Chakras: The Eastern Mind, Western Body
Yoga teachers mention chakras during class, and health influencers tote them on flashy Instagram posts, but there is so much depth to be explored with chakras. Understanding the energy center of our bodies helps us see where we are blocked and unbalanced to show us the path to healing and unblocking, coming back to our wholeness. Anodea Judith’s book, The Eastern Mind, Western Body, is a groundbreaking work reviving the chakra system of ancient yoga.
“The chakras are very intelligent – they are like the software of the whole computer body.” —Dharma Mittra
Judith breaks down the chakra system and infuses western Carl Yung's psychology concepts with ancient teachings in her book. She explains that the chakra system began in India more than four thousand years ago. Chakra translates as “wheel” or “disk” and refers to a spinning sphere of bioenergetic activity emanating from the body. She writes that chakras are a center of organization that receives, assimilates, and expresses life force energy as excitement, charge, attention, or awareness. It’s the thing that knows, that focuses – the energy flowing through your body, allowing you to read this very sentence. It signifies your aliveness. When our energy centers are blocked, we experience deficiencies or excesses of energy and life force physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The seven chakras depicted below show similarities to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, growing up and out, from grounding in safety to transcendence.
The Eastern Mind, Western Body
Chakra One
The root chakra, muladhara, sits at the base of the spine with the goal of self-preservation and survival. Similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we require safety, health, and stability at the foundation to meet our most basic needs. We develop our physical identity by grounding in the earth at the root. The opposition, fear, pervades the first chakra when our basic needs are unfulfilled– a constant fear of death. Judith explains that solidity in the root comes from our sense to exist. This is not meant in a suicidal sense but is claiming the right to take up space, establish your individuality, and take care of yourself. Perhaps basic, many people are afflicted and blocked by the sense to exist. Even if a person believes in their existence and has met their basic survival needs, they may still face difficulty allowing pleasure, money, love, possessions, or praise. A person may feel guilty about making money, unable to enjoy life’s joys, or avoid compliments. It’s easy to see how we or others struggle with the root chakra.
The Eastern Mind, Western Body
“Mind severed from body, culture from planet–to lose our ground is to lose our home.”
In excess, the root is disconnection from the body, feeling anxious and fearful. It’s living entirely in the mind, going hours without remembering one’s body. In excess, it’s overeating, fearing change, and having rigid boundaries. A root chakra can begin healing by reconnecting with the body through physical movement, touch, and grounding.
Healing affirmation: It is safe for me to be here. I love my body and trust its wisdom.
Chakra Two
The sacral chakra, svadhisthana, exists in the abdomen, under the belly button, and in the low back and centers on self-gratification, sexuality, and emotions. The second chakra moves beyond the physicality of the first chakra into emotionality. Here the right to feel emerges. Ads plastered on billboards and blasted on social media tell us to hustle, grind, and persevere. We receive messages to suppress feelings from our families, religious leaders, and friends “you’re okay” and “it’s not that bad.” We start the pattern of suppressing our feelings. Men are significantly affected because they are told not to cry and toughen up from a young age. Yet emotions serve a critical evolutionary need, or they wouldn’t be so core to our daily experience because they are a lifeline of information about our wellbeing.
The right to want to enjoy and have healthy sexuality is difficult for women in a society plagued with mixed messages about the sacredness of our virginity and the pressure of achieving a ‘perfect’ alluring body. Guilt is the demon of the second chakra because it prevents the free flow of life by taking the pleasure out of it. Either-or thinking polarizes thinking, locking us in black-and-white choices. If a child grows up in fear of punishment, they can get frozen in this either-or thinking. They want rules so they can follow them and feel safe. Yet our feelings are usually ambiguous, and when black-or-white thinking traps us, we cannot embrace and meet our feelings. We feel guilty for how we feel. Guilt can be a teacher when it guides us, but a demon when it traps us.
