24 Ways for Balancing and Healing the Root Chakra

There are any number of articles on the internet that share ways for healing the root chakra.  Many of these point in the right general direction. Many simply avoid the real issue and some are, in the opinion of this writer, downright fluffy.

The healing and balance of the Root Chakra is, for many people, a real challenge. It is one that they would rather avoid and the invitations from many root chakra healing and balance articles help them do this.

So I am dividing this article into two parts and four sections. These include 24 Ways to Heal and Balance the Root Chakra. I begin with sharing a menu of this article so that you can access various parts of it that might immediately pique your interest.

Healing the Root Chakra – 24 Ways Menu

Introduction –

• What is Root Chakra Healing?
• What is Root Chakra Balance?

Part I

• Chakra Healing
  • 6 Not So Serious Healing Ways
  • 6 Serious Healing Ways

Part II

• Chakra Balance
  • 6 Fun Ways for Chakra Balance
  • 6 Frivolous Ways for Chakra Balance

Notice that I have chosen to distinguish between Root Chakra Healing and Root Chakra Balance. So let me begin by outlining what I mean by each of these

This is where you have Root Chakra issues that seriously impact your way of Being in the world.

The world does not feel a safe place. You feel anxious, panicky and ungrounded. You may have body image issues. You feel yourself to be a victim and life is generally a struggle and you feel unhappy or even depressed. You may have serious money issues and have no direction in terms of what you do by way of work or career.

We all have these experiences at times.

I have had most all of these issues at some period sometimes to the point that I no longer wished to live. So I take this issue of Root Chakra healing very seriously. These kind of deep Root Chakra issues are not solved by eating red vegetables as suggested in one article on healing the Root Chakra.

This is more like when you are having a bad hair day. You have been thrown off centre. You have got stuck in your head in overthinking and you feel angry, irritated or upset in some way. You are beginning to spiral down into catastrophic thinking. The world is going to hell in a basket. This is not so deep rooted. You come back to your centre through practicing some fairly simply root chakra balancing techniques that you can do on your own.

As regards the frivolous and the fluffy Root Chakra suggestions I will touch on these and leave you to decide if they might be of some value to you.

So let me move on to Part I that is related to ways in which to heal the Root Chakra. These are divided into Serious and not so Serious. Please note that Root Chakra Healing is a serious issue. It needs a long-term commitment, patience, kindness and courage. Consider it like parenting or re-parenting your inner wounded child.

Let me list these EASY ways that you can explore in learning how to heal the Root Chakra. These are: –

1. Yoga Nidra
2. Walking Meditation
3. Write a Journal
4. Become a Sweet Dancer
5. Join a Drumming Circle
6. Explore Essential Oils.

This is where you might begin the long-term journey of learning to heal and then balance the Root Chakra which is foundational to learning to live your one wild and precious life. This is not an exhaustive list. I use some of these everyday (1 and 3) and have used most of them at some stage of the journey that is Yoga for Life.

So let me share with you the reasons I recommend these fairly easy practices, most of which you can do for yourself in the safety of your own home.

If you do not do any of the other 23 practices then do this one. There is a section on this website dedicated to this practice alone. I do it every day. I love it even though there are times I find it challenging but not in any painful way.

If you have tried different types of meditaion and found these hard to commit too (as is the fact in my own case) then this practice could well be the one for you.

This practice essentially brings you back to learning how to feel safe in your body and feel safe in your emotional body. It is used by Dr. Richard Millar in the iRest Program to treat the serious issue of P.T.S.D – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Listen to a lovely body sensing guided meditation by Dr. Richard Millar.

Yoga Nidra is very gentle, not at all analytical and you go at your own pace. To begin with the challenge, and it is a real challenge, is to stop falling asleep. You learn to stay awake through the commitment to practice daily.

Yoga nidra allows us to reach the most profound level of relaxation possible, It opens a doorway to a place where we can see ourselves and our lives in the most positive light.” says Rod Stryker– International yoga teacher, who has been teaching yoga nidra since the mid-1990s and who writes about it in his book, The Four Desires.

Resources

8 Benefits of Yoga Nidra

I practice Yoga Nidra every day. As a result, especially when working in the garden, I find myself engaged in walking meditatively. I am present to the steps I take. I am out of my overthinking personal mind. I am present to the birdsong and the buzzing of the bees.

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance beween spirit and humility. – Gary Snyder

There was a time, not so long ago, when each morning I would wake up feeling dread and despair. At the rimw I wasn’t practicing Yoga Nidra. At the time I wasn’t in the throes of alcoholism. I was really quite happy. I had no reason to feel the way I did. I wasn’t, however, ever sure that I would make it through the day.

