How to Feel Grounded, Safe and Steady, through your Root Chakra

The root chakra is the foundation of your entire energy system —and when it's blocked, everything feels unstable. Anxiety, restlessness, that low-level sense that the ground could shift beneath you at any moment. 
Sound familiar?

In this episode Christina Fletcher explores root chakra healing through real personal stories  from a frightening text from A&E in London, to homelessness, crumbling homestead foundations, and world schooling through Spain. She shares the lesson that no amount of outer stability can fix an unsettled root.

Whether you call it root chakra or nervous system regulation, the work is the same; learning to feel safe from the inside out.

In this episode:

• What the root chakra is and why it's your most important energetic foundation
• How moving, sudden shocks, trauma and even traffic jams knock it out of balance
• Why spiritual development stalls without root chakra stability
• The surprising link between your root chakra and nervous system regulation
• Practical grounding tools you can use anywhere; no crystals required

Free resource mentioned: Your Missing Map  a free guide and audio walking you through all seven chakras, starting with the root chakra. Simple, practical, and designed for real life. spirituallyawareliving.com/themap

Christina Fletcher is a Spiritual Alignment coach, energy worker, author, speaker and host of the podcast Showing Up Whole.
She specialises in practical spirituality and integrating inner work with outer living, so you can get self development off of the hobby shelf and integrated as a powerful fuel to your life.

Through mindset, spiritual connection, intuitive guidance, manifestation, and mindfulness techniques Christina helps her clients overcome overwhelm and shame to find a place of flow, ease, and deep heart-centered connection.
Christina has been a spiritual alignment coach, healer and spiritually aware parent coach for 11 years and trained in Therapeutic Touch 12 years ago.  She is also a meditation teacher and speaker.
For more information please visit her website www.spirituallyawareliving.com

