Chakra 1 : Root + Earth

“If you fall, I’ll be there” Ground

Hi Everybody,

Welcome back to my series following the Chakra System. This is the exciting part, where we will start to build our bodinuity! The greatest part of learning this system, and how I will present each Chakra, is that the journey is active. We are not simply reading, but there are easy things we can do to experience each level of Chakra, it’s associations, and connect deeply to our body and our world. Being cooped up at home, this is the perfect time to take a personal hour each day, to make space for aligning our under/overstimulated selves.

As we give allowance to and space for the principle of change, I will continue to present these Chakra journeys in slightly different ways. Keep coming back, even if you didn’t love parts of it. Not the same way works for everybody, and sometimes you need to see something in a different perspective to actually want to do it.

The summarizations, quotes, and some exercises come from the book Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith, PhD. All other sources are noted. These posts will be written as both blog and journal. My aim is simply to share information I have found useful. Any mistakes are my own.

If you didn’t check out the previous post, flip back to get the history and terminology.

The series as a whole: What we are doing is bringing awareness to and improving the health of each chakra by:

Doing physical exercises that pertain to relaxing, opening, or stimulating that area of the body
Working with each chakra’s associated images, colors, sounds, elements
Connecting with parts of our lives, to bring them into unity
Working through feelings and values of the chakra, and bringing new insight to our behavior

What you will need:

I encourage you to find a room to yourself, with only natural light from a window. A great addition to this would be to bring in a lamp, and cover the top with a scarf/cloth of the color chakra we are working on. To set that color lighting in the room is very stimulating to the subtle body.
Yoga or exercise mat
Pillow or meditation cushion
Water
A journal to write – take time to write down thoughts, and do the journal prompts
Tablet or computer
An open mind. Not all of these activities may suit you…but their purpose lies in the structure, not the content. After this series, you may lay down what doesn’t work.

Preliminary Exercises

The best way to jump into a topic you may be questionable about is to feel it! This exercise opens the hand chakras (remember chakras are all over the body, the hands are easiest to feel).

Stand up, extend both arms in from of you, parallel to the floor with elbows straight
Turn one hand up and one hand down
Quickly open and close your hands 12 times
Reverse your palms and repeat
To feel the energy created, face your palms towards each other with 2ft in between
Continue moving the palms closer together, you should be able to feel a subtle ball of energy like a magnetic field floating here
Fun, right!

Today is all about remembering our roots, but our home is our body. Now and forever.

Next, let’s align the chakras along sushumna (super highway current). Read through the steps first and then stand to practice

Stand with feet shoulder width apart, stretch hands high over head, reaching with your whole body while feet are flat on the ground. Stretching out, wiggle through the space that may have been compacted, encourages the chakras to align
Return to a normal standing position, palms facing forward (mountain pose), trying to maintain the elongated new height. Perhaps half and inch you gained back! Remember gravity is constantly weighing on us. Tuck your pelvis so your central axis feels stacked and a clear column is running through your core body
Breathe slowly, deeply, in through your nose to balloon your belly with air, and fill the chest next. Out through your mouth. 3 deep breaths here
Imagine the vastness of the sky above you (even as you are indoors), experience the space above you. Drink in this vastness through your head, pulling it down into you like a human sized straw. Cascade this airy, clean and bright space into your face, ears, whole head, down your throat, over your shoulders, continue all the way down.
It may help you to visualize this vastness as a light, a color, a stream of wind, or a column of bubbles
Take a few times to breathe in, getting a little further down your body each time. Till you are able to breathe through your feet releasing the breath into the floor. Earth. Grounding. We are experiencing the Manifesting Current.
When this feels comfortable, you are able to imagine the energy flowing from the sky to the earth, and begin working with the upward current! The Liberating Current.
Breathe in the earth’s energy from your feet, into your genitals, into your abdomen, cheast, heart, throat, face, spilling up into the sky above.
When this feels comfortable, practice running both currents at the same time!
Play with these two currents. Is one of them harder to control or feel, is there a particular block of tension anywhere? Thank yourself for this practice, and take a sip of water.

This is the longest post of the series simply because the roots are our basis for opening our grounding channel of energy. Once roots flow beneath, the rest of the chakras will be fed by a strong current.

