Filling Your Cups: Self-Care and the Chakras: Chakra 1

(Photo courtesy of Pexels.com, pixabay-36717)

         Self-Care is important ingredient for life. However, it’s hard sometimes to figure out what exactly will charge your battery. When choosing something for self-care, ask yourself: what will give me energy right now? What will fill up my battery? To make things even more interesting, you actually have SEVEN energy batteries that all need attending to. One battery might be full to brimming, while another can be empty, and others can be anywhere in-between. While that might seem like an overwhelming concept when thinking about recharging your one battery seems like too much to do, learning about your seven energy batteries (your chakras) can be very practical and helpful.

Self-care can include both big investments of time and money like going on a vacation, and little investments. In fact, investments that are part the routine of finding personal balance can be even more effective for keeping your energy batteries charged. Self-care obviously can be costly, but it doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, difficult, or take a lot of energy.

Thinking of “self-care” can stir up mental “shoulds” like: I should be taking better care of myself; I should meditate (more); I should eat better; I should take (more) time to relax; I should exercise more often, I should see my friends and/or family more (etc.) … BUT the reaction to those “shoulds” usually come with equally powerful inner arguments: I don’t have the time, money, energy, or see how doing the things I feel like I should do are even possible with all I have on my plate. You can combat those unhelpful “shoulds” that keep you from trying, and create self-care activities, routines, and practices that can be very personalized for you and don’t have to cost you a thing. In fact, you may find these investments of time give you back much more than you put into them. Self-care activities can be active or passive, stimulating or relaxing. It’s all about what you need to feel more balanced, energized, inspired and well-rested. Figuring out what that something is can be the tricky part because what is energizing and rejuvenating for one person can be draining for another. Even for one person, what can be energizing and rejuvenating one day can be draining and exhausting the next.

How do you know if something truly is self-care and not just a guilty pleasure? Good question! You’ll know based on how you feel afterwards. If you feel uplifted, inspired, feel better about life, then you know it was self-care. If you feel more drained, tired, feel worse about yourself or about life then it probably isn’t doing the job of self-care.  There is nothing wrong with guilty pleasures, as long as you don’t expect them to make you feel better beyond that fleeting moment.

How can you find the Self-Care Activities that will Recharge You?

Here’s a quick exercise you can try:

1. Do you feel like you need something to recharge you? Take a moment to find some quiet and relax, breathe, and get comfy. Just enjoy that for a little bit.

2. Next, ask yourself: What am I missing? What would recharge me? When everyone else’s voices, needs at home, at work, and in life take priority, we can forget to listen to our own inner voice and our own needs. Taking some time to ask these questions and to listen to yourself can really help. Your answers may surprise you.

3. When you take that time to ask and listen to yourself to figure out what will recharge your batteries, not just what would be a fleeting guilty pleasure then you are morel likely to FIND THE TIME to do it.

These 3 steps may be enough, but listening to one’s inner voice can be confusing when where are so many other voices and life demands in our heads.

In the journey to find Balance with Self-Care let’s look at the chakras. Because again, you don’t just have ONE BATTERY that you need to recharge, like your phone or computer. You’re a bit more complex than that, but it’s what makes you, you! You have SEVEN batteries (there are actually more, but we’re going to focus on the 7 main ones in your body).

We’re going to start with the first chakra, the first energy battery in your body, located at the base of the spine. It is our foundational energy battery that keeps us feeling grounded and safe. Without a strong foundation, (or well-charged first-chakra energy battery) other pursuits in our life can feel unstable.

Self-Care for the First Chakra: Be Stable

The First Chakra is a ball of energy at the base of the spine, or coccyx, that holds the emotions, beliefs, and vibration of connection to our primary needs: money, food, clothing, shelter. Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, at the bottom of the pyramid, these are the basics of survival. If we don’t have our basic needs met, it is difficult to engage in other interests with complete focus. The needs of the first chakra are having “enough” money or currency for fulfilling one’s needs, having a home and maintaining it, organization, safety, physical health, connection to the Earth, and connection to others: family, friends, tribe, nature, animals. (You will find varying opinions on the needs of the First Chakra. This is not a comprehensive list. Please incorporate anything that you know or find not on this list that you connect with).

Self-Care at this level of the first chakra deals with these issues. There are active, stimulating ways to engage in self-care, and passive, relaxing ones. Below are some examples of how you could engage in self-care at the first chakra level.

First Chakra – BE STABLE
Passive 1st Chakra Self-Care Activities	Active 1st Chakra Self-Care Activities
Engaging the feeling of Safety – for example: Connecting with a loved one who you know has your back, getting a hug, enjoying the feeling of being snuggled up in a comfy place in your home, visualizing and feeling held by a higher power. Relaxation: Rest, take a bath, a stroll, watch the sunset or sunrise, write to a friend, read, journal, listen to your Self, take some quiet time, meditate, lay down on the soft Earth (or anywhere comfy), breathe, do yoga, listen to a guided visualization, just Be, etc… Be with the Earth: Take in the beauty of nature with all of your senses: roll in the grass, smell flowers or the soil, look at beautiful scenes or at pictures of places you’d love to see, pet a dog (cat, horse, etc.), listen to the sounds of nature either in person or recorded (like frogs, birds chirping, the ocean), taste the lovely fruits that the earth provides.	Money: Doing something to balance your financial affairs: making sound financial decisions, budgeting, making a payment on a loan, etc. Home Maintenance: Cleaning, organizing things in your home, yard maintenance, vehicle maintenance, doing laundry, etc. Physical Health Maintenance: Exercise, make and/or eat something nourishing, hydrate, attend to grooming and hygiene (check and see if your toenails need clipping!), etc. Organization: making appointments, figuring out schedules, menu planning, making to-do lists and checking things off of those lists, catching up stuff that has been piling-up literally or figuratively, etc. Connecting with the Earth: Take a walk outside, garden, hike, bike, play outside, put your bare feet on the ground, make snow angels, roll in the grass, have a picnic outside, eat something wild (that you know is safe to eat). Connecting with others: connect with your people, animals, with the elements.

As you look at this list of possible self-care activities for your first chakra, How easy or difficult is it for your to do self-care for your first chakra? Are some areas easy and others difficult? Do you tend to lean more toward passive or active self-care at this level? These answers can tell you more about balance in your life.

If you find you have a hard time caring for yourself at the First Chakra level, an Akashic Record consultation may be helpful for you. I have a lot of experience helping people with their chakra energy batteries. Go to www.lightfilledlife.com to learn more about how an Akashic Records consultation can help change beliefs, help identify and remove energetic blocks, learn about and change ancestral patterns, and more, to help you build a stronger first chakra energy battery.

More to come in the next blog about Self-Care and the Second Chakra: the chakra of intimacy, fluidity, and creative ideas.