Deep Healing Transformation with Cristi Christensen

A Personal Note From Orion

After obtaining a severe back injury while training for the 2004 Olympics, Cristi Christensen thought everything was over. But during her journey to heal her physical body, something opened up in her life that started to heal her holistically – spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

Cristi Christensen is a Global Embodiment Coach, whose mission is to empower women and expand their definitions of yoga and well-being. She is also the author of Chakra Rituals: Awakening the Wild Woman Within, which is a self-help guide that makes the ancient science of Chakras accessible through a seven-week step-by-step program. The program includes immersive exercises such as vinyasa yoga, writing contemplation and embodiment.

She is the creator of Soul Fire, a unique style of yoga that incorporates dance, meditation and mudra practices to awaken and empower you, and the co-founder of the Asia-based Kirana Yoga School and US-based Deep Exhale. She has taught in 20 countries around the globe to tens of thousands of women.

In this episode, Cristi shares how to heal, transform and evolve your life and body through yoga and other self-transformation tools.

In this Episode

[01:17] – Orion introduces her next guest, Cristi Christensen, a Global Embodiment Coach, whose mission is to empower women and expand their definitions of yoga and well-being.
[4:43] – Orion wants to know about Cristi’s passion and the past experiences that lead her to find it.
[9:09] – Christi shares about having to deal with devastating anxiety after her injury and how yoga helped her heal.
[12:10] – Orion asks how Christi copes during the rehabilitation of her injury.
[15:22] – Both Orion and Christi talk about their perspective on yoga and the joy that can be released when doing it.
[16:43] – Orion requests Christi to give some advice to the people who are new to yoga and those that feel intimidated by everybody else when doing yoga.
[21:13] – Orion narrates her experience of shockwave therapy.
[23:00] – Christi presents her book called Chakra Rituals.
[25:44] – Description of the seven main chakra centers in the physical body.
[33:24] – The final step of the seven chakras is called saba chakra, which is the crown of the hand.
[36:15] – Orion and Christi both expound on healing through regression, awareness and reconfiguration involving the subconscious mind.
[39:58] – Christi explains how her throat chakra guided her to become a speaker.
[44:58] – Christi emphasizes that having a daily commitment to the sacred feeds her life more than anything.
[49:18] – Visit Cristi Christensen’s website to know more about her. Also, check out and grab a copy of her new book, Chakra Rituals: Awakening the Wild Woman Within.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey, Cristi and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. Thank you for being here.

I’m so excited and honored to be here with you. Pleasure to meet you.

Me too. Before we begin, can you share a little bit about your passion and how did you become the person that you are today?

I am a survivor of multi-generational abuse that started as a very young girl and continued for some time.

Wow, that’s just a little question. I really feel like everything that happened to me from the time I was born until now has informed everything I’ve done. I am a survivor of multi-generational abuse that started as a very, very young girl and continued on for quite some time. Because of the brilliance and intelligence of the body, I suppressed those memories very deeply and learned the skills of how to disembody, to not be present, and not be in the here and now so I didn’t have to feel the pain of what was happening. I also learned the power of shutting down my voice.

Even though at a time, those were tools that very much kept me alive, in time, those tools began to hurt me, you could say. Of course, all this was happening on an unconscious level so I didn’t have obviously the awareness or the understanding around any of this until much later in life. But one of my other defense mechanisms, I guess you could say, was I threw myself into athletics.

I was athletically very, very gifted and talented. By the time I was 10 years old, I was training 8 hours a day, striving to make the Olympic team in gymnastics. That kept me out of the house. In a way, that also kept me safe.

You just embodied by being very embodied in your gymnastics?

Yeah.

It’s like connecting to your body, but not connecting to your body. It’s an interesting place to be.

After I had to go on this big healing journey of slowly and surely healing my physical body, all the other things that needed to be healed started to come up and began to percolate. Click To Tweet

Very interesting because when I was obviously focusing on learning these skills and whatnot, I was very in my body. But when I wasn’t at the gym, I would trip over something and that’s normally how I got hurt. It was like, when I had this super duper focus of where to put my attention, I was very embodied, but outside of that, not so much, I guess you could say. I guess also what played into my favor of that skill of detachment was I had very little fear.

I was learning new skills and new tricks. I was like, sure, if my coach thought I could do it, I would go for it, which could get you into trouble sometimes too. From there, I actually did suffer some really severe injuries, my parents actually made me quit gymnastics, and then I moved into platform diving and continued on that same kind of track.

