Root chakra healing

I’ve been hearing from my friends about the challenges they’ve been facing lately, and it inspired me to write about the Root Chakra. When it’s not flowing properly, it can cause many imbalances in daily life. Symptoms may include feeling anxious, lethargic, unable to make decisions, forgetful, scattered, and fearful of running out of money. If this sounds familiar, it’s a sign that your energy is depleted and you’re feeling ungrounded.

Balancing, opening, and strengthening the Root Chakra is crucial for us, especially during these tumultuous times when our inner and outer worlds feel disconnected. The pandemic has tested our basic trust in life and left us feeling insecure about our sense of belonging in the world. The energy of the Root Chakra is essential to focus on because it helps us tap into courage, connection, and the will to live during challenging times.

There’s a lot of information available online about chakras, so I won’t go into the specifics. Instead, I’ll share an overview of my own experience and the tools I’ve learned and benefited from in the last few years, in hopes that they can help you too.

Root Chakra At a Glance

It’s located at the base of the spine and is responsible for feeling “grounded”—for a sense of safety and security. With the energy of the Root Chakra we feel connected, grounded and safe, and it helps us propel forward in life.

Element: Earth (Earth is our mother, our body is formed from her elements. She supports and nourishes us).

It’s also known as Muladhara —Mula meaning “root” and adhara meaning “support”.

It is the base of our life force energy and acts as the link between the outside physical world and our internal energetic system—it gives us the motivation to get up each day, eat, and procreate.
It controls our animal nature and is governed by the predominant survival sense of smell, then taste.

It’s the “starting point” for our seven energy centers. It is important to balance the Root Chakra first, before we proceed to others, or we will lack the stability and rootedness necessary for true transformation and personal growth.

Why Does the Root Chakra Become Blocked or Depleted?

1- Your constitution based on your birth chart plays a big role in this. Everything in nature including us is made up of five basic elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. We have all of them in us but some are more dominant based on our birth charts.

If you have earth element dominance, it’s likely that you will feel more connected to the earth, which is the element of the root chakra. If you are someone with air and water dominance, it’s more common that you will show symptoms of an imbalanced root chakra. For instance, I have Taurus in my chart (which is an earth sign) and I feel pretty connected to mother nature from the get-go. But since I don’t have water in my constitution, my efforts are more towards balancing my sacral/svadhisthana chakra, which represents the water element.

You can check out your chart here and find out more about your constitution.

2- Your diet can play a role in this. If you have been fasting, juicing or detoxing, you might accumulate a lot of air, which makes you float like a balloon and you need to make a real conscious effort to land back and ground yourself.

3- It’s believed that traumas, as well as positive karma, can be inherited and passed down from generation to generation. As human history is full of wars, famines, and natural disasters, they are “recorded” in the Root Chakra. These experiences create unconscious patterns of behaviors.

When our root chakra energy is in balance:

We feel safe, secure, and grounded. We feel comfortable with the stories of the past (good or bad) and with our prospects for the future. Our life feels filled with abundance, we feel secure in our choices, can set and work towards goals, and our love and excitement for life are reestablished.

Our battery is charged with good food and sleep and we start every day ready to WIN!

When our root chakra energy is out of alignment or blocked:

Psychological symptoms include anxiety disorders, fear, panic attacks, worry, overthinking, insomnia, depression, nightmares, emotionally disconnected, disconnected from the body, anger/rage.

Physical symptoms include: lethargy and physically drained, problems in the colon, with the bladder, with elimination, or with lower back, left arm, leg, or feet issues, inflammation, and weight loss or gain.

When our root chakra is out of whack, the scarcity mentality takes hold. Since we feel depleted physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, it leaves us profoundly insecure.

This can show up a lot with money issues too, in both ways. Not being able to generate enough money or saving compulsively and being too afraid of what might happen.

To recognize people with a strong root chakra, look around and you will see them with big cars, big motorbikes, big muscles, successful businesses, and big families that connect them to the physical/material world. Those are the people who lift heavy weights at the gym.. because their material possessions and bodies are a priority to maintain stability and safety.

PRACTICAL THINGS THAT HELP TO BALANCE YOUR ROOT CHAKRA

Yoga poses focusing on your root chakra /slow yin yoga: There are countless videos on Youtube you can follow. I’ve included a 15-minute practice at the bottom and you can also follow the chart below for your personal practice.
Slowing down, connecting to the earth, walking barefoot on the grass, gardening, feeling the earth beneath you, touching your plants/ flowers in the garden, smelling them.
Start a home garden! Plant veggies and flowers and watch them grow. Be a part of the process of mother nature.
Nutrition — eating grounding foods — root veggies, potatoes and stews, comfort food, and animal protein
Listen to music with tribal beats like this one or Spotify has a large list of playlists that will get you in the mood
When you are out in nature, create an earth offering with the materials you see around like stones, shells, and leaves and make a mandala to offer your gratitude (see some examples below)
Affirmations: “I belong; I am home; I feel safe and secure; I trust myself; I love myself: I have what I need: I trust true source which is the universal divine mother providing for my basic needs. Write them on post-its and stick them around your house to remind these to yourself, hang them on your mirror or door or fridge, and repeat them whenever you can
Sound vibration/pranayama- the sound U (oo) is the vibration of the root chakra. Take a deep breath to fill up your lungs and make the sound of U until your lungs are empty, then breathe again and repeat. 10-15 minutes every day.
The Bīja Mantra (Seed Mantra) of the root chakra is LĀM, the sound of spiritual awakening. It releases tensions and removes blockages in this Chakra and activates its energy. When meditating, chant LAM in your head, start with 5 minutes/day and increase to 30 minutes. You can also do meditation this Youtube video in the background.
Spend time with people who have a strong root chakra. You will get inspired plus energy gets transmitted.
Wear earthy colors like brown, beige, green…The color of the root chakra is red but more like clay and earthy red vs blood red.

You don’t need to do all of these every day but to see results, put some of these into practice day by day and incorporate this new way of being slowly into your life. Repeating yoga or pranayama at least 28 days in a row is always a good/strong sadhana.