Muladhara is our first chakra: the Root Chakra which keeps us linked to the earth. It is responsible for everything that manifests in the physical world.
It is our right to be, our right to have, our survival instinct. The belonging to a tribe, a home. The responsible of our daily routines that keep us safe both physically and emotionally.

Our first chakra represents our most public areas in life but also the hidden part of our spirit as it is linked to the unconscious functions of our mind and emotions. But this is not negative as we need this “autopilot” when performing any activity turning conscious actions into unconscious habits. Muladhara is the chakra of habits and instinctual patterns, our animal and survival side.

That is why Muladhara is the first chakra that we develop as babies: we need from the first moment to feel secure and loved, to feel part to the family, and we develop our animal instinct that makes us ask what we need in every moment. And the sense related to it is the smell which is the most developed sense in animals and in fact the first one to use in our relationship with our mother.

Also Muladhara is our elimination chakra that helps us to dissociate all into its basics, keeping the things that we need and giving back to earth the wastes and unnecessary attachments. It encompasses our feet and legs which are the link to the earth but also the anus, large intestine and urinary system. Basically when we eat we first split the food to its basics, assimilating what we need to live and letting go what we don’t need anymore. This elimination process affects to all the realms of us: the confidence that comes from stability in the Root Chakra allows for an easy grace of reducing complex things to common elements, keeping the essential to live and letting go of what isn’t needed, specially in this world today which is full of stimulus (too many) and pollution. Learn to let things go and avoid obsessions!

If we want to know how balanced is our first chakra we should ask to ourselves: how is my relationship with my own body, my skeletal structure, the food I eat, my connection to the earth and the world around me? How is the process of assimilation and elimination in me? Which are my attachments and how I can start to get rid of them?

This is the very first step if we want to connect to our most spiritual being. If we are not conscious of our most tangible me, linked to the earth and basic processes, that connection will be impossible. A house can’t start being built by the roof. A mind full of trash won’t allow us to find our real “me”, to see life as it is without veils and to be aware, healthy and happy and to feel and be part of the Universe. It is exactly the same thing as when we suffer of constipation… but avoid going to the opposite side leaving everything fast and going living in the clouds (diarrhea)!

Yogi Bhajan compared the chakra system with a car. If you want to start it you need to do it in first gear and then gradually go to second, third… until the fifth (or sixth) one for full speed. We won’t never manage to start a car with the fourth gear, right?

It happens the same in energetic terms. The Root Chakra is located in the base of the spine where Kundalini energy is dormant. If this chakra is not balanced it will be impossible to raise the energy to the upper centres where intellectuality and spiritually reside.

We can say that a healthy first chakra allows the change to happen step by step.

Some symptoms of an unbalance first chakra are:

– Physical unbalance with food and elimination (intestine and kidneys). Sciatic pain.
– Insecurity or the opposite which is indifference to danger.
– Not having the feeling of belonging: family, tribe, earth or universe.
– A bad management of money: being miserly or too generous.
– Obsessions, compulsions and repetition of patterns behaviour from the past: not learning the lesson as they are not rooted and can’t be fixed in us.
– Feeling of heaviness, like the earth is “swallowing” us. Chronic fatigue and laziness.
– Lack of self-esteem, depression.

How to balance this chakra?


If you want to work on it you can wear red (the color of this chakra), walk bare feet, go to the nature to create links and hug a tree!
Kundalini has nice exercises like crow pose (also squatting), and sat kriya. But in any pose try to feel always your root to the mat. Also try the First Chakra Kriya, Kriya for Lower Spine and Elimination or Healthy Bowel System Kriya.

The purpose of all branches of yoga is to raise the Kundalini, to raise the dormant power of the being so that he can have excellence.
YOGI BAJHAN

SAT NAM
Patricia (Krishan Atma Kaur)