burdock: bringing it up from the depths
root chakra & nourishing your resources
Sweet and grounding, I enjoy burdock root regularly as a nourishing infusion. When I drink burdock, it feels like a great stabilizer and herbal “multivitamin.” It’s a supportive digestive tonic, adaptogen for the nervous system, inflammation and immune system modulating, and so much more. Late Winter and Spring can be an ideal time to work with this plant. Burdock also has an affinity for supporting the root chakra.
root chakra
The root chakra - Muladhara - is the chakra located at the base of our spine, connecting to our low spine, legs, and feet.
There are seven or more main chakras according to Eastern teachings, located along the spine, connected to major organs and nerve centers.
From the root chakra at the base of the spine, to the crown at the top of the head, the chakras transmit and receive information through our being. As this life force energy flows without stagnation or blockages in these bodies of ours, we experience vitality and well-being.
From one of my teachers, Sage Mauer, herbalist and founder of the Gaia School of Healing, on the root chakra:
“In the root chakra we arrive on earth incarnated in many separate forms… woven together in a web of relations all dependent on each other, rooted together and intertwined. This is where we find our family, our support systems, family, and community.
We create home together, feed each other, care for each other, and tend the earth together. The root chakra is where we build our home on earth, building relationships of interdependence, and learn to care for all of our relations.
It is where we learn to serve and give to generations past and present. We meet our ancestors here who have walked the earth before us, and we learn how to live peacefully together. We honor all of our earth family, the plants, animals, and human family of relations we both care for and receive care from.
The root chakra rules our foundations, all that we are supported by in our lives, through family, community, friends, and Gaia. Here in our roots we are given all of our basic needs, as a member of this earth family.
Here is our nourishment, our shelter, safety, community, home, abundance, love, support, and family. Here we receive the touch we need, the love and care-taking from our family of relations.
We give back love and kindness to others, supporting and nourishing our family of many skins. In the root chakra we receive life and nourishment from the Earth Mother, and give back to her all we can.”
exploring the root chakra
If you feel curious or drawn to these themes of the root chakra, I have two things for you here:
A root chakra meditation from my dear friend, Briana Pontius, and her offerings through Touch of Nature Healing.
A burdock root herbal exploration… including energetics, medicinal qualities, specific ways to work with burdock, preparation as an infusion, and listening in: burdock tea meditation notes.