Chakras: The Seven Windows to the Soul
“The body is the vehicle, consciousness the driver. Yoga is the path, and the chakras are the map.” ~Anodea Judith
The Seven Windows to the Soul: The Chakras as the Structural Yoke of Yoga
By Anodea Judith, Ph.D.
Travelers, both ancient and modern, need a good map to guide them. If you seek the journey of higher consciousness, personal healing, or a better world, a good map is essential. As we face the twists and turns of the evolutionary journey – both personal and collective– our maps need to be updated. The surface features may change, but the underlying territory provides a consistent foundation. The chakra system, with its roots in ancient India and its relevant application to modern life, is a bridge between past and future.
In keeping with its Tantric lineage, the chakra system also forms a bridge that connects universal polarities: spirit and matter, heaven and earth, mind and body, masculine and feminine. The chakras are the stepping stones along that bridge, bringing polarities into a union. To navigate that territory is to take an exciting journey of awakening – integrating body, mind, and spirit. “Union or yoke” is the true meaning of the word yoga, and the chakra system can be seen as the structure of that yoke – the archetypal pattern through which these polarities unite. The practice of yoga is a means to awaken the chakras, through a combination of postures, breath, sound, visualization, and meditation. In my work I also combine yoga with bioenergetics exercises, developmental psychology, and sacred ceremony, layering modern practices on the foundation of the ancient ones.
The major energy centers called chakras (Sanskrit for wheel or disk) correspond to major nerve ganglia aligned vertically along the body’s core. Yet the chakra system goes much deeper than our physiology -it describes a profound formula for wholeness, a ladder for liberation, and a map for manifestation. As a deep philosophical system, it works with basic archetypal energies: earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, and consciousness. These elements exist both within us, as bones, breath, or vision, and they exist outside of us in the manifestation of the world-the earth we walk upon, the water we drink, the air we breathe. In this way, the chakras act as portals between the inner world and the outer-a meeting point between our personal process and collective evolution. In this way, the chakra system is also a template for our collective transformation.
Here’s how I define these ancient centers in modern terms: Chakras are organizational centers for the reception, assimilation, and transmission of life-force energy.” You can define this life force as prana, chi, ki, or simply “charge,” but you know it when you feel it. It’s what makes you vibrantly alive, potently connected to yourself and your environment. Awakening your life force activates your chakras. Awakening your chakras, in turn, enhances your life force.
The chakras can be thought of as jewels strung along a necklace. When you hold a necklace in your hands and pull the two ends apart vertically, the jewels line up, one on top of another. When you align your chakras vertically, from base to crown, the flow of universal energy or Shakti, moves through your body in the most efficient and direct way possible.
Like any gateway or channel, chakras can become blocked. When you take the time to remove blockages from within the chakras, your life-force energy flows through you in a more harmonious and productive manner. It becomes easier to relate to your environment and achieve your dreams.
As a map for the broad vertical terrain between heaven and earth, the chakras take us both up and down that bridge–from the heights of pure awareness and universal consciousness down to the realities of the material world. Most treatises on the chakras emphasize the journey upward. This journey begins with the body and the material world, entering subtler and higher planes of consciousness with each step upward. The ancient texts called this upward journey mukti, or freedom; I call it the Current of Liberation. This current allows you to liberate yourself from fixed forms, ignorance, and attachments. It enables you to break free from limitations that hold you back from attaining spiritual realization. I describe this path in my books, Wheels of Life and Eastern Body-Western Mind.
Less understood is the downward path, which the ancients called bhukti (meaning “enjoyment”). In this path, the flow of creation begins in the vast plane of pure awareness, entering our individual consciousness as a thought or idea. The chakras then act as “condensers,” turning thoughts into visual imagination, moving them into words and actions, until they are dense enough to manifest on the material plane. I call this downward path the Current of Manifestation. It is by this path that we enjoy the divine play of life or lila. I describe this path in my book, Creating on Purpose.
Blocks in the chakras are called granthis, or knots, that keep the energy of Shakti or Kundalini from passing through, although I have come to call them “nots” as well, meaning places where we are not aware, or places where we say “I will Not.” In working with countless individuals over the decades as both therapist and yoga teacher, I have seen the many forms these blocks can take. A chakra may be deficient in its functioning, meaning there is constriction that results in too little energy flowing in and out of that chakra, or it may be excessive, meaning there is too much focus on a particular chakra level, making the chakra dense and stagnant. You could say that the deficient chakras are a result of an avoidant strategy in that chakra, which in the yoga kleshas or afflictions, call dvesha, meaning avoidance. An excessive chakra, by contrast, functions as a compensation or fixation at a particular level, similar to the yoga concept of raga, or attachment. One of the goals of chakra healing is to balance the energy flow through each chakra through balancing attachment or avoidance that occurs at any level as the result of our childhood conditioning. In this way, the ancient map of the chakras becomes relevant to our inner psychology, bridging Eastern and Western philosophies.
The chakra system is a master map and an elegantly profound system for understanding the links between our essential Self and the world. The chakras have been used to identify states and stages of consciousness, developmental periods of individual growth and maturity, and eras of human history, even giving us a map for where we are in our civilization at this time–moving from the third chakra to fourth in our global culture. This is a profound change from the social organizing principle of the last 5000 years – the love of power–to a new organizing principle based on a higher center of awareness – the power of love. Understanding the chakra system shows you how to elevate or manifest your own consciousness so that you can be part of this important shift. I am excited to be bringing this information forward in my forthcoming book, The Global Heart Awakens.
We need models today that integrate mind, body, and spirit. To ignore the body and the earth in our spiritual pursuits is to foster a dangerous dissociation, one that is allowing our world and environment to spin toward destruction. But to engage in purely lower chakra pursuits is to indulge in the shadow elements of those chakras: materialism, sensationalism, and obsession with power.
We are being asked at this time to seek balance and wholeness. The long journey upwards, toward divine consciousness is an important one, but it is only half of the journey. The other half is bringing that divine consciousness back down, through our bodies, words, and deeds, as a way of contributing to the evolutionary purpose of creating heaven on earth. To chart our course into the future, whether as individuals or as a culture, we need a good map. The chakra system provides an archetype of wholeness that can guide us through the trials and tribulations of life’s transformations and deliver us to a new awakening, as empowered individuals, awake and alive, ready to dance our way to the future.
Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope!
You will also enjoy 7 Foods to for Chakra Balancing
About the Author and Her Work with Chakras
Anodea Judith, Ph.D. has been called “a prophet for our time.” A groundbreaking thought leader and bestselling author; she is the director of Sacred Centers (SacredCenters.com), a teaching organization of transformational wisdom. Judith holds a doctoral degree in Psychology and Human Health, is a 500-hour registered yoga teacher (E-RYT), and has engaged in lifelong studies in psychology, mythology, sociology, history, systems theory, evolution, and comparative religion. She is considered the foremost Western writer on the subject of the chakra system, bridging the philosophies of East and West, especially in the field of psychology. She teaches and lectures worldwide.
The author of several bestsellers and definitive works, Judith is best known for the classics Wheels of Life and Eastern Body-Western Mind, as well as the award-winning DVD, The Illuminated Chakras. Anodea Judith is a passionate writer and speaker on psychology, spirituality, and the evolutionary challenges humanity faces at this time. Connect with her at: sacredcenters.com
