The Nabhi Chakra (3) is associated with the spiritual qualities of righteousness, evolution and seeking. This centre also relates to our financial well-being and the extent to which the housewife is respected in the family and society. If there are financial difficulties or too much thinking about money this centre also gets affected. Too much attention on food also causes this centre to go out of balance. Once we have experienced our Self-realisation through Sahaja Yoga this centre becomes very sensitive to activity that goes against the principle of right conduct and such activity results in a feeling of nausea.
When this centre is awakened and cleansed one experiences a feeling of satisfaction and peacefulness which replaces the constant striving for a better material situation which is so typical of modern society.
This centre controls the liver, kidneys, stomach and gall bladder. Of these, the liver is especially significant in Sahaja Yoga as it controls the attention. Without a settled attention one is unable to meditate. Diet does play a role in soothing down the liver and when it is overheated it is best to avoid greasy foods, ice cream, butter, chocolate, black tea and coffee. Alcohol is harmful to the liver and also affects the Void area, the centre of self-mastery. The following are very cooling for the liver: cane sugar, white rice, yoghurt and ginger. Most fruits are also very cooling especially grapes and vegetables and especially radishes are very good too.
This centre is associated with the water element and it is very helpful to place the feet in a river or in the sea or in a bucket of water with some salt added. Many people who have suffered from insomnia have found this very helpful.
Here is an extract from a talk by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founder of Sahaja Yoga:
“The third center within us, which is the naval center, which looks after the solar plexus on the gross, is called as the Nabhi Chakra meaning the naval center and is responsible for giving us the seeking. We should know why do we seek. Why do we seek food to begin with? We feel hungry, but how do we know that we are hungry and that we want food? Even a child knows that, even an animal knows that; how? This is the center tells us that now you are hungry better go and have some food. And this is the center tells us now you better seek some money, maybe some power, maybe all the human things that we seek and waste our life quite a lot in that. After that when you are affluent when you have solved all these mundane things like no more we are living in the jungles like animals. Then we start thinking that there must be something beyond because I have got everything now but I haven’t got joy. I don’t feel joyous. I am not satisfied, what is that? When this seeking starts then you are a special category of seekers for which William Blake has clearly written very, very clearly two hundred years back he said that men of God will become prophets and they will have powers to make others prophets and that is today’s Sahaja Yoga. This seeking is a special category of people who we find now a days all over the world. That’s why I said it at the very outset that you do not find so many seekers, in the history of spirituality so many seekers. But today there are thousands and thousands; I would say millions and millions of seekers. But what happens to them? Again they get lost. Some start getting lost in the intellectual understanding of God, finished. How can you understand God with this limited brain? He’s unlimited. You have to go beyond this mind to understand. What can we understand of that God who does all these marvelous things of living processes which we cannot do even a wee bit with this brain of ours? So some are lost in the books and some are lost in the organized religions, finished.”
Talk by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founder of Sahaja Yoga, 2 August1984, Leicester, England