Left Energy Channel

Location:  Begins at the 1st chakra (Mooladhara) and passes up through the left side of the body, crossing the 6th (Agnya) chakra into the temple and terminating in the right side of the brain.

Essential Qualities:

• joy
• desires
• represents past emotions, desires and affections for others
• emotional management, self-regulation
• influences sympathetic nervous system responses

Joy is the predominant quality associated with the left channel (ida nadi), also known as the Moon Channel. The left channel is the channel of our past emotions and memories. It carries the energy of our desires. The left energy channel also influences our sympathetic nervous system responses and helps regulate our emotional functioning.

Nourishing and balancing the left channel improves these personality and character strengths…

• self-respect
• self-acceptance, self-nurturance, ability to be content with oneself
• self-regulation (self-control, maturity, discipline)
• unconditional love and acceptance (charity, altruism, compassion, affection, enjoyment of and appreciation for others; genuine enthusiasm, interest, and understanding the meaning of others’ experiences)
• unconditional empathy and compassion (willingness to invest whatever’s necessary to heal the hurts of others)
• emotional intelligence

• self-regulation (self-control, emotional stability, balance and maturity, adaptability, flexibility, calm acceptance of reality without emotional overreaction)
• emotional self-awareness and emotional honesty
• emotional intelligence (perceiving, understanding and managing the emotions of yourself and others, and using those emotions effectively to drive your thoughts and behavior)
• perspective-taking (emotional maturity and emotional self-regulation)
• emotional stability (mature, adaptable, flexible, calm acceptance of reality without emotional overreaction; self-regulating — manages emotions in healthy ways)
• self-regulation (self-control, maturity, emotional stability, emotional balance, discipline)
• hope (viewing events as external, rather then internal; optimistic outlook on life; expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it)

The left channel, begins at the 1st chakra (Mooladhara) and passes up through the left side of the body, crossing the 6th (Agnya) chakra into the temple and terminating in the right side of the brain in the superego area. The superego is the storehouse of all our memories, habits and conditionings.

The left channel carries the energy of desire and it correlates to our past experiences — emotions, memories, desires and affections for others. Desires trigger emotions. These desires and the feelings they trigger travel through the left channel to the specific location in the body that will bring about the actions of fulfillment. Desire is essential for action. Without the catalyst of desire, we’d have no motivation to act.

The quality of joy associated with the left channel is, ideally, the sheer joy of a child who simply wakes up happy every morning. As adults, our desire for this joy is forever alive inside us, but it may become blocked or “bruised” by the emotional or physical injuries we experience in life.

Problems with the left channel tend to result in emotional extremism; for example, swinging between elation and depression. In some, these problems may manifest as lethargy, extreme submissiveness or passivity, and self-obsession. For these people, self-discipline becomes difficult and it becomes harder to correct self-defeating habits. Because the left channel feeds into the skull area, pressure on the brain can become excessive and ultimately even manifest in the form of a mental breakdown, or conditions such as epilepsy and dementia.

Once the Self becomes stronger than old memories and conditionings, temptations lose their power over us. In its pure state, the left channel brings about emotional balance and enables us to express the qualities of deep joy, pure love and compassion.

Experiencing any of these symptoms may be a sign that your left channel needs balancing…

• mood and energy problems (such as depression or lethargy)
• unhealthy emotional attachments
• self-indulgent behavior
• low self-esteem
• excessive guilt (e.g., believing one is “always wrong”)
• Lust