A Balanced Root Chakra Supports Healing (Talk)

A balanced root chakra is the foundation of feeling safe, grounded and secure in your life. It is the home of your spirit. It allows you to step out in the world with a sense of wonder, adventure and being able to enjoy your life to the fullest. However, when it is thrown out of kilter, particularly through trauma, it creates underlying feelings of insecurity and fear that persist on all areas of you life. Healing this chakra takes time and when you do there is a wonderful sense of presence.

Transcript

Welcome to this talk on the root chakra.

This is the first of a series which I'm really excited to be bringing to you as I know from personal experience how much connecting with my chakras supported my healing from trauma.

I'm Chantal,

Psychotherapist and Reiki Master.

Now the reason I'm starting with the root chakra is it lays the foundation for building on the others.

And because when you have a healed root chakra,

It lays the foundation for you to step into life the way you want to feel,

Because you want to feel safe,

Secure and grounded in your life.

Because when it is out of balance,

Particularly due to trauma,

We live with this underlying chronic fear.

So the root chakra healing is all about opening,

Clearing,

Cleansing,

Supporting and of course strengthening this chakra.

Now where is this chakra based?

It's the base of the perineum at the bottom of your spine,

And its main colour is red,

And the secondary colour is black.

Now your body is the home of your spirit and the foundation of your temple.

So when this chakra is balanced,

You have this strong sense of groundedness.

You feel connected to earth with solid roots holding you up strong and resilient.

Now when this is like this,

It's because as an infant,

You had your basic survival needs met by your primary care givers.

That could be a parent,

A carer,

A grandparent,

Whoever that might have been for you.

You had food,

You had shelter,

You felt warm,

You felt loved and nurtured and had physical comfort,

Which means you were hugged,

You were held,

You were embraced as a beautiful child that you are.

As a consequence,

What you have is a sense of this belonging,

Loyalty and connection with your tribe and your family.

Now this is really important as it creates a sense of safety in your life.

And due to this safety and security,

You have the ability to trust in the world.

It allows you to step out and try new things,

Be adventurous,

Take risks,

Whether that be in your personal life,

In your business life,

Whether you have a career or you are an entrepreneur.

And you enjoy your life to the fullest,

Knowing you have this solid base and foundation to keep falling back on.

Because you felt safe and nurtured as a child,

What happens is as you grow older and go into adulthood,

You're actually able to meet your own needs.

And that also includes your own financial needs.

And you have the ability to provide for yourself financially and to provide yourself with life's necessities because you know how to take care of yourself.

You've been given that basic foundation how to do that from.

You know there's more than enough for you to feel comfortable and supported.

And when I go through the,

When it's blocked or not balanced,

You'll understand why.

And then because you feel comfortable and supported,

This creates trust in your life.

Because without this,

Your survival feels constantly threatened.

And even if you have enough money,

Enough funds,

You may still feel you never have enough.

And you feel fearful due to an inherent,

This inherent sense of insecurity.

So as mentioned before,

Where this all comes unstuck is when you've been traumatized in some way,

Particularly,

As I said,

As a child,

You have constant and persistent underlying feelings of insecurity and fear.

So when you don't feel grounded,

When you haven't been supported,

You haven't been nurtured,

You constantly feel fearful,

You feel insecure.

And of course,

This contributes to never feeling financially secure.

Which means you then you begin to obsess about money.

You worry that you won't have enough.

If you do have enough,

Will you lose it?

You worry about being perhaps poor,

Being homeless,

Even as I said,

If you've got a home,

Have enough funds coming in.

What you do is you overwork yourself to soothe this anxiety surrounding your finances.

What happens is you feel you must be in absolute control of your money.

So if that can create other issues of being tight with money,

Not knowing how to spend money,

Not having how to support yourself,

Or you can actually go the other way where you overspent because you don't have that sense of groundedness,

Sense of security,

And you don't know how to handle money and care for yourself in that way.

And when you have this unsolid base,

Of course,

What happens is you feel afraid.

You feel afraid all the time.

And this dictates how you lead your life,

Which then,

As mentioned earlier,

Potentially affects your career or if you run a business.

Because you never feel grounded.

You don't feel safe around people.

You have this constant sense of feeling unbalanced,

But you're never quite sure exactly what that is.

And what happens is you get stuck because you're unable to change or go with the flow when something untoward or unexpected happens.

And the reason for that is because there's a high need to have everything neat and in place.

So you constantly feel safe and in control.

This in turn creates high levels of anxiety and this hypervigilant.

You're constantly on alert,

Looking over your shoulder for any perceived threats.

So you are always on guard just in case.

And when you're on guard like that,

You don't trust anyone.

You don't trust the world.

You don't trust yourself.

You don't trust even your own body.

Ironically,

You believe that the only person you can rely on is yourself and you avoid asking for risks.

Now,

Even though you might be the only person you feel you can rely on doesn't mean you actually trust yourself.

