043: 5 Signs You're Living in Survival Mode (and What To Do About It) | Root Chakra Reflection

Feeling exhausted even when you sleep enough? Anxious for no clear reason? Like you never quite feel at home in your own life? These could be signs of a root chakra imbalance — and in this episode, we break down exactly what that means and how to start healing it.

This episode kicks off a brand-new nine-week chakra healing series exploring the seven chakras through the lens of the Divine Feminine Hero's Journey, based on Ananta Ripa Ajmera's bestselling book, 8x award-winning book, The Way of the Goddess. Each week follows a simple rhythm: Reflection, Ritual, and Release — so you get both the "why" and the practical tools to actually shift your energy.

In this first Reflection episode, you'll learn:

• What the root chakra (Muladhara) is and why it's considered the foundation of your entire energy system
• The Vedic goddess Shailaputri and what she teaches us about grounding and spiritual safety
• 5 signs of root chakra imbalance, including chronic fatigue, low-level anxiety, financial fear, and never feeling like you belong
• How Ayurveda's earth element (Prithvi) connects to feeling grounded, safe, and at home in your body
• Why root chakra blocks are often inherited trauma, not personal failure — and how Body Code and Emotion Code work (developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson) can help release them
• A simple 30-second grounding practice you can do today

Whether you're new to chakra healing, exploring Ayurvedic lifestyle practices, or looking for root chakra healing techniques that go beyond surface-level advice, this episode offers a grounded, tradition-rooted starting point.

Free resource: Download the free Chakra Healing Guide at chakrahealingguide.com for a full breakdown of all nine chakras — where your energy is flowing, where it's blocked, and how to restore balance.

TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP

Want to walk your own version of this journey for a deeper transformation?
The Divine Feminine Hero's Journey is a small-group container limited to 12 souls — so every person is truly seen, heard, and held.
  → theancientway.co/hero

Serious about your growth?
Join the Circle of Life Community — a free, by-interview space for those called to heal deeply and give generously. 2026 Global Health & Pharma Award winner.
  → theancientway.co/community

You were never meant to walk this journey alone.
Join The Ancient Way Village — our free community with book club, Q&As, daily spiritual practices and like-hearted people walking this path alongside you.
  → bit.ly/ancientwayvillage 

Done the work — but still feel something deeper holding you back?
Book your free Sovereign Within sample session. 7 healing modalities woven into an integrated experience, including Dr. Nelson's Body Code, Emotion Code, and Belief Code alongside Ayurveda, Yoga, Vedanta, and Vedic Astrology. No reliving the past or talking required. 100% of participants recommend it.
  → bit.ly/sovereign-within

Want a complete Ayurvedic foundation — at your own pace?
The Ayurveda Lifestyle In-Depth Program gives you everything: your constitution, your rhythms, your healing.
  → bit.ly/ayurveda-lifestyle

Book your free discovery call to explore joining any of our programs.
→ bit.ly/call-tera

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Ananta's books

The Way of the Goddess: Daily Rituals to Awaken Your Inner Warrior and Discover Your True Self
"A book we all desperately need. I plan to re-read it." — Dr. Deepak Chopra
→ amzn.to/4rQXYml

The Ayurveda Way: 108 Practices from the World's Oldest Healing System for Better Sleep, Less Stress, Optimal Digestion, and More  
→ amzn.to/4reaXyz

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More free resources

Living Liberated Newsletter: theancientway.kit.com
Chakra Healing Guide: chakrahealingguide.com
Digestion Healing Guide: theancientway.kit.com/digestive-healing

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Disclaimer: All resources are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult your healthcare provider for medical concerns.

Transcript

Welcome to True to Yourself — your soulful companion on the journey home to yourself.

I want to begin today with an image.

A tree. Not a young tree — a mature one. The kind that's been standing in the same place for decades. The kind whose roots have gone so deep into the earth that no storm, however powerful, can uproot it. The kind that offers shade to everyone who passes beneath it without asking anything in return.

