Is money the “root” of your daily stress and livelihood issues? Do you find it difficult to save money? Do you think about the future and when you’ll feel ready for retirement? Do you focus on the amount in your savings account? You might be experiencing an imbalance in one of your most important chakras. Discover how your body and money are connected, learn what chakra is responsible for money and your financial situation, and find ways to
heal and balance your chakras.
First of all...What is a Chakra?
You’ve probably heard this term before and know they are supposed to be open and aligned...but what even is a chakra specifically? A chakra is an energy center in which energy flows in and out of. There are seven chakras in the body that are located along the spine from the tailbone—the base or root—going up all the way to the top of the head. Think of a chakra as being like Grand Central Station, a hub in which the energies of mind, body, and spirit are intertwined and sent through the
meridians for use in our daily life. Each chakra is connected to a different area of your body and your emotions. Here’s a closer look at each of the seven chakras.
Root Chakra (1st Chakra) - This chakra, represented by the color red and a lotus with four petals, is located at the base of the spine. The first chakra is closest to the earth and responsible for both grounding and survival. Areas of the body that are associated with the root chakra include the feet, bones, and legs. The root chakra will connect you to mother nature and help drive you to acquire your basic survival needs. Misalignment or blockage in this chakra may result in paranoia, fear, financial hardship, or procrastination.
Sacral Chakra (2nd Chakra) - The sacral chakra is represented by the color soft red. This chakra is located between the base of the spine and the navel. The second chakra is closely associated with your the kidneys, circulatory system, bladder, and reproductive organs, and is responsible for the feelings of desire, pleasure, and creativity. If the sacral chakra is blocked or misaligned, you might experience feelings of sexual guilt, lack of inspiration, or compulsive behavior.
Solar Plexus Chakra (3rd Chakra) - The solar plexus chakra is represented by the color orange and is located just above the navel. With connections to your pancreas, adrenals, and digestive system, this chakra is associated with your emotions. Feelings of power, determination, happiness, and sensitivity are stored in the solar plexus chakra. If this chakra is blocked, one might feel angry, upset, or frustrated.
Heart Chakra (4th Chakra) - The heart chakra, represented by the color gold, is located exactly where you’d expect—your heart. This chakra is connected to your heart, hands, and arms and is responsible for feelings of love and the act of falling in love. If you’re experiencing problems with your immune system, heart problems, stress, or lack of compassion, your heart chakra is probably experiencing blockage.
Throat Chakra (5th Chakra) - Represented by green and located within the throat, the fifth chakra is connected to your neck, thyroid and parathyroid glands, and shoulders. This chakra is responsible for verbal skills, communications, inner strength and purification. Experiencing problems expressing your needs or feelings of dishonesty? Your throat chakra may be blocked.
Third Eye Chakra (6th Chakra) - The sixth chakra is represented by the color navy blue and is located between the eyebrows and about half an inch upwards. This chakra is closely connected to your
pineal gland. The third eye is known as the “inner eye” that can self-reflect and is responsible for your intuition, ideas, wisdom, and perception. If you’re feeling indecisive, you might be experiencing blockage in your third eye chakra.
Crown Chakra (7th Chakra) - Represented by the color violet, the seventh chakra is located at the top of the head, and connected to cerebral cortex, central nervous system, and the pituitary gland. The crown chakra is responsible for wisdom, sense of oneness, inspiration and bliss. Psychological problems can be the result of blockage in the crown chakra.
What is the Root Chakra?
The first of the seven energy centers in our body, the
root chakra (also known as Muladhara in Sanskrit) represents our basic survival needs. The first chakra is the seat of the unconscious mind—housing the instinctual drives for food, sex, and survival. Life is brought into being via the first chakra (the birth canal) through both birth and reproduction. You entered into this world through your parents’ first chakras, as they were brought into being through their parents’ first chakras.The first chakra keeps us grounded and connected to the earth and serves as an energetic doorway to our earthly life and mother nature.
How does the Root Chakra connect with money?
It is through the first chakra that we experience our natural sense of self-preservation. Food, clothing, and shelter are any human being’s most primal needs, but they all require money to have them. In our modern era, money is associated with the feelings of security and survival, which are the direct emotions of the root chakra.
A person with a healthy first chakra proactively ensures his or her own safety and well-being and has a natural trust in the abundance of life that basic needs will be provided for. When one’s first chakra is off balance, it can create feelings of mistrust and guilt that block the energy of abundance and money to flow in.
How does a chakra become blocked?
Generally, the first chakra develops in utero and during the first few months of life. Lifelong difficulties with the first chakra may develop if the infant’s environment is in some trouble. When the first chakra is underdeveloped, blocked, or overactivated, one may exhibit a nervous and insecure disposition with self-destructive or greedy, self-obsessed behavior.
Are you unable to complete daily tasks or feeling disconnected from others? Do you often feel depressed and unable to experience life’s joys? These are all signs of a blocked root chakra. Maybe you’re lacking confidence or energy or feeling insecure, self-disrespectful, or greedy. All of these feelings can also attribute to a blocked root chakra.