Emotions are simply energy in motion. Unexpressed, emotions get repressed, and that pent-up energy has to go somewhere. It gets stuck in our bodies, perhaps as physical pain. Denying our emotions is denying the vital energy of our life. In excess, the second chakra is overidentifying and becoming the emotion, “I am angry. I am sad.” Instead of watching it flow from the bank, we sink into the river of emotion. In deficiency, rigid boundaries and lack of feeling create a dullness in life, a sensation of being stuck, or an inability to sense one’s own needs. Life is gray. Cut off from our feelings, we become unfamiliar to ourselves. This chakra needs emotional release with titration to release the valve of feeling slowly while safely grounded. Other times, it requires us to witness the feelings without reacting. We contain the energy and seek alternative paths. We hold the urge to flick off a driver who cuts us off. Allowing the water element of this chakra to move the energy in our system will enable us to be moved by the currents, not drowned in them. Water makes life juicy.
Unhealthy guilt is an autoimmune disease of the soul that causes us to literally reject our own worth as human beings. Joan Borysenko
Healing affirmations: I deserve pleasure in my life. I absorb information from my feelings.
Chakra Three
The solar plexus chakra, manipura, is below the chest in the upper belly where our power, will, and self-definition sits. Our sense of purpose, self-esteem, and actions manifest in this area, where our ego identity begins after our physical and emotional identities inhabit the lower chakras—here, the right to act manifests, or if restricted, a loss of will and spontaneity. Authoritarian and fear-based upbringings and culture can stop a person's development of their inner authority, the right to be free. When chakra three’s counterforce, shame, is pervasive, it diminishes a person’s power. As Brené Brown, a shame researcher, says, shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. Compulsive patterns and addiction patterns manifest in a shame-bound body. The solar plexus collapses under the weight of shame, quite literally decreasing the chest cavity, reducing breathing, and constricting the throat. It’s as if you are collapsing into yourself. Shame is the voice that tells you that you’re a failure because of your mistake instead of seeing yourself as a worthy person who made a mistake. We take fewer risks as we embody that message, and the wheel of shame gains momentum. We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing. Brené Brown says, “If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.” She explains that shame doesn’t survive when we tell our story.
Overcoming shame occurs as we reclaim our power. Power is a dominating value in Western society exhibited by violence, warfare, domination, and sensitivity as a weakness. For all the power valued in our culture, it’s curious how powerless so many people feel in their lives. Society values power over instead of power within. When we tap our power to act, we can escape the struggle of suffering and empower others without diminishing them or ourselves. The purpose of power is transformation, not dominance. We begin to discover our individuality, which lights the path to action. Fire is the energy of the third chakra, converting energy into activity. We translate feelings from the second chakra into activity in the third chakra. We are enthusiastic about life. We take risks and make mistakes. As Joseph Campbell said, we step into the privilege of a lifetime to be who we are.
No human being can stand the perpetually numbing experience of his own powerlessness. Rollo May
Healing affirmations: I can do whatever I will to do. I honor the power within me.
Chakra Four
In our chest, the heart chakra, anahata, manifests self-acceptance, with our right to love and be loved. Here our social identity emerges. When balanced, we are compassionate, empathetic, and loving. Unbalanced, we experience issues in love and intimacy and experience physical pain in the chest or shoulder blades or a suppressed immune system. Grief is the demon of the heart, sitting on the heart chakra like a stone. Grief makes it hard to breathe or open up, turning us cold and rigid. When grief is expressed, the heart lightens, and spaciousness occurs to make room for hope and compassion.
Practice breathing experiences, journaling, and inner child work to release grief and embrace forgiveness to heal the heart. The paradox of relationships is that the deeper the intimacy, the more love reveals the shadow, the rejected parts of ourselves that can finally emerge safely in a loving container. An accepting partner allows our shadow parts to the surface so we can practice self-acceptance and self-love for those unloved parts of us.