A tree doesn't worry about whether it belongs where it's planted. It doesn't question whether the earth beneath it is worthy of its roots. It simply grows — downward first, always downward — finding water, finding minerals, finding the invisible network of connection that runs beneath the soil and links it to every other living thing in the forest.

And because its roots are deep, its branches can grow wide. It can offer fruit. It can weather seasons. It can stand through storms that flatten everything around it.

This is what I want for you. Not the performance of groundedness — the composed exterior, the appearance of having it together — but the real thing. The version that comes from having gone down deep enough that nothing on the surface can shake you loose from yourself.

Today we're beginning something I'm genuinely excited about — a nine-week journey through the nine chakras of the Divine Feminine Hero's Journey, the framework from my book The Way of the Goddess. Each week, we'll move through a chakra together in three parts: Reflection — understanding what's really going on — then Ritual, the specific practices that restore that center, and finally Release, the deeper energetic work of clearing what's been blocking it. Three episodes, one chakra, start to finish.

Today is Reflection — the week always begins here, with honest awareness of where we actually stand, before we ever move into practice or release work.

And every true journey starts at the root.

Welcome to the first chakra. Welcome to the week of the tree — and today, five signs your root chakra may be out of balance, and what the Vedic tradition, Ayurveda, and modern energy healing offer as the way back to solid ground.

— PART 1 — Shailaputri & the Root Chakra —

In the Vedic tradition, the first of the nine forms of the goddess Durga — the first face of the divine feminine we encounter on the nine-night journey of Navaratri — is Shailaputri.

Shaila means mountain. Putri means daughter. Shailaputri is the daughter of the mountain — and she is the goddess of the root chakra, the first energy center, Muladhara.

Mula means root. Adhara means foundation. Muladhara is the root foundation — the energetic ground beneath everything else we will build, heal, and become.

In the body, Muladhara governs the base of the spine, the legs, the feet — everything that connects us to the earth. In our experience of life, it governs our sense of safety, belonging, and basic trust. It is where we answer the most foundational questions a human being can carry: Am I safe here? Do I belong? Is it okay to be in this body, in this life, as myself?

Shailaputri rides a bull — Nandi, the vehicle of Lord Shiva — steady, powerful, immovable. In one hand she holds a trident, the symbol of the three qualities of nature; in the other, a lotus. She embodies both the groundedness of the earth and the purity of spiritual aspiration. Both feet on the ground. Eyes open. Heart steady.

She teaches us that true spiritual awakening does not begin by transcending the physical world. It begins by fully inhabiting it. By being willing to be here — completely, unapologetically, with both feet planted — before we reach for anything higher.

This is the teaching that most spiritual seekers need most and resist hardest. We want to go up — the crown chakra, the divine connection, the mystical light. And those things are real, and they are waiting. But they cannot be reached by someone whose roots have not gone deep enough to support the height of what they're growing toward.

The tallest trees have the deepest roots. Always.

In Ayurveda, this earth energy is governed by the element of Prithvi — earth — and the qualities of stability, density, nourishment, and form. When we are rooted, we digest well. We sleep deeply. We feel at home in our bodies. We have the energy to show up for our lives and our purpose without constantly running on empty.

So how do you know when the root is out of balance? Here are five signs.

— THE FIVE SIGNS —

Sign one: chronic exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch. When Prithvi — the earth element — is depleted, rest stops being restorative. You can sleep eight hours and still wake up running on empty.

Sign two: low-level anxiety with no clear cause. This is one of the most important things I've learned through the Body Code and Emotion Code work — methodologies developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson that have been central to my own healing journey. Often this anxiety isn't even originally yours. The root chakra carries some of the most ancient and deeply stored material in the entire energy system: trapped emotions of fear, shock, abandonment, and vulnerability, along with inherited patterns from lineages where survival was genuinely precarious — where belonging was conditional, where the body was not a safe place to inhabit. Despair anchors like I'm not safe, I have nowhere to go, I don't belong here — running silently beneath the surface, shaping every experience from below, without ever having originated with you.

