Now you may be a bit confused by the title of this week’s blog since I normally blog all about my book, Rekindled Prophecy, and all things related to the Greylyn the Guardian Angel series. But this week I wanted to divert a bit from my writing to discuss another aspect of my life I am currently learning more and more about – my family refer to it as the “woo-woo” side of me.
So please indulge me as we travel down a side road seeming to veer away from my books, which I will gladly talk about anytime and all the time. If you want to read more about Rekindled Prophecy, the series, the characters, the inspiration, and all things related to my writing, I’ll be back on track next week. In the meantime, please feel free to visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KCFreemanAuthor/ for all things Greylyn and guardian angels. I post daily there.
Here’s the first article I wrote on the subject of chakras for the online paranormal magazine, Paranormal Rag (sadly no longer in publication). I planned a whole series on chakras so I may take that up here with my own blog.
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The First Chakra – Root
Series on the Seven Chakras
By KC Freeman
What is a chakra? I keep hearing more and more about chakras all the time. What was once considered “woo-woo” is now making its way into the mainstream and I find it fascinating! So as I educate myself on the subject I wanted to bring you all along with me for the adventure. Hope you hop onto the ride and enjoy this metaphysical field trip into chakras. Since there is so much information out there on this subject, let’s take our time and navigate the chakras one at a time.
So again the question – what is a chakra? Without diving into the complex labyrinth of the history and origins of chakras, let’s just focus on what exactly it is and why it’s important to our overall health.
A chakra, by Wikipedia definition is “a part of the esoteric medieval era theories about physiology and psychic centers that emerged across Indian traditions.” To break it down further, the theory espouses that human life is simultaneously a physical thing and a spiritual thing. While we spend thousands of dollars a year eating right, exercising, taking vitamins and minerals, and drinking plenty of water, we are taking care of our physical body. Sadly, due to the chaos and hustle/bustle of everyday life, most of us have disregarded our “subtle body” – the psychological, emotional, non-physical aspects of our life. We ignore our chakra centers and the neglect heavily impacts our physical bodies regardless of how many times a week we work out.
We need balance between the physical and non-physical aspects of our life.
The chakras help us understand the non-physical and how it relates to our physical bodies. According to theories, there can be many chakras and the number varies depending on the practice. For our purposes, we will stick with the prevalent theory that there are seven primary chakras.
- Muladhara – the root chakra is located at the base of the spine in the coccygeal region of our body. We will discuss this chakra in more detail in just a minute.
- Svadhishthana – the sacral chakra located in the sexual organs.
- Manipura – the solar plexus or navel chakra.
- Anahata – the heart chakra.
- Vishuddha – the throat chakra.
- Ajna – the third-eye chakra located between the eyebrows.
- Sahasrara – the crown chakra located in the crown of our head.
Each chakra makes up our energy centers and each has its own purpose. Blocked energy in any or all of the chakras can lead to illness. However, to truly balance our physical and non-physical bodies for better health, one must start balancing from the root – much like a flower must first have a healthy root in order to grow and blossom into its beautiful form to be seen by the world. So let’s go back to our roots.
The first chakra, the root, is symbolized by the color red. It is located at the base of the spine and associated with the perineum in the coccyx area. The root chakra represents the foundation of ourselves and, when healthy, gives us a feeling of being grounded/supported. Mula means root. Dhara means support. The root chakra grounds your energy to the Earth. Examples of issues regarding an imbalanced root chakra are problems related to survival such as financial independence, a belief we will never have enough to survive such as money, food, safety, or shelter.
To be balanced in the root chakra, one must feel connected to your own life experience.
Overactive root chakras manifest in the need for a person to feel secure all the time. They are controlling, aggressive, materialistic, and can come off as being extremely greedy. There is never enough money, never enough food, never enough of anything. This leads to anxiety. The body will experience stress and fear regardless of how well our basic survival needs are covered for fear it will be taken away. Even when there is no real threat to our survival, an overactive root chakra will make our bodies still experience that fear and stress.
Underactive root chakras are just as troubling. Again, insecurity raises its ugly head. Instead of anger or aggression, this causes anxiety and chaos. Those with underactive root chakras may be highly disorganized and inefficient. These people are insecure and detached from the world and may feel unwelcome, so they hide away from the world or are considered to be “day dreamers.”
Some physical ailments brought about by an imbalanced root chakra are lower back pain, hip pain, digestive issues, as well as ovarian cysts in women and prostrate problems in men. Considering the number of over-the-counter medicines for digestive problems and the surge of patients seeking help from gastrointestinal medicine, I’d say that root chakra overbalance is an epidemic.
With both over and under-active root chakras, a person may experience significant weight loss or weight gain, high or low sex drives, over-activeness or laziness. Depression is also common in individuals with root chakra imbalances.
So now that we know the symptoms of root chakra imbalances, how do we fix them?
Without going into specific details here, common therapies for root chakra imbalance include yoga, aromatherapy, guided meditation, and visualization. There are numerous books and articles on the subject, as well as, excellent alternative medicine practitioners to help you along your path.
Here’s some other suggestions:
- Dancing, going for a walk, even getting a pedicure will help ground you. You will find that self-care is extremely important to balance all chakras.
- Yoga poses such as Warrior One, Bridge, and Mountain are excellent poses to balance the root chakra. For more information of yoga therapies for chakra healing, I suggest you search on Kundalini yoga.
- Crystals are a part of the chakra healing system which we can discuss in more detail in a later post, but to balance the root chakra, you can use yellow topaz, bloodstone, or azurite.
- Nutrition is not just for the physical body. Add red foods (no, not with red food dye – natural red foods) such as apples, cherries, tomatoes, beets, and even high protein foods such as red meat. Even hot sauce and spicy peppers are beneficial.
- Apply essential oils to pulse points or to the soles of your feet to relax and open up the chakra. For the root chakra use ylang ylang, rose, or frankincense.
- Meditation – imagine a lotus flower at the base of your spine while practicing measured breathing or listening to relaxing music. The main point here being to be mindful of that area of your body to bring healing energy to it.
- Acts of kindness are another way to open up an overactive root chakra.
- Activities such as gardening or walks in nature can help calm an overactive root chakra.
- Reiki practitioners are an amazing resource for balancing and cleansing chakras.
To be completely healthy in both our physical and non-physical (emotional, spiritual) bodies, we must first have a healthy root chakra as this is the basis of energy flow throughout the body.
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And just in case you’re still interested in my fantasy/paranormal novel, Rekindled Prophecy, but have yet to purchase one…I know it’s a shameless plug…