We show others how to treat us when we first treat ourselves with respect, honesty, compassion, and understanding.How can we expect another person to treat us with love and respect if we can’t even do it for ourselves? It’s a sacred act to care gently for oneself, and it’s merely being a friend to yourself first and forever.
In real love, you want the other person’s good. In romantic love, you want the other person.
Healing affirmations: I am worthy of love and there is an infinite supply of love.
Chakra Five
The throat chakra, visuddha, ignites self-expression through communication and creativity to speak and be heard. Our creative identity emerges from our throat chakra through the sound element. It’s critical that a person's upbringing allows truthful speaking and clear communication for the voice to develop. In the fifth chakra, attention moves to vibrations and subtle pulsations. Have you ever been moved by a song or moved to music, and your thoughts dissipated? This is resonance. It’s a state of synchronization among vibrational patterns. Our bodies beat to a rhythm in our hearts, circadian rhythms, and breaths. We are rhythmic beings. As we get closer to the brain, the upper chakras reveal the symbolic world of the mind through words, images, and thoughts. The throat chakra is the channel for communication, letting all that needs to come up and out. A healthy chakra speaks with a resonant and rhythmic voice that speaks truthfully and clearly.
Judith writes that we must express our truth to express our individuality fully. If we lie, our throat chakra loses its power. A non-individuated person will say what people want to hear. A fearful person will be afraid to speak their truth. A person without ego strength will be afraid of what others think. Creativity unleashes through the throat chakra, having broken free of established patterns, through conscious action and will. We create in every moment of our lives. We express creativity from every conversation with a stranger to ordering coffee at the cafe.
Shame, fear for one’s safety, or being out of touch with ourselves blocks us from expressing our truth. We censor ourselves. We hide from exposure. We stuff food down our throats and tighten our necks and shoulders – anything to not express ourselves. Healing the throat chakra is accessible, starting with sips. Challenge the inner critic with a second opinion when the critic says you will fail or it won’t be good enough – an exercise I am doing as I write this post. The next time a person asks how you are doing, answer honestly. You will develop your throat chakra by taking incremental steps toward using your voice.
Living creatively does not apply merely to the arts but to hold an attitude of possibilities. Humming, singing, and voicing your feelings with truth strengthen and tone your fifth chakra. Over time, you develop congruence between your words and your feelings. How creative are you? Do you see life as full of infinite possibilities? Are you on autopilot or participating in each moment?
Sound awareness is especially important, for although we easily lose our mouth and eyes to what we don’t want to take in, we can’t really close our ears. Nature did not give us earlids. Our ears remain open and working even when we sleep. Steven Halpern
Healing affirmations: I hear and speak the truth. Creativity flows in and through me.
Chakra Six
The third eye, anja, is located behind the eyebrows where self-reflection begins, and our goal to see and identify with archetypes emerges. Sixth chakra is about seeing, as the light element, a higher and faster vibration than sound in the below chakra. Perceiving that something exists and determining its meaning helps us develop patterns. We find our way to insight from patterns – or the ability to see within. Illusions, the demon of chakra six, can block our ability to see, wanting something to be different but unable to recognize that it's not. We try to change our spouses, redecorate our homes, buy new clothes, and dye our hair, going to great lengths to fail to change our external world rather than seeing our inner world with clarity.
Judith writes that intuition is the unconscious recognition of pattern, a passive and a central function of chakra six. You can't force intuition. It’s easy to live in our rational minds, conditioned to only use logic. When we rely only on reason, our intuition becomes underdeveloped. When this chakra is unbalanced and deficient, there is poor intuitive ability, with a relentless focus on the rational thought process. This is the intellect who can talk endlessly about a topic but can’t pick up on the utter boredom of the audience. This is the person who says, “That’s just the way I am” or “That’s just how things are.” In excess, a person can have obsessive fantasies and full-blown delusions, from neurotic annoyances to psychosis.
