1st Chakra:
Base of the spine, deep in the bowl of your pelvis.
Energy center of grounding, survival programming for the physical body. Belonging and enoughness.
It’s a little artificial to talk about the chakras separately because they’re an ecosystem, but I’m going to isolate the first and second chakras to highlight certain issues many of us hold at these levels, that are in need of healing.
Most of us rely on the inner “guidance” of accumulated negative pictures. Because these inner images of what is ‘real or true’ are painful, we launch into our minds, further separating us from ground, and the reality of what is unfolding in and around us in present time.
These negative images are records of past expereinces. We don’t need to destroy them, but we do need to de-energize them by allowing ourselves to feel and emote (move the energy) out of them so that they do not feel like reality that we are enslaved to live them out over and over. Being stuck on these pictures is how “fate” is created. Healing them creates choices.
When we learn to ground unconditionally, through these painful experiences and connect directly with the Earth, we can purify the 1st and 2nd chakras of their contraction around negative experiences, and begin to rely on these spaces as the sources of inner guidance that they are meant to be.
The first chakra is located at the base of the spine, deep in the bowl of your pelvis. You could check in with your first chakra as you read this, simply by taking a few deep breaths, and allowing the motion of your breath to come all the way down into this space.
The first chakra deals with being, and your survival programming: It holds your physical and nonphysical memories (and expectations) about being and enoughness. Some of these beliefs are from your physical body’s cellular memory.
Because many of us have a certain numbness or fogginess about our pelvis, I find it helpful to imagine sending the motion of your breath down into the chair you’re sitting on. If the chair can tell that breath is coming into the first chakra, you’re doing it!
Ask yourself some questions here, and let the answers be felt, not imagined or mocked up in your mental mind. If you don’t get a response that’s ok. No response can mean that you’re in the early stages of opening up inner communication with your body, and / or that there is something there that your mind feels a strong resistance to.
You may have some more recent trauma healing to unwind before it feels safe to feel into this area. The only place to start is where you are. Keep checking in with it when you feel like it.
What do your body’s physical ancestors believe about survival? Is life difficult? Does your lineage hold a belief that everything you’d ever need is always provided?
Other pieces of information in your 1st chakra are accumulated from your own spiritual continuum, which has experienced many different bodies, and holds memories informed by each one. Certain lives that were particularly traumatic, or likewise those that were inflection points in your soul’s growth process may hold particular charge.
What are your soul’s memories of being in different bodies?
Did different bodies feel different than this one? Were there some you are glad to be done with, or others you are still holding grief about leaving?
You may think you know some of these answers in your mind already, so experiment with asking directly to the 1st chakra. Allow the chakra to reply non verbally, through visualization, sensation, a word, symbol or other form of communication.
I want to emphasize that these pictures, both those originating in the lineage of your current body and those that you’ve brought into this lifetime, may be operating out of present time: they are like static declarations amidst a flow of experience.
Given any particular moment, they may align more or less with the possibilities arising. A picture that is skillful will allow you to move forward and support movement of energy and growth. Pictures that are not relevant will distort your reality, creatively shaping it to align with the bias of the picture. Pictures are not really ever good or bad - they’re created out of experience, and only create problems when we’re attached to them, meaning that we derive a sense of identity from them that is contracted, and in opposition to the natural flow of impermanence, {which does not just mean that all good things end, but also bad things.)
Pictures tell us who we are. What we can recognize by bringing them into conscious awareness is that we’re also more than our pictures. They may define us in 3D reality, but who and what we actually are transcends the scope of any picture. We are part of many simultaneous realities.
By knowing about our pictures and taking responsibility for them, we can own them, and come into choice about how they are going to operate in the larger picture of our evolution.
In a healing process, its important to accept our pictures, and not get so identified that we become victims of them.
Our attachment to pictures at the level of the 1st chakra may be particularly strong because they are pictures (identities) that are tied to survival.
What are the stories or pictures in your first chakra about being alive, in a human body? Is it a good thing? At the level of the 1st chakra, do you feel that you have always had, and always will have everything you need?
