Tool #10 - Lower Chakra Work: Visit, Validate, Verify and Volumize
This article links with Tool#9- Unblocking with the Emotional Freedom Technique. Please read that first. From "Not Broken: This is the Stuff, These are the Tools. Therapists are People Too.
Do not be afraid of the dam breaking.
Know that you can walk the miles to it
Dislodge a twig ……. a large branch.
Decide what to do next.
There is no great force beyond your own intention to go there.
Go to The Dam
There is no storm coming that dislodges The Dam
It is the one in your soul.....seeking.
How much flow is needed?
What volume of water do you desire for your purpose?
I wrote this brief poem at the start of this so you might have imagery for why we may not attempt to unblock. We sense the block but, on some level, have already visualized a huge dam that would break if we were to go there. That is the role of fear perhaps, to make us cautious, this tool helps us remain cautious and allows us to go there WITH CAUTION, instead of staying away from the block altogether.
This tool links with Tool #9 but can also stand alone and help you look at “the Stuff’ you are holding even if you choose to refrain from use of tapping from the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). This tool helps you use the concept of embodying energy centers, of which we can envision having seven centering inside and up from the Root of our being to the Crown. These seven centers coincide with our physical growth and development and therefore require nourishment at each stage. We don’t, however, always get the emotional nourishment from the environment because the so called “tribe” or family we come from can be absent, incomplete or diminished in some way.
The focus on our own Chakra system here can help us rely less on explanation or analysis and more on healing the centers. The seven centers are: Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Third Eye and Crown. However, the lower chakras are the focus for “the Stuff”. We can visit each lower chakra, validate there are things there that want our attention, verify the messages stuck there are real and increase the volume of our capacity for flow there. The volume increase is the thing, if there is pent up anger we expand our ability to know anger as a motivator to get what we want reasonably. If there is grief and shame, we expand our ability to be with it and act as communicators to speak our needs or pain. The energetic system of the chakras stems from ancient Hindu yogic tradition. Centuries ago, yogis compartmentalized the body’s functioning into seven major energy centers which again are known today in the West as the Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Third Eye, and Crown Chakras.
Responsible for much of the human experience, the chakras determine the quality of our physical bodies, feelings and emotions. They direct agency, ability to love, creativity, spirituality, and the mind. They are pure energy assets which are designed, however, and not acquired. They are there to bring us vibrancy, joy, confidence, passion, worthiness, and empowerment.
Here they are depicted above. They are illustrated like a rainbow of energy, where each chakra is responsible for powering a different level of human existence and is associated with a color of the rainbow. The Root Chakra is red and represents safety and security. The Sacral Chakra is orange and represents creativity. The Solar Plexus Chakra is yellow and represents self-esteem and willpower. The Heart Chakra is green and represents wisdom, love, and compassion. The Throat Chakra is blue and represents communication. The Third Eye Chakra is indigo and represents intuition and imagination. The Crown Chakra is violet and represents higher consciousness.
We can look at the seven chakras as stages of personal and spiritual power. At each chakra level, we have the opportunity to gain more energy—more power—and can learn to become conscious about how to use it. Each chakra carries a unique gift of energy that coincides with a unique level of consciousness that tends to develop at specific ages. The Root Chakra, for instance, begins to form as soon as we are born. It can be summarized in “I am” and is designed to help us feel solid and grounded in the physical world.
Our life during these developmental periods when our chakras are unfolding will either nurture our chakras’ natural rising energy that and form the core to being an empowered, happy adult—or block that rising energy. I like to say that the chakras are the energy source for our emotional stories to generate and continue playing out. If the system generates the story from clean energy sources, even disruptions can be managed and things are generally clear and well understood, we feel valid and understandable and can relate well with other systems.
If even one chakra is blocked, some of our power is blocked, and life will feel less clear, fulfilled, and it will be harder to see our path, our purpose and relationships as energy enhancing. We will feel as if we have been denied certain things and get stuck. Fulfilling our purpose becomes a struggle. In this context I see chakras as a colorful map of the whole flow of a person’s life story, the dim and stuck places validate where things happened and perhaps continue to be stuck. Wordlessly, we can reprocess the sensations there for a read. If tough emotions well up, the tapping tool can help with this.
