The theory of the chakras either migrated to China along with Buddhism, or at another time, or was subject to what might be referred to as parallel conceptual evolution. Although it is not the subject of this article, I should point out that there are even similarities with the sefirot pattern of Kabballah and other traditions.
The chakra meditations that I use in both Kung Fu classes and on the Kung Fu Living App use something of a combination of references to both the India tradition and the Chinese tradition without, I trust, causing any significant infringement to the integrity of either.
For anyone steeped in, and who’s intrinsic paradigm is, the traditional culture and religion of India or China, I humbly apologise for the appropriation liberties I take, but please understand that I have my own paradigm firmly rooted in Greek and later European philosophy, grown in the soil of Celtic and Norse mythology, weathered by the climate of Judaeo/Christian theology, watered by modern Western scientific methodology, while soaking up the sun of Indian and Chinese religious traditions. I am very much aware of the plethora of alternative approaches and interpretations applied to the chakras and dan tiens, but I have found the way I think of, and use, them to be helpful to many people. So, if I appear to have taken only those ideas that can be comfortably accommodated by my own noetic paradigm it is because those are the ideas that I have found to have the most utility to me and others with a western education. My descriptions therefore are far from exhaustive, but are specific to my practice.
The chakras appear to represent a journey or a process that starts with the most material or physical aspect of our beings to the most spiritual, ephemeral or transcendent. It can be seen as the stages of both, historic human cultural development and individual personal human development. It is in combining these images that, for me, creates a narrative that anchors us as individuals to the story of our species. It represents a map or if you like a flowchart of this journey, which enables us to, not only plot our progress, but also it becomes a diagnostic tool as our progress along (or up) this spectrum of development is not constant of necessarily progressive. In other words, we might be at a different stage from one day to the next, even moving backwards sometimes.
It is necessary to understand that emotions are felt physically in the body. Each chakra has an emotional response associated with it that you will literally feel as you meditate upon, or shall I say consider deeply, each one with its corresponding meaning. This association between a point in the body and a particular emotion is so strong that it is possible to imagine or visualise sending energy and your complete attention to a point in the body and have the corresponding emotion be initiated in response. Let me give a couple of simple examples to clarify. When most people (there is very little diversity) feel anxious or panicked they are experiencing what you might call a sense of personal inadequacy in their current environment or situation and they will generally feel this physically in their solar plexus. When most people feel the need to express a strong emotion, strong enough for them cry, but hold it in and refuse to express it, they will feel a tightening in their throat.
When we consider each chakra, you will find that the emotion associated with the corresponding concept is felt in the location of that chakra. So, by meditating upon each chakra in turn, considering its meaning and allowing the emotion associated with the idea to emerge, you will have a clear sensory feedback that you are able to relate to, and feel, that stage of the developmental process. Again, let me use a couple of examples. If you consider a sad idea with some intensity and deliberate focus, you will initiate that emotion. If you give your attention to something happy or joyful for a while you will initiate those emotions and of course feel them physically. If however, regardless of how much you focus on such an idea, you do not find the corresponding, physically sensed, emotion emerge, then you would know that you had some psych/emotional issues to work through; perhaps some relevant, emotionally significant event that you had not yet fully processed. In other words, the lack of emotional reaction would be diagnostically relevant. It would let you know your current psychological state.
Because each chakra represents a developmental stage and are progressive, each one building upon the previous, it is generally advised to always start your meditation at the base and work up. When you find you just can’t feel, that you can’t relate to one of the chakras, or rather the concept associated with it, there is likely to be an issue with the immediately lower one, that you would be advised to spend some time giving your attention to.
The Base Centre or Root Chakra (Muladhara in Sanskrit) is located at the base of the spine or more specifically at the perineum. Visualised as a red spinning energy, I see them all as tiny spinning galaxies, in this case as a galaxy of red stars. You might breath in to your abdomen and then as you breath out picture the energy moving down to this chakra and as you do so see it get bigger, brighter, redder and spin a little faster. Now as you focus on this point consider that from this point you are connected to the centre of the Earth. This point is all about feeling grounded, belonging. Consider that every atom in your body, from the food that you eat has come from the ground beneath your feet. You are literally made of the minerals of the ground. Every atom of you has been part of this planet since it was formed from the space dust from of some exploding star. You are a part of this Earth. You have an identity as an individual for a short time, but never stop being made of the stuff of the Earth. In the way that a wave is part of the ocean. It has an individual identity for a while as the wind blows it across the ocean, though is constantly changing the molecules that form its shape, just like you, and when it reaches a shore, it will dissipate back into the ocean from which it came. Your ancestors have emerged from this planet and have spent the last few billion years as a magnificent research and development project resulting in you. Every one of your ancestors from single celled amoeba have been survivors and successful in their generations, for they all had offspring. What this means is that your survival needs are met. It means that the ground produces all the nourishment you need. It means that the gravity is just right, the atmospheric pressure is just right, the electromagnet field is perfect, air is the perfect blend of gasses, the light intensity is perfect for your eyes and you even have a hormonal cycle in tune with the phases of the moon. In short, you belong, this is you home. Allow yourself to soak up that idea and spend a moment feeling grounded, centred and that total sense of belonging.
