Chakra Healing: What Is The Chakra System, And How To Find Alignment.

Before we can even think about healing the chakras, we first need to know what the chakras are. The chakras are part of our subtle body, the subtle body is described as being neither completely physical nor completely spiritual, the subtle body resides somewhere in the in-between.

The chakras act as messengers, sending you information and sensation when and where you need it most.

"We cannot see the charkas but we can experience them. Learning to listen to them might be the most challenging task on the road towards healing."

The more we learn to listen to their signals, the more clarity we will gain. And from that place, we can take action.

If we can learn to understand the chakras, recognise them, channel them, and decode them, we will begin to notice what particular affects each one of them has on us.

Once we understand that we are already complete, that we already have everything we have ever needed, we can start to look inward for answers rather than seeking external validation.

From Sanskrit, "chakra" translates to wheel. To correctly pronounce “chakra”, the proper execution requires a sharp “ch” sound with a subtle rolling of the “r”. Chakra is commonly mispronounced as “shakra” which, from Sanskrit, translates to cucumber.

It might not feel like such a big deal, but it is important to practice proper pronunciation (try your best) as a sign of respect for Eastern cultures, histories, and practices, if nothing else.

The chakras are energy centres that spin like disks, this can only be proven by intuition as they are not something we can see. They are located along the spinal column of the physical body, working upwards from the ground all the way to the crown of the head.

This is a sequential order not by any means a hierarchical order, meaning, the higher chakras are not better nor more powerful than the ones that reside lower on the body. Each chakra plays a vital role and work together to provide us with an accurate representation of the human experience via energy.

Energy as prana

To understand how the subtle body works, it is important to understand what energy is. Our energy or life force is called prana, we interact best with our prana though breath. This is why we practice pranayama in yoga as it is the conscious manipulation of breath. Without breath, there is no life. Now we can start to see why prana is referred to as our ”life force”.

Prana moves through the body via the nadi, which translates to river. Imagine: nadi is to vein as prana is to blood. Through this river that acts as a channel or a highway, the prana can travel.

We use our asana or physical yoga practice to smooth out any of the knots or kinks in the nadi (or energetic channels), just as we would stretch to undo any knots in our muscles.

There are over 72,000 nadi in the body, however in yoga we choose to focus on three main energy channels. The left channel, known as Ida Nadi, our feminine, lunar, cooling energy, the right channel or the Pingala Nadi, our masculine, solar, heating energy, and the central channel called Sushumna Nadi.

At the bottom of our central energy channel there is a stopper or a plug known as kundalini. Kundalini translates to coil or curl, figuratively and metaphorically speaking, she is a small snake, coiled 3.5 times, and she represents our concept of consciousness.

Yoga and Our Healing

So what does all of this mean for us? Now that we know more about energy in the body, how can we use it to heal? How can we learn to use our energy in a responsible way and be the drivers in our life and in our own experiences?

Life is full of hardships, trauma, and tragedy. And that is why we practice yoga. Yoga won’t make these problems go away but yoga will give us the tools to help manage and overcome our problems.

Imagine a door in your home has fallen off its hinges. You have a toolbox at home full of tools, yet, you don’t know which tool can help you fix the door because you are not sure why the door fell in the first place. However, the door cannot speak to you and tell you why it fell and what it needs from you, however, our bodies can in fact, communicate with us.

Imagine that this door is your body, it has fallen off its hinges so to speak, all you need to do is listen, and the body will tell you what it needs. Listen to the signs and signals your body gives you via the chakras, and with yoga as your toolbox, you can then begin to find solutions and “fix” what is unbalanced or out of alignment. It all starts with compassion, forgiveness and permission to begin healing.

Knowing what you need will always be the first step. Once you start to listen to your body’s cues and the information it provides you with, you will soon begin to see that so much of life is about listening. Talk less and listen more, to others and to yourself.

"This is one of the ways we can avoid feeling like victims of our own lives. Rather than believing that things happen to us, yoga teaches us to take responsibility, to be accountable and to make things happen for us."

Aligning the chakras is no different than maintaining physical shape, it does not happen over night, and we surely cannot expect it to happen on its own. It takes practice, consistency, and whole hearted action to produce a result. And that’s no different than anything in life, not love, nor our careers, nor our health.