Chakra One : Earth

“Muladhara” – Sanskrit name “Root Support“

Associated words: Earth, Roots, Grounding, Survival, Body, Food, Matter

A quick search will bring up many different images for each chakra, I will provide the most basic image, the easiest to remember.

“Your body is the journey, and it is where you begin, It is your connection to the physical world, your foundation, the home of your dance. You are the place from which all action and understanding will arise, and to which it will return. You are the testing ground of truth. You are the ground on which all things rest. You are the earth from which all things grow. You are here, you are solid, you are alive. You are the point from which all things begin.” Anodea Judith

The Table below is a non-exhaustive list of physical and mental, we will call them “charms”, which you can work with for each Chakra. “Work with” would be to feel (location on body), visual imagination, do (activate body part), eat, smell, watch, listen, etc. – Well that just means, using all your senses! How very Tantra of us 😉

Location	Perineum, base of spine, coccyx plexus, S1-S5
Element	Earth
Inner State	Stillness, security, stability
Planets	Earth, Saturn
Foods	Proteins, Meats
Verb	I Have
Yoga	Hatha
Herbs/Spices	Cedar, Dandelion Root, Paprika, Cayenne
Animals	Ox, Elephant, Bull
Chief Operating Force	Gravity
Demon	Fear

Rights	Right to have, right to be here
Glands and Body Parts	Adrenals, legs, bones, teeth, large intestine
Seed Sound	Lam
Minerals	Ruby, Garnet, Lodestone, Bloodstone

Location of Chakra and Core Trait:

The root chakra generates its energy around the “hammock” of our torso. In your seat can you feel this support?The nerve ganglion emanates from S1-S5, the sacral cluster, and is where the Sciatic Nerve begins, travelling all the way down into the feet. Think of these nerves as your roots. The longer the roots, the more stability to ascend. Energizing and caring for our body in this system starts with acknowledging the closest piece of us to the earth.
- These roots enable us to perform tasks to obtain life sustenance from the earth and environment
Root chakra solidifies our ground
- It is primarily concerned with physical survival
  - Instinctively – survival demands activates sympathetic (flight or fight) response which activate our adrenal glands
    - Adrenal glands, also known as suprarenal glands, are small, triangular-shaped glands located on top of both kidneys. Adrenal glands produce hormones that help regulate your metabolism, immune system, blood pressure, response to stress, sexual arousal and other essential functions.
- When survival is threatened, we experience fear (demon of first chakra)

To clarify, at this 1st chakra, we operate from survival instincts of: hunger, fear, need for rest, warmth, and shelter. Before we can effectively do anything else, we must first see these survival needs met in a direct way, so our consciousness is not dominated by the survival force, pulling us back, unable to get “off the ground”. Today, we will focus on our inner and outer home.

Journal Prompt

Name 4 ways you are safe at this moment; how your survival needs are met.

In what ways do I feel unsafe; what times did I feel unsafe? (Past and present)

As our society evolved, and most of us do not worry about keeping a fire going, our survival needs have become indirect: car health so we may get to our jobs, money to pay utilities.
- The pandemic has certainly threatened many means of survival for millions of people. Collectively there is panic, and that is totally normal.
- All we can do is accept the pull of this gravity and work within its construct. While panic is okay, it will hinder being conscious to look for solutions as we collectively spin inside the root chakra, stuck, unable to rise beyond those needs.
- The only thing to say in response to the intensity of acknowledging the present vortex, is our Root Chakra Affirmations: (say them out loud)
  - I have a right to be here
  - I have the right to take up space
  - I am worthy
  - It is safe for me to be in this body
  - I am capable and strong
  - I am supported and loved
  - I am grounded
Our words carry weight to bring our mind and body one inch closer to trusting each other, starting to get on the page of working together.
Roots are tied into the instinctual feelings that get programmed from the memories of our past
- Inherited instincts, genetically, culturally, physically, evolutionarily
- When we take time to examine our roots, we form an up to date image of ourselves to guide this Chakra journey. The past cannot be changed but we also cannot erase our memories of it. The only choice is to come to terms with it and recognize the paradigms that influenced how we were raised.

Journal Prompts: Some of you may like keeping a journal, and to others it is improbable, and not something you would like to do. I ask you right now to step outside your comfort zone and write. If not now when? It is especially important today as we view and solidify our foundation.