There are scripts to process what is there. I use ones in this chapter that are helpful in targeting if you have stuck energy even if you do not want to tap. I do encourage that you notice the feelings and consider working with a therapist if you do identify that you have stuck emotion and you are not revisiting the taping tool for whatever reason. This is a clear sign that you want “WITH-NESS” for this. That you have indeed figured something out that is now matched with obtaining a safe container to work through the rest.
BLOCKED CHAKRAS
Although they are interconnected and interdependent, each chakra has a unique mission to fulfill, and it all starts at the foundation, or the Root Chakra. While it can seem like there is a perfection to the rainbow, we all know it is rare to find the conditions for one to develop and in an imperfect world that at times teaches us we’re unworthy, unimportant, powerless, or unlovable, these elements can act to block and misdirect chakra energy and therefore our personal power. Each level of the chakra system needs its ingredients to develop and flow.
A blocked chakra doesn’t necessarily mean a closed chakra. These centers are like a hose through which water can course through at a trickle, barely capable of anything, or a force, designed to put out a fire. When imagining a blocked chakra, think in terms of how flow comes through and out the hose, how large the volume of energy is. Some of us have a sliver of energy running up through the chakras. What we’re going for is more volume—more life-force energy. The cost of blocked chakra energy is enormous.
Blocked chakras can limit us to a life of pain, disappointment, unfulfilled dreams, depression, anxiety, addiction, disease, and other woes. I avoided more intimate romantic relationships for many years because I didn’t trust there would be respected boundaries if I was not in the helping/healer role. Others I worked with were stuck in relationships and jobs they felt no passion for because they followed what was expected of them instead of listening to their inner voice. Still others left a job or relationship, or rather it left them at times, only to feel lost and unsure of who they were or what they really wanted. Free-flowing chakras empower us. Chakras blocked by fear, guilt, shame, and many other barriers render us powerless. The bulk of this pain resides in the lower chakras.
THE LOWER CHAKRAS ARE “THE STUFF”
The lower chakras (Solar Plexus, Sacral, and Root) are the bases of our power and responsible for how safe we feel to express our authentic selves in this world. This is where we get empowerment energy from. This is where we get that impetus that lifts us into action when inspired and dead set on following through and is full of courage. It is where there is deservedness, worthiness, and certainty, and we know it when we feel it that “this is my purpose” and is attached to “meant to be” energy. Using it feels good and right and meant to be because when we exercise empowerment energy, we do it the spirit of everyone’s highest good and have a sense it is beyond ourselves. Empowerment energy can affect momentous change. It’s hard, even painful, not to act on this energy. Denying it leads to suffering. Empowerment energy is different than power, which is usually an energy we use over others to get a specific outcome. It’s impossible to abuse empowerment energy, which comes not from ego or position but from our very core.
When you look at the chakra diagram, envision that empowerment energy starts at the Root Chakra and flows upward. Manifestation (having an idea and turning it into a reality) starts at the Crown and works its way down. Struggling to manifest our dreams is a sign that lower chakra energy is blocked, because most of the practical work involved in making dreams come true happens in the lower chakras. For example, I had the idea to become a therapist and while I manifested it into a trauma specialist, it has only been since my repressed trauma, I have manifested my true potential, to be a healer that delivers the work like this.
Releasing blocked empowerment energy may just be the focus of the entire book’s worth of tools given it is all about empowering yourself to be the expert on you. The lower chakras are more layered or “messy” than the upper chakras. They possess the roots of complicated emotions such as fear, guilt, and shame. This is where all the felt sense memories are. These are memories that are not remembered linearly with clear beginnings and endings. These are not like the defined chapters or episodes we have in our internal Netflix account memory.
The messy lower chakras involve long-forgotten memories and distant events that shaped us as children. When they are blocked, it means we are both filled with and encased with emotions like fear, pain, trauma, and all the things we don’t like about ourselves, but we won’t allow awareness. This blockage is compounded in the powerful Heart Chakra, the fourth of the lower chakras or the midpoint between. When we lean into these four chakras, with a focus on The Root, The Sacral, and The Solar Plexus; each unblocked center starts to light the way to the hidden or guarded off and forgotten spaces that hold the roots to our biggest struggles. These are sacred spaces where the real healing takes place, and where big transformation happens. And it’s where we’re going to spend most of our time.
