Growing up without the strong foundations of roots, is a challenge for any form of life without ground to thrive, create and build upon.
Our roots unconsciously inform our whole physical, emotional and energetic system of the very basic fundamentals of life, of who we are in this physical body of bones, flesh, and breath and so determines our relationships to our body, how we connect to the ground and all that we need to sustain a human life.
As a child experiencing sexual abuse, to be untethered from the ground and from the happenings to my body was a means of survival and self preservation but as an adult it left me experiencing life tormented with severe physical symptoms and a storm of overwhelming chaotic life experiences that kept me in a known “safe” state of disassociation.
Managing life as a functioning adult disassociated from a body, is a fractious, anxiety riddled, fear fuelled, over-dramatised, overwhelming, isolating and lonely existence.
There can be a lack of a full sense of belonging and safety, not just to the bodies we fearfully refuse we are part of but within our family units, our community, this world.
How does past childhood sexual abuse affect the root chakra?
I believe childhood sexual abuse causes a severing of our essence (innocent self) from our physical form.
We may only be able to perceive a sense of self as separate from our body and what it experiences and needs. We therefore bypass being a participant in many of the primary and essential key growth milestones that created the foundations of which we learnt to feel safe and safely explore our self, others and the world around us.
This leaves a hypervigilant turbulent life of instability, insecurity and uncertainty.
The root chakra and the “down there”, from below the waist to the feet of our body becomes unavailable and inaccessible to the child as a means of our body intelligence to protect.
As adults this can leave us numb to sex so in avoidance of sex or in search of stronger simulation. We are acceptable and wide open to being easily manipulated, addicted to ways of escape and/or coerced or attracted into situations that reinforce our abusive past rather than feeling deserving of experiences of something healthy and new.
The experience of abuse sadly and destructively becomes the informer of our identity, who we believe we are and what we are worthy of.
This strong identification with the abuse is not who we are, yet as the “normal” from such an innocent age is “known” and therefore what we unconsciously choose to keep re-creating or escaping from.
What is the root chakra?
The Root Chakra is the first energy centre, held within our physical form. We cannot see it but we can have a felt awareness of it, even if that appears as an emptiness or numbness.
It is our most primal centre of human survival and safety.
It is located at the very base of our spine, and our groin area inclusive of our anus and the top circumference of our thighs.
It is our energetic blueprint informed by the first seven years of life, including the time as an embryo forming our spine within the womb. This information also stored within our cellular memory is what we grow from and therefore is an influencer of our unconscious actions and behaviours formed from our unquestioned beliefs, the experiences, messages and information we innocently absorbed as truth as children and have continued to live by.
Here we also hold how we experienced others and the world around us that had the potential to positively or wrongly inform us of who we are.
It holds energetic information of our ancestral family tree, our base security, our sense of belonging, our sense of safety and how we connect to our body and the Earth.
It supports how we create and receive all that we need to thrive in our basic needs of our human survival.
The root chakra in unhealthy expression.
When we have not spent the time excavating our roots, the sexual abuse that happened and the devastation caused is still switched on as “happening”.
Our unconscious system is in survival mode of “then” not “now”, our nervous system, our choices and our life experiences are therefore creating similar “feeling” events and feeding the identity of the abused child as true and present.
Until we attend to these roots we are often unconsciously creating patterns of experiences that loop and are based upon the information we absorbed in our primary years of life.
We may experience when our root is still in survival mode and living as the severed essence from the “home of the body”:
A need for control in every aspect of daily living steered by the constant fret of the loss of control. This may show up in the way we structure and regiment our days, how we relate with our body and how we relate with others. When we believe we are in control it offers us safety, albeit a false sense of safety. The need for control can be exhausting.
A felt lack of safety, an intense feeling of not being safe in the body, with others, in our environment, in the world.
Hypervigilance. A permanent state of what I call “watching out for the Rottweiler” , a feeling of being under the constant threat of attack. This may feel normal for it is a state the nervous system has become accustomed to and so slow, calm, at ease, not being busy can feel overwhelming.
Obsessions and addictions. We can have an obsession with money, food and sex that leads us to physically not having enough or feeling we never have enough. We can have addictive personalities with drugs, alcohol, sex, relationships, money. work as a form of escapism and avoidance.
Distrust in others, our relationships and the world. A distrust that we deserve, can achieve, can have. A distrust that we are loved without agenda.
Dysfunctional relationships. Relationships of extreme dependency, control, manipulation, fear, abandonment, distrust, avoidance. Unhealthy relationships with money, sex, and our body and genitals.