With balance, intuitive, perceptive abilities enhance one’s imagination and creativity. The calm mind uses symbols and imagines different outcomes for their life. A developed sixth chakra contributes to the creation of one's personal vision. We hold up a new image in our minds, revealing instructions for our path. As this chakra develops, we shed previous identities and release attachments to the way things have always been.
“We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion.” John Bradshaw
Healing affirmations: I see all things in clarity. I am open to the wisdom within.
Chakra Seven
The crown chakra, sahasrara, at the top of the head defines our self-knowledge and awareness, where our goal is to know, and we grow out of the individual archetype into a universal identity. The right to know accurate information, the right to truth, and the right to knowledge is the goal of chakra seven. Violet in color, this chakra allows us to see the more profound meaning to life that underlies all of existence. Our beliefs are made of interpretations of our experiences. John Woods says, “the universe is exactly the way we think it is, and that’s why.” If we attach to an idea of how things should be in our lives, we prevent our crown chakra from expanding. While we can’t live without attachment, since we need healthy doses for our relationships, attachment shows us where we can release the grip on changing the external circumstances and dampen our desire to control the world. Attachment is the antithesis of trusting the wisdom of the universe. Yasmin Mogahed says, “Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full.” As we let go of our need for certainty, our control grip loosens.
“We think of consciousness as our thoughts, but thoughts are what consciousness creates, not what it is. We think of consciousness as our perceptions, but there is a faculty that not only perceives, but also remembers, discriminates, and integrates our perceptions. Who or what does this? We feel the pull of consciousness on our emotions, but who or what feels those emotions, and how do we experience feeling? This is the mystery that we embrace in our crown chakra–a mystery that can only be experienced, not explained.” Anodea Judith
Expanding our awareness to access a larger portion of the universal field of consciousness opens the crown chakra. Our spirit liberates from the crown chakra as we deeply root in the lower chakras. The two ends of the spectrum connect. Through meditation, spiritual practice, mystical experiences, study, and the simple yet missed act of paying attention, our awareness increases. To become one with the divine is not to abandon the Self but to realize that divine consciousness is who that Self really is. We can detach from suffering by becoming the witness of it or using the witness as our guide. As we quiet the mind and begin to unhook from it, we observe and disengage from our habitual responses, like fear or anger, and untie the knot these habitual responses have around us.
In everyday life, we can practice mindfulness by paying attention. We see and embody the richness of life in every moment, from sitting at the car repair shop to washing the dishes. It doesn’t mean we are living in fake bliss moment-to-moment, but that we are absorbed in whatever is in front of us, sensations pulsing in our bodies, sounds rushing to our ears, the water flowing over our hands. It’s easy to go on autopilot, to disassociate from the world, to numb out, to get impatient in every unfolding moment. Yet we disconnect from our experience of the present. Our seventh chakra feeds on information like our lower chakras feed on food or love. We absorb information by paying attention to our everyday experiences. Gaining knowledge of the world in us and around us brings us more self-knowledge, the goal of chakra seven.
Healing affirmations: The world is my teacher. I am guided by higher power.
Mindfulness has to do with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. Most of all, it has to do with being in touch. John Kabat-Zinn
Forming Identities
Judith writes that each chakra is associated with a particular identity, which gives us meaning. Humans are meaning-making animals. We evolved by seeking patterns, explanations, and understanding in every experience, including ourselves and our identity. It’s how we’ve made it this far. Everyone creates an identity for themselves; even deliberately not creating one is having one.
From the root chakra, we identify with our body “I am hungry” or “I hurt” up to chakra two, where we can get stuck in our emotion “I am angry.” Physical sensations and intense emotions are as fleeting as the clouds, yet they don't define the sky; they’re part of it. In chakra three, we identify with our actions “I am what I do.” We can become our to-do lists, a human doing instead of a human being. While the third chakra motivates us into action, we can sink into mistakes “I am a failure’.