What are my earliest memories and feelings of home?
What is my favorite memory of Halloween? Who was I with, why did I pick that costume, what made it such a good memory?
The person or people who took care of me, in what ways have I continued their “traditions” or mannerisms?

Reclaim these roots, witness where you came from and know the history of your family, even if just by their actions. Bring to light the instinctual realm that lives inside you. What were your family dynamics, how were other family units of your kind similar or different? Journal a bit on your own now.
- If your past is laced with hurt and pain…look at those actions objectively…is it possible to reveal what may have caused those outcomes. It doesn’t need to be labeled as “trauma” to remember incidents that hurt you. In addressing it you see your foundation, good or bad, it was real. From something tangible we can grow and find a perspective and tools to deal with trauma in later chakras. But we must view it as it was.
- I’m not saying there is always an answer, but by looking at the other circumstances of the event, we may find clues which influenced how events unfolded.
- The further we get from painful incidents which never got talked through in some way, to let out how scary that was, we put them in a little box in our mind saying “do not touch”. But most events have multiple relations to the outside world, which are bound to come up again, and which our children will come up against and ask about. Example: We don’t sit next to muscular bald men because one flashed a gun in his waistband at me in warning one day. Well that fear isn’t going to serve you well when your boss or your child’s teacher fits that description.
- When humans encounter fear, our adrenal system start up and we go into “fight or flight”. The image below is a unique chart to help us name how our subconscious influences our actions long after events.

I am so intrigued by this chart of Trauma Personality for its expression of how the self continues after the incident. Do you feel you align strongly with one, or a few?

Balancing this chakra is to send down, or strengthen our roots, so we may continue to grow up sturdy and grounded in healthy reality

Inappropriate levels of fear can be a sign the root chakra is hindered
- Facing the fear can wake it up. Figuring out our strategies of self-preservation is key to overcoming fear, mistrust, humiliation.
- Journaling your story is a good way to start. Where do you want to be in life and how does your past prepare you? If you feel ashamed and pain, rather than supported by your past, take time to really look at those scenarios…who was involved…what reactions were had…could those actions be perceived in a different perspective?
- For example, shamed by a school bully: What scenario caused her to be a bully in the first place? It certainly wasn’t you, so can you let go of the hurt they caused you?

My Body, My Home

The Body: We return to the same bundle of flesh and bones throughout the eternity of our life. Accept, feel, validate, love the body. Our body is our truest home. If you had to leave everything you know behind, could you walk away content, with the trust, the faith your body will be an equal partner providing what you mind and spirit need? To move on from the root chakra, we must feel at home on our body. It is where we ALWAYS return and it is from here we grow and thrive.
- I love this statement from Andoea Judith:
  - “Our body is the hardware through which the information is received. Etched into the body is the pain and joy. Coded into our nervous system are our needs, habits, memories, talents. Within our genes is our ancestry. Within our cells is the chemistry of our food. Heart beats our rhythm. Muscles mirror our actions. In touch with all that goes on inside us, we more fully experience the spiritual and emotional parts. Accepting the body into integration – our fullest expression, unites all of the parts.”
    - To me, I feel calm to read this. It is a sweet little reminder that our body is taking care of a LOT without our input. It is running its systems near flawlessly day in and day out. We certainly owe our body love and respect for simply showing up.
In our present level of evolution, matter is an undeniable reality and necessity.
Without a body we die, and to deny our body is to die prematurely
To deny attention to our foundation is to build on unknown or shaky stilts

Journal Prompt

Name 5 things you cherish about your body.

Name 1 part of yourself you can be nicer to.

When Home starts to shake…

When survival stress begins to accumulate, when you feel anxious, nervous, unsettled, the single best thing to do is get grounded. This series will explore many ways to do this, including breathing, journaling, or get outside and feel the earth. Get on your knees, look at the ground and breathe.
“Grounding/Earthing” is what everyone was benefiting from naturally before rubber soled shoes. Being on the neutral earth, our subtle body soaks up negatively charged atoms, which lessen the friction and instability of accumulating free radicals in the body from inflammation, infection, cell damage, trauma, stress, and toxic environments.
When we introduce antioxidants (food is a good source) and negative electrons to our system, they eat up the damaging “free radicals“. This balanced electromagnetic field helps heal wounds and lower stress.

