Working With Your Chakras

Posted on March 09, 2021

What Are Chakras?

The seven chakras are spinning energy centers or vortices that are located along your spine and absorb as well as emit life force energy. Each one holds a very specific vibration and has a specific purpose.

In a healthy, balanced person, the seven chakras provide the right balance of energy to every part of your body, mind, and spirit. When a chakra is out of alignment, meaning the flow of life force energy is blocked or flowing slowly it affects your mind – body – spirit balance.  

Most of you have felt some of these energy centers before. For example, whenever you feel fear or have a gut feeling about something you feel it in the gut region. Or when you feel deep love you put your hand over your heart. Now you aren’t actually feeling your stomach or your heart organ, but rather the energy center or chakra in that area.

In this blog post, I will provide an overview of the body’s energy system, including their purpose and how to work with them.  

Overview Of The Seven Chakras: 

1st Chakra: Root Chakra

• Location: Base of your spine
• Color: Red
• Element: Earth
• Purpose: The root chakra is all about connecting your energy with the Earth-- Grounding to the human, earthly experience. It concerns itself with meeting your fundamental needs such as support, survival, financial and emotional security, and connection to the wider world. 
• Balance: Sense of peace and security when you think about money, safety, shelter, and belonging.
• How to energize: Go out into nature.
• Crystals: Red Jasper, Bloodstone, Rhodonite – but remember that any stone that makes you feel safe and secure will have a great effect when working on your root chakra.

The root chakra’s primary concern is survival, security and stability – making sure physical and non-physical needs are being met. Just like it is explained in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, we cannot grow or evolve if our basic needs aren’t met, because we won’t be able to focus our attention or energy elsewhere. The root chakra is also concerned with connection and feeling a sense of belonging. Since our sense of belonging, safety and security are heavily influenced in our formative years through conditioning and childhood experiences, most of us humans on this earthly journey have root chakras that are somewhat out of alignment.

Working with the root chakra to bring it into alignment will likely trigger you and make you feel insecure or unsafe as opening to the energy flow requires addressing underlying blockages such as intergenerational trauma or a scarcity mindset. The physical world feels unsafe to you so working in this energy can be triggering.

But by intentionally healing your trauma, beliefs, and patterns that allow your root chakra to open, you allow yourself to move forward in life and to feel a sense of belonging in the world.

Working With Your Root Chakra:

• Ground yourself – best done in nature, walking barefoot on the earth or aligning your spine with the trunk of a tree. You can also ground by getting into your body and eating grounding foods such as root vegetables.
• Meet your needs – your needs are never wrong as they are the basic necessities that we as human beings need to feel safe, secure, understood etc. Avoiding them or ignoring them does not make them go away.
• Develop safe and secure relationships – many people have trauma that is located in the root chakra associated with not feeling safe and secure in relationships. Cultivating relationships that are safe and where you feel a sense of belonging are vital to healing.
• Acknowledge your fear – The root chakra is concerned with safety and security and therefore instinctually will alert you with the energy of fear. Get to know these fearful parts of you and integrate this energy instead of letting it drain or block the flow of life force energy.
• Move your body – any exercise that gets the blood flowing helps move energy and helps to open this chakra.
• Create an abundance mindset – the root chakra is about one’s needs being met and resisting abundance and resisting receiving is in direct opposition to having one’s needs met.
• Breathe – breath is life force energy and it connects the physical with the non-physical. Insecure, stressed, and fearful people tend to breath very shallow and subconsciously reject connecting with the energy of the earth and their human experience.

2nd Chakra: Sacral Chakra

• Location: Few fingers below your belly button 
• Color: Orange
• Element: Water
• Purpose: The sacral chakra helps you cope with new experiences and exploring the world and is the basis for your identity as a human. It brings creative energy that helps you enjoy life, sexuality, and your imagination.
• Balance: Able to relish pleasurable things life has to offer, without overdoing them or misusing them.
• How to energize: Create a piece of art, enjoy a delicious meal, indulge in sensual pleasures.
• Crystals: Carnelian, red jasper, citrine, sunstone and many more… but most importantly use your intuition and what stone feels right for you.

