Crystal healing is quite popular at the moment. One of the best ways to use crystals to bring healing and balance into your life is to use them to give your chakras a tuneup.
Chakras are the energy centers that run from the base of your spine up to the top of your head. There are seven of them, starting at the bottom with the Root chakra, and working up to the Crown chakra.
The word chakra comes from the old Sanskrit word for wheel, and that’s what chakras are believed to be. They’re portrayed as whirling wheels of color, each one at a specific place and each one a unique color.
When your subtle body and your physical body are both healthy and balanced, then that health will manifest in every area of your life. Fortunately, it’s easy to tune up your chakras and it doesn’t take special tools to do so.
What is the Root Chakra?
The Root chakra is located at the bottom of your spine, at the base of your tailbone. It’s the most physical of all the chakras, and it is where your survival instinct resides. It’s the foundation for all the other chakras, and it’s advised to begin working with your chakras here, and take the energy up, rather than to bring it down, which is more advanced chakra work.
When this area is underactive, you’ll feel uneasy, maybe even fearful, but you won’t understand why. Sometimes this disharmony manifests itself physically as pain in your coccyx or lower back.
Of course, any injury or pain does need to be treated by your health care practitioner, but they’re usually okay with you supplementing their advice with some chakra healing.
What Happens When the Root Chakra is Unbalanced?
When the Root chakra is balanced, your physical health will be good. You’ll have enough energy without being too peppy. Your basic needs like water, shelter, and food will not be a worry to you. Remember, though, this is at a root level. It’s easy to convince yourself you don’t have enough when actually you do, but that’s another chakra’s domain.
The Root chakra is where your past life memory resides, and where the powerful kundalini energy sleeps. If this area is overstimulated in any way, you’ll find it hard to see the joy in your life. You may lash out in anger or irritation. No matter what you do, you find it hard to establish the groundwork for success and fulfillment. You may even be obsessed with accumulating things that you don’t need which creates chaos and drains your energy.
When your Root chakra is unbalanced, you lose interest in your life. Everything’s a drag and you don’t have any drive, there’s no ambition. You just drift along, feeling like you’re caught on a road going nowhere from which you can’t escape. You would be hard-pressed to even define what it is that you want. You’ve lost your appreciation of the world.
Motivation is the key to bringing this area back into balance.
It’s frequently difficult to get going, but using crystals as you meditate on what you’d like to do with your life will help. The Root chakra’s color is red, so it makes sense that red stones are the ones to use when this area needs some attention.
Read this next: How Can You Tell When a Chakra is Blocked?
How to Use Crystals for Chakra Healing
Because crystals are usually small, we can carry them with us throughout the day. Each time you touch the crystal or look at it sitting on your desk, it can remind you of the intention you are working with.
The vibration of the crystal you’ve chosen will help you resonate with the desired state you wish you to reach.
This type of energetic alchemy is a way to use the crystal to create a new way of thinking that becomes natural. The natural energy of the stone will help you get into that wavelength and before you know it, you will be that way without trying.
You can program a crystal to help you with a specific issue by doing a special meditation where you set your intention and infuse it into the crystal as you hold it. The crystal becomes a sacred power object (also known as a talisman) for you just as healers and shamans have used natural items for magickal healing for millennia.
1. Red Jasper
This is probably one of the most easily accessible stones for helping you to tune up your Root chakra. There are many different kinds of red jasper available, from the solid red color to brecciated, and even some picture jasper is predominantly red. It’s not an expensive stone, but don’t let that fool you. It still packs a powerful punch!
This is a stone of empowerment and it helps you to stand up for yourself.
If you’ve got a difficult situation that you need to deal with, call on red jasper. It’s a stone of strength and integrity and will help you find your backbone. It gives you the courage to take things head-on, and build the foundations of strength and character so that you can create the life you want to live.
Variations like Mookaite Jasper can also work if that is all that is available.
2. Carnelian
This is another easily obtainable healing stone that resonates beautifully with the Root chakra. It will unblock your energy, and allow you to find your purpose. It is an energizing stone, a form of quartz, yet it has the potential to soothe animosity and frustration. Alternatively, if your Root chakra is sluggish, carnelian brings warmth and motivation to it.
Wear or carry a carnelian particularly if you’re looking for more independence and self-sufficiency.
If you’re struggling to hold onto your temper or dealing with emotional outbursts, this stone will help. If you’re in situations where you’re surrounded by people who are constantly arguing, bickering or picking on you in any way, this stone will help you find both the resilience to put up with what you have to, and the courage to leave when it’s the right time to do so.
3. Bloodstone
Bloodstone is another jasper, but it’s a green stone with blood-red flecks. It’s a stone of protection and will help you stand up to those who are trying to bring you down. It’s a good ally to have when meditating on the Root chakra, because it blends the red healing energy with the green, healing both your resilience and your heart.
