“Into the Potato” (Root Ritual)

Several years ago, having a tough time paying my bills and also considering moving, I became aware that everything I desired was focused in the first chakra. I needed some big shifts badly and so dedicated my daily ritual, along with a specially designed altar, to the root.*

The root chakra represents our basic needs: money, home, security, safety, and belonging. I incorporated the chakra’s symbols, using the color red, element earth, and personal belongings that fit the theme such as a photo of myself at around the age of three. It didn’t feel complete. I realized I needed an obvious symbol for my root, and grabbed a potato from my kitchen, placing it in the center of my altar, along with Buddha.

Intending to shift out of fear-based thinking and into greater balance, I sat each morning, at first simply focused on what was happening in my body and what beliefs were present. I let the revolving cycle of not helpful thoughts and images arise, met them with observation, and sometimes jotted down notes to explore later.

One day during my afternoon walk, I came up with a light-hearted way to offer a shift for those unwanted thoughts using my now-beloved potato. When the next fear-thought arose, I simply responded, into the potato!, and imagined dropping that thought into the potato on my altar. It made me laugh, and that lightening up helped even more. From there, all that I didn’t want or feared related to home and money was met with an Into the Potato! declaration, all day long, no matter what I was doing.

I continued my daily root rituals and my potato practice, uncovering related old stories and wounds, for four months until the process felt complete. In a final root ritual finale, I buried the potato, sharing huge gratitude for all it had absorbed and transformed for me, releasing all the fear that had been part of my story and body into the earth. Then, ready to continue, I got started on the second chakra.

(*I’d studied Anodea Judith’s work on chakras and remembered reading one of her early books that suggested creating a chakra altar, and it had stuck with me. I credit her with inspiring my idea.)