Guest post by Jyotish Patel
The chakras have a number of correspondents, just as the five elements do in the Chinese system. Each Chakra has physical location in the body and is associated with a nerve plexus, endocrine gland and physiological and emotional attributes.
As well as emanating energy in concentric layers or rings, the Root chakra opens downward and the Crown chakra opens upwards. As such, they play a special role in pulling energy into the body.
The root chakra pulls the energy up from the Earth, rises up through the body to meet the energy being pulled down from above via the Crown chakra. In this way they constitute essential and interdependent energies of Earth (yin) and Sky (yang), harnessing the power of the Earth and the cosmos. The Root chakra simultaneously sends energy back down to earth to ground us and release energetic toxins just as the Crown chakra sends energy upwards that connect us with the energies of the cosmos.
Each of the seven chakras also has seven layers. These may spin in the same or different directions depending on whether a particular chakra layer is receiving, releasing, storing or processing information as it adapts to the shifting energies in the dance of life. The innermost and densest layer is located at the spine touching and interacting with the basic grid system within the energetic core. Remember these layers of the chakras also extend out at the back of the body. It can be easy to think that the chakras only emanate out of the front body as most of the images that we see are of the front body, but they act equally on all sides of the body (front, back, sides). When Prune sees chakras, she describes them in two interconnected ways. The first is as the swirling discs of energy, but the second is as bowls that sit on top of each other. Imagine 7 bowls sitting on top of each other, each connected by a central column.
You can see in the picture that the vibrational energy of each chakra is represented by colour and also by the depth of the chakra. The base chakra is especially dense and thus represented as deeper than most of the others.But Prune reminds us not to get caught up in the belief that the Root chakra is always Red, or the Solar Plexus is always yellow. These colours traditionally shown simply capture the general vibration of the character of the chakra, not the reality of it for you, at this moment. You may have root chakras that show mostly purple today, or heart chakras that show deep red or orange. The chakra system is dynamic, continually changing and moving. It is a kaleidoscopic wonder!
So, the inherent movement in the chakras is generated by the energy moving through the energetic core from the Crown to the Root and from the Root to the Crown. In the process of individual development, however there is a flow of energy from the base up, which further activates the movement of the chakras. Normally, this upward progression from the first chakra to the seventh would occur over the person’s lifetime. However, specific practices that have been created and discovered over centuries to stimulate the chakras, and thus accelerate person development. Some examples of these practices are pranayama (breathwork), dynamic dance, meditations, affirmations, ritual and Sound Bath These discoveries often formed the framework of the secret teachings of the mystery schools, internal alchemy, healing rituals, and devotional practices.
In yogic philosophy the opening of the central pathway or energetic core is the initiation of the accelerated awakening process.
Deep within the Root Chakra, at the base of the spine, a massive amount of core energy is stored. This is known as Kundalini energy. When activated through energy and spiritual practices, this massive energy moves upwards through the energetic core and activates the major processing centres of all of the chakras. As this energy enter a chakra the increased vitality causes the wheel of the chakra to spin faster, expanding the vortex of the energy farther out from the centre of the chakra, stimulating and enhancing any and all functions. The effects are not confined to the energy centres only, but become manifest throughout one’s entire being.