Portal to the Sacral Chakra, and the Womb

Written by Gabrielle Hawke

August 2024

The earth welcomes the soft touch of the soles of my feet as I begin to walk the sandy track. It’s lined with yellow wattle and soft lemon bottlebrush, both adding some warm, sunny colour to this cold, wintery day. I pick up a stem of bottlebrush that has recently fallen from its tree, and wander down the stairs toward the noise of the pounding waves hitting the shore, the Pandanus guardians observing me as I pass … it’s not far now.

I love this place, Mara Creek. It is known to be a sacred women’s place for the local Yaegl mob. I sometimes soak in the brackish water – it feels nurturing, like I’m being held by the great mother. There’s something about the colour that draws me in, it’s a soft coppery colour that sparkles like a clear amber jewel in the sunlight and deepens into a dark chocolate brown as you float further into the creek. Its colour comes from the tannin in the leaves of the tea trees that seep into the waters. It’s a safe space this one, peace filled.

More often than not I find myself on my own as I am today, yet sometimes I can almost hear the voices of the women and girls that have gathered here before me, being supported by these waters, this land. It’s here that called me to come to begin my writing. Do you ever get those callings from places in nature, a vision of a place in your mind? I know I do, and I love to follow those callings as I know there is a message waiting for me there.

I set up the offerings I have collected on my way here. Three sea shells, that were once home of the Janthina globosa, commonly known as the violet snail. I rinse the sand out of one and fill it with some tea tree water and place it on a piece of driftwood. The lemon bottle brush lays alongside, with a piece of branch from the guardian Pandanus, that looks amazingly like it has aboriginal carvings on it. The local grey heron slowly wades through the shallows in search of food. I make my offerings to the land and waters that I hold so dear to my heart.

Where I am sitting I can see the water slowly leaving the main body of the creek, curving its way through the sand, like an eel, on its journey back to the ocean. The area directly in front of me feels womblike, a large pool of water that is being cradled by a high bank of sand on both sides. The swallows begin circling overhead, creating a vortex.

I drop into meditation to connect to my sacral, to my womb, yet instead I find myself in my throat, I can see and feel it strongly. This is the way through to the portal.

I smile bemusedly to myself, of course it is the throat. I remember some years back, being in a shamanic journey with the flower code of Feverfew when I found myself in what I thought was my uterus, which transformed during the journey into my throat. After the journey I did some research on how these might be connected and recall my childlike excitement when I discovered the incredible visual similarities between the throat and the reproductive system – how much the larynx and the uterus looked alike, as well as the vocal cords and the vulva and pelvic floor for example, it seemed incredible that I didn’t already know this.

This led me to the connection between the sacral, the heart and the throat chakras and how our creations are taken from the sacral through the heart and then expressed via our voice or through our hands. I also recalled my teacher telling me that when we hold trauma in the womb it can directly affect our voice, how we speak up, how we communicate or our inability to do so.

The image of the shadow of my heart returns from my journey into the pool of my heart in an earlier meditation, curiously this feels connected. I have worked through much trauma with regards to my womb, and my voice, or lack thereof, yet there’s still something there, another layer to unfold perhaps.

I am visualising myself as one with the larynx – the sacred guardian to my inner world – to my voice, my creative expression of what comes from my womb. I wait patiently until I am transported to the cervix, the sacred guardian, protector to the entrance of the inner world of my place of creation.

How magnificent and incredible is our womb. This place where miracles occur. How has society forgotten the importance of what we carry within us. What must it have been like to be a woman some 2000 odd years ago, when you began to experience the gradual and not so gradual decline of your rights as a female, the silencing, the loss of autonomy, the fear, the shame you were made to feel. But that’s too big a subject for today. It is changing though. I’ve witnessed it not only in myself, but in many others and can see it in my own daughters. They are beginning to know the truth of the magical womb that they carry inside them. How sacred it is and how important it is to protect.

And so I wonder what is it that my womb wants to birth in this moment

I step through the portal. I stand in awe, my mouth gaping, at the most magnificent and colourful bookshelves, I have ever seen. I slowly turn around, they line the walls, they seem to be growing up through the floor and disappearing into the roof of the womb, they are stacked with books of all sizes and colours. I select a luminescent orange book from the shelf in front of me and an artwork literally paints itself to life out of the pages. I laugh and put the book back in its place. I select another, and another, opening and inspecting them with wonder before returning them to their place on the shelf. One shelf of books contained memories of my already birthed creations, proud memories, so many I had forgotten about, and many I had never really honoured. Then there were the walls of books containing the very ordinary - yet important on so many levels, and those not so ordinary, grandiose in fact, and then others so far beyond my own imagination I didn’t even know what they were –they were limitless.

Theres a noise to my left, I open my eyes, the heron slowly makes its way to the other side of the creek. The water in front of me is slowing moving, slowing pushing its way toward the sea, it feels like a birth canal, the water pushing its creations forth offering them to, and surrendering them into the great ocean of life.

My eyes close, a picture of the heart appears, filtering what is being birthed from my womb, through my throat and through the hands. Are they coming from love, there must be this connection with the heart I hear. I see the infinite potential in this library contained within my womb, within all our wombs. Each day, each hour, each minute, a creation waiting to be selected. Allowing the magnificent Creator to work through us.

As I gaze at this world around me it dawns on me slowly that I do know what wants to be birthed and it’s not so much a creation but an honouring of the creations, in and around me. An honouring of what has already been birthed and that which wants to be birthed.

It may be the simple creation of a dinner for the family, of planning a new or regenerating an old garden, or building on a wonderful heartfelt business. Yet it also about honouring all of creation, including the one that creates all. It is appreciating the miracle of each and every sentient being on this earth.

Yet it is also in admiring the detail in this shell that was once the home to a violet snail, delicate and fragile to touch, washed upon the shore for me to collect today, or the lemon bottlebrush carrying it’s own story from this land, it’s food, and its medicine, or perhaps the branch from the Pandanus with its naturally occurring carving of lines and dots - all works of art just waiting to be honoured for the incredible creation that they are.

Whether your masterpieces are made for you alone to enjoy, or to share with others, or made for the one that created you, let them be made and cherished with love and honour - each and every one.

I place the bottle brush into the hollow stem of the pandanus branch as I complete my offering to this sacred place and the creator of this natural masterpiece, our world, by sending love and gratitude to all that surrounds me.