This is a particularly strong crystal ally if you’ve been dealing with a bad breakup. It’s easy to feel intimidated or alone when facing a new beginning, and bloodstone will help you to find your confidence and your sense of self-worth.
If you’re feeling tired, as if there’s not enough of you to go around, or if you’ve lost your motivation when it comes to doing things to enhance and improve your situation, bloodstone will act as a gentle reminder that you’re worth it and that you can have the life you want to live if you simply persist.
4. Ruby
Ruby is a stone of potential. It helps you to envision what you want and to find the motivation to achieve it. It also assists you in finding your energy again. If you’re feeling exhausted, downtrodden, lethargic, or just plain tired, wear or carry ruby for an extra boost of pep.
Ruby also is an ally when it comes to balancing bravado with confidence and ego with determination. If you have to face an adversary, ruby increases your chances of having the advantage.
The red form of sapphire, ruby is another stone that calms the Root chakra if it’s overstimulated. It takes away the animosity and frustration and replaces them with the desire to communicate. It calms the fears and creates a place where you can develop your confidence.
If you’ve been having problems in your sex life, ruby has the capacity to help with that, too, although it’s not a replacement for medical advice, and shouldn’t be used as such. Make sure that you obtain natural ruby and not the lab-created versions which won’t have quite the same impact.
5. Garnet
Garnet comes in many colors and they’ll all help with the Root chakra tuneup, but it’s the red ones that will resonate the most with balancing this area of your life. This is one of the oldest known talisman stones, and also one of the most protective. It’s an excellent ally in times of crisis and upheaval and enables you to find your self-confidence and your personal courage, giving you the strength to overcome whatever life happens to be throwing your way.
Red garnet brings success when it comes to financial matters and business dealings. Of course, you have to do more than just carry the stone in order to reap the rewards, but it is a known prosperity stone. One of the reasons for this is because it enables you to deal with your fears about not having enough and not being enough.
On that note, it’s another stone that will help you with regards to a healthy libido and sexual appetite.
6. Obsidian
Obsidian can be found in many shades, and it’s the red—mahogany—or black obsidian that you’ll want to obtain when it comes to a Root chakra tune-up. Obsidian is a protective stone, and a wonderful ally when it comes to purging grime and pollution from your chakras and your subtle body. Once you’ve got things balanced and working optimally, count on obsidian to help them stay that way, and shield you against things that would pollute your aura or weaken your energy field.
Black obsidian in particular is a great companion if you’ve been at odds with someone, and the frustration or animosity is creating discord in your everyday life. If you’re living in fear—fear that things are going to change for the worse or that somehow you’re not going to have everything you need to survive and be successful—put an obsidian stone under your pillow.
The apache tear stone, which is a form of black obsidian, is best suited for moving past grief that can make you feel stuck in time.
These little globs of translucent lava help you to find strength and determination and remove what’s standing in your way so that you can see the way forward with logic, reason, and purpose. They’re protective little guys, too, so pop one in your pocket so that you don’t pick up vibrational pollutants as you go about your daily life.
7. Black Tourmaline
Even though it’s black and not red, this is one of the most grounding and beneficial Root chakra stones there is. It comes in many hues and colors, but it’s the black tourmaline—schorl—that is the most protective. It’s long been used by medicine people and healers to enhance grounding, centering, and shielding exercises.
Black tourmaline deflects negative energy from the atmosphere and from others, so that you can rise up against anything that is not beneficial to your growth and empowerment, and overcome it.
If you’re prone to panic attacks, wear or carry black tourmaline, and make sure that you take time to ground, center, and shield as often as you need, in order to keep your psychic defenses up and strong.
The world can be a challenging place, where so many people would rather complain than do something constructive. Be the exception to the rule, and work on your positivity. When you do this in conjunction with the black tourmaline, psychic vampires, and others who would rather steal your energy than fix their own will have a much harder time in doing so!
Ground Your Energy to Help Your Root Chakra
One of the reasons that it’s so important to ensure that your Root chakra is functioning optimally is because it’s the base for all seven chakras. If it’s out of whack then the upper chakras are going to wobble too, just as if a house was built on shaky foundations. It’s not hard to bring this chakra into alignment, and you’ll soon know if you need to.
If you’re feeling stressed and generally restless, then work with grounding your energy and get your Root chakra working efficiently. If you’re feeling angry at the world, or lethargic, those are signs of under-stimulation or overactivity. Pent-up energy is another one, as is holding grudges or harboring fears and doubts. Once you get things spinning properly, you’ll be motivated to get ahead, and a plan of action is all it takes to get things turned around in an empowered and positive way.
If you’re interested in using crystals more to heal your chakras, we have some interesting chakra pendulums that can help you see which chakras are balanced and which need to be.
There are many ways you work on healing your Root chakra that will complement using crystals. You may choose to get Reiki, eat red plants like beets or pomegranates that help your Root chakra, and do standing yoga poses that also help the Root chakra.