Let’s Talk About: The Root Chakra
The root chakra is the first chakra, associated with the color red, and rules your tailbone, feet and glutes (the part of you that touches the ground when you walk or sit).
The root chakra governs your groundedness and feeling safe in your body and environment. It’s what helps you feel rooted and stabilized. It quite literally roots your energy into the planetary grid. Think of your root chakra as the metal conductors on a plug and how when you connect it to the wall socket a flow of energy is formed. That’s how the root chakra works with your own energy.
Root Chakra Blockages
Blockages can occur when your safety is threatened—abuse, physical assaults, being stalked, living around unstable people or in unstable conditions, to name a few. Or when your space, autonomy, or rights are violated—sexual assault or similar things.
You may also struggle with root chakra imbalances if you struggle to ground your energy through your full system, ie your energy is sort of stuck in the crown. That’s why spiritual people say it’s important to ground yourself. You can get so crown heavy you disconnect from your body and struggle to move or operate it. This has happened to me.
As a naturally spiritual person, I actually struggle to move my energy down to my root. Especially because my way of dealing with not feeling safe was to escape into daydreams or to go find somewhere to hide alone. I’m used to keeping my energy up higher, in my crown and third eye, where it’s safer. As I’ve been healing I’ve consciously been pushing my energy down. It usually gets blocked starting at throat chakra then down.
Signs of Root Chakra Imbalances:
— feeling spacy or unable to focus (struggling to ground the energy from your mind)
— feeling separate from your body or dissociation (struggling to ground due to a disconnect in your flow of energy through your energetic field)
— feeling paranoid about your safety, or like thinking people are out to get you, being so worried about someone breaking into your house, etc. (not grounding into the safety of this now moment via your mental body)
— shutting down, if you freeze or shut down in response to conflict or other triggering, this is a sign of root chakra imbalance at the point of entry of the root chakra
— anxiety, aka excessive fear about things outside of your now moment
— lower back pain or feet and ankle issues
How to Heal Your Root Chakra:
— somatic exercise, specifically yoga around hip opening exercises, and thigh stretching, stretching of the glutes, this can carry a lot of trauma associated with the root chakra
— eating root vegetables
— walking barefoot on the ground
— sitting and meditating on the ground, connect the palms of your hands to the ground and imagine energy flowing up through you from all the skin contact you make with the ground, lying down will be the most contact
— spending time outside
— eating heavy food or wearing heavy clothes (since root chakra imbalances struggle to ground you, eating things or wearing things that add weight can force you down too—that’s how weighted blankets work. They weigh the person down so they can feel more safe when they are having anxiety aka a root chakra imbalance because anxiety is rooted in fears that are usually not present at the moment
— building muscle, again adds weight and can make you feel more grounded in your body
— surround yourself with the color red and things that light you up with passion