I moved away from home by the time I was 15 and was training at a training center for diving in Orlando, Florida. Then I was actually training for the 2004 Olympics when I broke my back. That was from the training, from the years of gymnastics, the years of training eight hours a day.

For the last four years I was competing, it was all pain management.

For probably the last four years I was competing, it was all pain management. I was at acupuncture, chiropractors, icing, heating, electrodes before and after every practice. Physical therapy was just all managing. When you’re competing at that elite level, you get used to that’s just part of it. I never actually thought it was going to be the end. I just thought, this is what you deal with when you’re at this level.

I got to the point where the doctor literally sat me down and told me I was going to be walking with a cane by the time I was 30. If I ever wanted to have kids, I would not be able to pick those kids up. So he’s like, “This is not an option for you to continue. If you continue, the devastation that you’re going to do to your body is beyond.” You need to wake up, basically, is what he was telling me.

It was really hard for me to swallow because this was my one dream, my one goal, the one thing I knew I was good at, the one way I was identified, and it was also my escape. Again, I didn’t really even know that at that time. After I had to go on this big healing journey of healing my physical body, slowly but surely, all the other things that needed to be healed started to come up and started to percolate.

How old were you when you got injured?

I was 24.

Wow, very young.

I was 24, yeah. Again, it wasn’t overnight, it was over time. I was eventually at this place of dealing with pretty devastating anxiety and or depression depending on the day. Prior to that, I’d never had an experience that I knew of either, with the exception of maybe in competition. Now I could say that was probably anxiety, but then I labeled it as nerves.

I was very uncomfortable in my own skin. I was cursing my body because it broke on me.

I was very uncomfortable in my own skin. I was cursing my body because it broke on me. I was very disconnected from self, from others, from spirit. At that moment, someone invited me to my first yoga class. At this time, yoga wasn’t what it is now. It was not popular, it was not cool. It was still under the guise of maybe being weird or not sure what it was.

Really the only thing I knew about yoga at the time was that Madonna did it and she had great arms. That was my construct. I think in those times, when you’re like, okay, if you think it’s going to make me feel better, sure, I’ll go, it was one of those. I really believe that that first class was this first step in my healing journey of not just my physical body, but my relationship with my body, with starting to connect again with my emotional body, learning how to manage my mental body, and reconnect or maybe for the first time, connect to my spiritual body in a way that I hadn’t before.

Long story long, I started continuing to practice yoga and got introduced to these different teachers. Pretty early on in my yoga journey, I got introduced to the chakra system. That was what really lit me up. The chakras are described as mules of energy, of light, of color.

It was like, I could imagine these spinning wheels of energy, power, and color as me coming back to life in the red, in the purple, in the green, in the yellow. It was me waking up again and recognizing that I was not my trauma, I was not my set of circumstances, I was not my failure. My whole life just started to change.

Everything that's ever happened to you is held in the tissues of your body. Click To Tweet

Again, this was not overnight. I’ve been on this journey for 20 years. I’m so passionate about yoga, the tools of yoga, the tools of self-transformation, the tools and the map of the chakra system because it’s the map in which I now live my life and it’s the map that has helped me, continues to help me heal, evolve, and awaken to all that I am. I know if it can help me in this way, that it can help other people. I want to share it with as many people as possible.

That’s beautiful.

That was my short but long answer.

Thank you for sharing that. It’s very powerful. People learn more from stories than from things that we tell them because somebody probably just heard this and got so freaking inspired. They will go to a yoga class just because they heard your story.

I hope so.

Yeah, I’ll tell you why. A lot of time, and it happened to me in LA, when I went to a yoga class and I was around all those super bendy yogi. It felt very vain. It didn’t feel like a deep connection to source and practice of union. It was a practice of Instagram, of I can do the poses.

How do you find the right class for you? How do you cope with being as athletic because I’m sure that when you’re building your injury, you weren’t as powerful or flexible? Were you just perfect from the get-go?

I started training at such a young age. Even pre gymnastics, I was a dancer. My mom was a dancer and she had a dancing school, and we lived in an apartment on top of the dancing school. I was dancing by the age of two pretty much. My athletic career, you could say, started at birth. Yes, of course, when I got injured that final time, I will never be in that kind of shape again. I was in an elite athlete’s shape.

Now I feel better in my body than I probably ever have because I have a different relationship with it.

Now I feel better in my body than I probably ever have because I have a different relationship with it. Because I had doctors telling me I was going to be walking with a cane and all those things by the age of 30, now I can still do pretty much anything I want to do. You’re talking about this super bendy because of my back injury. I can still do backbends, but I can’t do those crazy backbends that you see on Instagram.

