The chakras are an ancient metaphysical system originating from India. According to this system we all have seven main chakras and several minor ones. The amount of chakras that are active and available for us increases with our spiritual development. If we consciously work on our main seven chakras, we simultaneously clear and activate the other chakras as well.
The chakra that is the most important to actively work on is our first one, the lowest chakra of material stability and the body. As children we all have naturally open upper chakras, but we need to learn to safely stabilize and feel at home on planet Earth. For many of us this process gets interrupted and disturbed due to circumstances and events in our childhood, and therefore becomes a work needed to undertake later in life. This is a process which can take long time, depending on a person’s willingness and dedication. Once you have opened your first chakra, work with the upper ones gets easier.
BASE CHAKRA or MULADHARA
Our roots, foundation, body, money, material stability, safety
Location: The bottom of the spine, including our legs and the lowest part of the belly
Element: Earth
Purpose: Surviving
Goals: Stability, grounding, abundance, right food, physical health, emotional clearing of childhood
Symptoms of being blocked or not working properly: Obesity, indigestion, anorexia, problems with knees and bones, reoccurring illnesses, fears and paranoia, concentration problems, nervosity, forgetfulness, a sense of lack, week memories from childhood
Colour: Red
Food: Meat, red vegetables, roots, nuts, beans
Right: To have
The first chakra is naturally developing in our time in our mother’s womb, and the first year after birth. This is the time when our needs are all about survival and physical comfort. The most important thing in this time is getting a feeling of safety and trust and establishing ways to satisfy our needs to survive.
To be denied the basic survival needs – food, warmth, health care, a healthy environment, physical touch – threatens our right to have. Our inner safety is disturbed and as a consequence we will obsessively look for it in various other things, such as money or relationships.
Exercises for a strong and healthy first chakra:
1. Make your home into an expression of yourself. If you are not living where you would like, think about where and how you want to live. Then write the steps how to achieve your goal. Get rid of all the things you don’t need which makes you feel anyhow bad or strange, even if they are presents and you think you need to keep it. Be surrounded only with things that make you feel good. Photos of dead people are better to put away, also dry flowers and old stuff you do not care about. Clean your living space, and keep it clean. Go through your storages and basement.
2. About the money, take a good look at your dependencies. Every dependency have its price, so try to make yourself less dependent on others and others less dependent on you. When people live together, this can be very relative. It is important that relations are balanced and energy flows both ways. If one gives more, the other can give back in another way. Think through if any of your relations are unbalanced like this. Take a look at how you earn your income. What could be a new, better way for your income, what do you really want to do in your life and spend your time on? Do you value your work efforts enough? Do you feel good about your methods? If you feel content and happy about your income, then that’s a good indicator that your first chakra is working good, even if you are not “wealthy” by society’s standards.
A simple exercise to connect with the energy of money:
Take a note of money in your hand. Close your eyes and observe your thoughts and feelings. Try to understand your relation with money in general, as if it was an old relative:
“What is money for me?”
“What is it bringing to me?”
“Do I deserve it?”
“Am I worthy to have it?”
“What can I do with it in the world?”
“How do I judge it? Is it good or bad?”
“Do I have enough of it? Do I have too much?”
You can also make a forgiveness exercise if you feel that you have a grudge about money, or on someone who influenced your feelings about it in a negative way. Then you can replace old negative feelings and attitudes with the money with new positive ones, such as:
“I deserve money!”
“I always have enough!”
“I am safe and taken care of!”
“I can do much good in the world with money!”
“All that I need is coming to me!”
Repeat them until you feel it, and whenever situations and issues about money surfaces in your everyday life.
3. Physical health and the body. Our health is strongly connected with our emotions. Emotional patterns are emerging mostly from our childhood. It is good to go through and process your childhood memories. Whatever you remember, write in a diary. By observing and welcoming your emotions you will find many keys to your relation with, and beliefs about, your body. Beliefs are changeable with meditation and other ways. Let go your harming beliefs and create a positive relation to your body. Make sure to eat healthy and get the right nutrition.
4. Practice forgiveness and learn to let go the past which hold you back. Our past is our foundation for our beliefs about ourselves, and the power by which we act in the world. In our body, our past is symbolized by our legs and ankles. Mistakes and hurts are stored there from our childhood, and becomes a cause for instability in what should be our stability. We can let these hurts go, and all its consequences too, if we learn to forgive our past and all people and situations involved.
Here is a simple forgiving meditation:
Imagine the person who you need to forgive standing in front of you. See him/her clearly, faults and all. Imagine a golden light grow on this person. As the light encompasses the person, the ugliness and faults goes away and left is the highest and purest version of the person, the Higher Self, what we all truly are. Feel how the heavy chains of grievance and anger goes away from you and the person, and feel his/her gratitude towards you for releasing you both. After that, place also yourself in the golden light, so you are all together in a golden bubble. Ask that you both be forgiven completely. Be in a meditation until you feel releasing. As much as you can release, you will feel released.
To forgive does not mean that you allow bad treatment! It means to release negative inner feelings, and to free yourself. It is also to understanding that people do ‘bad and ugly’ things specially becouse they lost their way and they don’t feel or know their true self. Everyone deserves forgiving. But you don’t need to give more energy or time to this person if he/she is treating you badly. To quit connections that are not good for you is sometimes needed, but to hold on to grudge and resentment is not.
5. Restore family relations and talk about things that need solving. Is there someone you need to talk to? Something that needs to be said or solved? Now is the time. Is someone in your family wielding too much control over your mind, financial situation or actions? Where do you need to cut the ties, and where do you need to restore them? Let go grievances and become free from unhealthy relations.
6. Connection with Earth is crucial. Meeting the nature will clear your mind, calm you down and connect you with yourself. If you feel bad, try to hug a tree or go for a walk. Only to touch a tree or the soil with your skin releases you from electromagnetic tensions, so it is much recommended after working with computers to take time in nature.
7. Create goals for yourself. Write down 5 goals which you want to achieve in one week, in one month, one year and in five years. They should be realistic enough to make them feel achievable, but big enough to make you feel inspired. Then write down the exact steps you will take to make them reality. Then you begin to take them.
8. Think about these words and meditate on them. Then write down what thoughts you get:
SURVIVING
MATERIAL POSSESSIONS
EARTH
GROUNDING
BODY
PHYSICAL
HOME
FAMILY
ROOTS
DISCIPLINE
BASE
SILENCE
9. If you want you can make an altar, on which you can place:
A red cloth, stones, wood, flowers or plants, a photo of your family, money, a mirror, a photo of yourself, your written goals, photos and pictures of things what you wish to get and achieve, and whatever you feel connects you to Earth, your body, your life and yourself!
I wish you a nice grounding!