Ep#077 Not Feeling At Home In Your Body? – Could Be Your First Chakra

0 (1s):
Welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition Podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you are so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a holistic nutrition and lifestyle coach, chef author, and Yogi, Christine Okezie.

Christine Okezie (22s):
Hello, and welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for listening. There’s really no better way to understand the fundamental interconnected mind body organism that we inhabit than learning about the chakras. This ancient map of our life force, akak our Prana, Chi , this life force circulation system that dates as far back as to 1200 BCE outlined seven major energy centers that radiate along the spine corresponding to seven major endocrine glands and nerve bundles. The chakras interface with our central nervous system and our glandular system.

Christine Okezie (1m 3s):
And as they vibrate at different frequencies, they cause the glands to secrete various hormones, neuropeptides, various metabolites that regulate all the processes, organ function, metabolism, immunity, and emotions. When our life force energy is well circulated and a flowing our health and wellbeing at all levels. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual is strong. And the converse is true when our prana is not flowing because the chakras are blocked or imbalance than our health suffers. So when it comes to the core of the work that I do, I realized at the root of so many of our food, weight and body image challenges is the inability to feel at home in our bodies to feel at home within ourselves.

Christine Okezie (1m 48s):
And when it comes to our relationship with ourselves, our bodies life itself, we’re going to want to explore our first chakra, AKA our Muladhara or root chakra located at the base of our spine. The Muladhara chakra literally serves as the root of the body connected to the earth element, thus linked to our capacity to plant ourselves and feel firmly rooted in our lives. Our root chakra is the energy of grounding feeling welcome. And at home, how we deal with our fears, life stressors, past woundings or traumas is deeply connected to our root chakra because our root chakra embodies our sense of safety, stability, and belonging.

Christine Okezie (2m 37s):
It’s about the energy of survival. And if our root chakra is blocked on some level, we’re living in survival mode, there is a deep unconscious fear that our basic needs will go unmet. When our root chakra is blocked, we feel nervous, distrusting and resistant to change. We experience a low to take care of ourselves and find ourselves rushing from one task to another easily. An increasingly distracted overworking and constant busy-ness are important signs that our first chakra is out of alignment. Eating disorders can also be a sign of blocked root chakra, not surprisingly.

Christine Okezie (3m 23s):
The root chakra is linked to our adrenal glands and our organs of elimination, such as our colon, kidneys and bladder. So physically this misalignment can manifest as chronic fatigue and weight struggles, either being overweight or underweight, as well as digestive issues like constipation. See physical issues mostly occur with the body part where the chakra is located. And when it comes to our root chakra, the body parts most closely associated are our lower back. Our pelvis, our tailbone hips, legs, sciatic, nerve bones, and the bottoms of our feet working with our root chakra is such a powerful place to work because it’s the chakra that’s most closely related to the body’s physical vitality itself.

Christine Okezie (4m 15s):
Even just bringing higher awareness to our body through the lens of the root chakra offers deeper insight into the whole of our experience. You can observe and connect our physical, mental, and emotional symptoms, even our behavioral patterns. And thus begin to explore some important questions about what we truly need to heal, to feel safe, calm, and secure within the deeper parts of ourselves. So what are some things we can do to balance or unblock our root chakra? Fundamentally balancing our root chakra is about engaging in things that are centered on us, inhabiting our bodies and learning to be present for our physical full sensory experience.

Christine Okezie (5m 4s):
So for example, walking in nature and even more so if you can get your feet on the natural earth, super healing practice called earthing, very popular, scientifically validated therapy for grounding and balancing our root chakra. Of course, I’m going to mention some of my favorite yoga postures that are great for the root chakra, super easy. The first one is what we call easy pose or Sukhasana. And we can do this sitting on a cushion or a mat, and we can elevate and tilt our pelvis forward. You know, keeping our spine nice and long, you know, crossing our legs at the ankles or at the shins and, and feeling our connection to the earth, feeling our rootedness in the earth.

Christine Okezie (5m 54s):
We can also do this in the chair simply once again, the soles of our feet on the floor barefoot is best, you know, placing the hands lightly on the thighs, bringing the elbows underneath the shoulders. And again, elongating the spine. We can close our eyes and feel the sensation of the earth underneath us. We want to feel and sense the connection between your physical body and the ground. In fact, we can incorporate a beautiful and powerful energy healing practice. You can imagine a spinning ball of green energy at the first chakra, just at the base of the spine, and imagine dropping that green ball of energy all the way down into the ground, all the way down, down, down, down, down into the center of the earth.

Christine Okezie (6m 42s):
And as it extends, it leaves behind this very radiant chord of green energy. So feeling a sense of being tethered to the center and the core of mother earth sensing and feeling into that place of belonging, connection and stability, a second fundamental pose in yoga, really good for balancing root chakra is baby pose or child’s pose. So you want to come down onto your knees, sit back on your heels, toes, untucked, spread the knees wide and bring your forehead to touch the mat, allowing your forms to rest either in front of you or by your sides.

Christine Okezie (7m 22s):
So in fact, you’re working on root chakra and you’re actually working on your sixth chakra as well as you bring the forehead to the mat. But you want to kind of feel once again, you know, your body making contact with the earth, feeling that body relax, melt, and feel so supported, taking a few deep breaths in and out and allowing your belly to fill an empty with each breath child’s pose can be done so easily anywhere for just immediate sense of security and immediate sense of safety. And then finally you might want to try mountain pose, right to dossena. So simply coming to standing with your feet, you know, a little wider than hip width apart, whatever distance feels comfortable in it, lift all your 10 toes, spread them apart and place them back down onto the mat onto the ground for extra support, perhaps gently rocking back and forth and side to side to really feel and sense all four corners, your feet I E, or roots, perhaps having a micro bend in your knees and tuck your tailbone.

