The Root Chakra & Immune System

August ~ Grain Moon

Hello beautiful beings!

Welcome to the fifth month of A Year of Gaia. It is August and the plants are flowering all around me! The land is covered in bursting green… flowering bee balm, so many lilies, blue vervain, tall yellow elecampane flowers, echinacea feeding the bees, and soft pink marshmallow in flowers. It is a gorgeous time of year in the middle of summer growth and the plants are abundant!

This month we begin moving through the chakras and systems of the body starting at the root. We are now beginning an incredible journey with the plants, calling in their medicine and healing energy through our whole being. These healing plants can bring needed transformation on many levels… Deep nourishment and healing for your body and soul. Get ready for powerful medicine in the months ahead!

This month I journey with you into the root chakra and see what plants you fall in love with there. The root is an energy center that holds so much, and I believe it is where most of our individual and collective healing is needed. When you explore the root chakra many emotions, memories, and energy may emerge. I hope you call in the strong support of the plants this month and be tender with yourself. I am with you all in spirit, calling in the plant allies and our helping guides. Ask for their support, and create time with them to receive…

You may want to create an altar to welcome in the energies of the plants for this month. Earth element plants, strong adaptogenic roots, fungi, and nourishing herbs. Choose a few plants to journey with into the root chakra, getting to know each of them one at a time through your own body and being. Notice how these plants you choose to connect to affect you during daily or weekly tea meditations. I will also have guided exercises to help support your journey through each chakra. You may want to incorporate some of these healing practices for each chakra into your month along with the plants. At the end of each month’s chakra journey, you may feel inspired to create a medicine blend for your own healing. Write about your experiences each month, and ask for the plant spirits to guide you.

May you receive the medicine you most need,
Sage

August Welcome Video

Journeying Through the Chakras

The ‘chakras’ are wheels of energy and consciousness residing in our bodies. All cultures have concepts of the energy, emotions, and wisdom that resides in the major parts of our body. Every healing tradition in the world has roots in both spiritual and physical healing, and all traditions have understood that we store emotions and energy in our physical body. The teachings I learned from originally came from the East (in Tibetan tantra and Reiki), so I use the term ‘chakra’ for that reason. Much of what I teach and what others share about the ‘chakras’ comes from years of deep listening to what we carry in these places of our body, and what they communicate to us. It might be helpful to change the language and not only use the term ‘chakra'... but the Eastern chakra system can be a very helpful as a framework for people to understand. It is also where I received teachings in the chakras through Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, and the Mikao Usui methods of Reiki. Many of these traditional practices are not recorded in books. This is part of the challenge often, since most are oral healing traditions passed on through in person training, working with the body through energy healing, bodywork, and herbal treatments etc. I still find the best way to learn is through direct listening and journeying into your own beings, and working with others one on one.

There are 7 or more main chakras according to Eastern teachings, located along the spine, connected to major organs and nerve centers. They run from the root chakra at the base of the spine, to the crown at the top of the head. The chakras express our emotional, spiritual, and physical states of being. You can understand the chakras as energy and consciousness that resides in the physical body, transmitting and receiving energy/information through our being. Universal life force and healing energy some call chi, prana, mana, or qi, resides in our chakras, helping to feed our whole energetic body. This invisible life force energy helps us to stay healthy, vibrant, and energized.

The first three chakras connect to the earth.

Earthly Realm

Root Chakra - The Muladhara is the chakra located at the base of our spine, connecting to our low spine, legs, and feet.
Sacral Chakra -The Svadhisthana chakra is located below the navel centered around our hips and genitourinary system.
Solar Plexus Chakra - The Manipura chakra is located around our navel to the bottom of the sternum.

The Heart Chakra - The bridge where earth & heaven meet - The Anahata chakra is located at our sternum, between the breasts/chest. “The heart chakra serves as a bridge between our body, mind, emotions, and spirit.”

The last three chakras connect to the spirits realm.