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Transcript

Why The Root Chakra Matters

Christina 0:00

Hi, and welcome back to Showing Up Hole, the place where we discuss alignment in mind, body, heart, and spirit in every aspect of our lives. Today, I want to talk a little bit about an energetic element of our lives. We're gonna tiptoe into energy systems itself, but I really want to focus in on the root chakra and or aka the nervous system, and how a root chakra can throw your human life quite off. All right. So I'm coming in to talk about the root chakra for a number of reasons, but it was really interesting how I was, you know, I have two daughters, and for both of them over this last couple of weeks, it seems like root chakra has really been something that comes up in conversation with them, which is always kind of interesting. In my family, we do talk root chakra a little bit more than your triggered nervous system. They are linked, and I'm gonna go into that in a little bit, but I kind of want to tell you a little bit about how this actually came up first and foremost. So let's talk about my one daughter who uh a couple of days ago was in London visiting her boyfriend. And lo and behold, I suddenly get this text message into our family chat that says not to be dramatic or to spike your cortisol, mom. But I seem to have fainted in a shop and banged my head, and I'm headed to A E or the emergency room here in the UK. And of course, I immediately felt kind of the ground flow beneath me. And my other daughter, who was in the chat as well, kind of just went, what? And I just went, what? And immediately the scenario unfolded. She's fine. She, of course, had to go to the hospital. She had a lot of different um experiences because we don't usually, you know, she hasn't spent that much time in a hospital. And she was around a lot of other people. She had a triggered nervous system, of course, because immediately the adrenaline kicks in, fight or flight. Uh, she immediately felt ungrounded, she immediately felt in an unsafe space, her pole system went into danger, danger, alert, trying to keep safe. Now, from a root shaker perspective, as soon as things feel unsafe, then that immediately sends your energy up into your upper regions. Now, she'd hit her head, so of course this led to a various system overload. And she's now been in bed for a couple of days with us insisting that she rests in order to tell her system that she's safe. Now, from a lot of very, you know, realistic human perspectives, that's a triggered nervous system. It's survival mode. Uh, she had to get over the trauma. We were giving her homeopathic arnica to help deal with that. Um, she had to give her chant her body a chance to heal. From a root chakra perspective, I knew that energetically we needed to make sure that she was grounding into her feet, that she was feeling safe and steady, that it was an energetic layer underneath. Now, flip to another story. Okay, so I also have this other daughter, and my eldest, she lives in London. She's been living in a dorm. She has a partner, and her partner just left their her their her her original home that with her roommates, and her and my daughter are moving in together. Wonderful. That's fantastic. But what we've been talking a lot about ever since this decision has come in is how moving and change triggers your root chakra. It can trigger your nervous system, sure, but there is a sense of your root chakra, this deep energy of not just change, but this sense of changing homes. I find that moving, the sense of not knowing where your stuff is, it's more than just a triggered nervous system. It's a sense of your foundations being knocked and crumbled. It was interesting talking to my daughter because, you know, there she is, and she's like, no, I'm actually thriving. She's like, I'm fine. You know, all my stuff is currently in one place. I'm going to be moving it to another place. I'm okay. I'm used to functioning like this. And we had a really interesting conversation where we talked about how as a family we have actually gone through a number of deep root chacering, blocking, rattling, shaking experiences. You know, we have had experiences when the girls were younger where we did face homelessness, that we did live in a place that, quite frankly, the house that we lived in on a homestead was actually the foundations themselves were really, really bad. And we had 40 odd posts holding the house up. We used to laugh that the foundations themselves were kind of crumbling, and it didn't feel steady and safe. Root chakra has become one of the things that's the most important thing for me personally. And it feels like we don't talk about it or value it enough. We talk about nervous system a lot. And it's like on this podcast, you'll hear us talk about root chakra a lot, and we talk about nervous system a lot. Why do we talk about nervous system? It's because I have discovered over the years how important it is to feel safe in your system, for that your energy to feel steady and grounded and rooted. And that is the root chakra. I remember um when I first started kind of cracking in to the importance of the root chakra for myself. And, you know, uh we were living in Spain, we had been living on our homestead, we had um been, you know, we'd had when we had our homestead, we lived on um, you know, we were self-sufficient for a number of years. We had um we had all the the wood stacked and we were burning it and we weren't very good at it. So often it was damp. Um we, my my daughters had years of sleeping in their um, you know, their Halloween costumes of really furry animals just to kind of make sure that they were nice and warm. We had had a lot of different situations of um traveling and going across the country of Canada and so different camping experiences. We'd moved from England back to Canada and back again, and it hadn't really landed in me how my energy was in this heightened state of not being able to fully settle. Always feeling like I was waiting for the next shoe to drop, always waiting for things to fall apart. I remember after, you know, we we decided that enough was enough, and we moved to Spain for a world schooling trip. So anyone who doesn't know what world schooling is, basically, we had been homeschooling all our children. World schooling is you travel with them and you teach them as you travel. And we'd found a world schooling community. So there were various other people who were doing the same thing from all around the world. It was this small space in Spain. It was absolutely brilliant. This just before COVID, and it was this incredible experience where, you know, there we were kind of going from the winter of Canada, um, rural Nova Scotia, uh, heaps and heaps of snow, and then all of a sudden landing near the Mediterranean. It was a phenomenal manifestation. That is one of my very favorite stories. But I remember being there, and I remember all of a sudden uh staying in this beautiful space and learning more about the chakras and working more