Christine Okezie (8m 30s):
So that once again, your spine is nice and straight and gently pull your belly button into your spine so that your lower back feels supported and allowing your palms to shine forward. As you stand tall, lifting the heart, imagining the crown of your head, reaching towards the sky as the feet, and the legs remain firmly rooted to the earth. You know, and I like to close my eyes and just sort of be, and maybe hold for just a few breaths and perhaps imagining roots, like tree roots growing out of the soles of your feet. And once again, extending down deep into the earth all the way to the center.

Christine Okezie (9m 13s):
And in this posture, you can feel yourself deeply rooted to the earth and perhaps, you know, sense healing energy that travels up the root and fills your entire body with healing energy. Visualization is the primary mode. When we work with yoga to balance the chakras because where attention goes, energy flows. So in all these postures you’ll want to, in addition to doing some slow, deep breathing in and out the nose, you’ll want to visualize your root chakra as this radiant ball of swirling red, glowing energy at the base of your spine.

Christine Okezie (9m 59s):
And again, in these postures, in any of these postures, as you inhale, I would imagine the light growing bigger and glowing brighter, and you can do this just for a few minutes. And as you bring your attention, your awareness into this part of your body, into the area of the root chakra, coming into this relaxed yet alert posture, you might even feel some tingling in that root chakra location. And if you don’t no big deal, right, it does take some practice. But the point is, you know, to engage with all senses. So again, with the breath, with the feelings, sensations of the physical body, making contact with the earth, and then maybe you can add some, some sound, you know, some mental or out or out loud affirmations.

Christine Okezie (10m 51s):
And my favorite root chakra affirmations are, I am safe. All my needs are met. I am taken care of. I allow myself to feel grounded and secure, and this is my ultimate favorite. I am ready to receive a whole new level of support in my life. I call it in now. Thank you. Thank you. And of course, you know, chanting or making a toning sounds can once again, help bring balance to the root chakra.

Christine Okezie (11m 32s):
I mean, sound, I’ve done a whole podcast on, on the power of a sound healing and mantras sound creates that vibration in the body. And these vibrations help the cells work together in synchronistic harmony, and the mantra sound the root or the seed sound of the root chakra is Lomb, right? So it’s like a long Oz, so it’s law. And so you can, again, incorporate any of this into a practice to work with your root chakra. It’s a beautiful sort of meditative quality to these yoga postures and the breath work and the mental affirmations.

Christine Okezie (12m 15s):
And of course the sound right. And then the final way that is worth mentioning when it comes to a healing practice in the, in the using yoga tools we use, bhandas also known as body locks and in Kundalini Yoda, yoga, we, we end many postures with deep inhale through the nose. We ask you to suspend the breath and thus suspend the mind, right? And we ask you to squeeze up on the pelvic floor and the paraniem and the navel comes on and we squeeze and it helps bring strong energy and strength to the area of the first chakra.

Christine Okezie (12m 57s):
And then we exhale and then we relax. So again, countless countless ways to support healing at this energetic level. When we work with the chakras, the psycho emotional psycho-spiritual level, when we work with the chakras, all the countless modalities, many of which I’ve featured on the show to date are focused on helping remove that stagnated accumulated emotional energy, if you will. And in this case, the root chakra. Now, of course, the journey to heal deeper, emotional trauma or wounding is best facilitated by doing deeper therapeutic work as well.

Christine Okezie (13m 40s):
Nonetheless, a balanced for a shakra when at root chakra is balanced and energy can flow freely. It can help us increase that sense of belonging, that feeling secure in our actions and our choices, and really, you know, have the ability to hold an increased sense of self and sense of worth. Now, what’s so interesting too, just to explore a little bit is our root chakra actually carries our ancestral memories again from a yoga science perspective. And basically everyone as a result of this being the fact, everyone experiences some manner of challenge or imbalance within our root chakra, right?

Christine Okezie (14m 24s):
Anything, any events, it could be famine, natural disasters, war, you know, violence, any events that threatened our basic survival. Going back down the line in our ancestry are all recorded in the energies of the root chakra. And those memories are imprinted in our subtle body in our life force energy, and they’re passed down intergenerationally. And so, you know, it’s just useful to understand that when it comes to unconscious long seated patterns in our ancestry, our root chakra is another place, you know, to work with that. So just another additional, I think fascinating way to think about all the healing and transformation that can come when we work at this law at this level of our body and similarly the karmas, right, the karmas of our past lives and even our current karma, you know, they’re like seeds and they rest in the energy space, the energy field of the root chakra.

Christine Okezie (15m 29s):
So once again, you know, looking for ways to bring balanced energy to the root chakra, we can all benefit from this at these deeper, deeper, deeper levels. And I guess I’ll close with the fact, you know, that the reflection is that now more than ever during these challenging times where we’re living with situations in, in our environment, that bring up a lot of fear that bring up a lot of threat to our sense of security. I think now more than ever, you know, some of these practices and countless others, you know, that are designed to help us balance the energy of the root chakra.

Christine Okezie (16m 13s):
So, so needed now, right? Allowing us to harness the courage and the resourcefulness to live and navigate these, you know, very fear-driven times with more intelligence, with more grace and with more love. So I hope that’s been helpful. My friends and I, I guess I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes from energy healing master, Anodea Judith and she says, “The body is the vehicle. Consciousness is the driver. Yoga is the path and the chakras are the map.” So thanks again for listening.

Christine Okezie (16m 53s):
And if you liked the podcast, I’d be grateful if you’d leave a rating and review on apple podcast. And if you haven’t already hit the subscribe button, please do so it helps people find the podcast easier. Thanks so much.