Spirit Realm

Throat Chakra - The Vishuddha chakra located at the throat.
Third Eye Chakra - The Ajna chakra, our 3rd eye, is located in between the eyebrows.
Crown Chakra - The Sahaswara chakra or the “thousand petal lotus” chakra is located at the crown of the head.

In order for the chakras to function well, their energy must be able to flow clearly without many blockages or restrictions. When we hold experiences and emotions within us that are difficult to integrate, they can get trapped in our chakras and physical body. Often the chakras heal through releasing the emotions, memories, and voices residing in our body. This can be done through deep listening and journeying into each of the energy centers and organs of the body, allowing the feelings and memories that reside there to rise up and be seen. Listening to what is needed for healing, and bringing loving support there. When we hold suffering and painful feelings or experiences in our body, we often try to shut down around them rather than let them out to be felt. This can also create blockages and physical ailments as the emotions contribute to illness.

Every healing tradition around the world has seen emotional and spiritual aspects associated with the main parts of our body (sexual reproductive organs, belly and digestive system, heart, lungs and throat, mind etc). These main energy centers in our body are understood in many other cultures, including in the Americas, throughout Asia, and in Africa. There are not always 7 energy centers identified, but they are highly emphasized in healing practice. You do not have to use the term ‘chakra’… You will still feel these parts of the body singing with energy, wisdom, universal energy, and our soul memories. These aspects of our being are universally understood by healers all over the world because you can't do healing work on an emotional, physical, spiritual level, and not feel the energy that radiates from us!

Chakras & Lotus Symbols in Sanskrit

Video ~ Talking about Chakras with Vivinne & Sage

The Root Chakra

In the root chakra we arrive on earth incarnated in many separate forms… woven together in a web of relations all dependent on each other, rooted together and intertwined. This is where we find our family, our support systems, family, and community. We create home together, feed each other, care for each other, and tend the earth together. The root chakra is where we build our home on earth, building relationships of interdependence, and learn to care for all of our relations. It is where we learn to serve and give to generations past and present. We meet our ancestors here who have walked the earth before us, and we learn how to live peacefully together. We honor all of our earth family, the plants, animals, and human family of relations we both care for and receive care from.

 The root chakra rules our foundations, all that we are supported by in our lives, through family, community, friends, and Gaia. Here in our roots we are given all of our basic needs, as a member of this earth family. Here is our nourishment, our shelter, safety, community, home, abundance, love, support, and family. Here we receive the touch we need, the love and care-taking from our family of relations. We give back love and kindness to others, supporting and nourishing our family of many skins. In the root chakra we receive life and nourishment from the Earth Mother, and give back to her all we can.

Aspects of our wellbeing ~

Earth ~ Body ~ Community ~ Ecosystem ~ Home ~ Basic needs ~ Survival instincts ~ Grounding ~ Family ~ Protection ~ Safety ~ Trust ~ Support ~ Nourishment ~ Nurturance ~ Comfort ~ Touch ~ Being held ~ Food ~ Shelter ~ Foundation ~ Structure ~ Roots ~ Elders ~ Guidance ~ Financial wellbeing ~ Physical health ~ Healthy boundaries ~ Self-nurturance ~ Service

We begin our journey through the chakras in the root, which is where we arrive into this incarnation. We incarnate into an earthly body, on our earth home. The garden of earthly paradise. We arrive here in a separate form from all the other bodies that surround us. This is the chakra where we meet the diversity of life on this planet, and get to explore the diversity of life manifesting on the physcial earthy plane. We get to enjoy being in a body! We have a body that is wired for sensory experience… That’s a pretty massive blessing! The root chakra encompasses the natural world, our home (including our body home), our family, community, and ecosystem we live in. It makes up the community of animals, plants, and many beings we share this earth with. What do we need to thrive as a living animal?

