Unfamiliar Terrain: Ways to Reclaim your Root and Embody your Vibrant Core Energy

There is power in the base of the body. There is potency in the pelvic bowl and its organs. There is aliveness in the sex organs and a strength in the legs that connects us to the earth. We live a world where intellect and thought are often given precedence over intuitive wisdom and embodiment, but we can reclaim our connection to our root and fully inhabit our bodies in a way that honours our whole being.

A Sense of Disconnect

We often hear of people feeling ‘a little heady’ or ‘lost in thought’. We may feel ungrounded or parts of our lower body may feel numb or hard to sense into. There can be multiple reasons for this sense of disconnect: a fear of standing on our own two feet, of being visible and standing in our power or taking up space in this life. For others, it may be a habit of disregarding the body, it simply functioning as a vehicle for the mind. We may have shut off from our pelvic bowl, from our creative source. We may not have learned to honour or connect to our sex organs.

It is not common practice to teach girls and young women to know deeply the physical and energetic anatomy of the womb, ovaries, vagina and labia. Neither is it common to teach boys and young men about the energetics of their sexual anatomy and the sacredness of this. For many, the relationship to our sexuality and sexual energy may have been in some way blocked, shamed, confused or skewed by conditioning, abuse, disconnect and wounding.

Re-Cultivating Connection

No matter how unfamiliar the terrain of the root, gut or womb may feel, we can actively cultivate a relationship with our bodies, instinct and energies. We can choose to deepen our connection with our root and, so too, with the earth. The benefits of this will ripple out into the whole being and into life.

There are many ways that we can practice inhabiting the base of our body. It can be as simple as walking barefoot on grass. We can stand with the knees slightly softened and the feet parallel, as spiritual teacher and Hakomi Therapist Prajna Ginty shares, meeting life as it is. In this way, we don’t lock the knees or lock off the energetic connection to and from the earth. We remain grounded. We can relax down into the pelvis and drop the breath low into the belly. In her text Wild Feminine, Holistic women’s healthcare visionary, Tami Lyn Kent advocates the use of breath and presence in her work, actively giving our undivided attention, breath (and so flow of energy) to parts of the body that may feel unbalanced. Tami names the base of the body as our radiant core. She writes about the female body specifically, but I think we all have a sense of our radiant core whether male or female, even if the energetics and anatomy are different. How would it be to move from this vibrant space, the radiant core?

Inviting Flow Through Movement and Creative Play

Michaela Boehm, in her book Wild Woman’s Way, suggests non-linear movement as a way to step out of the linear ‘doing’ mode of daily life and to re-set the nervous system, unwinding patterns and welcoming pleasure back into the body and in life. The freeing motion of circling the hips or snaking the spine is beneficial for all, as we become fully present, deepening our inner-listening, moment to moment.

We can also nurture the connection to our base through creative practices. Creative flow is very much a quality of the sacral chakra, svadisthana, the energy centre of the low belly and hips. In our weekly women’s yoga circle we recently journeyed, through a guided meditation, deep into our wombs. The womb doesn’t need to be physically present to connect to the energetic blueprint of it, or of the ovaries.

We drew what we sensed or ‘saw’ in our inner knowing and explored what the womb energy shared with us. This is work that the logical mind alone cannot access. It is also possible to connect to any body part in this way. You might breathe into and feel into the area of the gut or the heart or sex organs or legs to see what intuitive truths are held there in this moment.

There is energy and wisdom in the root.

Taking up Space and Standing in your Power

In other hatha yoga classes we have also connected to the base too. With intention, we breathed down into our root. The energy centre of the base chakra, muladhara, relates to the earth, our sense of security, connection and our sense of belonging. We affirmed our connection to root, to core. It can be helpful to create your own mantra around this, as Tami Lyn Kent suggests.  You might choose to affirm: ‘I move from my radiant core’ or ‘I am rooted and grounded’, ‘I create from my root/womb and life flows through me freely’, ‘I belong here on this planet’, ‘I am safe in this body, I am safe on the earth’.

If you’d like to nurture your connection to your intuition but ‘I trust my heart/root/womb/gut wisdom’ feels like a stretch at this time, then adapt it. Perhaps to something like ‘I want to trust my heart wisdom, I open to the wisdom of my gut, womb and root’. See what resonates for you and your body. Follow that. One foot after the other, step by step on the earth; grounding, embodying, bringing breath and attention back to the base as you move through life from your vibrant centre.

As ever, please do share your experiences and insights here too. How is your connection to the root, gut, womb and/or heart right now? If you draw, write, dance from there, what is shared with you?

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