3 Yoga Moves for Womb Wellness and Sacral Chakra Health by Anissa Marie
Yoga instructor and filmmaker Anissa Marie photographed by Connar Tandy @connartandy
Over the last year, I’ve learned that healing requires more than just sitting quietly and meditating. You have got to find a way to move all that bad energy out of your body, and how to welcome good prana into your vessel! Movement gets those positive juices going within you! It is its own form of meditation for the Divine Feminine woman. And because the Sacral chakra is all about pleasure, play and the flow of life, movement is also an excellent way to work your Womb energy.
Yoga was my first entryway into the healing power of movement. So, naturally, I spoke to my friend, yoga instructor and filmmaker Anissa Marie @anissalovesyou, about the connection between the intentional movements of yoga and healing the Sacral chakra.
Anissa is based in Los Angeles, where she teaches classes at Hot 8 Yoga in Koreatown and JLT Fitness in Hollywood. She has created "The Yoga Nook" a safe place for practice and meditation focused on serving the needs of BIPOC in West Hollywood. She also teaches private lessons.
With the rain pouring down outside my window in Baltimore, and the sound of the water lapping in Anissa’s hot tub, we went deep into the power of yoga in healing the Sacral, a chakra deeply connected to the element of water and its association with emotions, pleasure and sensuality.
Scroll for our interview and three yoga moves to connect to your Sacral chakra!
@anissalovesyou
Yogi, Filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA
AMIRAH MERCER: How did you get into yoga?
ANISSA MARIE: As you know, because we ran track together in high school, we used to put our bodies through a lot. I tore my patellar tendon in my right knee, so I was doing physical therapy, and then someone suggested Bikram yoga because of its restorative properties. I was living in New York at the time, and I found a Black-owned yoga studio. It was a very traditional studio — no talking, no being late, they took it very seriously. From there I was able to stop going to physical therapy. I really learned that I could actually heal myself — because with knee injuries, in the Western way of medicine, it’s like, ‘One day you’re going to have to have a surgery, one day you’re going to have to get this replaced.’ But I really don’t subscribe to a lot of Western medical practices.
AMIRAH: How has yoga affected your mental, emotional and spiritual health?
ANISSA MARIE: It benefits all of that. Just connecting to the breath, which is our life force. We breathe every day autonomously, without even thinking about it, but once you really start to breathe intentionally, you can turn that breath into energy and send it to different places in the body.
I loved going to those classes, where you put your phone away, [because] you really have to make that commitment to yourself and to your practice. At the time I was working as a social media manager for BET, which required me to work around the clock, so it felt really good to have that 90 minutes for myself when no one could call me. From there it helped me to develop what’s called a sadhana — a daily spiritual practice. I started waking up a little bit earlier to fit in a few classes before work, or sit in silence for 5 minutes before I’m rushing out of the door to hop on the train and dealing with all of these different energies. So that transferred over into my daily life.
Even today, I wake up and I give myself 90 minutes to just connect with myself, my spirit, to journal, think about my thoughts — and usually I do that after a 15 to 20 minute yoga practice and breath work. Because once you tune into your body and tune out the outside world, you can listen to your own thoughts. And I really like to set myself up to have a great day. It’s almost like the practice and the meditation is like a shield. I have my shield on now, I’m feeling balanced, I know I’m in tune with my emotions. I’ve addressed anything that might’ve carried over from the day before, and I’m starting out from an even playing ground before I start to deal with anything that might come up in the world.
AMIRAH: You mentioned your daily routine — what’s something that you do to honor your body daily, outside of when you’re instructing someone?
ANISSA MARIE: I have the same thing I do every morning: I wake up, I turn on my kettle, and I make myself some coffee or tea — just a warm drink to get my body warm — and then I like to just sit and think for 5 minutes. And I’ll do this in a Sukhasana, easy posture, which is basically sitting with your legs crossed. I sit there in a comfortable position, take some breaths, notice what comes to mind — and the thing I’ve learned about meditation after practicing for a while is it’s not necessarily turning your mind off, it’s just giving yourself space to acknowledge thoughts that come through and then release them. It’s something I do to honor myself and to balance my own spirit before I start giving myself freely to whatever I’ve committed to that day.
AMIRAH: How did yoga go from something you were doing as your own self-care into something that now you’re making it a service to others?