I can’t twist super deeply, but I can still do a handstand and I can still do all the poses that I need to do. I’ve let go of needing to do the picture-perfect stuff. I think that’s been one of my lessons because if I probably never was injured and got into yoga, I would probably be in that competitive, I’m going to be the best and I’m going to be the Olympic. I’m going to go be the Olympics of yoga. That probably would have been the next goal even though there’s no such thing.

I think the fact that I came to it from this place of being injured, what I was getting out of it from day one, it wasn’t the physicality of it that I fell in love with. I fell in love with how it made me feel. Even with all the “exercise,” and all the movement—maybe that’s a better word that I’d done my whole life—I had never paid attention to the breath movement by movement. Even just that alone for 60 minutes or 90 minutes, feeling each and every inhale and exhale as I moved into poses of expansion and contraction, that alone did something tremendous.

I understand that. I took a yoga class once. I did some kind of a backbend and my chest was open. I just started laughing uncontrollably. It was so amazing, like something opened up. I don’t know what happened.

My first class in yoga was the first step in the healing journey of my physical body and my relationship with my body. I started to reconnect with my emotional body, learn how to manage my mental body, and connect to my spiritual body in a way that I hadn’t done before.

Absolutely, that energy was freed. From the yogic perspective, we believe that everything that’s ever happened to us is held in the tissues of our body. The more contraction that we have, the more repression that we have, and the less movement that we have, that just gets almost solidified in the physical body. That might manifest as pain or it might manifest as, oh, I’m just one of those people that my neck is always tight or my shoulder this, but you don’t really know why.

When we get into these yoga asanas, we open up our bodies in these different ways, and we’re breathing into it, especially with backbends because how many of us rule our shoulders forward, collapse our chest down, and are sitting at the computer all day and we’re actually doing the exact opposite. When we open up the chest in this big way, so much energy can come in. So much more breath can come in. There’s this expansion and then we can release some of that stuff that we’re holding unconsciously and get in touch with that spontaneous joy or whatever was releasing out of you in that moment.

I had to go through a C-section. Since the C-section and because of COVID and where I was in the world and the countries I was in, I wasn’t able to join a yoga class and to really practice, train, or go to the gym. I got so tight.

Recently, when I tried to go to a yoga class, it just felt like my body wasn’t mine. I couldn’t do half of what I used to do and it felt very frustrating. For somebody in my situation or for somebody who is new to yoga and they feel intimidated by everybody else, what will be your advice for them?

What you do daily matters most. Having a daily commitment to the sacred is what feeds your life more than anything. Click To Tweet

Honestly, if you’re intimidated to the point where you don’t want to be around people, there are so many incredible online resources for yoga now. That’s one of the brilliant things that came out of COVID. There were tons of platforms that existed before, but most people didn’t see the benefit of doing yoga at home or they’ll go, no, I can’t get the same results or the same connection.

So if you’re someone who’s like, you know what, I don’t feel ready to go to a 60-minute class at a studio or a 90-minute class at your studio. You can go on an online service. There’s a great service called Omstars. Even on YouTube, there are plenty of things. There are so many platforms. You can do 10-minute classes, you can do 20-minute classes to get yourself comfortable in your own body.

Once you’re comfortable enough, I would suggest going to a studio because the connection that you get person to person, even if you don’t talk to them, there’s a syncopation that happens. Everyone’s breathing together, everyone’s moving together. There is something else you get, I believe, from that in-person connection. Obviously, you can forge a deeper connection with the teacher, as well.

Yoga is not supposed to be competitive or comparative.

But keep in mind, yoga is not supposed to be competitive. It’s not supposed to be comparative. It is a journey into the self, for you to get to know yourself, to grow yourself. When that frustration is coming up, that’s one of the lessons. Where else in my life do I get frustrated so easily?

Why am I getting frustrated so easily is because I’m a perfectionist. How is that serving me right now? Can I just be with what is right now? Can I accept that this is my body right now? This is the tightness I feel in my body right now. Can I be so grateful that I’m here on the mat today? I’m breathing in this body, I still have an able body. I know if I keep showing up, it’s going to reopen, I’m going to regain my strength, and so on and so forth.

I’d like to also bring that forth because I think we’re so concerned about what other people might think. Everybody else is so concerned. Do you know what I mean? Everybody is so concerned with themselves, but at the same time, so concerned with everybody else. No one else is thinking about you, no one else is watching you.

