Chakras are an ancient concept from Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism describing the ebb and flow of the body’s energy. The word “chakra” comes from the Sanskrit word “wheel of light” and refers to the natural holistic movement of the chakras within your physical body and spiritual mind.
Within your body, there are multiple chakra channels, and any instability among them can cause pain and suffering. This suffering may be mental, emotional, physical, financial, or interpersonal. It is imperative that healing through chakra balancing be part of a sound healing plan.
When your chakra system is in balance, it works as a radiant force that animates the body. There are seven chakras in the chakra energy system, represented by the seven chakra colors that create a full energy spectrum.
The Seven Chakras
- The Root Chakra, the first or red chakra, grounds your body from the base of your spine.
- The Sacral Chakra, the second or orange chakra, sits below your navel.
- The Solar Plexus Chakra, the third or yellow chakra, is located in the upper abdomen.
- The Heart Chakra, the fourth or green chakra, is in your chest behind your breastbone.
- The Throat Chakra, the fifth or blue chakra, rests within your throat.
- Third Eye Chakra, the sixth or indigo chakra, is found right between your eyes.
- The Crown Chakra, the seventh or violet chakra, is located at the top of your head.
Energy and Health Benefits of Chakra Balancing
The body’s chakras work in partnership with your life force energy, or Chi, which means “breath” in the Chinese language. The Chinese term “Qi gong,” or “Chi gong,” refers to the work of the breath to promote deep energy healing within the body’s energy centers.
When your chakras are in alignment through proper chakra balancing and healing, your physical self and spiritual self are fully receptive to the energy of the universe. You’ll feel deeply at peace and brimming with vitality. Nothing can shake you up too much, because you have stable chakra energy centers within you that nourish you from the inside out.
However, chakra imbalance creates a cascade of negative effects, harming your health and preventing you from fully connecting with your world. Let’s look at how each of the individual chakras promotes physical health within the energy centers of your body.
Root Chakra
Your root chakra also called the first chakra or Muladhara, rests at the base of your spine. This is the foundational chakra that helps you feel grounded in the world. It is of vital importance for security, safety, and confidence. In misalignment, it will feel “off” both physically and spiritually.
Check-in with your root chakra whenever you feel completely drained of energy. Has something left you feeling ungrounded? Are you disconnected from your deepest foundations? Open and reawaken your root chakra to restore energy flow and nurture your entire being from the very base of your life force.
Sacral Chakra
Below your navel sits your strongest connection to the outside world, your sacral chakra or Svadhisthana. Strongly linked to relationships, weight, sexuality, and pleasure, it regulates your openness to encountering new experiences.
The health of your sacral chakra is intimately tied to the health of your sensual self. When it is blocked, you will feel less enjoyment from food, music, relationships, and sensual pleasures. You may experience sexual dysfunction, obesity, stiffness that radiates through your legs, and lower back pain.
Solar Plexus Chakra
The solar plexus chakra, which is located in the upper abdomen near the stomach, is associated with your emotional stability. It is tied to feelings of balance and esteem, like willpower, assertiveness, self-respect, self-worth, and personal power.
A blocked solar plexus chakra is associated with digestive problems and memory failure. When this chakra is blocked, you may feel unable to muster the courage to do important things. Or you may feel a lack of humility that hampers your ability to accomplish the things you desire in life.
Heart Chakra
Behind your breastbone and within the center of your chest sits the beating heart chakra, or Anahata. It infuses our lives with love, passion, compassion, inspiration, and a desire to connect with the divine. It is said that there is no joy when you have a blocked heart chakra.
Your heart chakra may be in misalignment when you can’t seem to find inner peace or feel deeply connected with other people. In this state, you risk isolation, loneliness, depression, and life-threatening physical ailments like a respiratory and circulatory disease.
Throat Chakra
Located at the base of the throat, your throat chakra impacts your ability to communicate with others honestly about your innermost thoughts. A blockage here can lead to shyness, lying, deceit, bragging, and a lack of creative self-expression.
A misalignment can come with health problems like dental pain, mouth sores, or even throat cancer. Compounding the problem, you may find yourself unable to clearly express what’s wrong and seek proper care.
Third Eye Chakra
Right between your eyes lies the third eye chakra, which allows you to understand the deeper meanings and challenges in our world. It affects your intuition, imagination, and capability to make wise decisions.
Opening the third eye chakra is a challenge for many people, because they may not be used to relying on the power of this chakra. To keep this chakra aligned, practice habits that nourish it, like grounding yourself, cultivating silence, and honing your intuition.
Crown Chakra
The seventh chakra, located at the top of your head, is the crown chakra. It helps you hold your head high and forge a connection with the divine. When it is in alignment, you are fully open to spiritual enlightenment.
However, a blocked crown chakra is quite dangerous because it cuts you off from the universe and leaves you feeling spiritually untethered. You may experience migraine headaches, nerve pain, insomnia, depression, or periods of mental dissociation until you clear the blockage in your crown chakra.
How to Balance and Align Your Chakras
Maintaining chakra alignment preserves your body’s health and allows you to move through the world brimming with energy. If your chakras are misaligned, notice the lack of well-being and begin to bring them back into balance.
Take a moment to reflect upon the energy balance within you now. Do you feel fully energized, or is something interrupting your flow? Here are some techniques you can use to restore movement across your chakras and keep them in full alignment.
Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy approaches healing through the sense of smell, which can reinvigorate your mind, body, and spirit. In chakra alignment, essential oils can prime your senses for the energy effect you desire by making you feel uplifted, serene, focused, relaxed, and more, depending on the scents you select.
Meditation
In chakra meditation, you focus your mental energy and rest the physical body in a calm and quiet space. Chakra meditation may reveal deep insights and allow you to relax enough to receive beneficial energy healing from the universe. Finding a guided meditation program is an easy step to heal your chakra system.
Positive Thinking
Positive thinking, which is related to positive affirmations, is another method of priming yourself for chakra healing. During positive thinking, you attune your thoughts to your own well-being and open yourself up to new possibilities, which helps unblock your chakras and promote body-wide balance.
Yoga
Yoga is an ancient practice that uses physical movement to establish spiritual balance. When you want to align the chakras, try yoga poses of chakra-balancing like the Mountain Pose, Revolved Triangle Pose, or Balancing Butterfly.
Color Therapy
Because each chakra is associated with color, and because we as humans are so attuned to hues, color therapy can be quite effective. If your heart (green) chakra is blocked, for example, you can add plants to your environment to stimulate chakra healing.
Reiki Healing
Reiki is a form of energy movement that usually seeks the help of another person to restore energy flow within the human body. This healing activity gives your chakras a boost, along with your immune system, circulatory system, nervous system, limbic system, and other vital systems of the body.
Auras
Have you heard of aural cleansing? It’s a way to refresh your aura, or energy shape when it is out of alignment and misshapen. During aural cleansing, you shed negative energy that has been absorbed from your environment and focus on replacing it with your own fresh and glowing personal power.
Maintaining Chakra Alignment for Long-term Health
Is your chakra system in full alignment? If the answer is no, please don’t beat yourself up about it. Chakra healing is a technique you can hone, and I’d like to help you learn how to do it.
Let’s work together to restore harmony to your body and spirit.
I created this brand new Chakra Quiz to help you find out which of your chakras are open, weak, or closed. Get immediate answers and learn if you have a blocked chakra at the end of the quiz.
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