Chakras are fundamental to your health and well-being. Therefore, you definitely want to know what are the chakras and what they do.
To start with, get a basic understanding of what they are and how they relate to your physical body. But don’t stop there because their influence is holistic and extends throughout your mind, body, and spirit.
By familiarizing yourself with them, you’ll gain a new appreciation for the chakras and will surely want to learn how you can support them and balance them in your everyday life.
Here we’ll focus on the basics: what are the chakras and why do they matter?
For a deeper understanding and details on how to support their healthy functioning, search for “chakra” in my Mind-Body-Spirit blog posts.
What Are the Chakras
Chakras are vortices or wheels of subtle life-force energy found along the spine as seen in the image above. Moving from the bottom up, these seven primary energy centers include the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown chakra.
Major Chakras
Most commonly, people speak of seven major chakras. Because of the healing work I do, which involves the Soul Star chakra and the Earth Star chakra I like to include them too. Plus, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the significant chakras in the palms and on the feet.
- First or Root Chakra (Muladhara) – primal, tribal, basic needs, survival, grounding.
- Second or Sacral Chakra (Svadhisthana) – family, sexuality, creativity, and self-worth.
- Third or Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura) – ego, self-empowerment, personality formation, self-esteem, willpower, and integration of feeling and being.
- Fourth or Heart Chakra (Anahata)- relationships, emotions, love, compassion, forgiveness, spiritual development.
- Fifth or Throat Chakra (Vishuddha) – expression, communication, and inner voice.
Sixth or Third Eye Chakra (Ajna) – intuition, vision, insight, self-trust, the seat of inspiration. - Seventh or Crown Chakra (Sahasrara) – spiritual awareness, wisdom, construction of beliefs, and connection to the universe.
- Eighth or Soul Star Chakra (Vyapini) – the seat of the soul’s mission, and purpose in life
- Variously numbered Earth Star Chakra (Vasundhara) – super grounding, connection to earth energy, all of humanity, the natural world, and the cosmos.
Notice the chakras are different colors in the accompanying diagram.
Light is energy and different colored light represents different frequencies of an infinite spectrum of light energy. Chakras, therefore, resonate at different frequencies represented by their color. Red is the lowest or densest frequency.
The frequency rises and becomes less and less dense as you move up to the crown chakra. These different frequencies signal different healing attributes and capacities.
What is Subtle Energy
Subtle energy enters moves throughout and exits the body and around it through the chakras and the auric field. Your body relies on numerous types of measurable energy to conduct all its functions. These include electrical, electromagnetic, thermal, chemical, and mechanical.
Then there’s a subtle energy. It’s difficult to perceive, yet imperative for all life. Hence the synonym life-force energy. Still, today it’s not possible to directly measure subtle energy with conventional scientific instruments. Although, it’s possible to capture many of its outcomes and impacts. Nevertheless, people can and have perceived and documented subtle energy for thousands of years referring to it as prana, chi, and ki among its better-known synonyms.
As an energy healer, I can sense chakra flow or lack thereof. As its name implies, the perception of it is subtle. But, anyone can sense it with adequate open attention and practice because every living being channels life force. Otherwise, they would not be alive. You can sense it too.
Chakra Energy and Your Physical Body
So, How Do Chakras Relate to the Physical Body?
To place chakras in an everyday context of your health and well-being, let’s take a quick look at how energy relates to your physical body and the work it does. Energy is within and makes up everything in the body. All matter is held together by the force of some form of energy. All bodily processes function using some form of energy.
Additionally, energy drives all communication within the body and among bodily systems. The same is true for communication between one person and another.
Each of the seven primary chakras influences and regulates the energy flow and resultant energetic and biological functioning of specific organs and bodily systems (e.g., endocrine, cardiovascular, and digestive). Working in concert, they coordinate and integrate the body into the unique expression of who you are in your body, mind, and spirit.
Chakras and Your Mind, Body, and Spirit
For illustration let’s look briefly at the root and heart chakras. The root aligns with the adrenal glands and sense of smell. Both the structure and nervous system are directly under its influence. Consequently, the root governs our sense of grounding and safety. On the other hand, the heart aligns with the thymus gland and influences the heart, lungs, and circulatory, lymphatic, and immune systems.
Not surprisingly, love and connection are within the domain of the heart. In this way, the chakra system governs the entire body and its bodily systems and outcomes. Like the human body, the chakra system is integrated and its expressions represent an intersection of functional or dysfunctional contributions of all the chakras working together.
Still, people commonly zero in on a particular chakra or two when diagnosing imbalances or personality types. Though not very accurate and a gross over-simplification, focusing on one chakra at a time can be facilitative, particularly for a novice or someone without any energy healing experience.
People like to match their healing intention with colors and colored crystals corresponding to the energies of different chakras to promote healing. This idea is very accessible and fun. So, for many people, the attraction to chakras is related to colors and crystals. But, there is so much more to the chakras and life force energy. Reading and experiencing will deepen your understanding, strengthen your ability to work with your chakras, and enhance your healing outcomes.
For More Information On the Chakras and Chakra Healing, See:
- Mind-Body-Spirit Blog, in particular
- ebook Essential Oils For the Chakras
- Spiritual Life Coaching Sessions
- Energy Healing sessions
Updated February 19, 2023
