Before the seven chakras we often hear about — before the red spinning wheel at the base of the spine, before the crown of a thousand petals — there is another chakra. It sits below  the body, roughly 1 to 2 feet (or 20-60 cm) below the soles of your feet, depending on what your energy field is doing on a particular day.

  It is sometimes called: the Earth Star, the zeroth chakra,  or the Vasudhara Chakra. Though it's the easiest to overlook (it's not even inside the body, after all), it's the one that makes the rest of the chakra system workable for beings like us — living on this planet, in these bodies.

This is the first of a four-part series on the Vasudhara Chakra. In this post, we will introduce you to what it is, what it does, and why it matters. In the posts that follow, we'll turn to what it feels like when the Vasudhara is blocked, what it feels like when it's flowing well, and some practices for tending the connection.

What the Vasudhara does

The Vasudhara chakra is the energetic connection between the Earth’s consciousness and ours. It connects us into the flow of life force that the Earth offers. It conditions prana or life force so that it's Earthed — so that the energy available on this planet is stable and usable by us. If we were living on Mars, we'd need the Martian version of this energy. Because we're here on Earth, we need the Earth’s energy.

More specifically, the Vasudhara Chakra:

·       Anchors us to the Earth's field of potential. It roots our consciousness in one specific place in space, so that our consciousness  is here, not drifting through the cosmos.

·       Keys us into the Earth's consciousness. It tunes and attunes us to the collective consciousness of life on Earth - all of the experiences, stories, ways of being and events that have ever and will ever occur on Earth. 

·       Makes us into Earthlings. This is the distinction between grounding and Earthing. Grounding is a general settling, a coming-to-the-body. Earthing is specifically about belonging to this planet — about being oriented as a citizen of Earth, not just a visitor in a body. It is not something we create, it already exists within our energy system, quietly supporting us from the very beginning of life.

·       Holds us in relationship with every other Earthling. The trees. The stones. The soil. The creatures. The people. Not as resources to extract from, but as fellow members of a system of consciousness. Every being and entity on Earth is connected to every other through their Earth Star or Vasudhara chakras. 

·       Opens the manifestation engine. The Vasudhara makes the building blocks of Earth available to us for creating and becoming. It's what lets us turn an idea into a thing-in-the-world.

Without a healthy Vasudhara, the energies of Earth are still around us — but we can't quite receive them as Earthlings. We're here, but we haven't quite arrived.