The mornings where the worst. So I split the day into two and sometimes into hours. I would walk three times each day for miles upon miles. Scientifically I cannot prove this but I think the reason for the despair was that I took on the psychological pain of my younger sister. She found out that the cancer she thought had gone had in fact returned. This despair and dread lasted months and the walking meditation kept me grounded.

Resource

Walking Meditation Course at Live and Dare 

I love writing. If I do not write I don’t feel centred in the same way that I normally do. I am more easily thrown of centre. I write about what I love. There was a time I wrote a lot about dreams.

I was fascinated by what I felt to be the disconnect between my everyday life and my dreamlife. In my everyday life I was happy, creative and prosperous. In my dreamlife I was violent, enraged, lonely and feeling abandoned.

Most of my dreams were recurring dreams where I fought with my father in increasingly violent ways while he attempted to throw me out of our home. This was either while my mother looked on or she was absent.

This series of dreams, I think, was the final healing of the Orphan Archetype in me that in a way I hated and did not want to be. Each of us has this Archetype to some degree. We are all abandoned in some way. In my own life this was an emotional abandonment which left me feeling enraged, unworthy and in a real sense lost. In the words of a Bob Dylan song I had, “No direction Home.”

I don’t journal to ‘be productive.’ I don’t do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me. It’s the most cost-effective therapy I’ve ever found.” Tim Ferriss

Writing in a journal is an experience of emotional grounding. It does not have to make sense. To begin with it tends to be a struggle. You are blocked energetically but you then simply write a stream of consciousness. Writing a journal is a journey into trusting your own voice.

Now I can write for hours and never lift the pen from the paper. I can easily write for ninety nine percent nonstop if the topic interests me as does this topic 24 Ways to Heal and Balance the Root Chakra. If you do choose to start a journal practice ensure that you keep it private.

Resources

A Course that might be of interest Writing to Heal

In my early twenties I spent much of my time alone. This was the real dynamic of the Orphan who feels abandoned and unloved. I found ways to make myself come alive.

One of these ways was to practice lots of Hatha Yoga. The other was to dance in my room with abandon wearing headphones with an extended lead. My favourite song was by the Rolling Stones. This was Sympathy for the Devil.

This is what I call a Root Chakra Balance Song.

I loved the rhythm of the opening drums. I loved the lyrics. I had a certain kind of sympathy for the devil of an enraged Orphan who watched as his personal blitzkrieg raged.

The other song was by Van Morrison called Listen to the Lion.

This is a long song. It becomes a kind of chant. Read more about how I use songs for living a yoga way of life.

The Lion represented the voice of Wisdom that I was beginning to listen to and that would change the Orphan Archetype into the Innocent. (Functional Root Chakra Archetype) This would allow me to invite that other Archetype that is central to my life – The Sage Archetype.

With these songs, and especially with moving the body through dance, the feeling of loneliness would change. Sometimes I would let the Orphan rant. It was a kind of controlled catharsises.

For many years I was part of a wonderful community of drummers. I used to go to drumming festivals. Wherever there is a drumming circle close to home you will find me there. It is so grounding and if taught well so communal.

Drumming is perhaps the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity. It is a simple and effortless way to still the chatter of the mind, thereby inducing altered states of consciousness. It is one of the quickest and most powerful ways I know to open the heart and connect with a power greater than ourselves https://shamanicdrumming.blogspot.com

What it does is take you out of your head into your body. For an hour or two you stop the never-ending chatter of your personal mind. You get a great work out. You get to dance. You get to hear voices of energies that are beyond the dimension of form that come to join the celebration.

You also get to enjoy silence and relaxation. You cannot drum and think at the same time. I have a friend who taught communal drumming at one of the key mental health hospitals in Ireland. This was on a Tuesday night.

He tells the story that at the following mornings meeting of staff, consultants and patient representative it was noted that every Wednesday on doing the rounds the patients seemed to be calmer and less agitated. Staff and consultants were at a loss to explain why this might be. There was some discussion around the issue until the patient representative spoke up and declared, “It’s the fucking drumming.”

If you are interested in a powerful yet fun way of becoming more embodied then I recommend communal drumming or you might like to explore a drumming course that is called Drumming the Chakras which is available at https://www.stronginstitute.com/drum-healing/chakra-offer/

Learn more about the 7 different chakra rhythms

There have been times when I was intuitively drawn to try essential oils for some issue that was troubling me. Our sense of smell is very instinctive. It is intelligent in ways beyond the dualistic overthinking personal mind.

