Roots Down, Lift the Crown: A Practice to Align Your Chakras

Every time you sit—whether it be for meditation, the beginning of a yoga class, a meal, to drive, or to work on your computer—you can take a moment to align your chakras. Here’s a practice I call “Roots Down, Lift the Crown.”

Press your sitting bones down into the chair or cushion, and imagine sending roots out of the base of your spine into the earth. All the way to the red-hot center, if you can! Own the physical space that your body occupies on the surface of the earth. Notice your presence in your own body and your body’s presence in the room, along with the presence of any others in the space.

While keeping your roots pressing downward, simultaneously lift your crown up toward the heavens. Imagine the vast expanse of stars and galaxies arching above you. (Astronomers estimate trillions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars). Keep your ground as you expand into this universal field of intelligence. Imagine lining up with a star that is your very own, and pulling down its light like a string, into your crown chakra.

As you lengthen your spine, by pushing down and lifting up, feel the central line of energy moving through the vertical core of you. Imagine it as the capital letter I running right up and down the middle. Feel yourself supported by both ends of the spectrum, the earth below and the heavens above. See yourself as the connector of above and below. Say “I am in here. Right here. Right now.”

Open your crown chakra to receive grace, which is an allowing of greater possibility, intelligence, and simplicity to flow into your crown chakra and trickle down like nectar (amrita) through your body. Imagine each chakra filling with golden light, overflowing and then dripping down to the chakra below it, filling that chakra, overflowing, and then the next, until your whole body is filled with a golden charge. 

Finish with any kind of affirmation or intention-setting you want to do for the day.

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