Want to take back your power and discover how to heal yourself using simple exercises backed by science and thousands of years of spiritual wisdom?

Purchase Dr. Shamini Jain's program here to gain all the benefits of her on-site lectures and workshops in the comfort of your own home. The Healing Keys program will help elucidate the particularities of energy work, self-healing, and the biofield while leaving you with a practical toolkit involving:

a) grounding techniques rooted in the muladhara chakra

b) emotional healing techniques rooted in the svadishthana chakra

The workshop began with a dance of surrender to Durga. Shamini cleverly avoided inducing the anxiety of performance in our minds by bringing our awareness slowly into the interior: first, she asked us to move. The silence felt deafening, the eyes begged to remain open and the body felt awkward… finally, the music came.

Once we loosened up, our bodies gained instructions from intuitive realms; so we whirled around the temple, keeping in mind Shamini's instruction to feel the wood beneath the feet, to allow the body to surrender to its natural movements - whatever those movements were on this day, at this time.

Then came that lightning-bolt instruction: move across the room! Of course, there was more; Shamini added, instructing us like a mother would, softly but sternly: and now, and now, interact with each other! So we did, fresh as newborns at first, making eye contact and dancing energetically with each others’ biofields.

With the opening of the class concluded, we sat in our seats and Shamini began the lecture. Here we learned about muladhara chakra and the practices that rebalanced the energy contained within it. Shamini explained the importance of grounding practices like shirin-yoku (forest bathing), walking barefoot, sleeping on the bare ground, and so forth. She prescribed an excellent mantra of Ganesha, the elephant-god and remover of obstacles, for the practice of grounding:

Om Gam Ganapataye Namah

The muladhara chakra is presided over by the deity Ganesha.

• Ganesha is cheerful, he is full of bliss like a child.
• He is often pictured with sweets. He reminds us that the removing of obstacles doesn’t simply require the strength of the elephant; it also requires the sweetness of a child’s joy.
• Earth and fire are associated with this chakra.
• The sound that resonates here is LAM (pronounced LUHM). 

The muladhara chakra has 4 petals. There are many allegories here and as most know, 4 is a very auspicious number. Some of the meanings that Shamini highlighted were:

• The 4 Vedas
• The 4 qualities of consciousness 
  • Mind or manas
  • Intellect or Buddhi
  • Consciousness or citta
  • Ego or ahamkara

The Human-Earth connection is astounding. Several grounding studies were mentioned where it was found that people were syncing with the resonant qualities of the Earth; in the case of solar flares, studies show that geomagnetic fluctuations impact heart and blood pressure and in the most severe cases of synchronicity may even cause heart attacks or death. The interesting thing, of course, is that the impacts of geomagnetic fluctuations caused by solar flares are not isolated to a single community, spiritual center, or anything nonsensical like that. Indeed, these changes in the heart and blood pressure were seen in all communities across all regions of the Earth... occurring concurrently, cohesively, simultaneously. 

After the lecture, we were told to grab a partner. Our assignment was to listen without interjection. Our only guidance was: focus on the breath. I found it incredibly mind-altering to focus on the breath while listening to someone talk; the judgments melted away from my mind, the eagerness to interject, the eagerness that came from the ego’s need to make it all about me me me… for a blissful couple of moments, this was gone.

Throughout the class’s grounding exercises I noticed the following:

1. my feet were sticky, as if glued to the ground
2. I felt tired, sleepy, like a hobbit cradled by the warmth of the hearth-fire or the Earth herself

The practical component of the workshop consisted of moaning and groaning “Uhhhhh” and “Auuuuhhhhh” and then finally “Auuummmm”. While we moaned and groaned, we kept our feet planted solid on the ground and semi-squatted, bouncing up and down. Then we jumped up and down, up and down, like children, laughing, laughing as we jumped and groaned and moaned.

Afterwards we gathered the energy we had brought forth from the earth. Scooping it with our hands, we brought it up, up and up, through the entire body and onwards to the heavens. My personal experience manifested in that familiar feeling of the rollercoaster: the feeling when one is slowly ascending before plumetting — it was this feeling that I felt in the gut, the rising of the organs and the plummeting of mind, but without the usual fear of the plummet one expected after the ascension. There was a weight that came with me, but it didn’t weigh me down with the expectation of falling. It was the rising alone.

Grounding exercises to practice at home:

1. Walk barefoot.
2. Sleep (or nap! or relax!) on the ground or as close to the ground as possible.
3. Make time to rekindle your connection with the physical body. Use this time to feel the sensations of the body, particularly the feet.
4. Chant Om Gam Ganapataye Namah while focusing on the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. Take it a step further by visualizing the red color of the chakra. You may even see the flames of a fire purifying you and manifesting the positive qualities of the chakra within your consciousness: those of vitality, growth, and vigor.