So if you can approach the yoga mat from that place of like, I’m doing this to serve my body, my mind, my spirit in the highest. Today I’m meeting myself wherever I am and I’m going to be with that. I’m going to be with whatever lesson that comes with that. Just like life in general, some days are going to be joyous and full of surprises. Other days are going to be heartbreaking. That might be our same experience on the mat as well.

The chakras are described as energy, light, and color. It was like these spinning wheels of energy, power, and color. It woke me up, and I started to recognize that I was not my trauma, I was not my set of circumstances, I was not my failure. My whole life just started to change.

For me, that experience was very powerful. I went through that process of noticing that I was mad at my body. Why can’t you do what you used to do? This used to be so simple. What is going on? Then I was just like, you gave birth, this is amazing. Your body is saying that. You received a freaking miracle. There is no place to complain. This is all ego. I had to go deep. Why am I so frustrated? Why do I have to be never perfect? I was never perfect at yoga, but at least okay.

Right. No, I totally know what you mean. For you and for all of us, it’s like that shift of perspective. What you just went through we could say is one of the most amazing things that a woman’s body could possibly do and also the most traumatic.

It was traumatic, for sure. I don’t know what happened, but I used to wake up with super back and leg pain every day. I couldn’t even crunch. I had to use the dresser to just get out of bed. This pain lasted for a year and some until I found Shockwave Therapy, which I have a totally completely different podcast episode. It’s about shockwave therapy.

Wow, I’d love to listen to that.

Everybody is so concerned with themselves, but at the same time, so concerned with everybody else. No one else is thinking about you; no one else is watching you. Click To Tweet

It’s amazing. It’s about how to heal the scars with sound waves. When there is a cut in the body, it affects the nerves. The nerves send different signals or no signals to your brain. So you cannot activate it. It doesn’t matter how many clenches I would do, I can’t activate the core. With three to five sessions, it can change your life, even one session.

How did you find it?

Just the way I find everything in my life.

It comes to you.

This time, it’s from my husband who met Uran who is an expert in shockwave therapy. He told him about that. Then we found an office here in Florida that uses the same machine. It is incredible. The technologies that are out there to heal the physical body, they’re amazing. For anyone who’s got scars, shockwave therapy. Go listen to that episode because it’s amazing.

Very cool. I will be checking that out, for sure.

Can you please share about your new book? I’m very excited about your new book.

The seven main chakras are at these seven distinct levels in the body.

Yes. My book is called Chakra Rituals: Awakening the Wild Woman Within. First of all, I’ve already said that the chakra system as a whole has become the map on which I used to live my life. I wanted to create something that took the chakras out of the woo-woo, out of something that seemed like it was out there, and give you a really practical and grounded application of how to use this system, how to harness all the energy that you are, and awaken (what I call) your superpowers. Each of your chakras is at these seven distinct levels as their seven main chakras in the body.

The book has been designed, or I designed the book to take you on a seven-week journey. We spend one week at each of the energy centers. One week on each of the really beginning to build an intimate connection with this particular power, with this particular energy or intelligence. With that, it’s not a book that you just read. It’s a book that you experience by doing practice because the only way we can transform, the only way we can evolve is by doing something. We can’t just read something, we actually have to take action.

I use different rituals or yogic tools for the practices. We do everything from creating sacred space in our home, to meditation, to breathwork, to many vinyasa practices that I call body prayers, to mood your practices, to writing contemplation, to something that I call embodiment. Each day you have a little assignment.

I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed just by hearing this because they’re micro-practices. Everything is 15 minutes or less. Some things are only five minutes because I really wanted to make it accessible for all of us. We all have busy, busy, busy lives. I didn’t want somebody to be like, oh my God, how am I going to do this? So I really tried to design it with that in mind.

I’m passionate about the tools of self-transformation because it’s the map on which I now live my life. It’s the map that has helped me and continues to help me heal, evolve, and awaken to all that I am.

I share some of my experiences. I share personal stories to drive the narrative forward. The goal again isn’t to make you an expert on the chakras, but to give you the opportunity to have and live experience of the energy of who you are and use it as your map for your empowerment for you to come fully alive in who you are.

How would you describe the chakra centers? We’ve got seven or nine, depending on who’s counting.

Or 14, there are many different systems. I went with seven because those are the seven main ones in the physical body. Chakras are energy vortexes. We actually have 1000s of them in the body. But according to the system that I have studied, these main seven are the ones that are associated with our endocrine system, different parts of the body, different parts of our psychology, different parts of our health on all levels, and different parts of our spiritual connection. Don’t get hung up on the number. I’m just sharing from the seven chakra model.

