Each of the major chakras in the human body is a center of swirling energy positioned at one of seven points, from the base of the spine to the top of the head. The word chakra means disk, vortex, or wheel.

Where meridians are an energy transportation system, the chakras are energy stations.

Chakra energy is vital to every system in your body, and some energy psychology approaches focus primarily on the chakras in formulating energy interventions. Even with the brief and very simple introduction to chakra work provided in this module, you will be adding a significant element to the skills you have already been developing for bringing an energy-based perspective to psychological change.

The term chakra has its origins in India, but healers from numerous cultures have discovered, described, and developed techniques for working with these bodies of swirling energy.

Electrical oscillations in the skin above the chakras are in the frequency of 100 to 1600 cycles per second, as contrasted with 0 to 100 cps in the brain, 225 in the muscles, and 250 in the heart. When advanced meditators consciously project energy through a chakra, the strength of the electrical field emanating from that chakra multiplies.

Beyond instrumentation, most people can readily feel chakra energy when they learn even a simple chakra clearing procedure, such as to place either hand over one of the chakras of another person and move it with deliberation in a counter-clockwise direction and then in a clockwise direction. Try it.

Seven major chakras are usually distinguished, although some cultures identify only five and others set the number as high as ten. Part of this discrepancy may be because there are also many "mini-chakras" throughout the body. The hands and eyes act as chakras, and new spiraling vortexes may appear anywhere that fresh energy is required, as after an injury or if an area of the body needs to be cleared of toxins. The heart energy comes through the center of the chest, but also through each breast, as if there are three chakras feeding the heart area.

Each chakra is seen as hovering above the body, where it touches into the aura, and also as spiraling down into the body. As a "seer" follows the chakra energy down into the body, it has the appearance of being layered. Each layer has its own set of colors and may be spinning in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. Light and color are also seen as spinning up and out from the vortex of the chakra’s deepest layer. The deepest layers go into the body; the surface layers hover above the body.

While some books and charts simplistically correlate each chakra with a specific color, people who see subtle energy claim that each chakra is unique, holds many colors, and reflects the energies the person was born into as well as the life that has been lived. That is, some of the colors are unchanging and others shift with experience and development. While there does appear to be some basis for the correspondences between the chakras and the colors they are traditionally associated with--from red at the root to violet at the crown--the vibrational relationships of the chakras and their colors seem to be far more complex.

Each layer of a chakra also seems involved with different issues. In Donna Eden’s experience: "The top layer, which sometimes feels more like debris than a coherent energy, seems related to recent events that have not yet been integrated. As you go deeper, the energies get clearer and more consistent, and the chakra's distinct influence becomes more obvious. The fourth level begins to pick up incidents from earlier in the person's life. If I move into the field deeply enough, and reach the fourth, fifth, and sixth levels, I get images and stories. When I tell the stories, the person usually responds with some version of, ‘Yes, that's what happened.’ Working with the heart chakra of a morose 36-year-old woman, I related, ‘I feel I am looking out at the world from the age of about seven, and I have just lost someone I love dearly. It is not a parent, perhaps a sibling? My grief is too much to bear. My heart is closing down.’ Her startled and tearful reply: ‘That's when Robert, my older brother, was accidentally shot by a neighbor boy who was playing with his father's gun. He died two days later.’ I do not think of this as a supernatural ability, but rather an expression of our natural but often atrophied capacity to read the story imprinted in a chakra's energies."

Each chakra influences the organs, muscles, ligaments, veins, and all other systems within its energy field.

Each chakra is named after the part of the body over which its energy spins. The chakras are called, from the bottom up: 1) the root chakra, 2) the sacral or womb chakra, 3) the solar plexus chakra, 4) the heart chakra, 5) the throat chakra, 6) the third eye (or pituitary) chakra, and 7) the crown (or pineal) chakra.

The organs that are in the proximity of each of the primary chakras are related to that chakra's functions.

A sensitive practitioner's hand held over a chakra may resonate with pain in a related organ, congestion in a lymph node, subtle abnormalities in heat or pulsing, or areas of emotional turmoil.

The hand can vibrate so intimately with a chakra's energies that the practitioner has an experience which mirrors the client's or reveals the condition of one of the client's organs.

Practitioners who work with the chakras over time learn that these sensations have specific meanings, so the hand becomes a diagnostic tool.

The hand itself is a center of energy, extending out particularly from the palm, and it is often used as an instrument in energy healing.

Electromagnetic and other measures of the hand’s energies show marked increases when a healer is giving a treatment. These energies, emanating from the hands, are used to correct disturbances in the client’s energy system.

By correcting disturbances in the body’s energies, physical improvements are initiated. The central assumption is straightforward:

The chakras influence the endocrine system and are thus strongly involved with moods, personality, and behavior. They are also believed to encode information that is rooted in a person’s past and that influences psychological states.

