What the Heck are the Chakras?  | Who Knew that about Chardonnay?

Maria Mayes: [00:00:00] Hey friends, it's Maria, and here we are, episode one of Chakras and Chardonnay. Thank you so much for tuning in. I figure what better thing to focus on in this first inaugural episode than the chakras. I mean, what the heck are they? Are they just cute graphics on a t-shirt? No, they're actually much more.

So let's dive in. The first time I personally heard the word, I'm pretty sure my response was shock- what? Now, that was 16 years ago. I was sitting in my then therapist's office, and quite frankly, I don't really know what she said, but a seed was planted in me. And fast forward to today, if I were to Google it which I did recently, I get 120 plus million responses to the question, what are the chakras?

Now I like to keep things simple, so I simplified some of the [00:01:00] definitions into one that worked for me. So here's my go at it. Chakras are energy centers that can empower you to move to a more well state of being in the human body. So let me ask you, are you a well-being? If the answer wasn't a resounding yes, then keep listening.

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of room for improvement in the well part of my being. So let's look into this more deeply. Now, it's actually pronounced [CHUK] + [RUH], but that is really hard for me to say, especially when I pair it with Chardonnay. So forgive me, I'm using a very westernized accent when I say chakras, but the term itself is a Sanskrit word.

If you're not familiar with Sanskrit, it's a very old language originating in ancient India, and it's used for its vibrational quality of the words, almost more [00:02:00] so than the actual meaning themselves. That'll come into play once we start talking about the mantras for each of the chakras, um, down the road.

But for now, just be aware that the meanings are rough translations in. So chakra translates roughly to wheel, and probably more importantly, it indicates movement. And according to Harish, Johari, an author on the topic, chakras are said to be the playgrounds of the elements. The elements are those building blocks of all psychophysical existence.

I know that's a big word. Um, if we break that down, psychophysical relates to the relationship between our internal or psychic and external physical worlds. So chakras introduce movement because they can transform that psychophysical energy into spiritual energy. And that's essentially why these ancient practitioners worked with [00:03:00] them.

It was all about moving themselves to higher levels of consciousness and spirituality. So we will talk more about the five elements later. From an Ayurvedic perspective, they are space, air, fire, water, and earth. And now's a great time for me to lay some groundwork in that much of what you're gonna receive on this podcast is rooted in the foundations of Ayurveda.

So that's another Sanskrit term, and that translates to the science of life or the wisdom of life, and it's simply a consciousness based approach to health. So it's grounded in belief that we are more than just these physical vessels, right? And these spinning monkey minds that we have. It's grounded in the belief that everything in the universe is a transformation of consciousness.

So if we have that as our foundation, that consciousness is transforming itself in a matter everywhere in the universe, then it makes sense [00:04:00] that in some places that energy is gonna be stronger than in others. And so if we look that on the planet, we call it a vortex, right? Places like Sedona or the pyramids in Egypt, that one is on my bucket list by the way.

In the body, we call it a chakra, and sometimes it helps to have a visual. Maybe you've heard a visualizing spinning wheels of energy that run along the spine, so they run from the tailbone all the way up to the crown of the head. We'll talk more about that in the future, but for now, for a visual, I invite you to think of a pinwheel.

Think of a beautiful colorful pinwheel that when you blow on it, when you exhale it spins, it moves. See, the same is true of our chakras going back to that psychophysical energy, that relationship between our internal world and external world. That energy works with the help of prana. That's another Sanskrit term.

This one [00:05:00] translates to life force or vital life force, and one way we pull prana into the body is through our breath. Literally inhaling that life force and literally exhaling it out. Think about it. It's the first thing we do when we come into the world, and the last thing we do when we leave it .Now, you can't see your breath, right?

I mean, maybe on a cold day you can see the exhale. But as you inhale, even though you can't see it, you know it's there. And the same is true of the chakras. If you dissect a body, you're not gonna find round spinning balls of energy in there. I mean, that would probably freak you out if you did, but that's because the body exist at two levels.

We have the physical body. That's the one we're all very aware of. We know it. We feed it, we clothe it, we bathe it, hopefully bathed it today. But there's this other more subtle body, literally referred to as the subtle body, and that's where our energy field is surrounding the physical body. [00:06:00] So another word you might have heard of it would be aura.