in my understanding of them, and all of a sudden it just landed deep within me where I thought, actually, my root chakra has been scrambled, blocked, triggered, clogged up for years. And it became probably about a year of working on it. It became a year of prioritizing it and knowing that the foundation of my root needed to be stabilized. And when you're world schooling and you're not like living in your house when things are changing all the time, you have to do that from the inside out. It turns things around so that you actually need to be your own security. And you need to find the ways of making sure that you are grounded, connected, and and feeling safe without needing the structure of the actual house to provide that for you. It's a fascinating thing when you actually start leaning into this. And and I will say, you know, again, you hear me talk nervous system regulation. So let's let's rewind it actually into that a little tiny bit. Because nervous system regulation is actually the same thing. You may have heard me say, or maybe you haven't, that nervous system regulation has to be the number one thing that you work on before spiritual development. And this has become a really strong belief of mine because I have realized that you can do all the spiritual work that you want. You can do the exploration, you can do the reading, you can do the um the healing work, you can uh do the massive visualizations and focus on manifestation. But the truth of the matter is that if your nervous system is triggered or if your root chakra is blocked, you will never feel safe in any change. It means that you will always be living out there. You will want the evidence of the spirituality, you want the evidence of the manifestation, you will always be stretching and looking outside for the approval still or for the stability outside of you. Also, at the same time, if you do make a spiritual leap, it actually will rattle you because it will feel so unsafe to be making that launch forward. And so, you know, this was a humbling thing. I won't, I won't kid about with that because I had already been on my spiritual path, having all these different things, these extreme experiences of homelessness and bankruptcy and all these different things, when all of a sudden it landed on me that I, and at the same time manifesting going to Spain and manifesting all these amazing things, but the humbling moment of realizing that because there was no stability, I couldn't get my feet under me. It means that you're almost rewinding. And this is, I think there's there's a level of there can be a level of pride when you actually, when I say humbling thing, because you all of a sudden go, nervous system regulation, root chakra. I'm already, I have to go back to the root chakra. I thought I was working on all this magical stuff. But these things work in cycles and they work in making sure that you are covering all of your bases. Your root chakra is the foundation. If you live in a house, then you and you have a basement, then you don't just assume that, well, the found I have a basement. That's fine. Maybe this is what we should have done in our homestead. But you know, I have a basement, that's fine, it's done. I'll just build my house up 15 stories high. No, you continually keep checking your foundation. You make sure that whatever you're doing in your house, you double check your foundational walls. You maybe put in a teleposte here or there. You make sure that you are tending that foundation. Root chakra is that foundation. Now, one way of taking care of your root chakra is nervous system regulation. But we're gonna go into that in just a second. Um I just need a drink of water and we're just gonna take a short break. Do you feel like you're always trying to figure out the cause of something? Why are you anxious? Why does your stomach give you trouble? Why do you lack passion or why do you people please? It's frustrating when the questions of why overshadow life. Well, there are many reasons why things happen. Energetically, it comes down to alignment or unalignment. And while you can treat conditions and situations in all sorts of different ways, it helps to know where energetically you need to shift. It's like repairing a foundation to a house before anything else. This is why I created the missing map, a guide to understanding your energy system so it leads you back to wholeness. Inside, you'll learn about your chakras and your energetic worlds, how to know where you need to align, and how to realign when you need to. I've kept it really simple. So simple, in fact, that not only is there a PDF guide mapping it all out, there's an audio version you can listen to on the go. Download this key to your system. Learn how to navigate it all from the inside out. You can find the missing map for free at spirituallyaware living.com backslash the map, or in the session notes below. Okay, so where are we at? We're talking about the root chakra, the very foundation at your energetic system, nervous system, regulation, meaning that you are regulating your nervous system so you're not in fight or flight. They're all intermingled, but you're tending to your root, to your foundational self. Now, there are so many things that can trigger this out change, moving, sudden shocks, sudden traumas, um, really bad bills to pay, um, conflict, various uh trauma that ensues, the little tiny traffic jams of someone honking their horn at you, and it brings back different memories that all of a sudden you feel unsteady again. I was talking to a woman at the meditation class that I was talking about, um, that I was teaching tonight, uh, which I'm doing locally, and we were talking about how a childhood memory of being told that you have to be quiet uh when you have to speak up in when you're adult, you know, and you have that childhood memory of wanting to speak up, and immediately you feel like you're doing something wrong, immediately you feel like you're crumbling, and immediately you feel unsafe, insecure, unsteady. Now, root chakra, what's in there? Root chakra, your solar plexus is in there for your inner fire and confidence, and then your throat chakra for not being able to speak your truth. But that root is foundational. Now, what do you do about it? And and this is like I said, you have to be able to do this from the inside out. You cannot, I promise you, you cannot work on the outward workings of your life enough to make it feel safe enough for your root chakra to believe it. There will always be a kink in that wall somewhere because it's an energetic thing. Your energy is fed by not just your surroundings, it is fed by the thoughts you're thinking, the emotions you're experiencing, the memories, the subconscious stuff that's happening in the background, the programs that are continually running. Your root chakra is listening to all of that. So you can run around making everything as safe and steady. You can live in the same house for the next 30 years. And if you have little things in the background, which we all