So I find with using them that a change for the better occurs. Is this a placebo effect? I don’t know. I don’t really care. What I care about is that it makes me feel more centred, calmer and available to be creative and loving.

If there ever was one essential oil to completely calm down our nervous system, soothe our emotions and pacify any stress and tension it must be vetiver. Known as the ‘oil of tranquillity’, it has sedative and calming qualities. – https://yogandha.com/blogs/wellbeing/getting-grounded-and-calm-with-vetiver

Like all these practices it is for you to explore and find what works for you. All of these work for me to different degrees and at different times. You may well find other ways to explore feeling centred. Maybe you have a favourite that you would like to share in the comments section at the end of this post.

So those are what I consider easy but serious ways in which to commit to healing the Root Chakra rather than simply balancing it. Now I want to introduce you to those ways of Root Chakra Healing that are really serious healing modalities.

I have at different stages of my life used most of these. So let us look at what Root Chakra Healing involves if your experience of the everyday world is one of feeling unsafe, abandoned, insecure and other related ways of emotional living.

These serious ways of Healing the Root Chakra are:-

1. Therapy and Counselling.
2. A Weekly Massage
3. Giving Up Being A Victim
4. Give up Your Primary Addiction
5. Explore Homeopathy
6. Become Your Own Dream Expert

This is not an exclusive list and you may approach this issue of healing the root chakra from another modality. Please share what has worked for you so that anyone reading this can have other options which may better suit their situation or their personality.

In exploring those other articles with practices for healing the root chakra I not once came across a recommendation to explore therapy or counselling. I have an idea that this is all part of the common practice called spiritual bypassing.

Spiritual bypassing is where you practice spiritual development techniques in the hope that your abandoned, orphaned inner child will stop troubling you so that you can transcend its suffering. Sorry but it doesn’t work like that.

At various time I have sought therapy and counselling. Once after a breakup and once in in order to stop committing suicide which had become an increasing psychic pull. My experience is that there have been great counsellors and terrible counsellors.

I had the inner radar to know who to stay with and who to leave. At one stage I got into the psychiatric drug culture. This was a disaster. This is not to say that it hasn’t helped other people. It helped my wife through a fairly serious bout of depression.

My adventure into the world of psychiatric medicine left me feeling like I had no control over my body. I would move my mouth to speak and the words would come out sounding slurred. I sounded drunk but I wasn’t. I tried this route to appease the pleadings of an outpatient psychiatrist.

She gave me an injection in my ass and my mind left the building. The following week I told her to fuck off with her medication. Had I not been an outpatient I suspect that such an outburst would have meant I was being uncompliant.

I stayed and talked to the counsellor John Blackton who I loved and during that time I experienced what was a spiritual awakening. No drugs just connection.

Serious Root Chakra Healing can be facilitated by a massage. This is because you are very much drawn into the experience of embodiment. Massage is also recommended as part of a therapy program because you want to avoid what is called paralysis by analysis.

Your abandoned inner child is given a real sense of attention at the hands of the person giving the massage. It opens up the body armour that you unconsciously hold in place to protect you against emotions that you feel threatened by.

This is why most modern therapy involves what is called bodywork. This was developed by the German psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich and later continued by the American physician Alexander Lowden who wrote Bioenergetics : The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind.

When I lived in Manchester in the North of England, I used to belong to what was called The Reich Group. Each month we invited a leading humanistic psychology workshop leader from England or Europe to give a weekend workshop. This is where I learned the importance of releasing what Wilhelm Reich called ‘body armour.’ This is not your fluffy recommendation for healing the root chakra.

Resources

Article on Chakra Balancing and Massage

This is hard for many of us because we really do feel victimized by the circumstances of our life. However, you are unlikely to heal the wounded inner child that symbolized the dynamic of the root chakra by remaining a victim.

You will remain stuck at the level of the 1^st chakra. You will give all your energy to an identity that is only a part of who you truly are. It can become a wonderful part of who you are. I hated the idea of being an Orphan Archetype. I only wanted to live the Archetype (energetic pattern) of the Magician. Only without the dynamic and suffering of the Orphan the Magician would so easily become egotistic and inflated. I have seen this happen so often with people who become Magicians.

The Orphan keeps your feet on the ground. I don’t glorify the Orphan within me which would become a kind of victimhood. He is now, for the most part, an integral part of who I am. It involved processing the fear and rage of abandonment but I am no longer a victim of my past. There is still work for me to do around this issue. This is the deeper work of processing sadness and shame.