In the root chakra we find a community of beings all living in interdependent relationship. Every being dependent on the others for its basic needs. In the root chakra we are deeply connected to the earth, through our basic needs of water, food (plants and animals), shelter, safety, warmth, air, family, love, and touch. In the root chakra we arrive to the many family of relations that surround us. Here we find so much love and deep relationships here… Chosen family, blood family, those who care for us, and those we care for. In the root chakra we depend on the community to supply the needs of each individual - it is not every person out for themselves! We lean on community and family for support and care taking… Just as we ourselves are a part of the whole that cares for others. As you can imagine, there is a lot to heal in the root chakra, since many of us carry woulds around family, community, home, safety, and our basic needs getting met.

How does your community support you? What role do you play in your community? How do you help take care of the family of beings that surround you, and how do they take care of you? Humans, animals, plants, and ecosystem. How do you care for the ecosystem that surrounds you? There are many things that strengthen our root chakra, but giving and receiving care taking and nourishment is probably the one that is the most powerful. When we tend to the life that surrounds us, and allow it to tend to us, our root chakra heals and grows strong. 

Video ~ Root Chakra Talk

Root Chakra Wounds & Challenges

There are many experiences in human society that weaken and wound the root chakra unfortunately. Any difficult experience with your family, community, or society that is harmful to you is wounding to the root. As you can imagine that includes a lot of oppression, violence, and lack of compassion. The root chakra connects to our basic needs, and right now with so much ecosystem destruction, all of our basic needs are threatened. Our access to clean water, food scarcity with drought and climate change, safe communities, homes, and an ecosystem that can support our life. 

The root can be wounded by anything damaging in family relationships, throughout your life, and especially in childhood. It could also be related to abandonment from people you needed and counted on to take care of you, not just to do with the family that raised you. There is also inherited and historical wounding to the root chakra, such as genocide, slavery, oppression, war, loss of home or family. Losses around familial community, your home or homelands, and ancestral roots. Being forced off of your land, or driven out of your home from violence and oppression. All of our ancestors experienced this in different ways most likely, some in extreme conditions such as slavery and continual genocide. Some with hundreds of generations of oppression, poverty, and war. Living in a threat of violence, as many people still experience with all over the world. 

There are many aspects of society that can weaken or wound the root chakra, besides these examples. A society that lives in disconnection from our bodies, and from the earth. A society that doesn’t prioritize the well being of the whole ecosystem, and all of the living beings we share this beautiful earth with. One that continually harms animals, land, ecosystems, waters, and natural habitats/homes for humans and other animals. A society that would destroy the entire earth, and make it inhabitable for life. This is what we are living in currently…. And this threatening of all life, the mass extinction that we are living in right now, weakens all of our root chakras. Thankfully there is a lot we can do! We can focus on changing what is harmful in our societies, and contribute in our own way to collective healing.

 Expression of wounds ~ Root Chakra

Here is some of how the wounds of the root chakra show up in ourselves. Take some time to read through these, and mark down in your journal what resonates with your experience. For many of us, we have dealt with most of these at different times. When a chakra is wounded and weak we either pour energy into it to try to compensate for the weakness (imbalanced excess), or the energy to that chakra becomes depleted and deficient.

• Fear & Fight, flight, or freeze responses.

• Depression, grief, painful emotions.

• Feeling unstable & ungrounded.

• Struggling with feeling safe & trusting others.

• Poor boundaries or very rigid boundaries.

• Hyper-protective (excess) or under-protective (deficiency).

• Out of balance nervous system, anxiety, stress, racing thoughts, panic.

• Low energy, exhaustion. Strong need for rest.

• Lack of focus and ability to concentrate.

• Struggle to have daily rhythms or routine.

• Difficulty with practical tasks and responsibilities.

• Control - need to control environment or others.

• Difficulty building & sustaining things.

• Commitment challenges & struggle with goal setting.

Physical illnesses ~ Some physical illness arises from that is held in our own being, and some illnesses arise more from our environment. For example, AIDS did not wipe out a whole community of mostly gay men because of what was happening inside of them, it occurred because of a threat in their environment. In the root chakra we are very impacted by what surrounds us, which can weaken, strengthen, or sicken us. The whole physical body can be a reflection of the root chakra. I also see specific patterns of certain illnesses related to what we personally carry in the root chakra. These include issues of the musculoskeletal system, especially the legs, low back, and spine. There can be chronic body pain and muscle tension, chronic infections, allergies, auto-immune issues, cancer, chronic inflammation, depression/neural imbalances, neurological pain, digestive and bowel disorders are common.