ANISSA MARIE: That’s a really good question. I felt like, especially in the Black community, yoga wasn’t something that was very common [nine years ago when I started]. I would go to classes and, besides the Black-owned yoga studio I would go to, it was mostly white men and women teaching mostly no people of color in the classes. As a person of color who felt like they found this wonderful gift that you can use to heal yourself mind-body-spirit, I just really wanted to share it. It started with my family. My dad is a former athlete and he has injuries that have been nagging at him for years. I started trying postures with him, and then I started sharing with my mother, my sister and friends. I noticed that I was able to help them alleviate pain and stress, or even just helping them build strength. But it wasn’t until I went to do my teacher training that I learned about the non-physical parts of yoga, the different principles that go with the yogic lifestyle — everything from your diet to the way that you treat people, the way that you treat the Earth, the way you treat animals, and the things you do when no one’s watching, and I decided I wanted to live my life in a way that aligned with those principles and to share those things with others because they just benefited my life so much.
AMIRAH: I love that you got into it helping your family and friends, so it was a super-organic way into teaching.
ANISSA MARIE: Right, and I come from a West Indian background — my mother is from the Bahamas — and it wasn’t until I started sharing these things with her that she opened up like, ‘I used to do yoga in my teens’ — and it’s like, when you think you know everything about your parents! I found out she was a really disciplined yoga practitioner in her youth. But in the Black community, people are very suspicious toward outside practices. If you have family that’s very religious, they might be like, ‘What is this chanting? What are these mantras? What is it you’re doing with your body? How does this conflict with whatever my religious beliefs are?’ But it was really just explaining to them that it’s not about religion, it’s more about principles for a healthy, happy lifestyle.
AMIRAH: With Other Suns, I focus a lot on Womb Wellness, and my healing journey has come a lot through healing my Sacral chakra. What lessons did you learn about the Sacral chakra in your practice?
ANISSA MARIE: The Sacral chakra is actually one of my favorite chakras to focus on. I think it’s a great chakra for women because it focuses all around sensuality, creativity — it’s our pleasure center, and I think that as women, our hips, our thighs, our butts, it’s always something that we’re working on or focused on. It also deals with the demon of guilt. I can speak from personal experience of having trouble letting myself feel free of obligations — whether it’s work, family or friends. I have this tendency to spread myself a little thin. And you feel guilty, maybe you missed an outing that someone wanted you to come to, or maybe you had to call someone back. What I’ve learned by balancing my Sacral chakra is that everything is okay. If I was supposed to be somewhere or do something, and mentally, physically, emotionally I wasn’t feeling up for it, or I needed that time to myself, I’ve learned to not feel guilty and to just be expressive and honest with people. ‘Hey, I was feeling emotionally under the weather. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend your event, but I have to honor myself and my true feelings, and that’s what comes first for me.’
When you’re unbalanced in your Sacral, you have poor boundaries — you might start to be a people pleaser and want to make everyone happy and put yourself on the back burner. As women, we’re naturally nurturers. If we’re mothers, we’re naturally putting our children before us; if we’re partners, we’re naturally doing what we can to make sure our partner is happy and feels good. So when you focus on the Sacral chakra, it allows you to set healthy boundaries, to have healthy detachments, without being too detached, without being codependent on anyone. Less focusing on the exterior things you can't control and really focusing on your own spiritual ecosystem.
AMIRAH: I like that — ‘spiritual ecosystem,’ yes! So what are three moves women can do to connect to or heal their Sacral chakra?
1. supta baddha konasana - reclined ankle pose
“This posture gets deep into a lot of chakras. First, we’re rooted down into the Earth, stimulating our Root chakra. With the knees splaying wide, we’re getting into our hips and lower back, which is the Sacral chakra. And we’re opening up our heart, our palms facing up so that we can receive energy.”
ANISSA MARIE: Okay, I’m so excited about this part because I did a little flow before this just to see what really makes me feel healed and whole. The first one is Supta Baddha Konasana. It’s reclined, bound ankle pose. Most of us know the first layer of this pose as ‘butterfly,’ when you bring the soles of your feet together and you let your knees splay out to the side and you pull your heels in close to the body. Once you’re there, you come onto your forearms and you gently lower yourself down onto your back, straightening your spine, allowing the crown of your head to reach behind you. So you’re just reclining now in this butterfly pose, and then you allow your palms to face up at the sides of your body. The thing that I love about this posture is it gets deep into a lot of chakras here. First, we’re rooted down into the Earth, so we’re stimulating our Root chakra. With the knees splaying wide, we’re getting into our hips and lower back, which is the meat and potatoes of the Sacral chakra. At the same time, we’re opening up our heart with our chest cavity facing upwards, our palms are facing up so that we can receive energy, and then if you want to add another layer to this posture, you can tighten your Mula Bandha, which is your root lock — it’s kind of like the muscle that you squeeze to do a Kegel. And that’s another way to control your energy: On your inhales, you tighten your Mula Bandha, and then on your exhales, you release it, so it’s also an exercise for the genitalia and a way to send energy to that part of the body.