Up to the fourth chakra, where our social identity lives, the personality develops as it interacts with others – the seductive lover, the pleaser, the entertainer, the lost child, the hero, the rebel, the good girl. This social identity develops based on how successfully it met our goals like being admired, loved, or prevented from rejection. Our social identity traps us in who we are to others “I am the funny one” or “I am a people pleaser.” In the throat chakra, we develop our creative identity and self-express. We take responsibility for the commitments we make through words and actions, “I am an entrepreneur” or “I am a mother.” The identity we’ve created begins to set our path for a personal contribution to the larger system. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this is where self-actualization begins and continues up to the sixth chakra, our third eye. Here, our personal story is part of a larger story. Understanding ourselves develops as we learn from fairy tales, mythology, movies, sports, and new stories.
Finally, our seventh crown chakra, our universal identity, becomes conscious, transcendence from our small and limited world to the entire universe. According to Judith, this is the basis of self-knowledge, seeing the divinity within, as our smaller ego states give way to a recognition of all creation. The clear distinction of self and the world melts away as we see how we are part of something universal and greater than ourselves.
Counterforces of the chakras
Judith identifies demons – or counterforces – of each chakra, but not in an evil biblical sense. Instead, it’s a force that strengthens what it opposes. The medicine is meeting the challenge. Like exposure therapy, if we fear snakes, the best solution is to slowly introduce images of snakes. The counterforces starting from the root to the crown are fear, guilt, shame, grief, lies, illusion, and attachment. The journey upward allows us to access higher levels of organization and complexity, each a new shift in perspective. In the journey downward, we bring that more heightened awareness into our lower chakra activities. Instead of forming our decisions by feelings, we decide and live based on our values and principles. We don’t repeat impulsive patterns like yelling at our partners. Our compassion deepens, and we demand less from others, as we both meet our own needs and see beyond our needs in a relationship.
We begin to create who we are not instead of discovering it. The energy coming from the ground is dynamic and expansive, stored in matter, full of potential for transformation into heat, light, activity. The energy coming down from the top is systematic and calm, and it governs, organizes, orders. Without it, our ground energy is chaotic. Without the ground energy, there is nothing to organize.
Before this book, I imagined the system as linear, unblocking one chakra to reach the next one. But this is wrong. The chakra system sustains through currents of energy that drive down into the lower chakras and upward into the higher chakras. This constant polarity of energy creates balance and growth. The lower chakras ground and root us in our body and soul, while our upper chakras draw us closer to the mind and spirit. The act of duality of rooting and launching is the foundation of growth.
The Eastern Mind, Western Body
Wisdom of the chakras
While an expectation of being perfectly balanced and healed is unreasonable, practicing and connecting deeper with your chakras brings you closer to yourself and your path to connecting with the universal. Judith writes that it’s not so much a matter of trying to get somewhere as removing the blocks to see that we are already there. We are whole. We are not climbing another metaphorical ladder by investigating our chakras but by bringing depth and wisdom to each level, revisiting them over and over again. She affirms that enlightenment comes in pieces, little by little, each day. We receive insights and expand ourselves. Receive and expand. Again and again. Every moment and day is a learning opportunity, a chance to receive feedback, a moment to deepen and increase wisdom. As we change ourselves, so do we change the world.
Interested in a free breathwork session?
Some of you know I am completing a six-month program to become a breathwork facilitator. As part of the practicum, I am conducting free sessions in exchange for feedback. Breathwork is a practice of allowing our systems to see a different perspective whereby we feel deeply connected to our bodies and understand and experience the intelligence contained within our systems. Breathwork is a way to heal, release, and transform.
Book a free session here
Here are the most common benefits of breathwork:
» Immediate stress reduction & anxiety relief.
» Connect with your emotions & change your response to them.
» More energy & mental clarity.
» Deepens your relationship to your body.
