Overview A person with the gift of clairvoyance can see all your seven energy vortexes radiating like multicolored suns along the axis of your spine. These whorls of spinning energy are known as chakras. Today, this ancient awareness is becoming recognized as a legitimate model for health and illness, providing us with a rich, complex method for organizing the holistic gestalt of the human body/emotions/mind/spirit.
This book is an introduction to these chakras. The chakra system is a valuable tool for the holistic practitioner and for the person who seeks a deeper level of self-knowledge.
It provides an overview of the body and sexuality (lower chakras), the emotions (middle chakras), the mind (third and sixth chakras), and the spirit (upper chakras). The reader will find answers to the following questions:
• What are the chakras?
• Where are they?
• How do they function?
• What causes them to open or close?
• How can you change their energy?
This section includes a brief history of the chakras, where they are, and what they do. It shows how the chakra system enables the practitioner to analyze the health of a person’s body/emotions/ mind/spirit and how this system can enhance one’s understanding of human relationships.
The section “Development of the Chakras” explains how karmic and other events influence the opening and closing of the chakras. It also explains how to measure the relative openness of the chakras.
The chapters on each of the chakras describe the names, symbols, locations, areas of the face, senses, colors and antidotes, tones and notes, elements, crystals, aromas, statements, explanations, and personality types (balanced, excessive, and deficient) as well as contraindications, glands and organs influenced by the chakras, and illnesses and ailments that correspond to each of the seven energy centers.
“Chakra Evaluation” and “Methods of Treating the Chakras” describe various methods of evaluating the openness of each of the chakras. They also explain how to measure the seven levels of openness that can occur at any given chakra, and explain various healing methods that make use of the chakra system.
History of ChakrasThe word
chakra (pronounced
shock-ra or
chock-ra) means “wheel” or “disk” in Sanskrit. The chakras are described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, the ancient teachings of Hinduism. An understanding of the chakras can be seen in the ancient Greek mystery schools of Eleusis and Delphi, and by early Christian mystics and Hermetics. Chakras can be found in texts and artwork in various American Indian tribes, in Hawaii, and in India, Egypt, China, Tibet, Europe, and Africa.
In T
he Aquarian Gospel of Jesus The Christ, Levi Dowling gives a convincing argument for the education of Jesus in India, Tibet, and other parts of the Far East. In the New Testament, Luke 11:34, Jesus says, “The light of the body is the eye: therefore, when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.” Surely he was speaking about the third eye, which is the sixth chakra, also known as the Christ Consciousness Center.
The Hopi Tribe, believed to be the oldest indigenous tribe in North America, compare the axis of the earth to the spine: “Along this axis were several vibratory centers which echoed the primordial sound of life throughout the universe . . .” (from
The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters).
During the late 1800s, Alice Bailey and the early British Theosophists traveled to India and returned to write about Eastern Mysticism, including the chakras, thereby bringing a greater understanding of this ancient knowledge to the West.
What Are the Chakras? If you go to a New Age expo or psychic fair or look at the classified ads in one of the Personal Transformation newspapers, you are likely to find a wide array of healing modalities including chakra cleansing, chakra balancing, and vibrational healing.
Since there is no American or International Association of Chakra Healers, there is no standardization of such terms, and those who use them may just be following their own whims. But after you have read this book, you will be in a better position to speculate about what such language might mean. The best policy is to ask the practitioner to describe their work to you.
Considering that the chakras are invisible to the normal human eye, there is a remarkable amount of agreement, in various cultures, about their nature and location. Yet there also is some variation from one culture to another.
Through the chakras, we are able to receive and transmit social, sexual, and spiritual energy. The chakras have been described as multi-petalled lotus flowers. These flowers, which are considered sacred in India, symbolize the path of development from a primitive being to the full evolution of unfolded awareness. Lotus flowers float upon the water, yet they have their roots in the mud, just as the flower of your crown (seventh) chakra connects to the heavens, and the one at your base (first) chakra connects to the earth.
Some psychics describe the chakras from the tailbone to the crown of the head as having progressively more and more segments or petals. However, the sixth chakra at the center of the brow (the “third eye” chakra) is depicted as having only two petals. This could have something to do with the two hemispheres of the brain, and with the basic duality of life on this planet. When you recognize both the male and female within yourself, you become whole. Out of this knowledge comes the merging with All That Is, symbolized so appropriately by the “Thousand-Petalled Lotus” that is the symbol of the crown chakra.
Some systems describe five, others six, some seven, twelve, or even thirty chakras. Some see them only along the spine, and others find them at the joints, at the hands and feet, and beyond the physical body at progressively higher points above the head and lower points below the feet. Some people experience the energy of the chakras at the front of the body and others at the rear and some at both front and rear. In some pictures, each chakra is shown extending out a few inches from the front or the back of the body on a stem that opens into a round flower.
Whether you think of the chakras as wheels, spirals, or flowers, it is important to remember that they are energy systems that do not have physical form. Attempting to describe such a system is like trying to describe a sound; each person who hears it will explain it in different terms and use different analogies. There may be a variety of opinions about where the sound comes from, and disagreement about whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. Yet everyone is in agreement that it
does exist, energetically.
Copyright © 2020 by Joy Gardner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
