Muladhara, the Root Chakra: Where It Sits and What It Governs

Muladhara — mula, root, and adhara, support — is the first of the seven chakras, described as sitting at the base of the spine between the perineum and the tailbone. Its element is earth, its colour red, its seed syllable lam, and what the texts assign to it is everything to do with having a place to stand: security, survival, belonging, the sense of being supported by the ground.

Muladhara at a glance

What it is said to govern

The root concerns the conditions of living rather than the content of a life: shelter, food, money, physical safety, and the family and place a person comes from. In the scheme of the seven it is the foundation, and the texts are consistent that work on the higher centres without it is unstable — which is the practical reason teaching begins here rather than at the third eye, where most newcomers would prefer to start.

It is also where kundalini is described as lying coiled, and the entire ascent the yogic texts describe begins at this point. That is a large claim resting on a long tradition, and it is worth reading as the texts mean it rather than as a technique to be attempted from a web page.

When it is described as out of balance

The signs the tradition associates with a blocked or weak root are the ones that follow from what it governs: chronic anxiety about money or safety, feeling unsettled or rootless, difficulty trusting, restlessness that will not resolve, and a sense of not belonging anywhere in particular. On the physical side the texts and later writers name lower-back trouble, problems in the legs and feet, and digestive and eliminative complaints.

An overactive root is described differently — rigidity, hoarding, resistance to any change, a preoccupation with security that crowds out everything else.

The practices

All of them are taught freely and none requires a practitioner or a payment.

• The bija mantra. Lam, recited with attention held at the base of the spine. The simplest instruction the texts give for any centre, and the one they return to.
• Asana. The seated and grounded postures are the ones associated with it — malasana, balasana, setu bandhasana, virabhadrasana, and simply sitting in sukhasana with the sit-bones pressed down.
• Pranayama. Nadi shodhana, alternate-nostril breathing, for the channels generally; slow exhalation for the grounding quality specifically.
• Contact with the earth. Walking barefoot on ground, gardening, sitting on the earth rather than on furniture. The least mystical instruction in the system and the one most consistently given.
• Attention to the actual conditions. The tradition does not treat material security as beneath it. Where the root is unsettled because the circumstances are genuinely unsettled, the texts would have you address the circumstances.

Where it sits among the seven

Muladhara is the first of the lower three, which concern living in the world — the root, then Svadhishthana at the sacrum and Manipura at the solar plexus. Above them Anahata at the heart is the turning point, and the upper three — Vishuddha, Ajna and Sahasrara — concern what lies beyond it. The full map, including the 114 chakras the classical system counts beyond the seven, is on the chakras overview.