What Is a Chakra?

The word Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning wheel, or vortex, and it refers to each of the seven energy centers or stations of which our consciousness, our energy system, is composed. They are located in the spinal area from the tail bone up to the crown of the head.

These chakras, or energy centers, regulate the flow of energy through our energy system, much like the way our heart pumps blood through our veins and arteries.  The functioning of the chakra and how well the energy flows from one to the other is reflective of our beliefs, early life experiences, environment, feelings, both emotional and physical, as well as how we choose to respond to these conditions in our life. We open and close these valves when we decide what to think, and what to feel, and through our perceptions of how we choose to experience the world around us.

Memory is energetically coded into the chakras, as well as an imprint of every important or emotionally significant event you have experienced. The charkras each regulates distinct aspects of your personality and has specific tasks where it dedicates its energies.

When these chakras or energy systems are blocked, the energy does not flow freely between each of the chakras, causing us to feel out of sync. You may feel tired, low energy, just out of sorts and not right but can’t put a finger on why. When chakras are energetically cut off from one another, the aspects of the personality governed by each can become warring sub-personalities, not much different from the conflict between heart and head that we are all familiar with.   For this reason, it is an important function to keep our energy fields and chakras clear and balanced. It is just as essential to our health and well-being as keeping up with our physical and hygiene needs.

By clearing chakras that are still blocked by energies of the past, you can give your entire energy system a boost and depending on the chakra this will also enhance: your life force (root), creativity (sacral), assertiveness (solar plexus), love, compassion & forgiveness (heart), self-expression (throat), intuition, trusting your gut (third eye), or flow in your connectedness with the universe (crown).

In short the seven chakras resonate respectively with the principles of survival, creativity, power, love, expression, transcendence and unity.

*Some content from this article was taken from "Energy Medicine" written by Donna Eden*