When you’re in that Supta Baddha Konasana, you can bring your eyes to a gentle close and find the rhythm of your natural breath, or you can go into some diaphragmatic breathing — just breathing deep into the belly, allowing that to rise, and then the chest will fill up with air, the lungs will fill up with air, the heart will lift, that whole chest cavity expands, and as you exhale you pull the navel to the spine. It’s a really great breath to partner with the Supta Baddha Konasana because it really stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest system. So just practicing this breath will not only open up your Sacral chakra, help you feel grounded, help you be able to give and receive love freely by opening up the Heart chakra, but it also can help you sleep more soundly at night and it can help to regulate your digestion.
AMIRAH: That’s a power move! What are the others?
2. prasarita - standing separate leg forward fold
“What it does in the Sacral chakra is that it allows us to experience flection and compression at the same time in the hips, so the flection is happening on the inner thigh after stretching our legs apart, and the compression comes from hinging at the hip.”
ANISSA MARIE: The next one is Prasarita, which is standing separate-leg forward fold. So with this one you’ll bring about 3.5 to 4 feet in between your feet and your toes will be facing a 45 degree angle toward the outside of your mat. You’ll take a deep inhale and stretch up to align with spine, and then you’ll exhale and hinge at the hip. You can grab for the outsides of your feet, maybe your shins, you can place both palms on the floor if your body allows it. The goal here is to eventually get the crown of your head on the floor, and it’s a great practice if you want to get into headstands. What it does in the Sacral chakra is that it allows us to experience flection and compression at the same time in the hips, so the flection is happening on the inner thigh after stretching our legs apart, and the compression comes from hinging at the hip. This is a great posture to breath into and see how far you can get. It’s also aligning the spine. You’re finding separation between the legs, but then you’re also finding compression and compactment in the body by pulling the torso down onto the thighs and really just melting into it. So it’s a great posture for the Sacral, and then it’s also great for the Solar Plexus because it engages our core and the back. And it’s great if you want to go onto stimulating the Crown chakra in the headstand after you’ve practiced this for a little bit. It’s just like a straddle forward fold if anyone’s trying to get a picture in their head.
AMIRAH: I’m, like, mentally doing these in my head. I can’t wait to do them afterwards.
3. dhanurasana - Floor bow
“When our uterus is larger than normal, we we need to give it more space, so stretching the abdomen allows us to do that. This posture is also really great to alleviate anxiety, and it’s also a really well-known energy builder.”
ANISSA MARIE: I have one more. This one I really love specifically because it aids with menstrual discomfort. It’s Dhanurasana — floor bow pose. You lay down onto your belly, bend your knees behind you so that your heels are coming in close to your bum, and then you grab for the outside of your feet — like where your shoelaces go from the outside — and you pull your heels into your body. At the same time when you inhale, you begin to lift your torso off of the mat, so your body looks like a bow, or a bow and arrow. Not only does This posture open up the Sacral chakra, it stimulates the Mula Bandha naturally, that root lock, so that’s a really beneficial thing. It happens without even noticing it, and then by stretching the abdomen and pelvis area, it helps to alleviate menstrual discomfort. When our uterus is larger than normal, we we need to give it more space, so stretching the abdomen allows us to do that. This posture is also really great to alleviate anxiety, and it’s also a really well-known energy builder, so if you’re feeling a little tired or fatigued throughout the day, and you practice this posture — maybe you take five breaths in it, and then do a couple of rounds in it — it gives you an extra boost of energy. It also is a cardio posture, so it opens up the heart, it makes it a little bit tougher for us to breath, so when we come out of the posture, we’re breathing with more capacity in our lungs. It’s really good for dealing with PMS symptoms, alleviates anxiety, and stimulates that Mula Bandha, which works with our genital muscles.
AMIRAH: I feel like I’m going to be replaying this and doing this little flow all the time! I’m so excited.
ANISSA MARIE: I’m glad, yes, I love all these postures. These are things I do on the daily. I just find a way to fit them into the day and it’s like even if you don’t have time for an entire practice, just giving yourself 30 sec to 1 minute to focus on your breathing, your breath, how you body feels is better than nothing at all.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Let’s vibe, goddess!
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