The term ‘orphan’ is loosely used by Jung as one who has experienced the act of abandonment by a parent at some point in their childhood, (whether the physical death of one or both parents has actually occurred), and it is for this reason that EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US have the opportunity to use this to further our spiritual paths. – https://fractalenlightenment.com

This processing of the Root Chakra energy is facilitated by the other two chakra energetics related to personal development. These are the sacral chakra and the solar plexus chakra. You engage the personal will (3^rd chakra) with the will to relationship (2^nd chakra) This is the willingness to have a relationship with those aspects of yourself you feel victimized. You take back the power and you move from the Archetype of Orphan or Victim to the functional Archetype of the root chakra that is the Innocent.

The primary addiction that is the cause of most unnecessary suffering in the world is the addiction to your overthinking personal mind. The tragedy of modern education is that it does not teach young people how to use their minds. It ignores how they are used and abused but their overthinking, always one rational and irrational thinking.

This thinking takes up most all of the energy for living. It takes you into life of constructs, words, concepts and beliefs. Most of these are not your own. Many of them are alien to you. The personal mind is dualistic and oppositional.

Serious Root Chakra Healing involves learning to FEEL centred in the breath rather than in thought. This is being centred in “Feeling Fine.” You learn to trust the fineness of the breath rather than the disruptive movement of the personal mind.

Your breath takes you into a state of embodied Presence. You are then less unconsciously focused on using the breath to armour the body and maintain energetic holding patterns that keep your emotional energy locked up.

The breath becomes a doorway to a freedom rather than your being locked up as a prisoner of the overthinking, right and wrong duality of the personal mind.

I know this transformation is painful, but you’re not falling apart; you’re just falling into something different, with a new capacity to be beautiful.

-William C. Hannan

I think that homeopathy is magic. I have no real idea how it works. Only, when it works it is kind of miraculous.

There was a time in my life when I was experiencing what, in homeopathic terms, are called “Heavy Mentals.” My wife was at the time studying to become a registered homeopath. She suggested that I visit a local homeopath. I was sceptical but I wanted some relief without the need for drugs and their related side effects. I had been down that road before.

I went to the local homeopath. When she opened her front door, I immediately felt that there was something very special about her. I very rarely get that kind of vibe from anyone. I spent about ninety minutes with her and she gave me a homeopathic remedy.

These were three small white tablets. She said, “Go home, sit quietly and put these tables on your tongue and let them dissolve.” So I took the tablets in a small brown bottle home. I immediately wet to the main bedroom of our house and set on the edge of the bed.

It was a sunny day. The sunlight streamed through the window unto the golden satinwood floor. I was still sceptical but I put the three tablets on my tongue and they slowly began to dissolve. I waited a little while. I waited some more. Then I felt what I can only describe as a dark energy begin to rise up out of my body and move above me and leave. It felt palpable. I sat there wondering what had just happened. The heavy mental symptoms did not return. I have been a fan of homeopathy ever since. I have seen the magic work many times. I am no longer a sceptic.

What blocks the energy of the Root Chakra is more often than not unconscious. It is preverbal. It goes way back beyond your conscious awareness. What will unfold this unconscious awareness is your commitment to honouring the language of your dreams.

As the father of modern psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud said, “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.” I have found this to be the case in my own life. I would never have understood the depth of my feeling of emotional abandonment had it not been for my interest in my dreamworld.

I recommend that you DO NOT buy a dream dictionary. These are far too general. Your dream symbols are both personal and collective. They are your secret language for you to decode. This requires a long-term commitment. Over time you become more skilled at FEELING what feels right.

It is no co-incidence that in order to find your purpose in life that in many different cultures you are encouraged to follow your dreams. Your dreams override the dominance of your intellect. While this is thought to be rational it is often highly conditioned. This conditioning often blocks your energy and is not in your best interest.

Resources

A CD Course of Dream Instruction that I have Explored is Dreamgates.

This is serious root chakra healing work. I suspect it may not be what a lot of you reading this want to hear. I didn’t want to hear it. Rather it is so much easier to simply engage with something less demanding such as wearing crystals, drinking the right teas or wearing the right colour (red).

In other articles on the internet on root chakra healing, I my opinion, do not share with you the REAL CHALLENGE of embodied living. Without this ability to FEEL embodied and from Y-E-S (Your Energy System) then the so-called ascent through the Higher Chakra’s isn’t really on.

I say, “The so-called ascent,” because it is not you who ascend but the Divine who descends into you through an open heart. However, there is not open heartedness without some degree of feeling safe in the world.