Our chakras exist there, and that prana, that vital life force moves through the body via these channels called nadis. Again, we'll talk more about this in future episodes, but for now, just think about it as a transportation system for your energy. And the key component is that Prana influences and helps it move.

Just like blowing in a pinwheel, we can use our breath to really ignite and activate our chakras. So now that we know what they are, let's talk about why we might wanna keep 'em in balance. To do that, I want you to visualize the last time you felt fully vibrant, just awake with possibility, fully energized, ready to seize the day, just embodying joy that my friend, is how it feels when your energy is flowing freely through the chakras.

Man, do I [00:07:00] wish I was like that every day of my life? But the reality is we live in a crazy, chaotic world full of stresses. And so what happens is our energy itself can become constricted or stuck. And when that happens, that's when we start to experience the physical or emotional symptoms of imbalance or

so one of the most important pieces of this episode is this statement right here, and that is everything that happens in the physical body first happens in the subtle body. So doesn't it make sense that we might wanna keep it healthy, balanced, and bright, and keep that energy flowing freely like spinning pinwheels..

Another interesting piece is that our karma is stored in our chakras. Now, that's a sanskrit term you're probably familiar with. Everybody knows karma, right? But in this case, we're looking at it as manifesting as our memories and desires. [00:08:00] And the thing is, they tend to clog our chakras, just distorting the flow of consciousness and then just causing disharmony in our life.

We'll talk all about karma in a future epiosode. But here's the thing, cultivating a dialogue between your thinking mind and your physical body and the chakras in your subtle body is key to taking your power back over your health and science today is validating all this ancient Ayurvedic wisdom. You have much more power than you realize.

Hopefully I've convinced you that getting to know and love these chakras is a good thing and that there are more than just cool looking rainbow graphics on t-shirts. So let's wrap this up with a bit about balancing them. Now, anywhere you look these days, you're gonna see information about balancing these chakras, and maybe it's a potion, maybe it's a product, et cetera.

I am gonna encourage you to look at this from the perspective of insourcing your health [00:09:00] rather than outsourcing it. I don't have a magic pill to prescribe you, but I do have this simple thing that you can put into action today to increase the energy in your chakras. I want you to notice in this moment where your shoulders are at, are they rounded forward?

What about your chin? Is it jutted forward? Is your head tilted slightly? Is it? Let's straighten it up, Sam, from the tailbone to the crown of the head, I want you to get as much length as possible. Just stretch out that whole spine. Now take a deep, full breath in, and as you exhale out, imagine you're blowing a pin. Can it really be that simple? I'm here to tell you that it can, simple changes that we make can have huge impacts. When [00:10:00] you're slouching, you're compressing not only your physical vertebrae, but the ability for your energy to flow freely through the chakras and even for your diaphragm to move and do it's job..

Think about the additional real estate you just offered, not only your physical body, but your energy body. So that's your takeaway for today. Straighten it up and let the energy flow more freely. Okay, friends, the sound of that bell means it's time to transition this talk into one about wine. So let's start with some expectations.

Since it's the first episode, I'm not a Sommelier, so we're not gonna go super deep diving into the history or into specifics on a particular varietal. But what we will do is just explore some fun facts, some tips I've learned from my years of educating in a boutique tasting room, and from the many winemakers I've had the privilege of learning under.

So also from just [00:11:00] reading and researching because I love this stuff. So let's start with Chardonnay. Why? Because well it's the Chakras and Chardonnay podcast, and it's likely. One of the first wines I ever tried that is, of course, if you don't count the wine. My grandmother served me when I was about eight or nine years old in an aluminum cup paired with a sugar cookie, homemade wine from her garden in Minnesota, nor do we include the Mr. Bartels and Mr. James experience from my adolescence? That's for another episode. Let's talk about my exploration with Chardonnay, which started in my early twenties. So it was right when I was in recruited outta college to my first corporate, you know, fortune 500 gig, and everybody was 20 to 40 years older than me, and they were all drinking Chardonnay. So in order to fit in and numb my anxiety about it all, I [00:12:00] drank Chardonnay too, quite a lot of it. In fact, over that next decade, I consumed just way too much of it. We'll talk more about my journey and how I went from self-medicating my anxiety with alcohol to meditating, and now being able to truly enjoy a mindful relationship with it in the next episode.