The seven chakra model, what are those chakras, and what do they correlate with as far as color, physical, and emotional application?

That’s a really big question. I’ll see if I can try to quickly give you a little—

The overview. We’re not going to go deep, obviously.

Of course. I’ll go quickly. The chakras run vertically along the spine. One thing that’s important to know that even though they run vertically, is that there’s no hierarchy amongst them, that each of them contains again their own intelligence.

We start at the base of the pelvis, which is known as the root chakra or the Muladhara chakra is the Sanskrit name. The color is red. Red is the color of Shakti, of liveliness, of our blood, that first nourishment that we really receive. It is associated with the element of earth. We’re really dealing with the principles of grounding, of being connected to the earth, being connected to our physical bodies, being connected to our place on the bigger hole of the world.

Chakra work is really about you coming to terms with your own body and taking care of your physical body on the most basic level. It is reclaiming the temple of your body.

This chakra is really about you coming to terms with your own body and taking care of your physical body on the most basic, basic level and what I say is reclaiming the temple of your body.

Moving up to the second chakra, that is the water chakra or Swadhisthana. That is located more of the low belly, low back area of your body, or for women, we call it our womb space. It is associated with the color orange. The color orange is associated with creativity and the element is water. This is the chakra of reclaiming our pleasure, our desire, and coming into our own sovereignty, of our ownership.

If our first chakra is about really tending to the physical body and how we own it in this really deep way, it’s our emotional body. It’s to be in flow, to be in permission to feel everything that you feel. We have a physical body and an emotional body. Earth moves into water.

We move up to the Solar Plexus, which is below at the sternum but above the navel area. This is known as the power chakra or the fire chakra known as Manipura, which is the city of jewels or the place of diamonds within you as the little translation. It’s the color of gold like the sun or the brightness of the flame. It’s associated with the element of fire.

This is our power, this is our confidence, this is our self-esteem, this is how we metabolize our food, metabolize life experience, metabolize all that happens to us. It’s that energy of transformation, of showing up the commitment, the mastery, of saying yes to your life, fully and completely.

Then moving up to the heart center, which is the fourth chakra is known as Anahata. This is the color green. I’d like to think of it as the color of nature and all the different shades of green that we can see when we go into the forest or go into the jungles and into the trees. It is associated with the element of air.

This is the chakra of love in all its forms—self-love, unconditional love, relationship love, parental love, friendship, love a life, and then all that comes along with that. This is where we really wake up to true intimacy and coming into the balance of relationship between giving and receiving. It’s also the place of forgiveness, empathy, and compassion. All the textures, we could say, or all the sentiments really is the heart space.

Vishuddhi means to purify the poison that lives in your system. And that poison could be your thoughts.

Then moving up to the fifth chakra is located in the center of the throat. The Sanskrit name is Vishuddha or Vishuddhi, which means to purify, to purify the poison that lives in our system. That poison could be our thoughts. The poison can be the words that we’re speaking, the words that we’re speaking out loud, or the words that we’re speaking to ourselves. It could also be the poison we’re ingesting through our ears because our ears are associated with the throat center as well.

This is our center of communication. This is where we really bring the inside out, where we reclaim our voice. We can speak our truth authentically and be who we are. It is represented by the color blue, that wide-open full expanse of the most beautiful sky. The element associated with this is space or sound. The power of the sound vibration, the power of even what you’re saying, the shock therapy, the power of sound to create, to heal. Just like our words have the power to heal or to harm. Really even just taking responsibility around the power of a voice and the impact it can make.

Then moving up to the sixth chakra, which is located in the third eye center, the brow center is known as the Ajna center. This is the homeland of our intuition, of our imagination, of us being able to dream bigger, wilder, and reconnect to the awe, magic, and the mystery of what it is to be in this human form. It is also that deep inner knowing, that deep intelligence that embodies. We say that embodied wisdom. In yoga, we say the Yana wisdom.

It is represented by an indigo purple. It’s technically outside of the five elements. We could think of it as a deep, deep space. Also sometimes, some other wisdom keepers refer to it as the element of light. Just like the two eyes can see out, they can also see in and light up what is inside and what is true and illuminate our path forward. That in so many ways, could be our intuition right there.

Then our final step on this seven chakra journey is the crown of the head. That is called the Sahasrara chakra. You can imagine it as a 1008 petaled lotus sitting right on the crown of the head and it acts like a satellite dish that connects you to the divine, that connects you to the infinite, it connects you to the God of your own unique understanding. Whether that is the sun, the moon, the stars, Durga, Mary, or Jesus it doesn’t matter. Higher self-cosmic consciousness.