Yoga teaches us that we do in fact have control over who we are and what we do, and when we are placed in a situation that we cannot control, it is our job to change or shift our perspective in order to move past it.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate”. - Carl Gustav Jung

Once we can move away from thinking that only fate controls our lives, we can begin to see that aligning the chakras takes effort and work. Snakes do not produce their own body heat, and as Kundalini is also a snake, we need to feed her heat though our consistent asana practice, she can then rise up, in turn, raising our levels of consciousness. Therefore, with heat, sparks, and energy, we can bring ourselves closer to enlightenment.

The metaphor of the sleeping snake is the metaphor for dormant consciousness, likewise, the snake rising is a metaphor for realisation and consciousness. Kundalini is a feminine force and as she rises and travels from the base of the spine upwards, through all of the different levels of consciousness and chakras, she can feel and understand why something might be off in our body, causing misalignment.

A Word on Enlightenment

What is enlightenment?

It is important to remember that enlightenment is not something that can be described, nor is it something that looks or feels the same for any two people. If you try to define it, as soon as you try to put words to it, it takes away from it.

"You cannot define the undefinable. You cannot make tangible something that cannot be seen or held."

However, as best described, becoming enlightened could mean, raising your levels of consciousness. This is accessible and achievable for anyone. The Buddhists like to say “enlightenment and then the laundry”, to demonstrate that, just because you are enlightened, does not mean that you are suddenly unburdened from engaging with normal life.

You still need to tend to your responsibilities and continue to do mundane tasks. Enlightenment isn’t an escape from reality, in fact, its quite the contrary. It will help you see more, and with that, you will see more evil, just as you see more good.

Enlightenment is not a way to disconnect with the world, nor should it make you feel better than anyone else. Enlightenment is not something that we can necessarily feel while it’s happening.

Like sleeping, we close our eyes and wake up feeling rested, we are aware that some time has past between the moment when we shut our eyes and when we opened them again, however, we have no proof of what happened in between. We have only a concept of what we feel when we are in such a state, likewise, we cannot really identify what enlightenment is or know when it is happening.

So how does enlightenment relate to the charkas?

We want to be able to take the reins and take control of our life as not to become a passive participant in our life events or in our experiences. Sadana is a Sanskrit technical term meaning “residence”. So the idea is that we truly live or reside in a moment, often referred to as being present or mindful and engaging in life actively with consciousness.

The Chakra System

Now that we know more about energy, we can begin to understand how it can be felt in the body. Sometimes we can have a physical expression of an emotional issue. Like feeling choked up and unable to speak or feeling the physical pains after a breakup or the loss of a loved one that we refer to as having a “broken heart”.

These are emotional traumas that we are able to feel so deeply in the body, that they can manifest themselves physically. Through our yoga practice, we will find that everything can be expressed and understood though sensation.

With this understanding comes power. If we can find space to heal within ourselves, we can take on the responsibility to create space for that healing to occur. Most of us throughout our lifetime will suffer from trauma, but how are we to cope?

Issues with an external input, those that include dealing with people, of those people, some will be toxic, some will even hurt us. Chances are, when things take a turn for the worst, these people cannot always be dealt with in person, meaning, we won't always get the closure we think we need from relationships such as these.

Rather than confronting the person who caused you pain or returning to the place or time that they harmed you, the only place our traumas need to be addressed is within our own bodies. We need to be able to let go of those people, those things, those events, because not everything can be resolved with others but it must be resolved within yourself.

In yoga there is no blame, or shame, no passing of accountability, but rather, the power to take back the ability to be who you were before you broke into a million pieces of yourself. Yoga provides you with the tools to take back your essence, that which you may have been denied, that which you thought you had lost.

The 7 Chakras

Root Chakra- Muladhara

Muladhara, meaning root, resides at the very base of the spine, and it is an extension of the legs and the feet. This chakra is largely formed during childhood. It forms our original views about the world and our morals. It asks us to take care of our most basic needs such as our food, our shelter, our financial needs, and our core or blood family. Not everyone needs to be confronted, there has to be a way to come to terms with things within ourselves. Taking back the ability to mother ourselves, and to nurture and support ourselves.

The sense that is connected with this chakra is smell, which acts as a safety measure, and the element corresponding to this chakra is earth. Anything that helps connect us with the earth will be directly linked with this chakra. So taking a long walk in nature will help heal and rebalance this chakra.