Pay special attention to your root chakra if you’re in a job that is not meeting your basic needs and is leaving you feeling frustrated and unsupported, whether emotionally and financially.
Blocks in the root chakra are usually caused by guilty feelings towards abundance in your life such as, “abundance makes me greedy”, or, “if I have more others will have less.” Isn’t that ironic? The abundance that we want so badly could be evading us due to a deeply subconscious conditioned belief that we don’t deserve abundance in our lives somehow. Look inside and you might find deep down a fear of rejection, judgment, and isolation if you ask for more for yourself.
The good news is that ideas about money are just energy, and energy can easily be changed! Usually these ideas are unconsciously handed down generation to generation and take seed in early childhood. In your adult life, you might think about your job as a way to make money to support yourself and nothing else. Supporting yourself and making ends meet might have become—at some unknown point in your life—the sole purpose you show up to work every day.
If you can, think back to your first job aspiration and the work you did to make your first dollar. Was it raking leaves, babysitting, mowing a lawn? Now picture what you did with your pay. Did you put it in some kind of piggy bank or jar? Or, did you spend it on a treat for yourself? Whichever you chose, remember how you felt putting your energy into the task; how you believed in yourself and your abundance of skill and competence and then how fulfilling it was to be rewarded with money. Back then, money was just the result of the energy you brought to the job, not the only driving force.
With an honest exploration and clearing of your root chakra issues, you can return to that youthful exuberance and single mindedness surrounding making a living and earning money, and do more than just work to live. Without a balanced root chakra, balancing the other six chakras will be difficult—since this is the base of your chakras.
How to Open & Balance the Root Chakra
Many things that feel as if they are going wrong in your life or body can be attributed to an imbalance of one of your chakras. Performing exercises, meditation, breathing techniques can all help align your chakras. Other ways to release negative energy in your chakras are through essential oils, crystals, diet, and so much more. Check out tips and tricks to balancing your root chakra below to ease your mind and stop worrying about your bank account.
Easy Exercises to Open Your Root Chakra
- Stimulating the Perineum - Begin by sitting in a butterfly position. Hold onto the outside of your feet with your hands. Then, raise your hips up and down as you rock forwards and backwards. Doing this motion, you should be able to feel your hips opening, and your body warming up. Breathe in and out deeply as you sendy our energy to your root chakra as it begins to open. Repeat this motion anywhere from 10-100 times, whatever feels right for your body. Come to a rest when you feel your body has warmed up.
- Stimulating the Sphincter Muscle - Start in a standing position with your legs shoulder width apart. Bring your knees in towards each other, about a fists distance apart. Begin to raise your arms in front of you, keeping your back up straight. Begin to breathe in and expand your abdomen, while moving your thighs towards the middle of your body, tightening your sphincter muscle. Slightly bend your knees, and start to make your hands into fists out in front of you. As you breathe out, relax your muscles and let go of your fists. Repeat this motion 3-5 minutes, or until you feel heat within your body and your first chakra.
Practice these exercises for 10 minutes each morning to stimulate and open your root chakra. As always, remember to focus on your breathing. If you’re still not feeling warmed up and open in your root chakra, try the exercises below for further chakra healing.
Other Root Chakra Exercises
- Lower Body Warm Up - Begin by sitting on the ground and stretching your feet in front of you, into a staff position. Start to bounce your knees gently, creating warmth within your lower body. Focus on the backs of your legs, and breathe gently through your mouth. Shake your feet side to side, warming up your ankles. By doing this, we are waking up the circulation in our legs as the energy moves up towards your root chakra.
- Saddle Stretch - Begin by opening your legs wide, in a straddle. Start to lean over to your left side, raising your right arm up in the air. Feel the opening in your right side body. Close your eyes, and breathe in and out for several breaths. Return up-right to center. Repeat on the right side of your body, raising your left arm in the air and stretching out your left side body, while reaching towards your right foot. Close your eyes and breathe in deeply for several breaths.
- Upper Body Circles - Begin very similar to the exercise above for the sphincter muscle. Bring your legs into a butterfly position, with the bottoms of your feet touching. Begin to gently circle your upper body, going in a circle clockwise. Begin creating heat in your body, while focusing on your first chakra. Continue to breathe deeply. Reverse directions counter clockwise and repeat. You should ideally feel a softening in your lower back and hips. This movement should feel comfortable while your body connects your mind and core.
- Body Vibration Exercise - Rise to a standing position. Begin softening your knees and your elbows. Hang your body loose. Start to close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Start movement by creating a bounce in your knees and your entire body, letting your arms hang loose. Sensitize yourself to the energy in your body. Begin to notice how your feet, ankles, knees, thighs, and hips feel. Feel the vibration run through each part of your body, and feel warmth and energy.
Remember to pause between each exercise and take deep breaths, resetting your body and sending your energy to your root chakra.
