Root Chakra: Ground Down
he root chakra, Muladhara, develops when you are inside your mother’s womb through your first year of life. When you emerge from the womb, you depend on your tribe to meet your needs. Until then, the placenta nourished you and gave you oxygen. Your development and growth began with someone else caring for your needs.
As you age, you must learn to care for yourself and build the structures to thrive independently. Creating a happy home, a stable job, a healthy diet, and a regular exercise plan are all part of balancing this chakra.
Muladhara gives us the right to have and teaches us about self-preservation. It is the building block of everything we do, the most vital part of our spiritual growth.
As my good buddy Rumi says, “Maybe you’re searching among branches for what only appears in the roots.” So, let’s explore how Muladhara’s strong roots fit into the chakra system.
Article Topics
Muladhara Root Chakra
- Sanskrit Name: Muladhara, meaning “root support”
- Chakra Location: Base of the spine
- Element: Earth
- Color: Red
- Function: Survival and belonging
- Governs: legs, feet, bones, large intestine, colon, digestive organs
- Seed Sound: Lam
- Mudra: Prithvi earth mudra (join the tip of the ring finger and the tip of the thumb)
When Balanced
The goal is to have all of your chakras open and the energy flowing freely between the seven main energetic centers. If your root chakra is open, it will feel like contentment in your life and a sense of trust in the world. You will experience good physical health and feel like you can relax and remain in your body without feeling anxious or worried. It’s also a sense of belonging to a tribe and knowing you have a support system. If your needs are met and you feel stable and safe, those are all sure signs that Muladhara is balanced!
When Underactive
On the other hand, if you live in a constant state of worry and fear, financial stress, or even experience bouts of depression, your root chakra may be underactive. It may be difficult for you to bond and connect with others because you don’t feel safe or like you fit in. Suppose you’ve experienced destabilizing events like losing a home, being abandoned, poverty, or sudden loss. In that case, it may have created blocks in this energetic wheel, and you stay highly charged in survival consciousness.
Physical Ailments
If you have any chronic pain or symptoms in the body parts governed by your root chakra listed above, this will help you determine if you need to do some root chakra healing. For example, if you have digestive issues, it’ll be worth exploring belly-cling to help loosen the fascia and support elimination.
When Overactive
When energy doesn’t flow evenly between the chakras, it can get stuck and overused in a particular wheel. If you’re overactive in the root chakra, it might appear as obesity, laziness, hoarding, or greed. You may have rigid boundaries because you’re trying to control life instead of flowing with it. Think of a doomsday prepper – they’re so focused on survival that they forget to live! This overcompensation happens when other chakras are blocked, creating imbalance throughout the system.
Connect Deeply with Your Body
Photo: @the-lotusrose-wellbeing | Instagram
So, how can you open, train this chakra and bring it back to balance? The root chakra is connected to the earth, and your body is the earth. You are made of matter. Connect with your physical body by spending more time in nature.
Plant new seeds in your garden, lay at the base of a tree and study its make-up, take a walking meditation outside with your bare feet, and focus on the connection between the soles of your feet and the soul of the earth.
Try a new exercise class or go to an ecstatic dance. Move your hips in ways that allow the Kundalini energy to move up from the base of the spine.
Meditate! Incorporate a root chakra mudra like Prithvi earth mudra while finding stillness in an easy seated pose, sukhasana. Then, you can move into chanting LAM, the bija mantra, or a one-syllable sound that activates this specific chakra. Of course, there’s always yoga!
7 Asanas to Activate the Root Chakra
You can create root chakra-themed classes or practice these asanas to help ground and build stability in your body. Staying in each pose for a full minute will allow you to feel how the earth supports you.
- Sukhasana (easy seat)
- Malasana (garland pose)
- Tadasana (mountain pose)
- Uttanasana (standing forward fold)
- Balasana (child’s pose)
- Utkatasana (chair pose)
- Dandasana (staff pose)
Grounding Affirmations
Finally, I’d like to leave you with five grounding affirmations to help you focus on bringing harmony to your root chakra. Make it your intention in your yoga practice, or pick one that resonates and write it repeatedly until you fill a full page in your journal! Notice how your energy relaxes, and your body opens up to life!
- “I have everything I need.”
- “I am taken care of.”
- “I love my body and trust its wisdom.”
- “I live in a constant flow of abundance.”
- “I am grounded, but I flow.”
In Closing
Like a fruit tree, if we don’t choose a strong enough pot, tend to the soil, or water the roots, the tree will never be healthy enough to bear fruit. We must nurture our bodies, find our belonging in the world, and ground into our structures to actualize our dreams. With a strong and open root chakra, we can focus our energy on our desires at the sacral chakra.
I hope this knowledge and these practices allow you to bring better health and balance into your root chakra. Keep tending to your roots – we must ground down to rise up.
Source: Chakras Made Easy by Anodea Judith