The only way you can transform and evolve is by doing something. You can't just read something, you have to take action. Click To Tweet

Knowing that the energy that is running the entire universe is the same energy that is running your body so that there’s nothing of you that is not of the divine. We drink that in divine grace, divine gratitude of divine joy. It’s just so beautiful.

That’s just a quick little taste into this rainbow journey that takes us from the roots of the earth and moves up and out into this more spacious, more open, more boundless so we can awaken more and more consciousness or evolution. It’s never over. There are opportunities for more of these pedals to continue to unfurl for more healing to happen, more awakening, more access to the power of who we are.

Wow, I was never as excited about chakras as I am right now.

Just a little bit passionate about it.

Just hearing you speak about it is so beautiful and the way you explain, the metaphors, and the passion in your voice. It’s so soothing and exciting at the same time. It’s very beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that.

You’re so welcome. Thanks for asking.

The big bold questions.

When people ask a question like that, I’m like, well, how much time do you have?

That’s nice. That was beautiful. I was very aware of my throat chakra. Very recently, I just finished. Last week I took a course with Marisa Peer. She’s a legendary therapist, the best in the world. She teaches RTT, which is Rapid Transformation Therapy, which is a therapy that combines cognitive behavior therapy, psychotherapy, hypnosis, and neuro-linguistic programming. It’s all in one and it’s a process.

It helps people heal from different things in one to three sessions. It is actually rapid and it’s very, very helpful. It’s about taking people on regression, to events in their life that are hidden in the subconscious mind, finding the core meaning of the belief that was formed and healing that. It’s all done under hypnosis.

There are so many things that we suppress. This is about bringing stuff from the subconscious into an awareness of ourselves and through that to heal. It’s super powerful. Throughout this whole week, I was hypnotizing other ladies and they were hypnotizing me. There were a few guys in the room, but I think there were more female therapists in that session.

I was getting rapid transformation therapy, and on the last day we had a test. A coach was with us watching how we did it. They regressed me and I tapped into an event in my life that I didn’t even know happened. I had a vague idea. It was all to do with I couldn’t speak, I was repressed, I couldn’t scream.

It was a very, very traumatic event in my childhood and I could not scream. As a part of the healing journey, I think, as soon as we finished that, I got a sore throat. Things that are in the subconscious, things that are—our thought-forms actually create physical limitations or disease in our bodies. I believe this was a part of the cleansing process for gene cleansing.

There’s something that happened there because I feel like even after you finish a session like that, it takes a few days until you just come back to balance because you touch really deep stuff.

Yes. A reconfiguration is almost happening in the whole blueprint of your body.

Yes.

Everything that’s happening in the realms of the subconscious is impacting the physical body.

I’m so glad that you said about what’s happening in the subconscious because the same with the chakra is like, what’s happening in the subtle body or the subconscious? The chakras are the subtle body, the energy that we can’t actually touch, or feel, or hold on to just like the breath that we breathe. But everything that’s happening in those realms of the subconscious and the subtle is impacting the physical body and are being expressed that way.

That’s a perfect example of what happened with you in terms of getting that sore throat after this experience that was happening that you are now integrating and that you first came into awareness. Then it’s starting to integrate and then, what are you left with? A sore throat.

Yeah, that was powerful.

Absolutely.

It really feels like it’s incredible. It happened each and every time. When I did it to somebody else or when they hypnotized me, it’s freaking incredible. I think it’s going to be really lovely to integrate it with all that knowledge about chakras and maybe use some of the rituals in your book to help other people or anyone.

Absolutely.

For example, for the throat chakra, what is a ritual or something that one can do to heal that?

What most people deal with in the throat chakra is constriction, like what you were talking about. Some version of not being able to scream, not being able to speak up, or like swallowing your words. I’m sure everyone listening has had some experience with that. I may just backtrack, personally, my throat chakra has been something of big work for me in my life. I feel like that’s why I was guided to become a speaker because I had no choice but to work on healing.

Start opening up your voice where the stakes aren’t high and where it’s not threatening.

The biggest thing that I tell people is that you want to start opening up your voice where the stakes aren’t high, where it’s not threatening. Whatever that instance that happened to you when you were a little girl and you couldn’t scream, those stakes were high. The way your body may have inputted that information was that, again, it was survival. If the scream came out, maybe something really bad was going to happen to you.