But for now, let's focus on this grape called chardonnay. Did you know that chardonnay is the most widely planted white grape in the world. It went from like 4,000 acres planted in the eighties to now over half a million. That is a lot of Chardonnay grapes. It originated in the Burgundy region in France, and it said to be a result from across between Pinot noir and GU Blanc and.

There's a theory that Marcus Aurelius Provost brought the grape from his home region into Burgundy, so I [00:13:00] don't know if that's true, but research it and see what you find out on that. I'm in California and in California it's Wete Ernest Wete, who's credited with taking a cutting from France and then planting it in the Livermore Valley and isolating it, and then developing a clone that was hardy enough to thrive in this crazy California sun.

Wente still makes a great Chardonnay and they're about two hours northwest of me. If you ever find yourself in the Bay Area, California, I highly recommend checking 'em out. The property's beautiful. There's great history as we just talked about, and they have a good restaurant on site too. Last fun fact for your next, uh, dinner party is that Chardonnay actually put California on the wine map in that in the year of my birth, there was a competition in Paris and, a, Napa Chardonnay beat out the French wines.

So the rest, as they say, is history. And the thing I love about Chardonnay [00:14:00] now is just, its versatility. It's the major grape in champagne and other sparkling wines, and I love me some bubbly. So we've got an episode coming up soon that highlights bubbles, but it can also be clean and crisp, especially if it's fermented and stainless.

And then you have that dark, okie buttery option from Sonoma and some of the other wine growing regions. So my tips for you is that if you like your white wines real rich and fuller, bodied, then go for an Oaked Chardonnay. There's usually something that indicates that on its label and the color's gonna be deeper.

If you like lighter wines, if you like a more citrusy and floral, then go for an un oaked option. Here's a few that I've enjoyed recently that I'd certainly reccomend. We're gonna start with the Trefethen which is an estate Chardonnay 2020. So this comes from the Napa Valley [00:15:00] and it's in the Oak Knoll region if you've ever been up there.

Beautiful. I used to have, um, a client when I was in the AgTech world up there and just, oh my goodness. Some of these, uh, vineyards are just stunning. Anyway, it's really bright and crisp and. Oh, like a lemon cream pie to it. So I discovered this one when I was out on a date night with my husband and we found it at a restaurant and since then I've been, , enjoying it.

Next recommendation I have is for a 2020 Nest Chardonnay. Now this is from Napa, and this is actually from the Scout & Cellar line of wines, which are known for being clean, crafted. We'll talk more about that in another episode, but this one has just that perfect bit of creamy, butteriness and toastiness, but also has that clean, crisp, piece to it.

And I got a lot of baked apple in it, which I love. And lastly, I wanna highlight Buoyant 2018 Chardonnay. [00:16:00] Now this is done by winemaker Ken Post, who I've had the privilege to learn under. Ken used grapes from Santa Lucia Highlands which is in Monterey County. Not as many tasting rooms over in Monterey County, but man, do they have some gorgeous vineyards.

Lots of Pinot and Chardonnay grapes are grown there. Ken fermented this in oak barrels for about nine months, and also did what's called a malolactic fermentation process, and that's where they add bacteria to convert the tart malic acid into a creamier lactic acid. So that's what gives Chardonnay the butter iness.

For me, this one's just super balanced. It's kind of the in between of both worlds. It's got the pear and the citrus, but then it also has a soft caramel apple finish. A key piece for me in exploring my wines mindfully is what I'm pairing with it food-wise. And so in future episodes, we'll go into more depth on food pairings.[00:17:00] 

We'll look at the Six Taste of Ayurveda and how I incorporate those into my wine and food pairings. For now, I'm gonna leave you with this. There is a beautiful salmon recipe in the show notes. That's one of my favorite things to pair with Chardonnay. In terms of snacks, pairing it with hard cheeses or really good hummus and some veggies is fun too.

In future episodes, we'll also take a fun look at pairing each of the chakras with a particular wine, but we have to learn more about these chakras first. That's a wrap on the wine portion of episode one. The wines I mentioned will be in the show notes as well as that salmon recipe. I'd love for you to stick with me so that I can guide you through a relaxation.