The sacral chakra is the center of your personal power, your sensuality, and creativity. It is governed by your personal desires. It is the energy center through which you create the life you experience and how you relate to others in relationships. Its purpose is to connect, engage and co-create with others and the world itself, creatively and sexually.

As we try to move out of our survival mode into pleasure and enjoyment of life, we are often held back by external circumstances that want to control our desires or wants, therefore diminishing our personal power and ability to be the powerful creators we are. In order to be palatable, to fit in, or because we have bought into the fear mongering, we go against our natural desires and wants and restrict ourselves. For example, we feel shame for our sexual desires and for fully living out our sensual pleasures which also diminishes our ability to be creative because there is no real difference between sexual and personal creative energy. When we give our personal power away to external forces, our sacral chakra is out of alignment and we lose touch with our passion and what drives us to experience life to the fullest, therefore not fully living.

Working With Your Sacral Chakra:

• Embrace that you are a sexual being – if you have resistance to or feel shame around your sexuality, your sacral chakra will suffer and so will your personal power. Embrace that you are a sexual being and find healthy ways to express it.
• Get clear on what you want – a want is basically just a very strong need and meeting your needs is a basis for living a fulfilled, healthy and happy life as we already covered with the root chakra. So, get clear on what you want and how you are restricting yourself (and therefore the flow of life force energy) from having those wants and needs met.
• Be creative – express your creative and sexual energies to activate and pleasure all your senses. This can mean making a delicious meal, painting, dancing, or any other way in which you can let your creative energy flow.
• Heal relationship dynamics – learn how you show up in relationships and where you give your power away or where you try to control someone else’s personal power. We must learn that we are all sovereign beings that can come together in healthy connection without losing oneself.
• Indulge in pleasure – indulge and do more of that which brings you pleasure and awakens all of your senses.
• Live with passion - what lights up your soul? Do more of that. Chase joy and pursue those things that make you feel a sense of passion. Following your joy and passion is the best way to bring to life that which you were meant to share with the world.
• Feel all the feels – sexual and creative energy must be felt to be expressed so you need to learn how to feel all of it, emotionally but also how you feel these feels in your body.
• Breathe – Again, breath is life force energy itself. Focus on breathing deeply into your sacral chakra area to activate it and literally breathe life into it.   

3rd Chakra: Solar Plexus

• Location: Just above your belly button in the diaphragm area
• Color: Yellow
• Element: Fire
• Purpose: The solar plexus is the seat of your personal power and understanding your place in the world. You feel your self- confidence and wisdom in your gut.
• Balance: Feel a sense of wisdom, decisiveness and personal power.
• How to energize: Think of what you know you are good at; what makes you feel confident.
• Crystals: Citrine, sunstone, amber and many more.

The solar plexus is the center of personal power and identity, how we show up in the world. This chakra becomes blocked through inaction, indecisiveness, and inauthenticity. It is our gut feeling that provides us with wisdom that we then get to act on or not. Depending on our action or inaction, we either feel a strong sense of personal choice, confidence and integrity or we feel low self-esteem, desperate, insecure and trapped. Relationships where we don’t feel seen, heard or understood also contribute to misalignment of our solar plexus because they make us feel “less than”. Bringing our solar plexus in alignment means living our authentic self in this world and attracting relationships in alignment with our truth. You will feel empowered and confident to live the life you consciously choose.

Working With Your Solar Plexus Chakra:

• Be authentic – be completely honest with yourself and others with who you are, how you live your life and what you want. The more authentic you are, the more in alignment your solar plexus will be.
• Live with integrity – that means living in accordance to your internal guidance system, your conscience. You intuitively know what is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, ethical or non-ethical and that is your personal sense of integrity. Act in alignment with that.
• Embrace free will - the one power we as humans were given, is free will. Embrace your power to choose, to make decisions for yourself that reflect your true self.
• Create real intimacy in relationships – this means making their best interest as part of our best interest. In this way, our sense of self is not in opposition to the way we are in relationship to others. 
• Move your body – since this chakra is all about action and decision, it responds well to movement.
• Take risks – take risks that are in alignment with what you genuinely and authentically want to do, even if what you want are in direct opposition of what society tells you to do. But this is where you find your confidence in practicing your personal choice and freedom.
• Get that Vit D – Sunlight is helpful in activating your solar plexus chakra.

