fit with your nature. But heed them, however illogical they may seem to others, for they are your true guide. Otherwise, wrong environments can lead to you becoming sick because they put your immune system out of synch.
Your natural – and best – reflexes will come as rapidly as a click of the fingers. Your whole life is best lived in the moment because of this spontaneity. Yet it also means your antennae are always twitching and this can lead you to behave like a nervous Nellie. You’re liable to be watchful for any conceivable threat and to weigh up the risk around every corner. In fact, it is a wonder that you ever step out of the house in the morning! There is a tendency to fear this and fear that, because your survival mechanism is constantly on. This is the mother who is petrified of letting her child go out to play, or the insurance company’s dream – the person determined to cover every risk.
The specific fears that can be aroused within you depend on the gates that are turned on within your centre, and all this will be examined later in the book. But in order to calm this characteristic, you need to be aware of when this over – protectiveness kicks in and then adopt a more realistic attitude. The Spleen is fearful by nature, so stay alert, but don’t allow this to stop your life from happening. Also, a defined Spleen tends to mean a strong immune system, helping you battle illness. If you are constantly sick, it might well be the case that you’re ignoring your intuitive senses.
If your Spleen is undefined
Fears don’t elude you just because this centre is undefined. Indeed, it’s very easy for you to get triggered by the conditioning influence of other people and, because you mirror their fears, there’s a tendency for them to be magnified. Sometimes you can feel inundated with fears and have no way of processing them. Ironically, fear can overwhelm someone with this centre undefined more than anyone with it defined.
What I would say is that those with a defined Spleen are reacting to fears alerted by intuition and instinct, whereas you tend to give focus to fears without a root cause or rationale, and this can be debilitating. Your fears are likely to be the adopted baggage of those around you or have come from an experience or person from the past.
The way to transform this conditioning influence into impassive wisdom is to view fear objectively. Make your fears friends, not enemies, by becoming conscious of them. For example, a fear of authority can be turned into wisdom by understanding that a position carries power, not a person. The CEO of your company is not powerful, it’s his position that wields authority. Your wisdom grows from shifting your perspective on whatever fears grip you.
You also have an innate ability to diagnose the well – being in others. With an undefined centre, you are reflecting the atmosphere around you and will be able to pick up when someone is on edge.
Ironically, though, you struggle to recognize your own well – being. You’ll tend to be sensitive to drugs of any sort, so you might try using homoeopathic or other lightweight medicines. Ordinary prescription drugs might well take their toll on your immune system.
Also, be aware that you may have sharpened psychic capabilities because you are open to reflecting the intense undercurrents of life. Many mediums and clairvoyants have this centre undefined and thereby pick up the signals being emitted from others.
The Root
Drive
At the bottom of the life chart sits the square centre of the Root, the launch pad for all activity in life because it houses our adrenaline and processes stress. As the second of the two ‘pressure centres’, it applies the pressure to act.
The Root exists in a condition of stillness and joy, providing a sense of being rooted and grounded. If the other pressure centre, the Crown, applies an urgency to rationalize life, then the Root applies pressure to engage with and perform in life. It is, by nature, a centre of raw energy, but if it were to have a voice, when triggered, it would scream at you, ‘Lights, camera, action!’
The modern – day world heaps expectation on our shoulders with the pressure to be effective, profitable, productive, brilliant and able to complete a laundry list of tasks. The Root blindly provides the push to get on with things – and cope.
Ambition is one of nine characteristics of this centre. The others are joyfulness, stillness, contentiousness, restlessness, limitation, neediness, provocation and imagination. These individual characteristics are determined by which gates are ‘on’ and are explored later.
Anatomically, the Root relates to the adrenal glands, providing us with the stimulus that turns us into adrenaline junkies or provides that adrenaline rush. But, of course, we can also become stressaholics and permanently maxed out.
If your Root is defined
You have the means to handle, withstand and create extraordinary pressure that calls you and others to perform. All imposed or presumed deadlines are triggered in the Root and you have to gauge whether any goal or timeframe is essential or even attainable without losing balance. There is an intense drive from within, almost a compulsion to act. You are sitting on a volcano of energy that could erupt at any moment. Such pressure can blast you, and any person or project around you, into any number of different orbits.
Your natural state is to be living in the eye of the hurricane, finding calm and stillness amid the madness. When you can calmly smile to yourself in the middle of chaos, you’ve found balance. You thrive on adrenaline rushes, so once you’ve mastered how to find your poise in any situation, the crazier life gets, the more you enjoy it. You are, by nature, an adrenaline junkie, and as such you can be adept at handling stressful situations.
You may well adopt a classic symptom of someone with this centre defined: the inability to sit still. Your leg may be bouncing or your foot tapping, indicating the adrenaline and restlessness coursing through you. You are expert at getting people and things launched; the one who lights the fuse. I would counsel you to marshal the pressure which builds within you. Learn not to jump into something just because it sets off your adrenal glands, because the wrong pursuits or situations can send you off – balance and leave you with stress that not even the Root can handle. The Root is all about finding equilibrium in your life whilst pursuing your goals and chasing worthwhile ambitions.
If your Root is undefined
Your natural state, when alone, is to be relaxed and unbothered, going through life at your own pace. The problems begin when you’re sucked into the vortex of the outside world and start experiencing stress which your centre is not designed to handle.
You can probably associate with the expression ‘getting into a spin’. This is because a conditioning influence, either in your past or present – day environment, feeds stresses into your system from those with a defined Root.
You can achieve all sorts of goals in your lifetime, but it has to be done on your own terms. Whenever you feel stressed, you’ve committed to something outside your own integrity. Other people’s needs and pressures can send you off – balance and leave you out of sorts if you yield to them. If you’ve ever been challenged by a statement such as ‘Get out there and make something of yourself!’ that outside pressure alone can lead to you stressing out. You don’t have consistent access to the adrenaline needed to carry you through. In fact, you might well be known as a serial procrastinator or someone who does things at the last minute because, to achieve anything, you need time for the pressure to build within. You might be one of those people who pack their suitcase two minutes before the taxi arrives. I would almost bet that you write ‘to do’ lists just to be seen to be doing something! You can start millions of things but finish very little.
One likely characteristic people will notice about you is that you’ll be hopelessly early or terribly late when running on someone else’s timings.