This work accesses deep blockages and is meant to bring them to the surface therefore an example below is provided for one to see the power. This example comes before a generic set up, I always use in which you can replace the imagery for the root chakra, which is the youngest version of you in the imagery, with that of the toddler (Sacral Chakra) and then the child self (5 years old and up) found growing from the Solar Plexus. The Set Up for the Root Chakra detailed is pretty much the same for each lower chakra, just replace the youngest self with the Sacral and Solar Plexus sourced inner child parts. Each lower chakra will have a script. First, here is Vanessa setting up for using this tool
Case Example: Vanessa (they/them) 39
“I just can’t stop making lists of things to get done and I know it is like an OCD thing because I don’t write them down, I repeat them in my mind over and over and then speak harshly to myself for missing an item and start over.”
Vanessa is 7 years transitioning with gender-affirming hormone therapy and came to me after a series of broken hearts. They were diagnosed bipolar prior to our working together and they told me, “I just feel like it is something else”. Vanessa and I identified a felt sense that they were repeating something in relationships that was “so not me”. Vanessa had never been able to express anger and their mother, also diagnosed bipolar but resistant to treatment and both love and alcohol addicted, inflicted a passive aggressive model of anger that they “knew I never wanted to be like”. Their mother would say “Fix your face right now” and Vanessa remembers just knowing how to do that.
However, with gentle affirmation that this is a fawning or appeasing survival response, they were able to access safely the fear of the child to have used that response. The response to run, shut down, rock, scream, or tantrum, were all locked inside. They started to see that the child needed to know all those would have been fine responses to get out the fear and then that they would still be loved because Mommy made a mistake saying that and was sorry. None of that ever happened, Mommy did not express remorse, Vanessa thought that any natural response to run or cry out was bad. Repeatedly, Vanessa was told to “fix your face” and so there was a stuck storm of responses meant to complete themselves but never allowed.
The target experiences were from Vanessa’s felt sense of time. We did not pressure them to be 100% accurate because the felt sense was 100% accurate, the experiences were stuck in her from when they slept in the crib to moving to their grandparents. We estimated it starting at 1 year old through 4 years old and that was all we needed to focus on the Root and Sacral “lower” chakras to release this. The script for “tapping out” we co-created for her was then tapped through using the diagram from Tool # 9 using EFT. We first did the below scripts to clear her lower chakras for the ultimate tapping script that is detailed directly below and is created with a therapist or with your own creativity while the scripts and set up further down will get you to this point, they are just the starting place for deeper work:
“I accept my tendency to fix my emotions and repress. That comes from my directions, and I was a good child for accepting and protecting myself with this strategy. I don’t want that for myself now. Even if it hurts and I am scared and worried I am bad, I want all my feelings to have a home inside of me, I want to grow up for and with the child in me, not away from her, I accept this about myself and that it may be hard to come out but I am worth it, having all my feelings is my right”
NOTE: The Concept of the particular use of tapping combined with Scripts to Unblock the Chakras is adapted from the 2021 book “Unblocked" by couple Margaret and David Raniere, PhD.
THE SCRIPTS
The Set Up:
Sit on the floor, placing a pillow under just your sit bones. Let your legs fall in loose triangles and use your hips, even your hands to sway back and forth. This sets up an imbalance that you control and one you use to find center. Once you find center, lay hands loosely in your lap, tuck your hips up, and then back, and center again. You are seated with the floor not just on it. Close your eyes and take a series of deep belly breaths. For a few seconds, feel down into the core. Try to feel it like the roots and then trunk of this column you are growing awareness of, this channel. Then feel into the pillow you are sitting on, noticing everywhere your body is making contact and being supported. This is a quick set up to all tapping Experiences, it will help to put you in a light meditative state.
Next, visualize that you are looking at one of those old movie screens that count down the numbers or a modern power point presentation that fades the numbers, one fading and the next appearing: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You are in your mind’s eye where your unconscious mind can easily bring up images or paint a scene and can even set one there with conscious intention. We will set the intention to bring up the image of you as a baby. This may feel like you are making it up but allow yourself to use whatever you can. Trust that your mind will paint the picture that is needed and allow the baby to be there and breathe in through your nostrils. Now look for and allow more details, there are no right or wrong answers and there is no need to search for a specific memory.