Right now, let’s do 3 small exercises on our mats to continue stimulating the root chakra

Breathe slow and deep. As always, wiggle and move in an direction you need to explore during the transitions.

“The body is a system requiring occasional recharging by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface – the “battery” for all planetary life – to be optimally effective.” NCBI

Head to Knee Pose – Hold for 15 counts
Knee to Chest Pose – Hold for 15 counts
Bridge Pose – Hold for 15 counts

Lovely! These micro breaks stimulate parts of the Chakra keep the “rooting energy” going.

To integrate, here is a Meditation a brief but centering 3.5 min 🙂 The narrator is using affirmations to foster self-empowerment. Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and listen.

Our root chakra holds our ability to focus and manifest our needs.

This is where consciousness comes into its tangible form. Remember from the manifesting current, the root chakra is the last chakra in the flow, at our root, where those inspirations will materialize into form if we have dutifully focused to get there. And it is where our liberating current starts, as we look at who we are in our core – what will give us the energy to grow.

Root is where ideas become reality
- Limitation is an essential creative principal, allowing the ideas from the mind to gel and build energy, connect the pieces of vision and communication and personal power to do so. Yet resting in a simplified space…the here and now of the roots, we make room for those ideas by clearing out old beliefs and fears that have no place where we are going.
- When we root in the present, we let go of clutter. This is the principle of mindfulness which will come up again in the 7th Chakra.
- Allowing patience to befriend you can help creativity find a voice along a crowded channel. If the mind and body are too busy, how can true desires make way? This is our opportunity while we are all practicing physical distancing: limiting our outside interactions allows more time alone to manifest and liberate any ideas you haven’t had time to notice are within.
To write a book, you first need to narrow your focus, an outline helps. Write and write, don’t forget to edit later! But diligence and perseverance is seen in all the middle chakras. The root chakra gives you the safety and security you need to start liberating your imagined content, and your manifesting current is satisfied by security of self and space – where you have the ability to start writing your content with clarity.

Journal Prompts

Where do I feel the most grounded? (With a person, place, thing? List as many as you can)
I feel safe when I…
Name the people I can go to for unconditional support.

Root Chakra as it relates to Culture

Present day USA reflects the superiority of “high” at the expense of “low”
1. Socially and economically, intellectual work is better rewarded than physical labor
2. Our natural body processes – waste elimination, sexuality, birth, breastfeeding, nudity, are to be done only in private as they are “dirty” and we are made to feel guilty doing these acts.
3. Control of our health is put in the hands of an elite class which denies us the sense of our own innate healing potential
  - This is THE reason I began my journey into health, wellness, and massage…I woke up to the fact that no one is going to have the answers to my body more than myself. And I realized I had been relying on everyone to keep me well, except myself. I finally understood, I am responsible for how I treat my body. If I know my body to the best of my ability, I have a hand in the outcome, possibly avoiding any limiting rules that could affect what, when, and where I decide to take my body. There is so much information available on how the body rights itself naturally, and we deserve to be in tune to these mechanisms so we can notice when they may be off. That is why the Chakra system is important, it is another way to feel and acknowledge the system.
4. By losing touch with our grounded-ness, allowing societal power structures to flow down hierarchically, we are ruled by a part rather than the whole. The Wheel does not spin.
5. In an un-grounded culture where the overarching values ignore the body and it’s pleasures….pain develops!
  - The stress of competition and fast living don’t allow us to rest and renew – to process or release that pain.
  - Ironically, as people develop more pain, they become more resistant to grounding
    - Because to “ground” is to “be in touch” and feel that pain. But…this is the first step to heal. See and feel the pain in order to release it.

Name two things that upset you about the structure of your job or your society, that make you want to take action to not filtrate your personal life.

Anger can be a motivator for good. But don’t live there and let it fuel you regularly. An overactive root chakra can be expressed as anger, annoyance, thoughtlessness, greed, trouble focusing and restless, being materialistic, unable to go with the flow, controlling.