In terms of asana, the postures that can help realign this particular chakra are standing poses or cross-legged meditative positions that help us connect to origin and earth. The sound of the root chakra is LAM. There are sacred sounds that correspond to each chakra because they are energetic, vibrational channels.

Sacral Chakra- Swadhisthana

Located below the belly-button at the lowest part of the back, this charka relates to the lower belly, the reproductive organs, and the pelvis. The relationship that is dealt with here is that of our intimate partners, meaning those who we are currently intimate with or lovers from the past, even the people we would like to be intimate with will affect the chakra.

Unresolved issues relating to this chakra will often lead people to return to the same kinds of relationships that hurt them in the past. There is a way to recover from our past traumas, and that is, within ourselves.

Here is where you can begin to understand what you were looking for in that other person and what it is that you wanted them to fix for you or provide you with, and realise that we need to do that for ourselves.

The element that corresponds to this chakra is water, as it is connected to our emotions, love being one of the strongest and most powerful emotions of all. Typically emotions last only 60-90 seconds, yet they seem to last far longer because we allow them to spiral around in our minds, dragging us though these experiences over and over again.

We cannot and should not suppress our emotions, but we need to learn to experience them without allowing them to define us or impact us so much. We are not our traumas, so we cannot label ourselves in such a way. So, say yes to feeling everything, the hurt and the pain included, but then, be able to let them go.

The sense that is associated with this chakra is taste, the flavour of life and connecting to deliciousness. The asanas that help open this chakra are any postures that help to open up our hips such as pigeon, or bound angle pose, also seated forward folds such as pashimottanasana will directly address this chakra. The sound associated with this chakra is VAM, this can be chanted to help realign this chakra.

Solar Plexus Chakra- Manipura

Manipura translates to the jewel in the city, and it is the centre of our own sun and fire. It is the seat of our ego, which we all have, it does not mean that we are egotistical, our ego is how we present ourselves to the world, it is our unique personality, it’s how we interact with each other.

We need the ego but of course, too much ego will hold you back and disconnect you from reality, just as too much shyness will hold you back from empowering yourself and others.

The sense that is connected with this chakra is sight, the ego is concerned with what we see in our future, our goals, our 5 year plan, and how others see us and what their opinions of us are. The relationship that corresponds to this chakra are the people who we associate with, our friendships, our work relationships and colleagues, the people we spend most of our time with, those who allow us to be ourselves in the world.

The stomach will be affected by the ego, making us nervous, causing indigestion, and unease in the stomach. The twisting asanas such as seated spinal twist or supine spinal twist will help ring the ego out, freeing up space where the inflated ego or lack of ego and insecurity reside. The sound associated with this chakra is RAM.

Heart Chakra- Anahata

Anahata, means to be "un-struck". Every instrument in the world, in order to play, must have applied external force. You need to press air over your vocal cords to be heard, or pluck strings with your fingers to produce a sound on a guitar, however, the heart requires no external force to be played. From the moment you enter this world the heart sings a song that plays until the day you die. It beats and sounds on its own accord.

Here we find, not conditional love, the love that comes with terms, but it is the place of unconditional love.

Despite the fact that we believe we love our partners or lovers unconditionally, this kind of love is conditional. We will only love our partners if they continue to be kind, caring, supportive, and attractive in our eyes. Otherwise, that relationship is likely to end if we begin to see something other than what we “signed up for”.

This charka however, is a place of love and compassion beyond judgement which is in nature, unconditional. The sense connected to this chakra is touch, as it is a necessity to receive touch and caressing. Therefore, arm balances and back bends are important to open and heal this chakra. If we are not physically open, we cannot be emotionally open either.

Opening the heart can only happen if we practice forgiveness of ourselves and others, so we begin by opening up physically though the asanas to make room to go deeper. The vibrational sound associated with this chakra is YAM.

Throat Chakra- Vishuddha

Meaning purity, in the form of words you say to others, how you express your opinions, and even what you allow into your body in the form of food. This charka relates to the ears, the neck, the throat, and the voice, as it is our primary form of communication.

"If the heart is open, it will be easy to speak from it."