Just as the primary source of authority about the physical nature and functions of the chakras rests in healers and intuitives who "see" and "feel" the chakra energy, they are also the most reliable source available about the psychological and spiritual functions of the chakras. This discussion draws from their reports since there is virtually no empirical research on the psychological functions of chakras. If this seems too speculative, you might want to simply skip the following discussion of the psychological and spiritual functions of the chakras and move to the techniques, which bring you back onto an empirical footing. That is, you will observe from within your own experience that the techniques work or that they don’t work.

However, it may be of both interest and value to have a larger context for understanding the techniques. The "sight" of energy intuitives is the best source of information to date for understanding the anatomy and physiology of the "energy body," so the remainder of this discussion, and the subsequent discussion about the spiritual functions of the chakras, rely on their reports.

A person’s physical, psychological, and spiritual evolution are each said to be reflected in the chakra energies.

Memory is believed to be energetically coded in the chakras just as it is chemically coded in the neurons—an imprint of every emotionally significant event a person has experienced is said to be recorded in the chakra energy. Even information that traces to purported "previous lifetimes" is said to be encoded in the chakras.

The chakras reveal how a client's history plays into current symptoms. By clearing chakras that are still caught in the energies of the past, or are otherwise disturbed, the entire energy system is given a boost, and depending on the chakra, this will also enhance: the person’s life force (root chakra), creativity (sacral or womb chakra), assertiveness (solar plexus), ability to give and receive love (heart chakra), expressiveness (throat chakra), ability to comprehend and transcend one’s own story (third eye), or flow in one’s connectedness with the universe (crown chakra).

Each chakra is believed to be a conduit for a particular form of energy within the universe. That is, the energy of a chakra is seen as the microcosm of a universal principle expressed within the body. The seven chakras resonate, respectively, with the principles of survival (root), creativity (womb), power (solar plexus), love (heart), expression (throat), comprehension and transcendence (third eye), and unity (crown).

These universal forces manifest themselves through the chakras in both their positive and negative aspects. They provide the archetypal pattern for bonding and for separation (heart chakra); for growth and for atrophy (solar plexus chakra). The chakras spiral these larger energies into the body, feeding the entire physical structure, and linking the body to the subtle energies that surround it.

Going up the scale from the first to the seventh chakra follows a natural developmental line—from the urge for life to its manifestation to its empowerment to its capacities for love, expression, and comprehension, to a spiritual longing for oneness and unity.

This does not, however, mean that the "lower" the chakra the less spiritual it is. This commonplace, hierarchical idea is like saying that a 40-year-old man is spiritually superior to his 4-year-old son. To each his season. Each developmental stage is in its own way as profound as the next. Each chakra connects with a universal force, has a soul-deep task, and holds a transcendent beauty.

For many people, in fact, personal evolution seems to be more about dropping deeper into the themes of the "lower" chakras than about cultivating the themes of the "higher" ones. Many therapists have faced the dilemma of counseling people who use their spiritual pursuits as a way of trying to skip over having to complete certain basic psychosocial tasks.

Although some practitioners of energy psychology work almost exclusively with the chakras, and in great depth, the focus in this program is on a single dimension of chakra work which does not require any special sensitivities to subtle energy.

Specifically, you will be learning to recondition a disturbed chakra response to a stimulus (thought, image, memory, or event). As in the meridian protocol, the treatment goal is to pair a previously disturbing stimulus with an undisturbed response within the chakra.

Some practitioners prefer to begin with the chakras rather than the meridians. Balancing the chakras tends to bring balance to the meridian system and vice versa. Because the meridians are used more frequently within energy psychology, this program began with them.

If you have been following the program as it is laid out here, and the problem persists after using the advanced meridian treatment sequence, a variety of possible causes and next steps should be considered.

One of those possibilities is that a different energy system is involved in the problem, and treating the meridians did not (though it often does) correct that disturbance. If the meridians are balanced, yet the problem persists, the chakras are usually the best next candidate to explore.

To check for involvement of the chakras, first be sure the problem state is still "locked in" (based on earlier use of the Third Eye Up or the Leg Lock techniques from the Opening Phases module). An indicator muscle that was firm before the problem state was accessed should now be weak on an energy check "in the clear."

One of numerous techniques for balancing a chakra that becomes disturbed when a problem state is accessed, and the one featured here, is to lock in the problem state and then:

1. Circle the area over the chakra with either hand, using a counterclockwise motion (imagine the client’s body as the face of the clock) for about 30 seconds.
    

2. Pause over the chakra and take a deep breath.
    

3. Circle in a clockwise direction for about 30 seconds.
    

4. Pause over the chakra and take a deep breath.
    

5. Recheck. If there is no correction, repeat or check for psychological reversals or neurological disorganization.
    

A simpler method, while less potent, is often adequate. The client makes contact with the chakra with the palm of the hand and imagines directing energy in and out of the area while taking several deep breaths. Either method can be used when alone, but the first is more effective when administered by another.