The goal in every chakra is balance. Undue attachment to more and more material comforts traps the growth of consciousness
A sense of self which comes from the whole body, not from ego inflation has a power all its own – familiar, secure, you can recognize your ground. If everything was stripped away, would you still understand who you are?
The ability to plug ourselves into the earth like from the exercises here, receiving and emanating frequencies is a way to cope with stress – releasing anger and restlessness – releasing overload and receiving safety and stability

Journal Prompts

When do you feel yourself being pulled away from a calm center, to careless, greedy, or angry? Is it a certain time of the day, the week, around certain people?
Describe your financial woes. How has your financial situation progressed since childhood?
Name 1 material attachment I have that only serves my ego.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “every action causes an equal and opposite reaction”. This has go to be my favorite principle. Everything we do causes a ripple, though we cannot always fathom what consequences will come. This is an underlying principle of the universe, present in all action, which we can consider in every thought and movement choice.

If you are one of the folks whose work schedule or management of your work has changed due to the pandemic,

Can you take a moment to consider 3 ways your daily routine has changed? What has not rushing out the door each morning felt like for you?

As we grow more aware of our body and the actions and attitudes it takes, we can pause the cycle. Pause for rest, recovery, or simply toning down the reactions of our bodies actions- to find a more parasympathetic balance, where our bodies recover.

Because of the lessened rate of commutes and commerce, many parts of the world are experiencing signs of relief from former levels of business and constant activity
- Canals of Venice, Italy are clearing up, and fish are swimming, something most residents have not witnessed their whole lives
  - https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/venice-canals-clear-water-scli-intl/index.html
- Animals are wandering into towns because there is less danger of traffic
- Smog is clearing up in big cities
  - While some sources say the air and canals are not any less polluted than before, is not for me to discuss. All I know is it is nice. People are stopping to view and smell these “roses”, which elevates moods all over the world.
The ebb and flow of our personal and professional lives will vary, and our balance will rock, it is important to account for how powerful it is to stop to reflect. Finding our ground does silent wonders for the wellness of the body. Pausing the “flight” hormones eases the burden of accumulating stress in the body which contribute major malfunctions like heart disease, high blood pressure, and syndromes of anxiety, depression, and more.

Lastly,

The vortex of energy at this chakra is the most dense – slow frequency
- It is the solidness, a constant security of matter, which allows us to recognize ourselves day in and day out
  - Imagine if you were to come home everyday and your house was in a different shape or location. How confusing!
- Matter is the element of this chakra. Our lives function around the interaction of tangible things. What we are doing with the Chakra is learning how to organize the matter to serve our needs, to live out our truest desires
  - Materialization will occur when there are enough forces of similar nature and direction, from activating all levels of awareness in the chakra system.
    - For example, saying you have a dream to become a therapist – is thin ground.
    - Manifest that into reality by meeting with current therapists, enrolling in classes, figuring out direct means for payment. Actions solidify and support the dream.
When we are cut off in any way from our charged connection to the earth (perhaps blocked by fear or a shaky foundation) – we lose our path.
- Have you been busy looking up…forgetting where your feet meet the path?

This is my longest post because the roots are simply the key to where we will go. There is a lot more information out there if you would like to hear more about the deities, sounds, stones, etc. Continue inquiring with questions you have in your gut.

If you would like to add anything else to your day relating to the root chakra, take a walk outside (barefoot is a plus!) stopping to look at the leaves, trees, bushes, roacks, and flowers. Eat a satisfying meal that includes a fistful of quality protein. Maybe a favorite meal, one that makes you smile.

To finish up today, I hope you will join me in a 20 minute yoga sequence, and spend some time doing self-massage to wrap up our time today with Root Chakra. The massage video is only an example of places to touch, spend at least 5 minutes slowly massaging where it feels good to you. There is no wrong way.

Yoga with Adrienne is one of my favorite Youtube Channels. She is very clear in her instruction so it is easy to do her sequences by just listening, her tone and commentary is very inclusive and compassionate, and she is from Austin! Please enjoy the rest of your day after your yoga, you have accomplished so much by just being present here. I hope you will join me in exploring the rest of the Chakras!

Chakra 1 Conclusions: Never be afraid to fall, to start over, to recall your roots. Our roots and the earth is our safety net. Limiting intake of stimulus allows time to recover. Your body is part of your journey to Manifestation and Liberation.

With Health and Happiness we go,

Kaitlin

4/13/2020