The objective is to communicate in such a way that once someone has spoken with us, they should feel somewhat uplifted and undiminished. We need to hold our own personal beliefs high and live true to them but never impose them on others, nor belittle others because of their beliefs.

We should never try to convince other people that what we value and believe is true, and we need to learn to honour the differences between us all. Try to listen without judgement. Different things can be right for different people and you never know the conditions of other people’s lives.

The relationship that correlates with this chakra is the relationship we have with the people that we have hurt. The people who may have misunderstood us, or that we have left an unpleasant or negative impact on. But because there is no shame in yoga, there is no shame in this.

To move forward we need to accept, forgive, and allow space for our mistakes and make a commitment to work to improve how we treat people and interact with others. This can be better accomplished if we can learn to soften around our own self judgement and let go of past mistakes.

In regards to the asanas, practicing shoulder stand, plow pose, legs up the wall pose, fish, and headstand will help realign this chakra. The sound associated with this chakra is HAUM.

Third-Eye Chakra- Ajna

Ajna means knowledge, it’s our ability to see clearly, rationally, and it is our ability to see truth. In Eastern philosophy, the third eye allows us to see what our two eyes cannot.

Technically speaking, our eyes see through their ability to separate and differentiate what they perceive in order to give us a picture of what we are seeing in front of us. However, the eyes can distort, they can play tricks on us, they can make assumptions, they can see double, show us optical illusions, or see things that are not really there.

Ultimately, despite what our eyes do for us, they are limited. However, we can take control and work to raise our own consciousness in order to see beyond these limitations. This is the viewpoint our third eye gives us.

The third eye sees all, it sees totality, it sees what is, the sameness and integration, it sees infinite possibility. The relationship that resides here is between us and whatever we consider as our higher power. Yoga will never dictate to you who or what you should consider as your higher power, but if you can look beyond and see with the third eye, much more will be possible for you.

Through practice of our Kapalbhati Pranayama, which is technically a Kryia or cleansing practice, we can buff or shine up the third eye. In terms of our asana practice, child’s pose is an excellent posture to find alignment, as our third eye is resting on the earth, and the earth is a very abundant source of divinity. The mantra relating to this chakra is Om. Saying or chanting this mantra will align all of the chakras, but primarily the third eye.

Crown Chakra- Sahasrara

Sahasrara translates as thousand petal lotus, which is a flower that blooms only once every 100 years. This metaphor means that it is very rare that someone possesses enough devotion and intensity in their practice of yoga to really grow spiritually. It is said that we all have a lotus within ourselves that will only bloom with intense commitment to ourselves and our growth.

Despite this being hard work, this type of change is available and accessible to everyone at any time. It does require a big shift of perspective and perceptions in and of life, but it is possible.

What this chakra represents is our deep and intimate connection with the source, or higher power. Again, this higher power cannot and will not be defined by yoga but it is that connection that will bring us closer to enlightenment.

Disconnection is the greatest sadness and disease of humankind. To be disconnected is to be removed and ultimately, absent. Aligning this chakra will help us find connection and belonging, often in the form of faith. Faith in something bigger than you. This surely does not have to be a god, but it needs to be something larger than you.

This will serve as a constant reminder that there is more to life than that of our personal, and often selfish needs.

The asanas that can be used to connect to this chakra are headstand, and meditation practiced in a seated position. The mantra we use to align this chakra is not vocal, it is something just to be thought and felt. The mantra is once again Om, but this time it is not said aloud, it just needs to be believed and felt.

Final Words

Challenge yourself to expand your understanding of the things you cannot see. Not everything in life is about the physical, the material, or the tangible, in fact, very little is. Start by opening up to you, to listen to what your body is telling you.

If you would like more information about the chakras, visit our other articles and check out our book recommendation blog post.

If you would like to practice a Restorative sequence to align all of the chakras, click this link.

---

Jasmine Melrose

Director & Founder of DECO the Blog

Jasmine Melrose is a Toronto native living in Amsterdam. Once a professional dancer, her passions include movement, fitness, yoga, healing, and all things vegan. Jasmine is a 500-hour trained yoga teacher, who loves to get you deeper into your practice. She is also a certified barre teacher who loves making raw vegan, guilt-free and good-for-you treats. Check out her recipes and articles on everything from fitness to yoga, to notes on a journey towards healing.

---