Healing the Root Chakra

For the root to be strong and heal, it must reconnect with its source in the earth. Just like a baby who has an umbilical cord to their mother, our root chakra is the umbilical cord to the earth. The earth mother that feeds us, physically and in spirit, is where we can reconnect for nourishment… and regrow strong roots in connection to her. I have seen many people’s root chakras heal through a deepening connection to the earth. As we heal our relationships with family (not always blood family, but our family of relations), and create safe home spaces where we can heal and thrive, the root chakra heals. We can create loving, nurturing communities that help to support our life and the life that surrounds us. By honoring all other life forms, and learning to play a beneficial role, working together to create healing homes… this is how we heal the root together. 

Therapies for the Root Chakra

 Our root chakra connects to the earth, just as an umbilical cord going to our mother. When we reconnect with the earth, our root chakra can regrow and healing. The root chakra is the foundation for all the other chakras. It is difficult for all the other chakras to be well if the root is not well. As the root chakra heals, we see so many other chakras grow stronger. This is the place where we begin to do the deepest healing work within us. Plants are incredibly healing to our root chakras, connecting us back to the earth, to our bodies, to nourishment, and to a close relationship to the earth. 

There are many healing practices and therapies that are restorative to the root chakra. Gardening, tending to our home spaces, planting food, community healing, creating home space, increasing access to resources people need to thrive, ecosystem restoration, community care (in many forms from activism, to schools, to support groups, to medicine/healing spaces, to restaurants, to creating functional needed items people need for daily use…) Providing healing touch, creating loving spaces for connection and safety. Learning ancestral skills that help us to live simply and closely with the earth, providing for our basic needs. Resting… which is also a basic need our society often neglects!

• Connecting to the Earth. Time in nature

• Lying on the earth… Or connecting to soil!

• Stillness & Grounding practices

• Rest & Retreat

• Self care & Receiving care from others.

• Receiving support from community, family, & relationships/friendships.

• Being of service to others – whole earth family.

• Building safe, supportive, community.

• Permaculture & Growing food for self & others.

• Caring for your Body – Massage, body-care, herbs, foods, exercise, yoga, sweats, swimming, etc.

• Creating safe space, being in safe spaces.

• Gardening, taking care of plants, growing your own food & medicine.

• Cooking and eating healthy food

• Time with animals & pets.

• Creating simple routines and structure.

• Tending or caring for anything in your environment/community.

• Ecology, food systems, & sustainability.

• Sacred places on earth & visiting home lands.

Rooting ourselves in the earth. Being nourished. Building home. Serving community. 

You are home on earth with beloved family all around you. You are nourished from all directions, and you will be cared for until the day you leave this earth walk. Root yourself in the arms of the earth, so many hands reaching out to you. You are held and loved here. Walk a path of service, caring for all your relations, giving whatever you can.

Ancestral Homelands & Lineages

The root chakra connects to our ancestors, and to our past incarnations here on earth. In the root chakra we can discover a long history of family members, and feel the roots of nourishment coming from them. Our loving ancestors in many ways help to care for us. We continue to tend the seeds they planted, in the world and inside of our own being. In the root we find often home where they made their home… Returning to homelands of our ancestors can strengthen our roots immeasurably. Sometimes there is healing to do in those places, if they carried or left pain and loss there. There may be grief, as well as love and connection. It is all meant to be seen and embraced as you return into the arms of your loving family. 

Journey to the Grandmothers & Elders

Here is a guided journey to connect with some of your loving elders. Follow your own guidance and where the spirits take you… feel free to ignore or pause my voice if you like. You can use my guidance as your anchor, along with your breath. Remember to guide yourself through the journey as well, making your own choices as you go, and speaking with the elders directly. Allow your heart to receive what they would like to show you or offer you. Sometimes they will give healing energy or medicine that you need at this time. After the journey allow space for yourself to ground and transition through stretching, drinking some water, and slowly integrating.