Dedicate some time to experiment with both methods.

Just as when a disturbed meridian is balanced, other meridians that had tested strong may become disturbed as the energy system attempts to rebalance itself, chakra energies may also shift as interventions are applied.

Some practitioners routinely balance each of the major chakras, generally working from the root to the crown chakra. This can also be reversed, particularly when the head is feeling clogged or a headache occurs during the work.

In Seemorg Matrix Work, which places a large emphasis on the chakra system, the chakra associated with the target problem is held while each of the other chakras is balanced. Clinical experience has shown that involving a chakra that contains traumatic energy, while balancing each of the other chakras, facilitates the release of energies associated with the trauma and stabilizes the results of the treatment.

The overall strategy, which can be used with both the meridians and the chakras, is to, after appropriate preliminaries, have the client:

1. Access and lock in (Third Eye Up or Leg Lock) a problem state.
    

2. Rate the amount of distress it causes (SUD and MUD ratings).
    

3. Correct neurological disorganization before and throughout the treatment sequence.
    

4. Correct psychological reversals before and throughout the treatment sequence.
    

5. Shift the energies related to the problem state using appropriate energy treatments.
    

6. Integrate into this process additional procedures that lower the SUD level (e.g. nine gamut, brain balance, eye roll), anchor in the results when the SUD has reached zero, and bridge the gains into back home situations.

As do meridian interventions, chakra interventions fit within point 5.

If one of the earlier practice treatment sessions did not lead to a full resolution of the presenting problem, return to that problem, this time incorporating chakra balancing.

Alternatively, choose a new problem area and conduct a session using the protocols you have learned in this program, this time, however, working with the chakras rather than the meridians.

At the end of the session, solicit feedback from your partner and then reverse roles

(Case Illustration from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine, pp. 141 – 142)

A woman was having her eighty-sixth birthday and someone had given her a session with me as a birthday present. I eventually began to sense that I was picking up something about a past lifetime. I said, "Excuse me, do you believe in past lives?" With annoyance in her voice, she said, "I most certainly do not!" So I tried to ignore what I was sensing, but it continued to plague me. Finally, I said, "Images that are not of this time or this place are presenting themselves to me very strongly. I know you said you don't believe in past lives, so we can just take this as a metaphor, but I feel I won't do you justice unless I tell you about it.

She finally agreed, and I told her that I was having a vision of a man in his forties who lived in England. He was a real gentleman. He was sort of short and squatty, and he was a wonderful piano player. Along with his family, piano was his great joy. He had two daughters and a wife, and they were all accustomed to life's finer things. But he wanted them to have more than just an ordinary, unadventurous life, and he found the courage to take them to the New World.

The only piece of furniture they had sent over was his piano. When they got to what is now Virginia, it was not at all a genteel world. There were fears and concerns of the unknown, of the Indians, and of the hardships. The town had a fort around it. Because the man was short and squatty and did not look at all refined, they wanted him to be a guard outside the fort. He protested that he was a musician, but there was no piano to play, as his had not yet arrived. He was ridiculed for trying to get out of the work as a guard by claiming to be a piano player, and he was never recognized for having taken the enormously courageous step that brought him to the New World. He was not at all cut out to be a guard, and he was very unhappy with his life. His daughters hated living in the New World, they blamed him for their misfortune, and they were quite cruel to him. They were also ashamed, embarrassed by his ineptness, and they soon became estranged from him.

He had no one to talk with where he stood guard, except little children from the Indian communities who would come by. These playful boys and girls became the light of his life. His higher-ups told him he must make them go away as he could create problems with the Indians. But every time the children came around, he enjoyed them so much that he allowed them to stay.

His piano finally arrived, after having been lost for years in a foreign port. When it showed up, he was much older. His daughters were married and gone. No one took him seriously about the piano, and he couldn't find the courage to play it after so many years.

I also saw that he died without ever realizing the gift he had provided his community. He had a great deal to do with maintaining trust with the Indians because they saw that their children loved him so much. Just as he had shown tremendous courage in coming to the New World, he had also been an unsung hero in ignoring his superiors and not sending away the children.

After relating this story, I looked at my client and she was choked with emotion. She told me that she was a pianist, and that she had two daughters, and her daughters felt that she did not have courage because she was a much better pianist than anyone knew. "I am very very good, but I cannot play in front of people." She looked me in the eye and said, "That was me." She kissed me good-bye when she left. That night was her birthday party. The next day she called to tell me that she played her piano at the party. Everybody was stunned by her abilities, and her daughters spoke eloquently of their pride in her.

If stimulation of the meridian points—interspersed with general balancing techniques and the resolution of psychological reversals—does not get the SUD down to 0 or near 0, it is possible that:

5. Another energy system is involved.