Muladhara/ Base Chakra

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Muladhara is the root chakra, it is located at the base of the spine in
the region of the coccyx and is said to be red in colour – the colour with the
longest wavelength in the visible spectrum. It is associated with the gonads,
lower pelvis and the sacral and coccygeal nerve plexuses.
The traditional symbols are: the yellow square/ cube of Prithivi (Earth
Element) and the seven-trunked royal elephant Airavata. Muladhara is said
to control the legs and is related with the sense of smell.
Muladhara works through the balance of life and death. Muladhara
works through the dynamic of instinct, evolution and suppression.
Muladhara is the root of our animal nature – that is, the part of us that
is more animal than human.
Below the base chakra are other chakras, which for the moment we
can include within muladhara. The colour below the base chakra is black.
This connects with the unconscious, the ancestral, and the hell realms and
the womb of the goddess as the ‘dark mother’ – the ultimate yin or potential
from which all life emerges.
From the association with the gonads we can uncover several spheres
of activity related to Muladhara – associations that are borne out by
traditional attributions. Firstly, the ability to reproduce is one of the main
properties that distinguishes living from dead matter. Muladhara then,
concerns reproduction and all the animal instincts that surround and protect
that function. It also connects with life and death, the distinction between
them and the doorway between them. From these two together we find
associations of survival and protection, security and safety and their
opposite – fear, most particularly fear of death.
Muladhara is the foundation, or root, of physical life and the “flesh and
blood” body. By extension Muladhara bestows solidity and cohesiveness.
To clear, balance and evolve Muladhara we need to contemplate
death. The secret of Muladhara is that by fully accepting (the inevitability of)
death, we can learn really to live. Death helps us to appreciate life and to
keep things in a proper perspective in our life.
In another way it is actually death that enables life: in the natural
process of decay and degeneration back into the constituent elements which
then combine into new life – the so-called cycle or circle of life and death.
Also when we look closely we see that death is the greatest teacher
and biggest reminder of impermanence – everything is impermanent and
subject to continuous change. Death is impermanence. And it is
impermanence that allows life. Consider that it were possible to be
permanent – really solid, real and permanent; you could not change or move
in any way – no rhythm, no cycle, no vitality. We know a watch is working
because the second-hand moves (or maybe ‘flashes’ these days…) – its state
changes: the old state ‘dies’ and the new state is born. The same with the
human heart – its beats are a cycle of impermanence – birth, death, rebirth.
So actually what we think of as being alive is more accurately described as a
dance between life and death. The constant is change, is impermanence.
So understanding muladhara as the reality of death is just this. This is
how physical life really is – our understanding has expanded, we haven’t
discovered anything ‘new’. When we go right into it and bring understanding
more and more to the level of realization then this in itself empowers the
muladhara chakra.
And when we look closer at who dies in this process – it is the ego, the
limited self. It is the ego that fears death. This is another reason why there is
such emphasis placed on death in the spiritual traditions – from
contemplating death to the death-dismemberment-reconstruction rites of
passage for the shaman. Without coming to terms with death and what it
really is, we have no “root support” for the spiritual journey ahead. We still
go along ‘doing’ our spiritual practice, yet there is always an element of
pretence or of using it as another ego-entertainment. All that changes in the
face of death – there is no pretending, there is no getting around it.

Everything that is born is by its nature impermanent and bound to

die.

So there is also a sense of urgency, when we contemplate death, when

we face death. We realize that we have a limited time – we’re just not sure
how limited. Years? Months? Maybe this time tomorrow we’ll already be
dead. The inevitability of death means that we don’t waste time.
Facing death, and going beyond the fear of death, beings us great
freedom and confidence. Our sense of self is less and less based on ego and
released more and more into the infinite love and wisdom that is our true
nature. And in this relative world we become truly stable, good-hearted and
easy. Our character, dignity and self-value are not based so much in trying to
solidify the illusion. In a very deep way we can relax. We can let go, and
realize that we are supported, and always have been, by our true nature and
also by the earth. This is called grounding.
Working with muladhara is also a way to bring the suppressed and the
unconscious out – to be resolved and released. Look back to the 7EM and see
the correspondence with the gonads. So already the practice of shamatha
that you have been doing has been working with clearing and empowering
muladhara. Do you begin to see how incredible a practice shamatha is? Even
without us necessarily knowing, it works on so many things simultaneously.
All very naturally and safely.
So the re-membering of the 7EM now also has a richer texture. To re-
member is to re-build. The energy of muladhara is related with the earth
element which is, amongst other things, the physical body. Here then, in
muladhara, we find all the autonomic and usually unconscious processes
which build and maintain the physical body. In this way the body re-
members, builds and rebuilds in its usual processes of anabolism and
catabolism, to maintain homeostasis (stability). The memory of the body,
which is a natural remembrance, is (in our modern thinking) stored in the
D.N.A. and then through different orders of organization up through cells and
organs to complex interacting systems to produce the organism – our body.
So within muladhara there is the possibility of working even with the D.N.A.
and with every level of physical memory above it. The bodily processes, the
re-membering, are usually unconscious – yet we suggest that they do not
have to remain so.
Muladhara, by its association with the physical body and with the
suppressed patterns of thought and emotion, gives us the clearest indication
of suppression being stored in the body. We can say, more precisely, that
there is a physical correlative for any and every mental/ emotional event.
This also shows how the physical body can be affected by working with the
emotional and mental contents of the mind. As the Buddha said:

We are what we think. Everything that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.

