking in the door at an ER. One of Kliff’s readers paid $5,751 for sitting in a hospital waiting room with an ice-pack and a bandage while waiting to see a doctor, but who left because she was feeling better and didn’t need care after all. Kliff’s work reveals that these “facility fees” are rising at twice the rate of other health charges, with no rhyme or reason.

All of this refers to people who come into the ER under their own power, out of an abundance of caution – for example, my daughter recently broke her collarbone, but we didn’t know that until we went to the ER for an X-ray, and if we’d less prudent, we could have iced it and made a regular doctor’s appointment for the next day, leaving her untreated and undiagnosed. But of course, ERs treat large numbers of people who are unconscious or in agony when they arrive, either on their own or on an ambulance gurney. These patients can’t possibly be expected to shop around, to demand to know whether their medicines are medically necessary (I once had a small eye injury that I went to get checked out on a Sunday just in case and had to stop the nurses from pumping me full of IV dramamine just in case it turned out I would need neurosurgery!), to evaluate whether the doctors are in- or out-of-network, and so on.

(We ended up paying $2,400 out of pocket for our daughter’s ER visit, including $2.50 for a generic tylenol, despite having gold-plated insurance from Cigna)

Kliff’s work reveals the whole story of “market based medicine” to be a fiction. Markets are regulated zones where consumers compare the offerings of producers and make purchase choices based on their information. To call being wheeled unconscious into an ER and raced into an operating theater and then presented with a bill months later a “market transaction” is to make a terribly, grisly joke.

It’s as good an argument for Medicare for All and single-payer health care as you could ask for.