The Root of it All

Imagine that you are in the natural food market.  You notice an attractive, upper-middle-class soccer mom get out of her Lexus SUV.  She is dressed in her designer yoga  unitard.  Just as you notice her, she sees a friend, and calls to her, "Oh Judy!  Guess what I'm doing tonight?  I'm going to a seminar.  We're going to learn how to open our Third Eye Chakras!"  You think to yourself, "Go ahead, lady - open away!  It's an empty box."

Everybody is so fascinated with the concept of opening their third eye, and they don't even know what it is that they are fascinated about.  Like an om-pendant, it's just trendy, it's in style - and so everyone in "Newageyville" says it.   We all love our faces, too.  We look at them for hours - we comb our hair, primp and fuss - on we go.  And the third eye chakra is right there on our face, so we're told.  So let's put some makeup on IT, too.

We've seen that our energy falls upwards in us.  Energy only flows in us when it flows through the root chakra, and most peoples' root chakras are tightly shut down.  Furthermore, the root chakra is the chakra of the physical body, so all shut-down root chakras are physically pathological.  And even further-furthermore, the root chakra is located at our crotch.  Does this scare you?  Hmm.  The root chakra is also the chakra of fear.  Does it make you angry?  Frustrated?  Guess what - these are root chakra dysfunctions, too.  

Everything you want, but don't have, is at the root

The root chakra is location of life and survival - food, air water, shelter - the basics of life.   It is your core; it defines the core of you.  In Sanskrit, the name is Muladhara, which literally means root.  The reason that yogis traditionally sit in the familiar cross-legged position is so that the root chakra touches the earth as they meditate - not figuratively or symbolically, but actually physically touching the ground.  All of the pillows and accoutrements that people use today are all 20th Century embellishments.

The root chakra is located at the perineum, and kundalini energy, if it is to circulate in us at all - starts right there.  In 99.9999% of us, it ends there too!  It sits there on standby - latent but lame - and does nothing while we pretend we're spiritual by talking about our third eye.  We prefer to think about our third eye because the root chakra has to do with genitalia and the anus; with pee and poo and things we don't like to consider or talk about.

But the root is the place where the power is.  The place from where kundalini rises - yet kundalini does not rise at all in most people.  What most people who talk about their "kundalini rising" have experienced is some sort of neurosis, anxiety attack, psychosis, hysteria, nervous breakdown - or it's a complete fabrication of their imagination - or some other sort of pathological, delusional or drug-related episode.    It's new age machismo - ego fodder - something to brag about.   "My kundalini is better that your kundalini!"  "I have more truth than you, that has set me freer than you".  See how we are?

But rising kundalini does keep us in mind of a very important fact.  We want to move kundalini energy up the sushumna nadi.  Opening the chakras is not the goal, but rather the means.  Opening the root chakra is what must happen first.  Period.

The Root of Life

The root chakra is about you and life.  It is not about mommy, honey, the tribe, identification, the tsunami victims, starving-people-in-third-world-countries - none of that.  It is only you and survival.  People who have open root chakras love their lives - love their physical incarnation in their present bodies.  People who pine away for heaven, future happiness, moksha; people who wish they were somewhere else (be it physically or in some allegorical way) define themselves as root chakra impaired.  So do people who are angry, fearful, cynical, distrustful, frustrated, envious, jealous, stingy - the list goes on.

The root chakra is all about food, air, water, shelter, power and physical health.  The ultimate root chakra failure is suicide - the ultimate root chakra success is empowerment and love of life.

The Root of Physical Health

We saw on the previous page that every chakra maps to a different body.  The muladhara chakra is the chakra of the physical body.  This means that ALL physical conditions have a root chakra component - and 99.9999% of the time, a very strong one.

So many people, when they have an illness, say, "Oh!  I've tried thousands of things, and nothing has worked".  Fact is, they haven't.  They've tried one thing, thousands of times.  And the only thing they need to do is the one thing they would never dream of - start by examining (literally and figuratively) their root chakras.

The chakras do not geographically map to body parts and body ailments, but chakras DO map to our different bodies - so the root chakra maps to our entire physical body; toe to head.  All things physical are root chakra by definition, but not all things root chakra are physical.

The root chakra is the chakra of empowerment.  So why are so many people so disempowered?  Because the root chakra is also the chakra of anger, fear, hatred, envy, jealousy, frustration - all of the "hard" emotions - the ones that make you grit your teeth.

The root chakra is the chakra of health and empowerment.  Every other chakra is downstream of it and only receives the energy that the root chakra can pass through to it.  Mystics are at peace with their pelvises and their sexual energy.  If they weren't, they couldn't be mystics.  The path to health and mystical power goes right through the gender organs. 

To understand your root chakra, you must come to a place of peace with your sexual energy.  This probably doesn't mean what you think it does.