Now consider the second or Sacral chakra. Sometimes called the sex centre. (Svadhishthana in Sanskrit) The lower dan tien or elixir field. Picture a tiny orange swirling galaxy that sits an inch or so below the naval and a couple of inches inside. Now if the base centre was about your survival needs being met, this one about wanting more. Not just nutrition, but a good menu, not just shelter, but quality interior design. This energy is what the Chinese call Jing energy, an animal drive towards abundance. No longer are you the individual surviving, now you will collaborate with others to build abundance. It is because of this drive that we are no longer naked in the forest digging for roots to eat. It drives us want more, to build, to create, to gather. Whether you make it, create it, take it or procreate it, you want to have more. The drive itself is amoral, that is neither good or bad, it is a brute fact. It might drive you to create art, a business empire, a family, a garden. It might drive you to colonise the wilderness or invade another country. Creative, sexual or violent, it the drive to abundance.
The third or Solar Plexus Centre or Chakra (Manipura in Sanskrit) sits at, not surprisingly, the solar plexus, but nearer the centre of your body and is yellow or golden in colour. This is the seat of self-esteem, self-control or self-discipline and you might say self-love. When you feel fearful or inadequate for your current situation, this is where you might feel it. When you feel exultantly powerful and confident for the task before you, you might say expectantly victorious, even proud in a non-conceited way, this is also where you might feel it. When you love yourself properly, self-discipline becomes easy because nothing is too much effort the object of your love. You can often see women who feed their children the best food they can get their hands on but then eat rubbish themselves, because they love their child but have insufficient love for themselves to make the effort to care of their own body. Or men (I don’t mean to be sexist, merely referring to people I have known) who love their car so much they lavish great attention upon, giving it the very best fuel and servicing it regularly, but letting their own body fall apart from neglect. It takes no discipline to care for the object of your love. This is why self-love or self-esteem are linked to self-discipline. We have to learn to gracious to ourselves. To be forgiving. We see our own faults from the inside, all of our doubts, fears, mean thoughts and selfish anger, but we only see of others the result of their editing; what they allow to develop from thought to action. Hence we often judge ourselves harshly. People often say that the hate something about themselves and my response is something like, if your own child the very attribute that you hate in yourself, would you hate them? Or would you love them in spite of it? If the latter then learn to be gracious to yourself.
The fourth or Heart Chakra or Centre (Anahata in Sanskrit) is also the middle Dan Tien and is the centre for Chi energy. It sits at the heart or the centre of the chest. This is seen as emerald green. The energy of this Dan Tien is higher than at the lower or if you think of energy in terms of wavelength this is double the hz. This energy is the energy of joy or love. It can overflow from the love of self to expand out to others. Joy is the emotion of Love. Sometimes when we talk of loving we use the word to mean a loving action that is more an act of the will than an expression of an emotion. But the emotion, the feeling in the body, the physical sensation of love is what we generally call joy. When I say I love something, whether I love walking in the Welsh mountains or listening to a particular music, looking at a particular painting, or indeed if I say I love a person, what I generally mean is the they cause me to feel joy. Joy is like an energy that fills the chest and overflows. It feels like you breath in energy that your chest can’t possibly hold and your shoulders have to rise, your head goes back and your mouth opens in a smile. Compared to the energy of the lower Dan Tien, you can see that it is similar and people often confuse or conflate sexual attraction with love for this reason.