4th Chakra: Heart Chakra

• Location: Center of your chest
• Color: Green
• Element: Air
• Purpose: The heart chakra is the center of love, compassion, kindness and healing. It allows you to have emotional connection with yourself and others.
• Balance: You can equally feel love for yourself and others.
• How to energize: Show appreciation for yourself. Give yourself love first and then spread love and compassion to others.
• Crystals: Malachite, tourmaline, rose quartz, emerald

The heart chakra is the unifying chakra sitting between the three lower and three upper chakras and is therefore associated with integrating the physical / material with the spiritual / ethereal. It is not surprising then that the heart uses the most healing frequency of love, because only love can bridge the gap between the physical and spiritual and create wholeness. 

Truth is that we are all connected and we are all one and the heart chakra knows this. An open heart chakra will allow you to live in harmony with yourself and others. Disconnect however happens when we get hurt. Pain caused in relationships and connection to others is what causes the heart chakra to close and can be experienced in the form of grief, isolation, resentment, and hatred to name a few.

Working with Your Heart Chakra:

• Connect with your heart – Become aware of your emotions and which of those are keeping your heart closed.
• Express your emotions – the first step is always awareness, so become aware of your emotions and then express them in a healthy and integrated way. Repressing emotions will close your heart.
• Practice self-love – If you have a self-hating or critical relationship with yourself, your heart cannot be open to love and healing. Consciously cultivate self-love to open the heart chakra.
• Visualize – Use visualization to open your heart chakra. Envision a green plate, flower or vortex spinning in clockwise direction while expanding in front of your body as well as from your back.
• Move your body – look up heart opening yoga poses or do a workout somewhere in nature.
• Speak from the heart –you can do this by filtering your thoughts through your heart and allowing the sounds to travel from your heart to your throat rather than from your mind to your throat.
• Seek love – deliberatively seek experiences and think thoughts that are in the vibration of love, compassion, joy, generosity etc. Aligning with this high-level frequency will cause your heart to open.

5th Chakra: Throat Chakra

• Location: Center of your collar bone
• Color: Light blue
• Element: Ether
• Purpose: Voice and our personal truth Gives voice to your personal truth with clarity; self-expressions
• Balance: Clearly speak with love, kindness and truth.
• How to energize: Speak the truth
• Crystals: Turquoise, Celestite, Lapis, Blue Topaz… and any other blue crystal

The throat chakra is about owning and expressing your individual truth. Seeking truth means mastering listening, communicating and living with personal integrity and honor. When you are unable to speak on or take action that reflects your personal truth, or when your truth isn’t heard or is invalidated, then your throat chakra will certainly be out of alignment. If this is you, then you quite possibly struggle with physical symptoms such as a sore throat, anxiety or feel like you are stuck or drowning. Opening your throat chakra takes intentionality, self-awareness and courage, but it is the only way to live a life that reflects your soul’s truth.

Working with Your Throat Chakra:

• Be authentic – become aware how you are out of alignment with your authenticity, truth and integrity.
• Use sound – the throat chakra is related to sound and sound can help heal / open the throat chakra. Sing, chant or scream – whatever intuitively feels good to unblock this chakra.
• Speak – practice conscious communication which means speaking your truth in a way that is in alignment with your intention and in a way that others can hear you. Before speaking ask yourself the following three questions: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it hurtful? - This will get at the heart of your intention. 
• Journal – Sometimes speaking your truth isn’t that easy, but express your inner truth anyway, even if it means writing it in a journal.
• Practice positive expression – be conscious in the ways that you express yourself in verbal and written communications and avoid negative expressions and gossip.
• Sit in silence – the counterpart to speaking is listening. In order to be able to speak your inner truth you have to spend time in silence and listen first.