Root Chakra Abundance Meditation
Sitting or lying quietly, imagine a warm, deep red light beaming throughout your root chakra. Feel its warm radiance and, in your mind, watch the light become a glowing sphere. Begin to spin the sphere in a clockwise direction. In the center of the sphere, imagine a four-petaled deep red lotus flower unfolding in your root chakra. You might notice if you are having trouble getting the sphere to spin or the flower to unfold, which is an indication of blockage. Just keep breathing intent and energy into the root chakra until you can easily and freely spin the sphere. Finally, send the energy of abundance throughout your entire body, up through the other chakras and out the crown chakra.
Root Chakra Mantra for Affirmation
Courage and strength are also attributed to the root chakra. Repeat this simple
affirmation often throughout your day when you are working on
root chakra healing: “I have courage and strength.”
Sound Healing for the Root Chakra
Sound healing can help align and open each chakra, but what is sound healing? It is the process of leveraging music to connect with and restore the listener’s emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical health.
Sound healing therapy consists of a person listening to music or sound that resonates at a specific healing frequency and simply absorbing the sound while sitting or lying comfortably or through more dynamic engagement like dance, mantra, meditation, or dance. In most cases, a specific sound or song can be made to produce positive brain waves, improve a mood, or heal a chakra.
The sound associated with the root chakra is a “LAM” sound. Chanting this sound, or listening to binaural beats for music healing can help open and align your root chakra.
Essential Oils for Root Chakra
Essential oils can help balance and open your body and special blends can specifically target any imbalances in your chakras.
Essential oils bring the healing power of plants and nature to help you restore your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.To open your root chakra, try incorporating aromatherapy with the
essential oil ingredients below by diffusing or direct application onto the body.
- Frankincense
- Patchouli
- Angelica Root
- Benzoin
- Myrrh
- Black Pepper
- Ginger
- Cedarwood
- Oakmoss
- Cloves
- Spikenard
Crystals for Balancing the Root Chakra
Crystals are believed to give off energy that you can bring into your life. This energy of each stone can affect your chakras in different ways because both chakras and crystals are influenced by color. If you choose the crystal correctly, the energy that each stone gives off can heal, balance, and open any specific chakra. Try placing crystals in your room, on your desk, or incorporating them into your meditation to give your chakras the needed boost. Another option is to lay down on the ground and place a corresponding crystal to each of your seven chakras, or the chakra that needs balancing. By doing this, you can open your mind to the energy the crystal is giving off, absorbing the energy, and merging it with your own inner energy. By turning your energy inward to this chakra, you may be able to figure out the disturbance or imbalance that is being created.
Since the root chakra is associated with the color red, choose a crystal that gives off a deep red color. Below you’ll find
crystals that can help to open and clear your root chakra.
- Red Tiger's Eye
- Ruby
- Bloodstone
- Red Agate
- Garnet
- Red Jasper
- Red Aventurine
Simply seeing and absorbing the color associated with the chakra you are trying to open can help heal and balance the chakra that is misaligned. Surrounding yourself with red objects, such as crystals, can help add energy to open the root chakra. Imagine the color red coming into your body, and into your root chakra and healing all of the negativity stored there.
Nature & the Root Chakra
You’ve already learned that the root chakra is what keeps you grounded and connected to mother nature. One way to balance and open your root chakra is to spend time outside. Since the root chakra is all about grounding, going for a walk with your shoes off and standing barefoot in the grass will do your body good for the root chakra. It’s also a good idea to go out in nature to relieve any stress caused by money that are stored up inside. Releasing the emotional blocks against money could help clear any obstacles that might be preventing it from flowing. If you’re not up for physical activity, try planting some flowers or gardening to connect more with mother earth.
Foods for the Root Chakra
Your diet can affect your chakras, as well. When you’re eating to open and balance your root chakra think: root vegetables. Sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes. With grounding in your food, you’ll have grounding in your body. Plus, beets and radishes also incorporate the red color of the root chakra as well.
Organization for the Root Chakra
A great way to focus on all of your chakras is to get organized. Clean your house, put away your laundry, or even better for the root chakra—pay some bills on time and get your financial life in order. You’ll notice you’ll feel more balanced all around if you complete these simple life tasks.
The next time you’re feeling apprehensive about a big purchase or money is on your mind, try these exercises and daily routines to get your root chakra aligned. Now that you’re equipped with ways to open and heal your root chakra, you’ll feel the money flowing in in no time.
If you’re interested in learning more about chakra healing, check out our
Chakra Healing Course for Beginners, a 6-hour HD video course led by Dawn Quaresima, the Director of Body & Brain Yoga, and an energy chakra healer with over 15 years of experience.
Change Your Energy’s Chakra Healing Course for Beginners is inspired by Ancient Korean Traditions. Developed by Ilchi Lee, NY Times bestselling author and founder of Body & Brain Yoga, this course is a simple and effective journey through each of the seven chakras teaching you the basics of what each chakra represents and how to heal them. Learn more about the course
here.