The fifth or Throat Chakra/centre (Vishuddha in Sanskrit) is sky blue or even turquoise. This is often described as the seat of truth. I think of this energy centre more like a gateway and I actually visualise it like a swirling sky blue galaxy, but as it is energised by my focus, as well as getting brighter and bigger, I see it open in the middle like a camera aperture. When this centre is working it allows us to freely and easily express our emotions. This is vital because when we can talk about our emotions, we can process them. If we have an emotional experience that we can’t process, we can’t leave it behind. Picture an emotion like an energy of a certain wavelength. Until it is dissipated by being fully processed it can stay with us like a magnetic force that will warp other energies and therefor experiences as they pass, twisting or diverting our thinking like a magnet pulling or pushing. Suppose you had a heart-breaking relationship and now every time you even consider having another relationship, the loitering emotional energy from the heartbreak subverts your thinking and you can’t even consider another relationship with supposing that it will end badly. Now when we can talk about an experience, and I don’t mean reliving it so that you just reinforce the hurt, but talk about it enough to be able to let it go by changing the energy of the memory, then we can start, and sometimes finish, processing it. Talking is always necessary, though not always sufficient, so you might need more therapy, but the talking must happen. When we talk of something, to put it simply, it goes through one bit of brain to recall, another to construct words, and another to actually speak it. Then we hear our own voice so it passes through another bit of brain. You will know the power of this if you have ever spoken for the first time of an event from years ago, that you thought you would be over by now, but as you start to speak you find yourself crying, perhaps totally to your surprise. If you have some understanding of how to recall a memory and reframe it in a way that it is stored in future with a different emotion attached then you don’t necessarily need to talk to another person (If you are not aware how to do this, there is or will be an article about the process on our site. Some trauma is of a level of severity that a therapist in person will be needed to help.) It seems to be the actual vocalisation that is the key feature. You could talk to your dog, a tree, the stars or just out loud to yourself, just not silently in your head. As I mentioned earlier, I’m sure we are all familiar with that feeling in the throat that we get when we need to cry out, but hold it in. That is the throat centre.
The sixth chakra or centre, sometimes referred to as the third eye, (Ajna in Sanskrit) it is the higher Dan Tien and the centre for shen energy. Located above the brows in the centre of the forehead, it is a darker blue, like Lapis Lazuli though some people describe it as a silver blue. This is the seat of wisdom and as with all the chakra it requires the previous ones to be functioning to work. Perhaps you can see that you need to have no emotional energy from your own past warping your thinking to have clearer insight. This is about being able to see the big picture. Shen energy is twice the hz of chi energy so you could think of it as being higher than joy or love the way the joy is higher than sexual drive. It is energised consciousness that is often described as spiritual energy. People sometimes say that they always feel on the verge of realising some great wonder or mystery, and it gives them excitement at the prospect, they are also content to be in that position of expectation. You might meet someone who you feel so connected to that you start to wonder if reincarnation must be true because you feel that you must have known them before. This chakra is also about projecting ahead. Let me unpack that a bit. In the dark it as if the road ahead is not even there, but if you turn on your car lights, suddenly you have illuminated several hundred yards ahead of you and you can go forward into that illuminated future. Imagine creating an image of your own future and projecting it ahead of you like a hologram, then you could go forward into that illuminated future. If that sounds like super spiritual nonsense, just carefully visualise a pizza. Picture in great detail, the crustiness of the base, the tomato paste that you might spread on it and each topping, until you have a clear image of it. Now go and make that pizza. You just did it. But your creative imagination could be of less mundane things than a pizza.
The seventh, Crown Centre or Brahma chakra (Sahasrara in Sanskrit) is on the very crown of the head, though some people see it as just above. This energy centre is seen as purple of even golden purple is you can picture such a colour. Unlike the others, this chakra is often described as like a fountain of coloured energy pouring upwards like a firework where the energy goes up and falls back. This is often the hardest to describe. I find people often nod, quietly smiling and then say something like, ah yes, I know, I find it difficult to find words as well. This chakra is about feeling connected to everything, it has that sense of being at one with the universe. It is what Buddhists would describe as the realisation of the illusion of separateness. What Rumi most likely meant when he said “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” If you consider the big bang, or however you picture the beginning of the universe, as one great event, just one event and one thing, but one very complicated and huge event, that you are part of or rather it is expressing itself as you. Now in my experience, this is a realisation that happens rarely and for a moment, but can the memory of it can stay with you for some time. It comes with the most profound sense of contentment, a sort of magnificent realisation of “oh, that’s ok then.” On our Kung Fu Living online program you will find both individual guided meditations for each of these, but also a longer guided meditation covering all of them. I hope you find this helpful.