Again, this is not happening on that conscious level, that’s happening on this deep unconscious level. That’s why for some people and women in particular, actually, speaking up and speaking their truth is so terrifying. Because in this subconscious way, we feel like we’re going to die. That’s at least what my experience was.

I love doing sound. It was me learning how to actually just make sounds. So exhaling out through the mouth or the tongue and giving myself permission to be uninhibited. Paying attention to the structures of the throat, the neck, and the ears, and all the habitual tension that you hold there. I guarantee you, if you’re someone who has a difficult time speaking up, you deal with shoulder and neck pain on a regular basis or at the base of your skull.

Every day, I would just gently move my neck up and down, do neck circles from side to side, and pay attention to the sensations I felt so that I could feel when I was contracting there, when there was something that wanted to come out that I wasn’t able to say. Then I play. I play so much.

For me, movement because I’m a movement person, is so the gateway in so many ways for me of opening the body. My favorite technique I’ll share with you, which is also in the book, is something I call shake, rattle, and roar. It’s super fun. If you have kids, you can do it with your kids too because they love it. You can do it with music on or without music.

You literally start with your hands. You just shake your hands vigorously. You shake them forward and back, up and down, and you just get the movement first. Then you can say to your hands, okay, hands, what’s stored in your hands that you want to let out? You don’t say the words, you just start making nonsensical sounds.

When I was a little girl, I made up my own language. I would just start like making these sounds. I know it sounds so crazy, but then you do that through every body part. You then shake out your arms, your shoulders, your chest, your belly, your head, and you let each part vocalize.

Again, you’re not doing this from the thinking mind. You’re doing this from actually that deep wisdom that lives inside that place where everything that has ever happened to us is programmed inside the body. You’re giving yourself permission to release what you’ve been holding. You might notice, as you go through the whole body, there are places that you don’t want to voice out or you’ll just stop. You’re like, no, I’m done. It’s because there’s something there.

This is a non-threatening way to start to play with moving the energy in your body, moving the congestion that’s keeping your voice shut down so that once we build that muscle, we’ll be able to more easily speak and stand up in situations that are a little bit more higher cost. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. I’m going to do it tonight with my two-year-old, for sure.

It’s super fun. It doesn’t have to be long, it could be two minutes. It doesn’t have to be an hour-long thing.

We’ll put Baby Shark in the background.

There you go. If you do it for five minutes, it’s a great HIIT workout because your heart rate is going to get way up, you’ll break a sweat, and it will also just change your whole energetic frequency. What I suggest that you do at the end after you get through the whole body is then just spend the last 10 seconds, just shake the whole body, just make whatever other kind of sound do you want to do, and then take a moment to pause. You finish, round your feet, maybe you take your hands to your heart or anywhere else on your body. Just take a few breaths and be really present to what you feel, be present with the subtle vibrations.

The vibration is our voice. It is the sound of creation.

The vibration is our voice. It is the sound of creation. Just paying attention to those subtle vibrations. You don’t have to put language to it. But if something does come up and you want to take pen to paper and write it down, do that. Just continue to allow that release to happen.

Beautiful. Wow. I have another bold question. What are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

For me, again, this is another reason why I wrote the book the way I did. I believe what we do daily matters most. Having a daily commitment to the sacred is what feeds my life more than anything. That daily commitment to the sacred could be my yoga practice. It could be me just lighting a candle, but just with total presence and reverence. That would be my first thing is doing something daily that is connecting you to the sacred and whatever that means to you.

Because without it, I have no anchor. I don’t want to feel I’m on this journey alone. I want to be plugged into Source and to feel the support of, we could say, the Mother Earth and the Father Sky and know that I’m held in between both. For the divine, spirit, or wherever you want to call it to show up for you, you have to show up for it. That’s at least how I believe

The second one is you got to move your body. You have to move your body. There’s so much science now that says moving your body is good for everything. There’s nothing that moving your body is not good for. Whether it’s doing the shake, rattle, and roar, whether that’s going for a walk, whether that’s doing your yoga, whatever it is for you, make time to move your body every day.

Again, it doesn’t have to be an hour, it can be 10 minutes. Whatever it is, move your body. It will improve the quality of your life by a thousandfold. This is what’s just coming through right now for the third one. If you asked me yesterday or asked me tomorrow, find time to revel in the magic of what it is to be a human, the magic of what it is to be alive.

Chakra Rituals by Cristi Christensen

Because I feel like, especially in this day and age of we’ve been in this period of time for a year and a half now where we’ve been in such detriment, such loss, and we’ve gotten disconnected from actually all the good that is happening in the world, and the magic and the miracles that are also simultaneously happening around us.