Your mind may answer these questions in one way, but it’s often not the same answer that your 1st chakra has; so try once again sending a few breaths down into the space of the 1st chakra, and ask it some questions. Allow a wide range of responses, especially for non verbal ones, even subtle sensations. Keep asking questions: where is the 1st chakra right now? Let your body draw your awareness to its location - I said it was at the bottom of your spine, but is it? Is it more over to one side? Does it have a color, or feeling tone? If you send the the message, “ I love you and am always here for you” to the first chakra, how does the chakra respond? Try saying something nasty like, “ I am never ok”. How does the 1st chakra respond?
One important thing here is to let the chakra answer. It may answer immediately, or take some time. Just relax and breathe. If it says something that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s probably a good thing - don’t edit in your mind because you don’t prefer the response you’re getting. Sit with it, notice the reaction in your mind (especially when you don’t understand or don’t like the response) and you may end up getting new information that evolves your relationship to your 1st chakra. In fact, just being a good listener to yourself is an amazing first step to having a better relationship with yourself. We all like people who are good at listening to us - if we want to have a good relationship with ourselves, we need to be good listeners for ourselves too.
Most of us hold painful pictures in our 1st chakras that have to do with separation. We separated from our mothers body at birth, and as we’ve grown and developed our bodies, language and minds, we may feel alternately excited to be evolving into an individual, as well as hold grief and a sense of unreality about who we are, because on some level it’s painful to be separate. We feel divided from ourselves and the Earth.
Some of us may feel at the level of the 1st chakra that we will never be totally ok, never have enough simply because we’re separate, which is very scary.
What needs to happen is to be with the experience of separateness, allowing it to be held as whatever it feels like in the moment. By relating to the inner experience of separateness, we develop a relationship with it - which begins to heal the gap, and de-energize the picture as a center of gravity. As we become ‘un stuck’ on a picture, different vantage points emerge, and a previously insurmountable “truth” may feel more like a misunderstanding meant to be lived through, in order to evolve consciousness.
If you’d like to experiment with building conscious relationship with the 1st chakra for healing, you could try out some of the statements below, and see how your chakras respond.
Remember that affirmation / statement work is about opening dialogue within yourself - not brainwashing.
If some of these statements elicit a strong rejection, allow yourself to go into a felt dialogue with what they bring up.
For example, if a statement like “ I always have what I need” brings up an inner response like, “ That’s never been true, I’ve never been supported”, that’s important information. Some part of you feels that way.
Now you can begin to have a relationship with the part that feels it’s never been supported. Even a contentious relationship can be the beginning of something better.
Be a good listener to yourself, and as always, use what’s relevant to you, disregard what’s not.
1st chakra statements
I’m supported and belong to the earth.
I always have what I need.
I create what I need, the earth and life always support me unconditionally.
I am: and that is the way it’s supposed to be.
I am equal. No being is better than another.
It’s ok for me to enjoy the creative life force energy that is mine. It is supposed to be there and does not belong to someone else, nor do I owe it to someone else. It also does not harm others when I own it.
Other people do not need me to feed them my energy.
I wanted to exist very badly. I have huge disappointment about how difficult it is.
I need to know the difference between memories, and present time.
When I need to feel this difference, I anchor into my mother, the Earth’s core, from where i can step out of my minds unknowing + confusion about what is now and what is an image.
I also honor these images when I need to - from my family, from my own lives, from the shared experience of this planet and others, that tell me what is going to happen: that I will be betrayed, I will harm others, I will have to manipulate and be manipulated to simulate connection. I honor these images and I honor that they are projections, not real or true unless I will them to be.
I honor the feeling inside myself that I need to participate + perpetuate these pictures, and I honor my sovereignty: the right to de-energize them and step more fully into the opportunity and responsibilities of this body and this lifetime.
Separation is an experience. It is not the ultimate truth. If I accept this experience as something that appears to be happening, I can own and accept it as my perception, and it will reveal something new to me that I need to learn.
