How to take care of your root chakra

This article is aimed at people looking to get out of a job or school and transition to their own independent business. In all the big life changes that are ahead of you, please don’t forget about your root chakra.

Your root chakra is the energy center in your body corresponding to physical safety, finances, abundance, and stability. Your root chakra is your connection and grounding to your physical surroundings, the material means by which you physically support yourself, and your sense of belonging in the physical world.

The root chakra is analogous to the roots of a tree. Through its roots, a tree draws water, minerals, nutrients and other nourishment from the earth. A tree’s roots are its connection to the earth. They ground it to its physical surroundings.

Like a tree, we all have roots planted somewhere. Through our careers, our neighborhoods, homes and physical belongings, we’re connected with the earth and the rest of the physical world.

If a tree needs to be uprooted and moved to a new location, it isn’t simply pulled from its roots and indiscriminately inserted into any old hole in the ground. Care is taken to ensure that the tree’s roots are preserved in a large enough ball of soil, that the new location will provide sunlight, water and soil nutrients, and that the tree is moved during the appropriate season. Otherwise you risk traumatizing and killing the tree.

Likewise, we need to ensure that major life changes protect our root chakra, and don’t simply strip away our sense of physical security, abundance and stability. An uprooted root chakra can lead to worry, stress, anxiety, depression, and feeling checked-out or disengaged from the world. Most people need a stable and secure root chakra in order to function at their best.

If you want to do inspired work that has a big impact on other people, you need to have a stable root chakra. You’re not going to do creative, inspired work if you’re worried about your most basic physical needs. Even the potential promise of future rewards probably wouldn’t be enough to motivate you.

In fact, research shows we perform best when we have enough money (and thus stable enough root chakras) so that we don’t have to worry about money.

So before you embark on any shaking up of your life, consider the following tips for taking care of and protecting your root chakra so that you maintain the security you need to work at your best:

1. Don’t dig up your roots before you have somewhere to go

You wouldn’t dig up a tree unless you knew what you would do with it. Nor would you try to move a tree unless you had a good reason to.

It frightens me when I hear about people who quit school or college only months away from receiving a degree or certificate. Or when someone with relatively little experience or business skills quits their job with only a vague idea of where they’re headed. It’s like ripping a tree out of the ground with no provisions for taking care of and replanting it.

On the other hand, you can safely move a tree if you have a plan for taking care of it and a suitable location to replant it. And you may be able to safely uproot your root chakra by quitting your job, moving, or disposing of belongings if you’ve pre-paved the path ahead with careful planning and preparatory action.

2. Know who you are and respect it like the Gospel

There are no fewer than several thousand self-authors and speakers who push and inspire us to act quickly and boldly, to transform and morph into greatly improved versions of ourselves while overcoming all manner of challenges.

Some of them have led lives that are highly inspiring examples in and of themselves. They’re good examples to learn and draw wisdom from, but are often poor examples to imitate.

To live life in the conventional pattern of getting an education, a steady job, a family in a white picket fence house, saving for retirement, and spending winters on overcrowded beaches in Florida may be blindly following the crowd. But ditching the crowd in an attempt to imitate the path of a motivational or self-help author isn’t necessarily a better way of living your life. In either case, you’re not being true to yourself.

Consider the kind of person you are, how you function best, and what kinds of things you need in your environment to thrive. For some people, it’s okay if they own only 100 possessions and live out of a suitcase. But many people would be stressed out if they lived like a nomad with a handful of possessions. Some people can share a living space with roommates – some people are solitary cats and need their own space to function properly.

Some people can quit their jobs and start their own business. Other people need to transition, and others may find a comfortable mix of both a job and a business. For most people, quitting their job before they’re clear on where to go next is a recipe for a disaster. No matter how sensible the advice of someone else, it may not work for you. It may go against the grain of who you are and how you’re wired.

Respect your uniqueness. Follow your own grain. Your path is shaped differently than everyone else’s as a result of who you are. Measure your success with your own measuring stick.

3. Don’t act on impulse

It’s said that impulse buying is generally a bad idea. If that’s the case, then impulse life change is a horrendous idea. Resist the urge to go through your life with a machete. You may severe important aspects of yourself that you’ve been taking for granted.

If something is truly worth doing today, it’s usually still worth doing tomorrow, next week, or next month.

Gradual change is generally more effective and less uprooting than sudden changes.

If you’ve been used to a stable job and plenty of liquidity, don’t quit your job tomorrow.

If you’re comfortable and settled in your home, don’t unceremoniously sell your house and possessions in an effort to downsize by next week.

When it comes time to quit the job or sell the house or donate a load of possessions to the Goodwill store, it should feel like a logical step that follows from many others, not a quantum leap.

4. Keep your root system flowing

We’re dynamic, living beings that continuously give and take from our environments. A sense of flow is essential to a healthy root chakra. That means making a positive contribution to the world, and receiving some source of income at all times.

Most people feel more secure with a reliable stream of income than with a fixed stock of savings. If you quit a job in order to start a business, or travel, attend school or train, you’re probably going to be much happier if you have at least one source of income that continues even after you quit.

Establish some streams of income other than a job. You may be able to teach music, sell handmade dog collars, or create an e-book or info product.

5. Establish safety nets

Leave yourself something to fall back on. Even though a college degree may seem worthless, you should probably still finish it if you’re already partway through. Even if you detest your job and you’re tempted to quit tomorrow, it’s still worth looking into other options such as working part-time, on a contract, or taking a sabbatical.

Safety nets come in many different forms. It may be savings in the bank. It may be education or skills that you’ve developed that you can harness to make money when you’re short (I still tutor as an additional source of income). It may be family or friends that you could stay with for a while in case of a financial disaster.

You may never need your safety nets, but it’s silly not to have them. Why leave a disaster as your only alternative?
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A tree rises from its roots. Without them, there’d be no tree.

Without a stable root chakra, you can’t work in your upper, creative chakras. We’re spiritual beings having a physical experience. And that experience would be seriously hampered if we couldn’t meet our basic physical needs. Like a tree, if we lack roots, we’d quickly topple over.

So no matter what you do, please take care of your root chakra.

Photo credit: Flickr

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