Earth and Sky, Above and Below

For a basic understanding of the energy field, it’s important to understand the relationship between the crown and base chakras. As healers and spiritual counselors, we need to be able to consciously open both chakras in order to access spiritual guidance and healing for the client and still stay grounded. In this context, we can think of the base chakra as providing us with a link to everyday, normal consciousness, or even a more left-brained, practical-minded state of mind.

The crown chakra, by comparison, helps us connect with the spiritual (collective field) and access the altered or ‘expanded’ state of consciousness required for both spiritual healing and spiritual guidance. Naturally, the spiritual practitioner needs to be able to open the crown chakra at will and ‘lift’ their energetic frequency a little higher in order to access spiritual wisdom and good quality healing energy. The crown chakra also helps the practitioner connect with the support system of their own spiritual network or team.

During spiritual work, the practitioner must stay sufficiently grounded in ‘consensus reality’ in order to retain the information received in the altered state and coherently relay anything of importance to the client. In essence, this is about having the presence of mind to translate information from one reality into another. The practitioner must maintain control of the session and their own awareness, rather than slipping too deeply into a trance-like, meditative state.

An open base chakra provides a counterpoint to the open crown chakra, helping the practitioner keep at least ‘one foot on the ground’, even whilst opening up to higher, more spiritual energies. The open base chakra also keeps the practical left-brain engaged; this is important during psychic work, because this brain acts as witness to and organizer of information that might otherwise seem as fleeting and chaotic as a poorly remembered dream.

It important to remember that psychic work opens us up to the spiritual energies of life (collective field) with both positive and negative results. On the positive side, we can grow in awareness through exposure to a larger reality. On the down side, we can potentially loose our sense of coherent, individual self through exposure to too many ideas or an overly expanded experience of reality.

The base chakra also provides an ‘earth’ for high and intense energy charges, whether they be spiritual, emotional, physical or intellectual. Sometimes the amount of energy running through a practitioner’s system can cause them to become too ‘wired’ if they are not able to earth it via the base chakra. High energy discharge from the client’s body into the practitioner’s body can also be earthed, in order to prevent the client’s energy from disturbing the balance in the practitioner’s body. Ideally, discharge from the client’s body to the practitioner’s body should be minimized by firm, healthy personal boundaries, but realistically, transference does occur and it’s important to understand how grounding protects you from its potentially negative effects. Likewise, it is important to teach clients how to ground themselves rather than making them dependent on you as an ‘earth’.

Grounding is something we establish at the beginning of a healing session and monitor the whole way through. After healing, the crown chakra needs to be closed, our energy ‘lowered’ and the base chakra activated more intensely. Failing to shut down properly can result in headaches or an overly ‘wired’ system and problems such as paranoia and over-sensitivity to surrounding energies. In this sense, grounding is very much a form of protection from instability. Grounding helps us stay connected to our body and the reality of our day-to-day lives. It stops us from getting ‘caught up in our heads’ and losing perspective.

My art teacher expressed her opinion today about the importance of grounding in her own words “Many creative people have lots of ideas but they have trouble taking action. Ideas are fine, but you have to ask, ‘Am I able to act on this idea?’. It helps to have concrete visual images from existing resources that express the various elements of your idea clearly. Otherwise, you find that your creative ideas are constantly in flux, and its difficult to maintain a constant, clear image of the completed image and then follow through with action to bring about that final, completed artwork.”

In general, a person trapped in the inner realms (open crown chakra, shut base chakra) loses themselves to fantasy, escapism and the intangible world of ideas, possibly at the expense of their physical body, mental stability, effectiveness in the outer realms and their personal relationships. By comparison, someone trapped in the outer realms (open base chakra, shut crown chakra) could well be living a robotic life without any real depth of meaning or any real, independent enquiry into the source of their own behaviour, beliefs, drives and values.