Yes. There’s still a lot of good that is happening in the world. It’s about what we focus on. The world, it’s yin and yang. The more the darkness, the more the light. But there is light and the light is just as big and powerful and even more powerful than the darkness.

Yes. Sometimes when I say something, because people are like, well, then you’re denying the dark. I’m like, no, I’m not saying don’t deny the dark. It’s real, the shadow is real, the dirt is real.

The shadow is part of the light and the light is part of the shadow. They coexist.

Yes, absolutely. I’m just saying we also need to bring equal attention to the light. I’m sorry, for the last year and a half, most people were in a big light deficiency, a big joy deficiency, or a big miracle and magic deficiency. We need to put stock in that bank account to even just bring it to equal level, even just to bring it up.

Whether that is the smile on your kid’s face or the fact you woke up this morning, whatever it is, bring some of that extraordinary again into those ordinary moments or that magic in the mundane of experience because it is there. Even back to what we talked about earlier, that shift of perspective of the eyes in which we are looking the mind and which is what it’s focusing on or fixated on. Is it fixated on the flaw or is fixated on the beauty?

How can we do that? I believe that just those three little things, if you just committed to that for 40 days and did nothing else, your life would absolutely change.

Wow. Thank you for all these inspirational words. It’s beyond your words, it’s your energy. I can just feel everything that you say and it’s incredible.

Thank you.

Where can people find you, connect with you, get the book? I know that you might have online programs, maybe you can share all of that with us.

The two best places to find me is Instagram and it’s @cristi_christensen and my personal website is cristichristensen.com. From there, also, one of the tabs is the book and that will take you to my book website. My book website is chakrarituals.com. Everything I’m doing pretty much lives there. You could sign up for my email list if you want and you’ll get a bunch of free stuff and you’ll be in the know.

The next thing I’m doing is I’m guiding people. We’re going to go through my book as a global community. I’m doing a 7 ½ week course on the book. We’ll gather together via the Zoom platform and we’ll go over the chakra that’s to come. I’ll share additional content and some kind of bonus practices that aren’t included, so there is bonus material.

Then you’ll go off through your week, you’ll do the practices, and then we’ll meet up the next week. We’ll have time for question and answer, reflection, and then we’ll move on to the next chakra as well. I’m really excited about that. Just have tons of other stuff in the works too. If you follow me in any of those places, you’ll find out.

That’s beautiful. It sounds fantastic. Thank you so much, Cristi, for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you, listeners. Remember to have a daily commitment to the sacred. Move your body because it’s good for everything. Find time to reveal in the magic of what it is to be alive and have a stellar life. This is Orion, until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Share anything that has helped you with other people. What you have experienced may benefit the lives of others.
{✓} Keep in mind that yoga is not competitive or comparative. It is a journey into the self for you to get to know and grow yourself.
{✓} Avoid being a perfectionist. Always aiming for perfection will just frustrate and depress you.
{✓} Do not focus on what others think of you. This is your life to live, and you are the only person who needs to approve of your choices.
{✓} Set clear intentions before doing mindful practices like yoga.
{✓} Take more action in life. The only way you can transform and evolve is by doing something.
{✓} Get your body moving. Movement is a gateway to opening up your body. You can try Christi’s shake, rattle, and roar technique.
{✓} Do something daily that connects you to the sacred. Plug into your source and feel its support.
{✓} Create a sacred space in your home where you can pray, meditate, do breathwork, and do other holy practices.
{✓} Don’t get fixated on the negativities and dwell instead focus on positive things. Always seek the extraordinary from ordinary moments of your life.
{✓} Visit Cristi Christensen’s website to know more about her. Also, check out and buy her new book, Chakra Rituals: Awakening the Wild Woman Within.

About Cristi Christensen

Cristi Christensen is a Global Embodiment Coach, whose mission is to empower women and expand their definitions of yoga and well-being. Cristi’s first book, Chakra Rituals: Awakening the Wild Woman Within is a self-help guide that makes the ancient science of Chakras accessible through a seven-week step-by-step program. The program includes immersive exercises such as vinyasa yoga, writing contemplation and embodiment. She’s the creator of Soul Fire, a unique style of yoga that incorporates dance, meditation and mudra practices to awaken and empower you. Additionally, she’s the co-founder of the Asia-based Kirana Yoga School and US-based Deep Exhale, a transformational experience merging the worlds of breath, music & movement. She has taught in 20 countries around the globe to tens of thousands of women.