I've been experiencing an opening up of my foot chakra lately, and if you experience tingling/heat/sparking sensations in your own feet, you may be doing the same! Until recently, I was barely aware that I even had a thing called a foot chakra. This changed a little over two months ago when I took my first Shamballa Multidimensional Healing class. Shamballa is a form of energy healing that is similar in some ways to traditional Usui Reiki and that shares some of the same principles and tools, but is also more open-ended and intuitive in practice. Anyway, when you take a Shamballa class, as with any Reiki class, you undergo what is called an "attunement," during which the teacher/practitioner heals your auric field so that you can be brought up to the next level in your spiritual development and be better able to use the Shamballa healing energies. It's sort of an energy tune-up. (Read more after the image).


    During my Level II class last Satuurday I felt the chakras in my feet get VERY hot, almost uncomfortably so. Sometimes healing energy can feel warm (if, for instance, the healer is concentrating on healing your 3rd Eye Chakra, you may feel warmth in your forehead), but this was beyond warm. It was H-O-T. In the end though, I sort of dismissed it. "Oh, I guess my foot chakras were just opening up more! So that's good." But today as I followed a Qigong DVD by Lee Holden for the first time, after much work on the energy meridiens in the legs I also felt heat and pain in my feet. I am prone to foot pain after standing for a long time, so I thought that might be the case here (although I'd only been standing for about 20 minutes at this point). I thought perhaps something about my stance had worn out my foot muscles, and so I sat down and as he began to work on energy meridiens in the arms, I followed along from my sitting position. But as I did so, my feet, still sore and hot, started having a very intense tingling sensation. It was almost a sparking sensation, like points of electricity. I have had a similar sensation before after having a hand or foot "fall asleep," but this was more intense and, of course, my feet had not been asleep.
    Thinking there must be something going on with my foot chakras, I finally did some googling, and based on what I've read the heat in my feet just indicate a presence of a lot of energy. The tingling/sparking sensation indicates an opening/clearing of the foot chakras. And that, it turns out is a very good thing! According to Hermes Trismegistus:

"Now, the foot chakra is an important center in that it is here that divine energy returns back to the Source. It is the last point at which the energy is a part of you."

Also according to Hermes, people with healthy, open foot chakras "can pass quickly out of the body's energy system and take most of the built-up negativity out of the system before it has a chance to do any harm and possibly manifest as an illness."

Before I took my first Shamballa class, I wasn't even aware their were chakras other than the 7 most commonly mentioned ones. But of course, for energy workers the hand chakras will be especially important, and it's necessary in doing energy work to know that they exist! The foot chakra is also extremely important, because we need to have them open and in good working order so that we can release negativity and allow energy to circulate out of our bodies to be recycled and renewed. Energy needs to circulate in order to be healthy.

Based on Hermes' following description of a person with blockages in their foot chakra, I think I may have had chronically blocked foot chakras all my life. This would explain my chronic low-energy and the difficulty I have in "letting go" of negative energy and situations. Hermes writes:

"On the other hand, a closed foot chakra, where a great deal of swirling is going on, shows a person that is in a blocked-up state. The energy has no place to go, so it backs up and leaks out of the other (higher) centers and into the surrounding aura and atmosphere, where it is then absorbed by the Earth Plane. This leaking is very undesirable because energy that does not pass through the foot chakra and exits through the other centers can not be used by the individual. This kind of leaking also carries away much positive energy and, as such, these people will often be tired, irritable, and unreasonable."

Hermes suggests placing a clear glass of water and sea salt between the feet to allow blocked energy to be released from the foot chakras. You can also read his full article: The Foot Chakra. He has excellent information on other chakras as well.

I've also found this website to be extremely helpful. It's a little wordy and even a little arrogant (!) in some places, but the visualizations and esoteric information are very helpful. Even as I was reading I began again to feel sparkling/tingling sensations in my feet. You'll be almost halfway down the website's scroll before you really get to the most helpful information (in my opinion), but it's worth wading through.

If you have blockages in your own foot chakras, or if you're just generally interested in a healthier auric field, I hope you find this information useful! :)