And this is not even to mention what is possible when we step beyond the
limited mind and realize in a non-conventional, or non-local sense, the
inherent illusion of physical existence.
So when we stop the flow of the event by making it ‘real’ and
suppressing it, the resonance of that event through the physical body is also
interrupted and suppressed. The type and nature of the mental/ emotional
event determines where in the physical body this energy ‘sticks’. This is
illness arising at the level of the physical body.
The interrelation of mind and body in this way is the basis of all energy
medicines such as acupuncture. This is also how bodyworking systems can
work with ‘emotional release’. Emotional release through bodywork is a very
good way to help empower muladhara.
Sex is also a good way to work with muladhara. And empowering
muladhara will also help with sexual and fertility problems. We’ll look into
more specifically sexual methods at a future date.
Having mentioned sex, however, we should also mention kundalini – as
the two seem to be inextricably bound in the western psyche. Kundalini is
the ‘snake-power’ which lies coiled 31/2 times about the muladhara chakra.
Stimulated in a certain way and at a particular time, the power of the
kundalini is ‘released’ and unwinding from muladhara, shoots upward
through the chakras to unite with sahasrara. There are many beautiful
metaphors and myths which explain this process.
The ‘kundalini experience’ seems to have taken a hold of the western
imagination – perhaps it is more accurate to say the western ego-
imagination. Perhaps because of its association with sex – with which
western culture seems obsessed.
 Yes, there are sexual methods to arouse the sleeping kundalini. Sexual
methods are not the only ones, however. Nor is kundalini just another
product to titillate and amuse. To arouse kundalini as a purely sexual ego-
fantasy inevitably leads to more problems than it solves. Re-read the
sections on ego to get an idea where such a course of action will lead you.
The kundalini can actually arise at any time. In the natural course of
your spiritual development it will arise at just the right time. According to
tantrikas (people who follow the tantras) it is not difficult to get the kundalini
to awaken and rise. A short training is often sufficient. How you experience
this awakening is a different matter altogether!
Here we can think of muladhara as Pandora’s Box. Remember it is the
storehouse of, or the doorway to life and death, to the unconscious (the
whole of it), not to mention everything that we have deliberately suppressed
out of pain, anger, fear and so on. Are you ready to blow the lid right off
Pandora’s Box? ‘Heroes’, the desperate, and the egotistical need not apply.
This is why masters will train their students, purifying the mind stream,
sometimes over years, so that when the kundalini rises it does so with ease
and bliss – the super-charged energy finding a suitable home in the well-
prepared body-mind system of the candidate.
If the kundalini experience attracts you – all well and good. Do find out
why it attracts you – you have the method. There will be the light side and
the dark side. There is the ego and the shadow. Even the desire for such an
experience when analysed in the context of shamatha will show you many
things about yourself. It will, incidentally, help lay the foundation for the
experience itself… If the kundalini experience repels you – all well and good.
Find out why this is so. The same benefits apply as above.
In any case you need not fear ‘accidentally’ firing off some terrible
kundalini experience nightmare. This really only happens through the ill-
advised and unprepared use of psychedelic agents. You need not fear biting
off more than you can chew with shamatha – it’s just not possible – the ego
doesn’t find shamatha entertaining enough!
The final thing we want to look at on the topic of kundalini is a little
about the experience itself. We find from the Tantras that there are different
levels of experience, depending on the maturity of the practitioner. The one
that you may have heard of – the rising of heat in the body – is actually the
lowest/ most basic result. There is no need, therefore, to hanker after this
experience, particularly, or you may limit your potential. So much for
kundalini, for now.
Muladhara is associated with the physical body and also with the
image of the physical body – our self-image. The physical body is the point of
integration of all the ideas we hold as our image. And while we identify very
strongly with the physical body, our self-value and self-worth are very much
interrelated with muladhara: strengthening one, strengthens the other and
vice versa.
Finally for muladhara let us consider the Earth Element a bit further.
Here we can think of muladhara as the Earth and what is below the Earth. In
oriental medicine we would be considering the Earth and Metal Elements. We
are considering the physical and our consciousness of the relative, and we
are considering that which is below consciousness – the subconscious –
otherwise known as the underworld.
Now the Metal Element concerns quality, self-value, and purity. The
organs of the Metal Element are the Lungs (Yin) and Large Intestine (Yang):
the Lungs need pure air for us to breathe; the Large Intestine purifies the
body of potentially toxic waste products from food and by-products of
metabolism (other waste products are excreted through the skin –associated
by oriental medicine as an extension of the Lung).
From this information we can bring out some suggestive
correspondences. For example:

• That which informs our self-worth is largely subconscious. Self-worth

issues can be found by looking in the subconscious.
• Lack of self-worth (Metal) will certainly have an effect on the physical
body (Earth) in a process where Metal continually overburdens Earth.
This can result in eating disorders right through to obsessively giving
or eliciting sympathy in an attempt to bolster low self-worth.
• Low self-worth may also have a physical correlative in intestinal
problems (Metal) or sexual problems (muladhara’s association with the
gonads).
• A shamanic view of intestinal problems (including those resulting in
candidiasis and so on) is the lodgement of an ancestral spirit in the
intestine. In a different metaphor we might say that there is an
inherited predisposition to such a problem.

Magically muladhara is associated with the Earth Elementals, in the

western tradition called Gnomes, and their work in excavating treasure from
deep within the earth; with nourishing nature and the physical world around
us; with their infinite patience, diligence and determination and so on.
We have gone into Muladhara quite extensively as an example of how you
might make connections between associations.