Living as I do in a small town nestled in the Pennine Hills, where it often rains and every day in winter is a challenge, I had an unusual experience this January. I spent the entire month back home with my mum. My mother has a lovely warm home, not far from London and the sun seems to shine ‘down south’ so much more than it does here – even in January!
Normally I find her overheated home, really difficult to ‘be’ in, and find myself nipping out of the back door into the garden for some much needed cool, fresh air. This time however, I was shocked at how quickly I adapted to the suffocating heat. I loved how I could do my daily yoga practice in a T-shirt and thin yoga pants without even needing to open a window. Unfortunately, the downside to this happy state of affairs soon became clear. I was finding it harder and harder each day to step outside the house and embrace the much cooler fresh air on my daily walk.
I realised that this is probably what happens to a lot of people at this time of year. Unless we have a pressing need to go outside for work, shopping or dog walking, It’s so much easier to remain snugly indoors, in hibernation mode, than it is to get out and get some exercise. That is one of the reasons why my thoughts often turn to Mulhadrara, known as The Base or ‘Root’ Chakra in yoga philosophy. This chakra, or energy centre, relates to our basic needs and processes. It is situated at the base of the spine, near our excretory organs and encompasses the legs and feet.
It’s fairly well documented that as humans, we spend a lot of time thinking about stuff. This thinking is carried out at the very opposite end of our bodies, in a small planet (the mind) which is connected to our bodies by a thin connection (the neck). Once we are ensconced in our place of comfort and warmth, we tend to curl up and forget about our body, thinking about what we see on TV and what is happening in our lives. When we do go outside, our feet are encased in socks and shoes and we don’t really notice they are treading on the surface of the earth so we continue to live in our heads, often overthinking things and becoming anxious or depressed.
The basic remit of the Base Chakra is,
“Never let yourself forget that you need your feet on the surface of the earth, to survive”.
We have expressions like
‘She really has her feet on the ground’
which is a way of expressing admiration for someone who is successful in what they do whilst at the same time keeping a sense of proportion and balance in their success. How many pop stars or celebrities do we all know who have found this really difficult and taken a dive?
A person with a strong Mulhadara will happily take care of themselves, by eating food which will nourish them: they get enough sleep and balance their fun times with their alone times: they feel confident as they move forward with their plans and they feel safe and loved and are able to return love to others.
Does this sound like you? If not, there are many practices and postures which yoga has to offer which will help to draw our minds away from their preoccupations and overthinking. A really simple one is to simply walk barefoot around the house when you can. Hopefully on a nice warm carpet or rug. As the weather gets warmer, you can expand this and take a little walk around your garden or yard every morning, barefoot of course!
There are more receptors on the soles of our feet than in most other places in our body. This is because the primary activity of a human is to move forward in an upright position. When we walk without our shoes, the brain receives many messages about the ground underneath us, so that we can feel the undulations of the ground and the tiny little stones or tufts under our soles. From an evolutionary point of view, this aids us to hunt prey more stealthily or run more quickly away from danger. In our modern world of cities and houses and pavements, this act of walking barefoot, simply helps to draw our attention away from the top of our body and down to the bottom of our body. Result?
1. Distraction away from our, often negative ruminations about ourselves and our world.
2. A connection and lengthening of the spine as it lengthens and flexes in tune with the movements of the feet on the ground. We are more upright.
3. A sense of spaciousness around us – if only for a moment, as we become aware of our whole body moving through space. Imagine what it would be like to walk barefoot on the sand, as we love to do on warm summer beaches?
4. An increase in hormones and neurotransmitters in the body and brain which allow us to relax with this gentle form of exercise.
Next month in April we move on to look at the next Chakra up from here: Svadisthana