It doesn't mean you trust your decisions,

But that feels a lot safer for you.

And what happens is you find that the world is a fearful place to live in.

So as a consequence,

You feel the need to manipulate and control everything.

Everything has to have its place.

Everything needs to be neat as mentioned before.

And not only do you need to feel you need to control everything,

But you also feel you need to control everyone to keep you with this wonderful sense of safety.

But of course,

If something happens to you,

Guess what?

You come unstuck,

You feel unbalanced,

You go back into fear.

And when you're like this,

It might be worthwhile just to start tuning into your own body.

You start to feel restless because you're constantly hypervigilant on high alert.

That takes away energy.

You're lacking in stanoma.

You feel edgy and you find it hard to be still and relaxed because you're unable to settle.

And you're unable to settle because you have this need to be constantly doing it on the go.

You're striving,

Doing,

Succeeding.

And this is what can lead to burnout.

Because you might be able to go like that for quite a while,

Actually for many years.

But in the end,

It is exhausting.

Your body actually no longer knows how to cope.

You feel exhausted.

You might have a breakdown and you burn out.

And the reason for that is because when you're in this relentless state of hyperarousal,

Your body is constantly being flooded with stress hormones,

Which of course promotes the instinctual flight or fight response.

You never feel safe to stop and rest.

And this was my experience.

And I didn't realize that even after I had the breakdown,

It took me a while to get that I just simply pushed myself too far.

I didn't listen to my body.

My body gave me the little signs,

The nudges,

But I just kept going.

And in the end,

I actually crashed ending up in hospital because I was so disconnected,

Ungrounded,

And I was so terrified of losing control.

Not a great place to be.

And it took me quite a while to come back.

But that was part of my healing was teaching me how to be in my body,

How to respect my body,

How to feel safe,

Not only in the world,

But also in my body.

And that I could ask for others for help.

I didn't have to rely on myself.

Now there are many ways to support you bringing your chakra back into balance.

So I'm going to share some with you.

Some you may like some you might not,

But this will give you an idea of what you can do,

Because you need to do ones that work for you.

Otherwise you won't own them and they won't have the benefits for you of balancing your chakra.

So firstly,

You start to take the time to listen to your body and act on what it's telling you.

And it does tell you,

We just need to listen and then act on it.

And you can do this through movement,

Walking,

Dancing,

Meditation,

Connecting with nature,

Because all of this will help you to slow down.

All of this will help you to slow your breathing.

Because what you're needing to do is free this blocked energy that's in there,

That has been building up for years.

As I mentioned in my trauma talk,

We can freeze and when we freeze,

We hold all this energy in our bodies,

It remains blocked,

It needs to come out.

We need to move it,

We need to soothe our nervous system.

Another way to support yourself is to eat grounding foods,

Such as sweet potatoes,

Beets,

Carrots,

Ginger or turnips.

Work with a professional,

Get help.

But mind you,

Find someone who's either trauma-informed aware,

Or even if it's particularly in the beginning of trauma,

Who's trauma educated,

Really,

Really important.

And if possible,

If someone has also had lived experience,

Because then they really understand what is happening for you.

Other ways to be able to support yourself is learn how to do EFT tapping.

No reiki is another way to support healing.

Wear the color red.

Use grounding essential oils such as sandalwood,

Patchouli,

Vetiver,

Black pepper or ginger.

Another thing if you love using crystals,

Use red jasper,

Hematite,

Smoky quartz,

Black tourmaline.

And how you can use these is put them in your purse or wallet,

In a pocket.

Even hold one just in your hand when you're meditating,

When you're walking or just because you can.

Particularly if you're feeling unsafe or gone into anxiety.

A powerful one for me here was to journal,

To write.

I found writing really useful because it helped me just to find the words,

To get understanding,

To understand myself.

It took me out of my mind into my body.

And then what I do is if I really want to extra support,

I wrote with a red pen.

And another thing lastly you can use is repeat positive affirmations.

And just keep saying them.

Because initially you might not believe them,

Initially you might feel disconnected from them.

But find one that really resonates with you.

It might even be one that you hear now.

And then just keep repeating that.

Then you'll find over a period of time,

It'll shift and you'll find the one that works best for you.

So here are a few to get you started.

I'm safe in the world.

I'm safe in my body.

I'm protected in this world.

I am grounded.

I am rooted firmly to this earth.

My root chakra is balanced.

I release all my anxieties and fears.

I have everything I need.

I am financially secure.

I am safe.

And I am strong.

Thank you for listening.

Let me go how you went with this.

What ideas you've got,

Any understandings,

What you can put into place.

And you might like to then listen to my next one will be a meditation and the third one of the series will be a Reiki.

So this will fully immerse you into helping you balance your root chakra again.

And remember when you work with the root chakra,

Work with red and all black.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you this was just what I need🙏🏻