Coming Home Tomorrow at 9am ~ The Root is Radical
Working with the root chakra and finding the ground of our being is essential to thriving into a new paradigm.
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow morning is our regular Tuesday morning class and meditation. It starts at 9am and ends somewhere between 10 and 10:15 depending on how deep we go. Tomorrow, I plan to go deep because we’ll be working with THE ROOT.
The Root is Radical
I’ve been working again on my root chakra, which is the source of a healthy sense of grounding, trust (not just in people, but in the Universe), safety and security, a sense of belonging here in this life on this planet, and nourishment of the being.
This is a regular practice for me, but about once a year, I am called to go more deeply into the root. The call this spring came from a very talented healer who helped me see that the “inner critic” I’ve been wrestling with in my creative pursuits originates here with an imbalance at the root. That surprised me until I began to sit with it and investigate more deeply. I’ll share a little of my process tomorrow because I suspect it will be a familiar story to many.
To be born in this time in the modern materialist West—in my case, America—is to practically be guaranteed root chakra and attachment issues. I think this is already changing with a new generation of parents who are attuned to their children’s needs in important ancient-future ways. But, I was born in 1973 to young parents who were (and are) amazing people, but somewhat unprepared for the challenges of parenting in the nuclear-family nightmare that has been our reality since the beginning of the 20th century.
Bless their hearts. I am grateful for all they’ve done for me…AND they were both working, isolated from other family members, burdened with debt and financial responsibilities to a predatory system, nursing their own attachment issues from the parenting they received (or didn’t), and indoctrinated into Dr. Spock-style advice on childrearing and medicalized birthing…Not to mention the collective trauma we were all swimming in. The situation was rife with challenges for welcoming a sensitive human being into a life on this planet. But, it was at that time, considered “normal.”
This idea of normalcy…are we done with it, yet?
Our disconnect at the root—the fundamental ground of our being—is responsible for many aspects of illness and dis-ease in our society. It is where our own indigenous wisdom can be retrieved in the body, the channel that connects us into the deeper cycles of Nature. It is where we can remember our birthright, our unique and precious reason for being here and honor our ancestry. It is where we recover a fundamental sense of safety so our overworked nervous systems can relax and we can stop numbing nad medicating ourselves. It is where we can surrender completely into the arms of the Cosmic Mother and really KNOW Her abundant love and nourishment. Here we can retrain our nervous systems to respond to arousal and stimulus in healthy and helpful ways. We can learn a “doing” that comes from effortless being rather than the doing that characterizes most of our society: a doing born from wounding. We can finally, truly feel AT HOME here in our bodies and on this earth. This will open up waves and waves of love for our planet and for all beings in this interconnected web of life that will change the world.
THIS IS OUR HOME. To live that fully is where we’re headed.
It is becoming clear to me that working with the root is essential to the next chapter in humanity’s story. We need to heal and repair our energetic body here at the base and we can call on the earth to help us. This is the perfect time of year to work with the ground. The quickening of energies in and below the soil, the sun’s warmth intensifying, animals mating and nesting, the blossoming of ALL LIFE. This is a time for the planting of new seeds and nurturing ourselves—from the roots up.
As I sleepily gather myself into a new day, I am thankful for these words and images, particularly the heart-inspired art that sings your dreams and insights into the Real. I am struck by how strongly the feminine is evoked in your sacred gift-giving to mama Gaia: the mushrooms, ferns, and moss arranged in a yonic pattern--right there where the above-ground visibility and underground invisibility of the root meet. The other words that struck me were "indigenous wisdom," "coming home," "deeply into the root," "thriving" and the compassion expressed towards your mother and family. Thank you for giving me some delicious ideas and images to metabolize and set the world into motion; I'll be paying attention.