So what if you are to some degree integrated as a personality? (Aligned the lower three chakras of the 7 chakra system) You are for the most part centred. You have a relationship with all the parts of yourself that are referred to in the Bible as “Legion.” You have clear boundaries and you are able to direct your personal will in the service of what supports your integrity and authenticity.

Yet sometimes, and even many times, you are pulled off centre. You have a bad hair day. Your kids are acting out. Your significant other is in a mood. Work is driving you to distraction. You need to come back to the centre.

This is what I call the practice of Root Chakra Balancing.

I share here some ideas in how you might practice returning to equilibrium and get your feet back on the ground. Just to say don’t forget the primary practice for healing and balance that I started this 24 Ways to Root Chakra Healing and Balance. This is the practice of Yoga Nidra.

So the nice ways of Root Chakra Balance include:-

1. Take a Shower
2. Walk in Nature
3. Cuddle a Pet (probably not the Goldfish)
4. Dance to a Different Drummer
5. Walk a Labyrinth
6. Smell some Lavender.

Not all of these may be available to you. These give you some idea around practices that invite balance of chakra energy centres. Notice that not any of them are focused on thinking. They all involve the body and the senses.

Your thinking mind is the root cause of most of the stress you experience in life. It uses you. It clouds your Essence. It is the servant running riot in the Palace of Presence, while you, the rightful King/Queen have left the building.

Some of the above do not need explanation. Some do. So let me share these that I think need some explanation.

Root Chakra Balance is about embodied energy. It is about feeling and moving the body. There is noting quite like dancing. You might listen to something like:-

• Osho Dynamic Meditation.
• 5 Rhythm Dancing
• Chakra Dancing.

You might simply play a favourite song or group of songs and play them on www.listenonrepeat.com

Resource

THE POWER WAVE A High-Velocity Ecstatic Dance Workout – Gabrielle Roth

This is not the most available way of balancing the root chakra but one that I love and recommend. Read about the centring power of the Labyrinth that its invitation can mean for you. It is an embodied sacred geometry that you engage with in a meaningful and empowering ritualistic way.

You don’t think your way through a labyrinth. Think of it as a guided walking meditation without words were you concentrate on sensing your inner body while taking the next step to the centre where you stand silently in trust.

When I was graced to walk a labyrinth in the Derry Guild Hall with members of our natural voice choir a friend in the choir declared that walking the labyrinth was one of the most extra ordinary experiences he had ever had.

Resources

The Labyrinth Society

I love the smell of fresh lavender.

When you smell lavender it is a really quick way to calm your nerves and feelings of anxiety. When I would sometimes attend at interviews, I would keep a sprig in the inside pocket of my jacket and take it out discretely to have a sniff if I found myself tensing up while waiting.

I grow fresh lavender in my garden. You may not have such direct access. If not, then you might consider burning some lavender essential oil in a defuser. If nothing else this will make your room smell pretty wonderful.

Resources

Recommended Essential Oil for Grounding

So there are some fun ways of balancing the root chakra.

Now we come to what I refer to as the fluffy and frivolous recommendation that you find in other articles related to this subject of Root Chakra Healing and Balance.

These include:-

1. Wear red clothing because this is the colour associated with the root chakra.
2. Use affirmations such as “I am safe.”
3. Drink herbal teas such as dandelion root, sage, ginger, elderflower.
4. Eat root vegetables because they are connected to the root chakra element -earth.
5. Chant the sound LAM.
6. Wear red tinted spectacles.

When I write these out, I have to smile.

For some (6) I ask, “Is this for real?”

Let me also say that I love some of these ideas and use them in my everyday life. These are items (1) and (4). I think, however, that they have no real impact on my energy level and certainly no real impact on healing my inner Orphan.

Having said that it is up to you to explore what works for you.

Let me say, however, that none of the above six fluffy practices will heal serious root chakra imbalance. You are fooling yourself and being misguided if you think they will.

If you think you have a Root Chakra Healing or Balance issue then if you do nothing more at least start a daily practice of Yoga Nidra. This is not fluffy practice.

The practice of Yoga Nidra is both challenging and enjoyable. The challenge is to stay awake. It is not as demanding as therapy or counselling. It does, however, give you a real foundation for learning to live as an embodied Presence of Love on this Planet. This is your true destiny.

I hope you found these 24 Ways of Healing and Balancing the Root Chakra of value especially if you feel you have serious imbalance as shared above. Maybe you have a practice that you use in your life that heals your feeling of being less than fully embodied and that allows you to feel safer in your own skin. Maybe you would share it in the comments.