Key Takeaways
- The seven, and where each one sits
- There are more than seven
- What the texts say they do
- What the tradition prescribes
In This Article
The chakras are energy centres described in the yogic texts as sitting along the spine within the subtle body, from its base to the crown of the head. Chakra is Sanskrit for wheel. Seven are treated as the principal ones, each with a location, an element, a colour and a set of faculties attached to it — and the classical system counts a great many more than seven, which is where most confusion about this starts.
The seven, and where each one sits
| Chakra | Where it sits | Element, colour, and what it governs |
|---|---|---|
| Muladhara, the root | Base of the spine | Earth, red. Security, survival, the sense of being grounded and of belonging somewhere |
| Svadhishthana, the sacral | Two inches below the navel | Water, orange. Desire, pleasure, creativity and the capacity to feel |
| Manipura, the solar plexus | Between navel and sternum | Fire, yellow. Will, confidence, the capacity to act and to digest — of food and of experience |
| Anahata, the heart | Centre of the chest | Air, green. Love, compassion, devotion. The hinge between the lower three and the upper three |
| Vishuddha, the throat | Base of the throat | Ether, blue. Speech, truth, expression. Associated with the thyroid |
| Ajna, the third eye | Between the eyebrows | No element. Indigo. Insight, discernment, the seeing that is not done with the eyes |
| Sahasrara, the crown | Above the top of the head | No element. Violet or white. Not a centre to be worked on but the state arrived at |
The first three are concerned with living in the world, the upper three with what lies beyond it, and the heart sits between them as the turning point. That structure is the reason the system is usually taught from the base upward rather than in any other order.
There are more than seven
This is the most common misunderstanding about the subject, and it comes from the seven being the only ones most popular accounts mention. The classical yogic literature describes a far larger system: 72,000 nadis, the channels through which prana is said to move, and in the reckoning most often quoted, 114 chakras — points where those channels cross.
Of those 114, two are described as being outside the physical body, leaving 112 that can be worked with. The seven everyone knows are simply the major junctions on the central channel, the sushumna, which runs up the spine between the ida and pingala on either side. The rest sit in the palms, the soles, the joints, the face.
What the texts say they do
The chakras are described as belonging to the subtle body — the energy body held to exist within the physical one — rather than to anatomy. They are not organs and no scan finds them. Several correspond approximately to glands and plexuses, the throat centre to the thyroid, the solar plexus to the coeliac plexus, and some writers make a great deal of that; the texts themselves make the claim in the other direction, treating the physical structure as the shadow of the subtle one rather than the explanation of it.
The function attributed to them is regulation: each is said to govern a group of faculties, and the tradition describes a centre as open, blocked or overactive depending on how freely prana is held to move through it. The lists of signs — the throat centre and difficulty speaking honestly, the root centre and chronic insecurity — are describing that framework from the inside.
What the tradition prescribes
The practices are the ordinary ones, and none of them requires a practitioner or a payment:
- Pranayama. The central practice, since the whole system is described in terms of prana and its movement. Nadi shodhana, alternate-nostril breathing, is the one named for clearing the channels.
- Asana. Specific postures are associated with specific centres, though the classical texts are far less prescriptive about this than modern teaching is.
- Bija mantra. Each of the seven has a seed syllable — lam, vam, ram, yam, ham, om, and silence at the crown — recited with attention held at the location of the centre.
- Meditation on the location, which is the simplest instruction the texts give and the one they return to.
- Dhyana and japa in the ordinary devotional sense, which is where this tradition and the pilgrimage tradition meet.
Where this meets the pilgrimage tradition
The connection is real and worth stating accurately, because it is also frequently overstated. The two traditions share a vocabulary — prana, nadi, the subtle body, the idea of a journey from the base to the crown — and Kashi in particular is described in the texts in terms that borrow from it, the city mapped onto the body with the sacred centres as its chakras.
What the pilgrimage tradition does not claim is that a puja opens a chakra. The rites we perform — Rudrabhishek, Mahamrityunjay Jaap, Shanti puja, and the ancestral rites — have their own purposes and their own scriptural basis, and we would rather tell you that plainly than let the two be blurred into a package.
🕉️ Vedic rituals at Prayagraj, Varanasi and Haridwar
- Rudrabhishek, Mahamrityunjay Jaap, Shanti puja and the ancestral rites
- Performed by Teerth Purohits at the tirtha, not by a booking platform
- We will tell you when a lighter rite is what your situation calls for
- Live video link and a written record for families abroad
Each of the seven has its own page with the full treatment — the deity, the symbol, the petals, the signs and the sadhana. Start at Muladhara and work upward, or go straight to the one you came for. For the related but distinct subject of what a birth chart is held to show, see Vedic astrology.
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