do, then it's very easy for all of a sudden you have that drop in your legs. You're you're you're just feeling like, or all the blood rushes to your head. You feel really insecure, you feel really unsteady, you feel really unsafe. You know, you might find that you start to kind of shake a little bit, that hyperventilation, that sense of tension in your whole body. You might, um, I know for me, shallow breathing is a really big one, or my voice starts going really high because all my energy is shot up to my head. Um, you may find that you got really fearful thoughts, really anxious thoughts. You may find that you start racing, talking faster. You may find that you're just on alert, you've got that hypervigilance within you. Uh, you may find that you have um almost dizziness, a sense of not being able to walk straight. So, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to find stability in the instability? First of all, let's just know that the only thing that we can really count on is continual change, because that's what we're here for. Nothing ever stays stagnantly the same. So you've got to have some movement in there. At the same time, where your thoughts go matter. So focus and focus on the ground. Focus on your root. You know, you can focus on your feet, and by focusing on your feet, all of that energy is going to go all the way back down from like that heightened state, that spiky cat that I love to talk about, that when your nervous system gets triggered or your root chakra gets blocked, all your energy spikes up and you're in that terror state. You can focus on your feet and allow that energy to drop down into the ground. You can take deep breaths. And one of the lovely, like a great little juicy meditation that I love to do for root chakra is I'll inhale and I'll imagine the breath going all the way down to the base of my spine, and I'll imagine a red light at the base of my spine. And with every inhalation, it grows a little brighter and then it drops, and then it glows a little brighter and then it drops. You know, you you can tell yourself stories of where you're safe. You can know that the universe has your back. I think one of the key steps that I took for my root chakra was to remind myself that things were always working out, that everything was taken care of, and that I wasn't on the journey alone. Knowing that my experience and the contrast of those changes were leading me to something else. It was this continual movement forward, and it started though, with just trusting that I could be safe, looking around, knowing I had food in the fridge and that I had a roof over my head, and I might change roofs, but it was still a roof. Knowing that there was grass and ground that I could stand on and that it wasn't going to be shaking beneath me. Finding the moments of stability and making one moment safe and then the next moment safe and then the next moment safe. Root chakra does not thrive in future focus or in past focus. So your present moment is where your power is. It was interesting, you know, because when I got this message, and I I will, I totally appreciated how she phrased it of not to be dramatic, but I've banged my head and I'm headed to the A and E. And later on, she's like, I'm so sorry about your cortisol, mom, because she knows that as a perimenopausal woman, I am taking care of my Cortisol levels and I don't like to be stressed. And it was so interesting because I told her, I was like, that moment, yeah, my root chakra started to get knocked. I acknowledged it. And then I asked myself simply, in this moment, is everything okay? I knew she was being seen to. I knew she was with her partner. I knew that she that she just banged her head. I talked to her partner on the phone. And he was like, yep, no problem. Don't worry. It's all good. It's simple. We kept it in the moment. I talked to a few other people and they went, oh my God, you must be panicking. And I went, no, no panic, because I've grounded myself. I've rooted. I'm aware of things, but it's not entering into my system like that. She wrote later wrote saying, I'm so sorry about your cortisol because I know you're trying to keep your cortisol low because, you know, it affects all your other hormones. And it was so interesting to be able to say, you never have to worry about that in these situations. Because when we're in an emergency, our systems know how to respond to it. That's what cortisol is for. That's what that adrenaline rush is for. As long as we ride that wave and we're not building and building and building, but this could happen and this could happen and this could happen and could be like this. And what about this? And no, no, no, no. When we don't focus it on the future, when we allow it to be in the moment, it's amazing how that doesn't actually spike us. It doesn't feel unsteady. It just feels conscious presence. So it was a fascinating lesson for both of us because we were able to say, no, stressful things happen, emergency things happen. They don't have to rock your root chakra. But you can glide it through, you can keep yourself steady and safe. You can keep yourself anchored. And then you're the lighthouse in the storm. You don't have to run off in a panic. You don't have to feel triggered. Root chakra alignment is something we need to focus on more because it doesn't sound like the fun one. Just like nervous system regulation doesn't sound like the fun, magical one, but it is key. And understanding how your system works is key. Now, as saying that, and maybe this is why I'm so like focused on chakras right now at this moment, but I have recently released a this week, actually very recently, um, a new guide to your energy system. It's called The Missing Map. I'm leading you through all of the chakras. It's a free guide, and also if you like listening to podcasts, you're gonna really love it because I actually have made an audio version of it. It's just on SoundCloud, not on a podcast app, but you can just listen to all of the chakras, one track at a time, one page at a time, depending if you use the PDF or the audio. I'm taking you through each chakra, what they represent, how you know if it's triggered, and how to clear it with one simple tool. It's very simple, very basic, very practical because it's for the modern day, just like we've been talking about here, right? It's just about how you notice it within yourself and how you navigate all of that. So you just download it, download the guide. I've also made a little journal so you can start to observe yourself and keep a few notes in the journal. All of that is available to you. It's all free. It's at spirituallyware living.com backslash the map, because it is a map to your energy. And you can also find the link in the show notes. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it resonates. I'd love to hear how it works for you. And I hope that in these ever changing times, when everything can be so uprooted that you feel safe, steady from the inside out. Sending all my love and light.

unknown 26:22

Bye now.