What Are Chakras?
A. The subtle energy system of the body contains seven key centers or chakras. These chakras are concerned with important life functions. According to ancient texts, the seven chakras are located in the following areas: the first is near the anus, the second is near the genitals, the third is near the navel, the fourth is in the center of the chest, the fifth is in the throat, the sixth is in the brow or the third eye, and the seventh is at the top of the head. In the Shiva Process we examine four of these centers at the navel, heart, throat and third eye. This examination gives us a vast amount of information about our lives, our blocks, and ourselves, and puts us in a position to empower ourselves enormously.
The word chakra translates from the Sanskrit as disk, vortex, or wheel. Chakras are whirling concentrated centers of energy. They receive, assimilate, and distribute life-force energy (also called “chi”, “ki” or “prana”) within human body for optimum health and well-being. Each chakra supplies energy to specific organs, corresponds to a distinct aspect of one’s personality, and resonates with one of seven universal principles related to survival, creativity, identity, love, expression, comprehension, or transcendence. Chakras also code one’s experiences in their energies, just as memories are chemically coded in person’s neurons. An imprint of every emotionally significant event a person has experienced is believed to be recorded in his/her chakra energies.
“Chakras are organs of the energetic or subtle body. Tantra recognizes five layers of the body, which are called sheaths. The outermost layer is the skin and bones. Next is the more subtle system of respiration; beyond that is the even more subtle system of cognition. Then comes discretion, and finally, most subtle of all, the chakra system, the body’s intuitive or psychic energy system through which one may achieve physical ecstasy and spiritual unity. “There are seven major chakras in the subtle chakra system, each of which is both a generator and a reservoir of energy and psychic consciousness. The chakras are connected to one or more of the five sheaths by means of “subtle channels” called nadis. In this way the energy from each of the chakras nourishes the whole body. These channels are not unlike the meridians on which acupuncture is based, and they are also similar to our understanding of the body’s neural connectors and circuitry…” “Each chakra corresponds to a specific area