Sign three: never feeling like you fully belong — in a room, a relationship, even your own life. Like you're a guest in your own life. Like you never quite arrived. This is the most foundational question Muladhara governs: is it safe to be here, in this body, as myself?

Sign four: financial instability or scarcity fear that doesn't match your actual circumstances. A persistent low-level anxiety that something is about to be taken away, even when — especially when — you're doing all the right things and building something beautiful. That mismatch is often the root speaking, not your current reality.

Sign five: exhaustion in a way that doesn't entirely match your circumstances — the sense of running on empty even when, by every outward measure, things are fine.

If you recognize yourself in one or more of these, I want to offer you something important: this is not a personality trait. It is not a character flaw. It is not something you simply have to learn to live with.

And the extraordinary thing — the thing that has given me more hope than almost anything else in this work — is that these patterns can be cleared. At the root. Permanently. Not managed or coped with, but released from the field entirely. And when they are released, what grows in their place is not constructed confidence or practiced positivity. It is something far quieter and far more real.

The feeling of being home. In yourself. In your body. In your life.

That is what the root chakra, restored, actually feels like.

— WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT —

So if you recognized yourself in one or more of those five signs, here's what to do with that today — not a ritual, not a practice. Just reflection. Because that's what this episode, and this day of the week, is for.

Ask yourself, honestly: when did I last feel fully at home in my own life? Not performing okay-ness. Actually settled. If the answer is "I can't remember," that's not a failure — that's useful information about how long the root has been asking for attention.

Notice where the fear actually belongs to you — and where it might not. The next time that low-level anxiety or scarcity fear shows up, pause and ask: is this responding to something happening right now, or does it feel older than that? You don't need an answer immediately. The question itself starts to create distance between you and the pattern.

Sit with this one plainly: is it safe for me to be here? Not as a test to pass, but as an honest inquiry. Whatever comes up — resistance, sadness, relief, nothing at all — let it be information rather than a verdict.

Notice your body's habitual answer to feeling unsettled. Do you speed up? Go numb? Reach for distraction? There's no right answer here. The goal this week isn't to fix anything yet — it's just to see clearly what's actually there.

This is the whole purpose of Reflection week: not solving, not yet doing — just seeing honestly. On Wednesday, we move into Ritual, and I'll give you the specific Ayurvedic practices to actually work with what you notice today. And in our third episode, Release, we go into the deeper energetic clearing of what's been stored here, sometimes for generations.

— FREE GIFT —

If any of those five signs resonated, I have something free for you, right now.

Our Chakra Healing Guide walks you through each of the nine energy centers in this journey — where your energy is flowing freely, where it's blocked, and what specific practices will help you restore balance in each one. It's the perfect companion for the nine weeks we're beginning together.

Download it at chakrahealingguide.com. That's chakrahealingguide.com — I'll put the link in the show notes.

— CLOSING —

Before I let you go today, I want to leave you with one practice and one invitation.

The practice: today, at some point — whether it's when you wake up, or before you sleep, or in the middle of whatever your day brings — take thirty seconds to feel your feet. Just your feet. On the floor, or the earth, or wherever you are standing. Feel the weight of your body pressing down into the ground beneath you. Feel the ground pressing back. That exchange — that quiet, constant conversation between your body and the earth — is the root chakra speaking. Let yourself feel it.

The invitation: stay with us this week. In our next episode — Ritual — we move from reflection into the specific Ayurvedic and embodied practices that nourish the first chakra and help you build the kind of deep, stable groundedness that supports everything else you are growing toward. And in our third episode — Release — I go into the actual energetic work of clearing what blocks the root at its source, and what becomes possible once that clearing happens.

This week is the foundation. Everything we build together over the coming weeks rests on what we root into right here.

Until then — stay true to yourself. Namaste. 🙏