Overwhelm resides in the Root Chakra. When you balance your Root Chakra you bring solidity and security to your immediate experience.

Chakras and Overwhelm

Your chakras are energy centers that run from the base of your spine to just above the top of your head. They’re inextricably linked to your embodied experience. What you sense, think, and feel. They mirror that experience.

If you balance your chakras, you’ll help bring your body, emotions, mind, and spirit back into balance.  To ground and center yourself, balance your Root Chakra.

About Your Root

The Root Chakra, also called the Muladhara, is located at the base of your spine. It’s the chakra most attuned to your stress response and survival instinct.

It relates to satisfying your basic needs, safety, and survival. Thus, to reduce overwhelm: balance your root chakra with a few simple, natural practices noted below (For more on what chakras are).

The Root Chakra’s Relationship to Basic Needs and Safety

For most Americans, these are really difficult times. In the face of financial, employment, and health threats, you probably feel severely constrained in what actions you can take to help regain your balance and security. It’s hard not to feel stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed. At times, it’s like walking a tightrope draped across a long, dark abyss: lots of uncertainty still lies ahead.

The Need For Self-Care

Now, more than ever, self-care is critical. Recall that the root is all about the fulfillment of basic needs, physical survival, and safety.

It also relates to your sense of belonging: to a clan, ethnic group, community, etc. Isolation and fear are challenges for your Root Center.

Let’s look at some of what you might be experiencing right now.

Possible Health Stressors: You might be anxious about your health or the health of your loved ones.

Possible Financial Stressors: On the financial side, you or another family member may have had your hours cut or even lost a job altogether. A significant dip in your income could put your housing at risk.

Real or Imagined Stressors: The experience of these events, or simply the fear that any of these events could happen, will throw you and your root chakra out of balance.

The imbalance of energy in this center could be expressed as too much energy (surplus or excessive) or too little energy (deficit). What might you be experiencing?

Root Chakra and Fight/Flight/Freeze

To understand the connection between your energy centers and your body, consider the Root’s close association yo your vagus nerve.

This is part of your nervous system that modulates your autonomic fight/flight/freeze response to threats, stress, and overwhelm (also known as the sympathetic response). This innate and automatic response is critical to the success of your body’s survival instinct. The vagus nerve, through the parasympathetic response, enables the body to rebound.

Symptoms that Your Root Chakra Is Out of Balance

Excess Energy Imbalance:

Feelings and behaviors associated with excess Root Chakra energy are: fearful, worried, anxious, ungrounded, overwhelmed, unsettled, distrustful, unable to focus or sit still, hyper-vigilant, and compulsive. All of these feelings and behaviors connote agitation and excess, which mirror the nervous system states of fight or flight.

Deficit Energy Imbalance:

Feelings and attributes associated with deficit energy in the root chakra are: lethargic, sluggish, tired, drained, heavy, obsessive, fixated, hoarding, depressed, over-eating, and exhibiting other eating disorders. These feelings and behaviors imply dampening or shutting down, which mirrors the nervous system states of freeze or numbness.

You undoubtedly recognize some of the symptoms of a root chakra imbalance. You may have experienced excess and deficit energy imbalances under different difficult circumstances, or maybe one expression of imbalance is more common for you: your habitual response.

How to Balance Your Root Chakra

When you balance your Root Chakra you also improve the balance of the vagus nerve: both can mitigate your stress response. Many of these practices are suggested for toning your vagus nerve to bring down your stress level and rebalance.

Practices to Balance Your Root Chakra

• Practice slow breathing. Take deep, slow inhales and exhales. Deep breaths stimulate nerve endings in the lower lungs associated with vagus nerve activation and restoration of balance (see my FREE guided meditation or register for my short virtual or in-person workshop Build Stress Resilience With Breathing Techniques.
• Meditate. This can be a seated or moving meditation. Follow your inner compass to identify that practice that shifts your energy up or down depending on whether your root chakra is in deficit or surplus. (Why Meditate – the Benefits of Meditation)
• Listen to guided meditations that ground and center. Grounding and centering draw your scattered energy back in. It can also build strength when you feel depleted. (Experience my free guided meditation available on my website.)
• Spend time in nature and walking barefoot. Nature rebalances both excess and deficit root chakra energy.
• Regularize your schedule. This can lessen the sense of disorder or chaos that is often associated with the excess energy of overwhelm.
• Eat root vegetables and red meat, which are grounding. Heavier foods help reduce excess energy. Light food and effervescent drinks as well as bright herbal tea such as ginger, lemon, and mint help shed the heaviness of an energy deficit.
• Bring your attention to the body through stretching, exercise, or dance. Movement is particularly helpful for energy deficits.
• Diffuse essential oils for the root chakra or grounding essential oils derived from the roots and resins of plants such as vetiver (Vitiveria zizanioides). (See my article on how to balance your root chakra with essential oils).
• Use grounding or Root Chakra essential oils in a small portable aromatherapy inhaler. Take a few sniffs whenever needed.
• Wear Root Chakra crystals as a pendant, bracelet, or earrings. Make sure you regularly clear the crystals.

Regular Practice Creates Change

Natural healing often takes time. When you regularly put your attention on yourself and how you’re feeling, you notice when you start to shift out of balance. This is the time to do some self-care practices to quickly regain your balance.

The Feeling of a Balanced Root Chakra

You’ll know when your Root Chakra is balanced because you’ll feel steady and secure. You and your mind will be less restless. You may not be able to solve all your problems, but you’ll feel more confident, grounded, courageous, resourceful, creative, and hopeful.

To Learn More, see:

• Aromatherapy to Reduce Stress
• Natural Healing and Wellness eBook: Aromatherapy, Essential Oils, and the Chakras.
• FREE guided meditation: Relax, Ground, and Clear the Mind, 
• Personal Growth, Natural Healing, and Wellness Workshops.

Updated March 3, 2025