Root Chakra Plant Allies

Burdock, Nettles, Oatstraw, Astragalus, Pine, Reishi, Cedar, Solomon’s Seal, Chickweed, Alfalfa, Dandelion, Yellow Dock, Black Cohosh, Osha, Oak Bark, Patchouly, Marshmallow, Shatavari, Gotu Kola, Siberian Ginseng, Sandalwood, Myrrh, Sage, Sweetgrass, Cedar *** Roots, barks, mushrooms, trees, lichen.

Earth Element Nourishing herbs ~ Nettles, Burdock, Oatstraw, Dandelion, Chickweed, Alfalfa, Violet, Plantain, Comfrey, Mullein, Marshmallow, and all wild edible plants.

Earth Element Adaptogens ~ Astragalus, Fo Ti, Reishi, Chaga, Siberian Ginseng, Ashwagandha, Nettles, Burdock, Maca

Trees ~ Oak, Pine, Apple, Birch, Spruce, Fir, Cedar, Juniper, Maple, Redwoods, Hemlock, Beech, and many others…

Tissue healing (vulneraries) & Musculoskeletal Plants - Solomon’s Seal, Comfrey, Plantain, Chickweed, Violet, Mullein, Marshmallow root, Burdock, Horsetail, Oatstraw, Nettles, Calendula etc.

Mushrooms & Lichen ~ Reishi, Chaga, Turkey tail, Usnea lichen, Lion’s mane, Shitake, Maitake

Plants for Root Chakra Healing

Spirit House Journey

Here is a beloved journey I offer students when we explore the root chakra. It is a powerful practice I’ve used for decades now, and many people have continued to journey to their spirit house for many years. I have more than a few I’ve been visiting for years. It is where I meet my granmother/grandfather guides, and where I go to heal myself. In the spirit realms we can journey to find what nourishes and heals us… Resting close to the earth, calling in the energies of our allies to hold us in healing space. When you journey allow your imagination to be free, reaching out with your heart to what is the most nourishing for you.

Guide yourself through the journey, walk where you want to go… do not follow my words exactly, just use them as a guide if you need an anchor. To help you stay awake, you can hold something in your hand like a rock or sacred object. Feel free to come in and out of the journey, at times it will be vivid, and other times it might be a floaty dreamy blur. Practice journeying and you will learn how navigate in the dreaming space, connecting to elders, receiving medicine and guidance you’re needing.
*** If you tend to fall asleep, do this journey sitting up instead of lying down, or not when you are already tired.

Spirit House ~ Root Chakra Guided Meditation

Root Chakra Prayers

We arrive to the beauty that surrounds us, the blessing that is our life. 
Open your eyes, you are welcomed here on earth with love!

I am at home in my body, held close to the earth as I arrive more deeply into my skin. 

If I do not rush, I will receive all that is contained in this sacred moment of life.

Mother Earth provides all we need to thrive and we care for her with returning love and gratitude.

The footprints of those who came before us are held in the soil beneath our feet, their voices echo in the trees and the waters that whisper.

I am one small yet important and sacred part of the web of life.

My survival and well being is dependent on the well being of all here on earth.

Each moment I walk this earth, I am grateful for this precious life I am given.

Every step I take on the earth, my feet whisper "I am home".

I rest in the arms of Nature, her plants my food and medicine. 

I care for my body as sacred home and temple, listening to my body’s needs and responding with kindness.

For every need, support and care is given to us from the earth. Food and nourishment surrounds us, let us help all to be fed!

I rest in the arms of Nature, her plants my food and medicine. Each moment I walk this earth, I am grateful for this precious life I am given.

The Allies ~ The Adaptogens

Continued in Part Two

Booklist & Recommended Readings

Opening to Spirit by Caroline Shola Arewa
Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self by Anodea Judith
Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith - PDF Here

Return to Year of Gaia Course Portal