What My Chakras Taught Me About Grief, Shame, and Liberation

Healing doesn’t always begin with words. Sometimes, it starts in the body—quietly, energetically, and from the inside out.

Key Takeaways

➡️ Grief doesn’t just live in your heart—it imprints on your body.Unprocessed loss often shows up in our energy centers long before we give it language.

➡️ Shame clogs more than your confidence—it blocks your ability to receive.When shame lodges in the lower chakras, it disconnects you from worthiness, power, and pleasure.

➡️ Liberation is a full-body experience.Chakra work isn’t just spiritual—it’s somatic. Releasing energy through breath, sound, movement, or intention can open pathways that years of talk therapy may only begin to touch.

When Healing Has No Words

You can read a hundred books on grief and still find yourself silenced by its weight. You can talk about shame, even laugh about it—but still feel its grip in your gut when you're alone. Some emotions don’t respond to logic. They live in the body, tangled in places even language can’t reach.

This is where the chakra system becomes more than spiritual theory—it becomes a map for healing.

Long before it became Instagram shorthand, chakra wisdom offered a deep, layered way to understand how our energy flows—or doesn’t. And in times of grief, guilt, or unworthiness, our energetic centers often hold truths our minds aren’t ready to face.

When I began exploring chakra work, I wasn’t looking for enlightenment. I was looking for air. For a way to exhale the unspoken and unstuck the frozen. What I found surprised me: my grief had a location. My shame had a voice. And my freedom wasn’t in fixing myself—it was in listening to what my energy had been trying to say all along.

The Grief That Hid in My Chest

(And How the Heart Chakra Helped Me Name It)

The heart chakra (Anahata) is said to govern love, compassion, and connection. But when we lose someone—or lose ourselves—it also becomes the vault for pain we don’t know how to release.

I noticed it not in heartbreak, but in tight shoulders. Shallow breaths. That involuntary flinch when someone hugged me too long.

By placing a hand over my heart, focusing on my breath, and using heart-opening meditations, I didn’t “solve” my grief—but I softened its hold. I gave it space to move. To sob. To forgive.

Shame at the Root

(How I Learned My Safety Was Worthy of Protection)

Grief was heavy, but shame was louder. It whispered from my root chakra: You are not safe. You are not enough.

The root, linked to grounding and belonging, can carry early trauma, financial fear, abandonment wounds, and social rejection. Shame thrives here—especially if you were ever made to feel “too much,” “not enough,” or simply wrong.

Learning to reconnect to my root meant walking barefoot on the earth. Eating nourishing foods. Moving slowly. Saying, “I am safe” until my body stopped bracing for impact.

Liberation Is Physical

(Healing Isn’t Just Mindset—It’s Movement)

Too often, we treat healing like a mindset challenge: reframe it, rethink it, rewire it. But liberation isn’t just mental—it’s energetic.

One spiritual guide who introduced me to gentle metaphysical practices explained this beautifully: “The body remembers. But it also reclaims.” I later discovered her book tucked among intuitive healing titles, and it became a touchstone for moments when I felt overwhelmed by the abstract.

The chakra system gave me something both practical and profound. It wasn’t a belief system. It was a way to reconnect to myself—in motion, in breath, in spirit.

Maybe you don’t need to figure everything out right now. Maybe you don’t need to “heal” in the ways culture prescribes.

Maybe you just need to notice where in your body you’ve been holding too much. And start there.

Let your grief breathe. Let your shame speak. Let your liberation move through you.

Your energy already knows the way.

For those looking to explore energy work through an approachable and intuitive lens, Kimberly James’ works on metaphysical healing offers one such path—gentle, curious, and deeply human.