6th Chakra: Third Eye Chakra 

• Location: Between your eyebrows
• Color: Indigo
• Element: Light
• Purpose: Opens your mind to information beyond the material world and 5 senses; allows you to see how the world around you is interconnected.
• Balance: You are confident in allowing your intuition to lead you and you have clarity on your path.
• How to energize: Commit to expanding your perspective and your awareness.
• Crystals: Moonstone, Labradorite, Sodalite, Tanzanite, Opal

The third eye chakra is our sixth sense, our intuition. Its purpose is to help us see and understand our inner and outer worlds and therefore it is also a unifying chakra like the heart chakra. An open third eye chakra allows us to see beyond the limits of our ego and our physical reality. It can help us gain clarity and accept even the most differing perspectives. This is also why the third eye chakra is associated with clairvoyance and psychic abilities. When this chakra is out of alignment, it can cause closed mindedness, confusion, lack of direction, prejudices, cynicism and a lack of ethics to name a few.

Working with Your Third Eye Chakra:

• Practice integration – the third eye chakra becomes blocked through black and white thinking, polarity and limited perceptive reality in general. Practice integrating multiple realities.
• Become self-aware – self-awareness requires expanding our perception. The more aware we become of our own perceptive limits, the less likely we are going to perceive our reality as the only reality.
• Practice intuitive awareness – do any practice that will help expand your awareness and train your intuitive muscle, such as meditation, visualization, breathwork, mindfulness, and channeling.
• Befriend your shadow – do the work to become aware of your subconscious so you can shine a light on any false beliefs and stories you are holding on to.
• Be creative – letting your creative juices flow will enhance your intuition and imagination. Work with the images of your mind’s eye, which is information that can be seen beyond normal sight.
• Get some sunlight – exposing your eyes to direct sunlight for a short period of time will stimulate the third eye chakra.
• Explore plant medicine (if you so choose) – many shamanic traditions and rituals include the use of plant medicine such as psilocybin or Ayahuasca which have an opening effect on the third eye.

7th Chakra: Crown Chakra

• Location: Top of your head
• Color: Violet / White
• Element: Thought
• Purpose: The crown chakra is about opening ourselves up to a more transcendental perspective, our personal consciousness, and creates a sense of peace, well-being, and confidence.
• Balance: Feeling in alignment and in the flow of life. You enjoy living the human experience.
• How to energize: Seek out things that cause you to feel inspired.
• Crystals: Amethyst, Sugilite, Danburite

The crown chakra is the chakra associated with our conscious connection to source and the embodiment of our higher self. It is the center of consciousness, our highest potential, and the doorway for our eternal knowing to come into physical life and help us see the bigger picture. The main blockers to the crown chakra are not believing in spirituality or a higher power and / or secular thinking which can lead to a life that is driven by fear and confusion.

Working with Your Crown Chakra:

• Meditate – meditating and quieting the mind will allow you to be open to receiving and becoming more aware to consciousness.
• Become inspired – do more of those things that inspire you as inspiration is a sure sign that your crown chakra is opening.
• Open your mind – challenge your own thoughts, beliefs and perspectives by seeking different viewpoints and new knowledge.
• Climb mountains – The atmosphere on mountaintops causes people’s thoughts to come into a frequency that allow the crown chakra to open.
• Use sound – chanting, singing, or listening to binaural beats help the opening of the crown chakra.
• Love more – express love to yourself and others. You can use any love language, such as acts of kindness, to create connection and limit separation.

One final thought I want to leave you with is the misperception that chakras can be too open and can therefore cause some of the symptoms of misalignment. But in fact, an open chakra will bring balance and the more open it is the more life force energy is able to flow through this part of our body's energy system. Therefore, practice opening and increasing the flow of energy through your chakras as much as possible. The one aspect to be conscious of, especially if you are energetically open, is the likelihood of picking up other people's energy which can clog our aura and energy system. This is why practicing energetic hygiene is crucial. Anyone who works with the chakras should also have tools to clear and protect their energy system without restricting the flow of life force energy (read: Simple and Powerful Tools For Clearing & Protecting Your Energy).