The process is for sensing the version of you that knows what needs to be healed but can only show us nonverbally. It is more about allowing a picture to appear and trusting that what appears is important to explore. Now we will use an EMDR tool called Subjective Units of Distress (SUD). Try to gauge on a scale from 0-10, how is the baby feeling distress wise? How would they answer, “Do you feel safe, is everything okay, are you scared at all?”
SCRIPT FOR ROOT CHAKRA TAPPING MERIDIAN POINTS
(Cheat Sheet Tappin Points: Inner wrist pulse, Karate Chop part of hand, Inner Eyebrow, Outside Eye, Below Eye, Below Nose, Below lips/chin, Colar Bone, Under Arm/Bra Strap, Crown of Head)
Part 1
I have just barely arrived, and I am so small, so new here and I am filled with all these sensations, and it is a lot. I am needy and it’s scary. Sometimes I feel safe and loved but if I am not warm and fed, I feel alone, even sad. I see that I cry out and no one is there. There are questions I can’t ask, like do they want me and am I supposed to be here if no one is coming to soothe me? I am not sure I feel safe or if anyone will help me to feel better. Am I in the wrong family, is that why I am screaming, crying, angry, scared –
I see me there and I play but I am alone crying, screaming, angry, and scared sometimes– Maybe sometimes something has happened before now or something shocking and scary happened recently – There are times I look secluded, but I think I need to be held and soothed. Maybe I am a baby who learned it wasn’t entirely wanted or it can just feel something is not right and people are not able to love and care completely or at all. Maybe I sense that even in loving me my parents are limited and are distracted, stressed, anxious, conflicted – I sense there are parts of me they don't want to deal with. There I am tiny and in fear, it is rippling through my nervous system – and I worry I am trapped here in this vulnerability and unmet needs. I completely honor this small experience as real and true; I see it, I feel it. I know it happened. I completely accept this baby’s experience in the first chakra development, I honor there is something there.
Inhale deeply. If the imagery created by the script resonated and/or took you to your own first chakra place, your emotions were likely intense and it could be a good time to repeat the tapping with “I DEEPLY AND COMPLETELY ACCEPT THERE IS SOMETHING THERE, I OPEN TO IT TO LET IT THROUGH. Take a moment to just be with the gravity of what your implicit memory trapped in the unconscious revealed to you, it is the felt sense of what happened, it does not have to be explained. You may see a representation of how your nervous system was wired long ago and how these feelings can be focused on now to validate why we cannot move on towards the good things until we unblock where alert and unsafe come from.
Part 2
Inhale and begin tapping.
There are so many feelings coming up because I think on some level, I knew that I was not supposed to go through this. Maybe I am even angry at too many things? Why did I end up there without a way to help myself, why did I get made? What is the point of feeling this pain? I know I must honor this, but it is so hard. All the questions I had from the earliest moments are the confusion trapped in me: Why am I here? – I think this feels wrong? – This doesn’t make sense; aren’t they supposed to love me and keep me safe? I have been carrying this all this time, oh little me, I have trapped fear and anger in me my whole life. BREATHE
Wow, I can see it now, I was so deserving of love and care, or adoration and soothing and I needed all these things to survive without developing blocks. While I should have gotten reassurance and arms holding me with love and I didn’t get what I needed, I can see it and that my nervous system has held on to this charged information. The reasons why are less important now –I always deserved that loving attention. There was nothing wrong with me to have this happen– And I always merited love and soothing and to be kept safe and held. If I have doubted that it was a mistake. I deserved unconditional love because I was just a little thing and could not do anything to get it. I needed them to bring that to me and give it generously. I did not get this, but I always deserved to be held in love. Now I must heal these raw emotional moments from my first chakra. I need to heal and release this from my nervous system so I can manifest my heart and upper chakras.
I let my little one know I am here now and I am going to keep it safe. I understand now and I am the only one who does, the only one who really needs to. In doing this I take responsibility like no one else has. I don’t close myself in this responsibility. If this is a process for me that I missed out on I trust others may too and I choose to open now as I see this, what has happened to me, I rise into myself and I am here.