Healing the Chakras
As a healer I work with the chakras. Whether I’m using Reiki, Pranic or any other healing modality, assessing the function of the chakra tells me a lot about the person and why they don’t feel well or their life is not what they imagined it could be.
Being in Balance is a thing
Yogis, Reiki practitioners, Pranic practitioners, and energy workers alike all talk about how important a balanced chakra system is. Their lists of benefits and problems roll off their tongue easily along with tools and methods for balancing them. We can do much to balance our own chakras and thankfully, there are knowledgeable people who can help us dig deeper when a yoga posture or meditation is not quite getting the job done. I’d like to share with you some cool information on our chakra system. With knowledge comes power. I hope this bit of information helps you make your yoga or meditation practice more effective and meaningful. Or, possibly inspires you to see a qualified energy worker.
Chakras are energy vortexes in the subtle body or aura. The seven major chakras line up along a central channel called the pranic tube, starting at the top of our head, running along the spine, and ending at our tailbone. These centers are the gateways between the different layers of our aura (subtle body). Within the chakras, the activity of one layer such as the emotional body connects and interacts with or stimulates another layer such as our physical body. For example; fear, an emotional response to a situation, causes butterflies in our stomach, shortness of breath, and shaky hands and voice. These physical characteristics betray our lack of confidence in the world and we emanate the vibration. This leads others to react to us in ways that can perpetuate our anxieties by becoming fearful, judgmental, or aggressive toward us. If we are with someone who has overcome their fears, we will be met with support, love, and compassion. Even if this fear is buried in our childhood, it is held in the chakra and continued to influence our behavior. Or get triggered and surprise us with an unexpected reaction. How many times have we said. “where did that come from”? Healing our chakras frees us from these reactions and patterns.
Each chakra has a different job or duty to perform that is associated with each level of our aura. The levels are: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Overall the chakras work together as one unified system, but it is beneficial to understand the specialized function of each chakra. This knowledge helps us to understand our habits, beliefs, and why we approach life the way we do. It is also important to know the difference between a chakra that is moving and exchanging energy efficiently and smoothly and one that is inhibited or “blocked” and not self-regulating or clearing.
Each chakra changes the speed of the energy running through it. Heading upstream energy is sped up. Flowing downstream the energy is slowed down. The individual chakras support the skills, awareness, and understanding we need to achieve enlightenment or successfully manifest ideas. Starting at the root chakra, we experience survival whereas up at our crown chakra, we experience understanding. The first two chakras that govern the way we interact with the physical world are the root and sacral chakras. They are all about physical activity, survival, ego, and our tangible sense of ourselves.
The upper three chakras, crown, 3rd eye, and throat chakras, represent the realm of imagination and perception and the impact the physical world has on our consciousness. We store this information in our minds as symbols that we combine and recombine for understanding. The upper chakras are less ego-specific and do not identify with the self as much as the lower chakras do. They also transcend the limits and boundaries of the physical world and on some levels, they transcend time and space. This means that they can perceive and assimilate impressions and information from anywhere in the universe, including different time periods. In our upper chakras, we can go anywhere.
The heart chakra in the center of the system acts as the interface between the upper and lower chakras. It uses the quality of unconditional love to bring balance to the opposing forces of intellect (higher knowledge) and feeling (human physical experiences). Once balanced, we can achieve understanding and wisdom. The throat and solar plexus chakras also have roles as central chakras. The throat chakra puts words to our ideas and prepares them for manifestation. The solar plexus powers up our language with personal will. This creates a foundation for our ideas to be built upon. We have to have access to enough energy so we can transform our thoughts into words then into plans then into actions. With the help of the power of our emotions in the sacral chakra, we take the right thought, are empowered by the right words, and create something with the right action. Our emotions help us to act and are the wind beneath the wings of our thoughts, and that is the process of manifestation.
The function of the chakra system as a whole is to move and manipulate energy for our own purposes. It moves this energy in four directions. Driving the energy upward from physical (root chakra) to understanding (crown chakra), we learn how the world around us works, know how to manipulate it, and understand the consequences of our actions. We come to terms with physical laws and learn how to use them to manifest our dreams. Drawing the energy down from spirit, through our crown chakra all the way to our root, we are bringing our ideas into a form we can touch, taste and feel. More importantly, we are communicating them to our family, friends, community or world at large. When our chakras move the energy inward we receive information from the outer world. In addition to knowing all the subtle levels of the environment around us, we can experience the world as a reflection of what lies within our own subconscious. Moving our energy outward we are expressing ourselves and making our own ideas known to others. We begin to bring into form what is in our imagination.
We can heal damaged chakras, remove blockages, balance the entire system, and keep them in proper alignment through guided meditation, using crystals, doing exercises like Tai Chi and yoga, and making sure we have proper nutrition and hydration. Knowing the characteristic of each chakra will lead you to connect your symptoms to weaknesses in your chakra system. Physical, emotional, and mental dysfunctions can be an indicator of a chakra that needs healing, clearing, rebalancing, and reconnection to the system. Some of the benefits of a healthy chakra system include vitality, interest in your life, successfully completing projects, protection from outside interfering energy, overall health, and living in the present instead of fantasizing about the past or what will be.
Stay in balance and be well!
