Chakra Affirmations for Trauma

Note: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) and to highlight this I have included links at the end of this post to anti-sexual violence organizations and organizations offering support and healing services to survivors. Tomorrow night 4/27 I am conducting my introductory Energy Work for Sexual Trauma webinar with sliding scale available to survivors. Note that while not explicitly trauma-focused, I am also participating in an online summit that may be of interest – An Awakened Life.

As I’ve often written about here, working with the chakras can be a powerful addition to any trauma survivor’s healing process. The last year has brought forth many different forms of trauma, between Covid lockdowns and losses, racial injustice, political insurrection and more, and we are all grappling with the impact of one or more. For survivors of personal traumatic events, these collective traumas can intersect and become especially triggering. For that reason, although it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I decided to offer a more general map of basic chakra affirmations as part of healing from and managing the impact of trauma. 

Last week I posted the image shown here on my Instagram and Facebook accounts, and decided expanding upon it here might be helpful. Every chakras has so many different aspects, this is just a selection of what you might focus on as you work with the chakras and trauma. There are also many different chakra mappings, so in this post, as in most of my written work, I am using the 7 chakra model that is the most familiar to many. Also, in this approach I am focusing on empowering energies and aspects helpful to trauma healing, as opposed to focusing on the release of blocks, which is another helpful way to work. 

Here I am offering simple techniques for strengthening these energies through affirmations. While you say these, you can focus on the associated chakra area, and/or add a color visual if you like. Of course you can also work with the chakras in any of the others ways you already do (including from Chakra Empowerment for Women if you utilize those tools.)

Root: Safety In Body

Whether from an accident, assault, or abuse, trauma often impacts our relationship to our body, and can especially undermine our ability to feel safe within it. This can be as true for emotional trauma as physical, as we often feel our body ‘betrays’ us in its resulting anxiety. Strengthening and re-establishing both our sense of safety in the moment and overall relationship to our body is an important part of working with trauma. Explicit body work, yoga, and somatic techniques can be especially helpful in this regard but It’s very important to find a trauma-informed practitioner and one that you click with (see organization list below.) Strengthening here also enables self-care, as we are better able to ‘listen’ to and respond to our body’s needs. Simple root chakra affirmations along these lines are:

I am safe and present in this moment.

I am safe in my body right now.

I trust in my body’s ability to heal.

I appreciate and care for my body.

 

Sacral: Reclaim Pleasure

This is often a big area of healing for sexual trauma survivors in particular, but difficulty connecting to pleasure of any type is common for many trauma survivors beyond that. Pleasure can be anything from really enjoying a favorite food, to relaxing while viewing a beautiful sunset, to affectionate touch or sexual intimacy. It is very related to relationship to body, because we experience pleasure in our bodies. But it goes beyond relationship to body, because sometimes trauma causes a ‘lockout’ of pleasure on an emotional level, out of a sense of shame, and/or a fear of overwhelm. So working with gentle ways to reintroduce and welcome pleasure as a form of self-care can often be an important part of healing. This may be as simple as allowing yourself to enjoy a warm bath or fresh flowers to start. Some chakra affirmations to support this are:

Pleasure is safe and nurturing for me.

I welcome simple pleasures.

I enjoy [fill in] as an act of self-care.

I deserve to feel joy and pleasure.

 

Navel: Affirm Boundaries

There are so many variations on this one, but on a general level, trauma survivors experience a lack of agency over their lives and that can reflect as a feeling they don’t have the right or ability to claim or assert boundaries. For survivors of emotional and/or physical abuse, often that right has been explicitly imprinted onto to them through abusive language and treatment. Conditioning around taking responsibility for others, as well as having natural empathic tendencies, can contribute to a general state of taking on others’ energies and emotions – in some cases as a strategy (conscious or unconscious) to ‘stay safe.’ Affirming both the right and ability to claim boundaries, and ongoing work around this, can be such an important part of healing. This chakra is also linked to our sense of personal power and agency in our lives, and so in cases of abuse or assault that have undermined this, working to re-establish it is key too. Some chakra affirmations to support this:

I claim my right to assert boundaries.

I affirm my ability to assert boundaries.

I center in my own energy and emotions.

I am powerful.