Disbelief we are worthy of the abundance the world has to offer and therefore survive in scarcity, lack or repetitive patterns of losing what we have through self-destructive behaviour.
Lack of responsibility of own actions to keep alive the crippling psyche of victim by blaming others, bypassing and/or an inability to take needed action.
Ungrounded – lack of feeling and awareness of feet upon the ground, legs in motion, hips in movement. An absence of “being in” the experience of movement. (The only way I know how to describe this, is that I used to be walking but the walking was empty of the feeling of walking). A unattached or fearful relationship with nature and the environment. A feeling of not being safe “out there”. Lack of motivation. May have poor blood circulation, constant chill in feet and lack of awareness, sensation and relationship to the body below the waist.
Fearbased thoughts and perspective of life and people that limits daily existence or an over-exertion to make happy and perfect, that feels crushing when the “dream” falls apart.
Lack of sensation in root chakra and genitals, creating a drive for over stimulating touch, or distress, numbing out and withdrawal of any form of touch.
The root chakra in healthy expression.
❤️ Sense of belonging, pleasure and joy in the body and all its sensations.
❤️ Sense of belonging to the ground.
❤️ An embodied knowing of self as essence, body and mind.
❤️ Presence, the past has lost its power on the present and no longer influences the future.
❤️ A sense of safety within self, anchored in trust in self.
❤️ A joyful connection and relationship with the nature and the Earth.
❤️ Healthy boundaries that are met.
❤️ Healthy evolving relationships and expressions with money, food, and sex
❤️ An ability to walk ones talk.
❤️ A desire and ability to create, explore, play, move, relate in body and the world around us.
❤️ An innate trust in the abundance of the Earth, that what we need and want can and will be provided.
❤️ An ability to surrender.
❤️ A known experience of freedom available in the moment.
❤️ To feel connected to the body and ground when in movement.
❤️ Responsible for own actions and the way we show up in the world
❤️ Felt comfort and safety in own skin and bones.
Healing the root chakra:
Restoring the root chakra to health and balance is absolutely possible.
It is not an overnight attendance, or even a week or so.
It asks for a re-creation of how we live.
It has to be so, for so much up to that point would have been built from the residue effects of being an abused child, and a survivor.
We have to softly move towards freedom from both of those identities. That does not make either wrong, it simply makes the experience of time and self no longer fragmented into pieces but whole.
Healed roots become our consistent anchor of stability, security and safety in life.
When we think of a tree, many storms may pass through the branches, but the roots remain strong and anchored. When we create this for ourselves, our internal World and a sense of self is not disturbed, attached to, buffeted or altered by the chaos, drama or opinions of the external world.
In my experience, the healing of the root chakra meant showing up for myself regularly throughout the day, everyday and re-creating a sustainable daily lifestyle that was of safety and trust, firstly with myself and then my body.
Allowing myself frequent spaces to slow down and create soothing routines that opened sanctuary for the “wounded fragmented child” a place to come to and trust that I would forgive, love, listen to and meet it’s pain.
It takes raw honesty in reflecting where our inner landscape is influencing our actions and external experiences and compassion for self and courage to uproot the roots that do not support who we are but feed the abuse that tells the story of who we are.
Only we can change how we relate to ourselves, to our bodies, to our sex and be responsible for that consistently. Not shaming ourselves when we make a mistake, but seeing the bumps as an opportunity to change and loosen the grip of the past.
At the beginning, it takes conscious effort and constant choice, what I mean by that, is checking in with what is informing our behaviour, actions and choices. If we are choosing to fuel the chaos of past that churns our lives up again and again … or to breathe into the present moment and lean towards the life we do want, and need.
When we are not aware of our choices, this is when the past programming influenced by the experience of abuse runs our life and takes us once again as hostage.
Healing the root chakra asks for action.
Yes we can journal and scrawl out our shame, our anger, our grief, our loss but what are the new expressions born from the page that can be integrated into daily life?
Yes, we can attend talking therapy, but can we touch our own body without slipping into disassociation? Can we soften the soles of our feet and trust the ground when we walk? Are we in our legs and hips when we move? Can we breath deep and round into our belly and be at ease with the sensations that stir in our groin?
Can we allow ourselves to be receptive, loved?
Can we let go of our old guards and create healthy boundaries?
Healing the root chakra is the conscious creation of the new roots you choose to grow yourself and the rest of your life from.