 

Heart: Self-Nurture

Trauma survivors often feel there is something inexorably ‘wrong’ with them – deep feelings of unworthiness or undeserving are a frequent long-term impact of trauma. This is partly a result of blame-the-victim social messaging (very prevalent for sexual trauma but actually present in messaging around other forms of trauma too), but also magnified by our general lack of understanding of the reality of the ongoing physical and mental health struggles that often accompany trauma of all types. Although there is a growing awareness around this (and Covid has actually increased focus on mental health to some degree), there is a long way to go. The greatest impact of this on trauma survivors is often reflected as difficulty recognizing and acting on their own need for self-care and self-nurturing. Even finding small ways to self-nurture throughout the day can be so helpful – really taking a moment with that warm cup of your favorite tea, stopping and smelling some beautiful flowers, allowing yourself those moments to stretch, relax, or unwind. I prefer ‘self-nurture’ to ‘self-care’ these days, as I find that often ‘self-care’ is getting translated into exercise, nutrition, or meditation routines and/or spa visits. And while all of these can be wonderful acts of self-care, they can all also become new ‘shoulds’ that we introduce into our lives and feel like we have ‘failed’ when we don’t execute on. So focusing instead on little moments (and later building to routines) that actually feel nurturing in the moment, can be a great place to start. It’s related to the reclaiming of pleasure from the sacral, but has more of an explicit healing, self-loving energy to it. Some chakra affirmations to support this:

I care and nurture myself.

I deserve to care for myself.

I am worth it.

Caring and nurturing energy fills my being.

 

Throat – Speak Truth and Needs

As you can probably see by now, these begin to build on each other as we move upwards in the chakra structure, and in this case the speaking truth and needs to others is especially an extension of our ability to affirm our boundaries with others (navel), and to nurture ourselves (heart). Speaking truth can mean everything from telling others about our trauma when it feels helpful, to acknowledging feelings that are difficult for us in any situation. Closely related is our ability to speak up and say what we need in a situation in which we are uncomfortable, or in which we are feeling triggered and need support. Experimenting with this in small ways first is key – practice telling (even texting) just one trusted person in a moment of discomfort and build from there if this is a challenge area. Chakra affirmations that can help:

I am safe speaking my truth.

I speak my discomfort when feeling it.

I ask for what I need.

I accept help and support.

 

Third Eye – Self-Trust

We have many levels of knowing – if you are reading a post about chakras, you no doubt already are in touch with your subtle and intuitive senses to some degree. Trauma can often trap us in purely mental forms of knowing – caught in cycles of trying to ‘figure’ out why things happened, or predict in advance what might go wrong in order to stay safe (hypervigilance.) Connecting with our Third Eye is instead about tuning into a deeper level of non-conceptual knowing. Often our trust in this side of ourselves is undermined by traumatic events, as we wonder how we could have not foreseen or prevented what occurred. Relating to our intuition and insight abilities in a new way – not as the movie version of being psychic ‘prediction’ abilities but instead as a deeper connection to the unseen emotions and energies within us (including our chakras and spiritual forces) – is often key. It allows us to really acknowledge what is and isn’t working for us, what people do and do not support us, what environments we do and do not feel comfortable in, and more. Permitting ourselves to trust our own insights (without becoming lost in dissociative astral fantasies as an escape) is a supportive way of engaging in our Third Eye as part of trauma healing. Some chakra affirmations to support this are:

I trust my insights.

I honor my different types of knowing.

I center in my innate wisdom.

I safely embrace my intuition.

 

Crown – Hope

Often when it comes to the crown chakra, we talk about faith and belief, and certainly these are both key. Especially if you have a strong spiritual belief system, finding a way to draw upon that can be very helpful in trauma healing. But the truth is, trauma often undermines a survivors’ spiritual faith, and this can be hard to admit. As we begin to recognize the long term impact of trauma, it’s clear survivors’ often struggle with a sense things will never change or grow sustainably better – a healing fatigue often sets in. In this sense a grounded hope is often the most helpful energy we can pull in through our crown chakra – a feeling that things are and will continue to get better, bit by bit. A feeling that we are gaining new tools, new resources, new faith in ourselves (and new energy of all the types named above) to move forward. Hope is forward moving force, and often paves the way for greater self-belief and spiritual faith, in cases where these have been undermined. Chakra affirmations to support this include:

I welcome hope.

I am hopeful and inspired.

I have been moving, and can continue to move, forward.

I am resilient and allow myself hope.

If you are dealing with trauma in your own life, I wish you safety in your body, pleasure, strong boundaries, self-nurturing, the ability to speak truth and needs, self-trust and HOPE.

Organizations that offer anti-sexual violence advocacy work and/or practitioners listings for survivors:

The Breathe Network

RAINN

NSVRC

NAESV