Chapter
6

Be Mindful of Your Chakras

“I think, therefore I am,” wrote Descartes, the seventeenth-century French philosopher. Most of us have been raised to believe that we are our thoughts, for how can we ever separate ourselves from them? With social media, we’re constantly posting and commenting on all manner of experience and opinion. Our thoughts are everywhere. And yet, according to yoga philosophy, we are not our thoughts. Thoughts are something we have, like hands or hair or clothing or a smart phone, but they are not us. They are not you, or at least, your thoughts do not define you. They are not the whole you.

But it probably will be difficult for you to recognize the truth of this unless you practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of paying attention without engaging in what you are paying attention to. In other words, mindfulness is awareness, pure and simple. It is not thought, but it is aware of thought. It is not feelings, but it is aware of feelings. It is not your physical body, but it is aware of your physical body. It is the ability to perceive yourself and all your qualities without making the mistake that you are any of your qualities. It is the you that transcends qualities. Mindfulness meditation is a specific technique to cultivate mindfulness, but you can be mindful anytime, anywhere. You just have to stop your chattering brain, take a deep breath, and be.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness isn’t just helpful for meditation. It has tangible physical benefits. Many doctors, psychologists, and healthcare facilities teach and employ mindfulness techniques because of their proven stress-reducing effects. Mindfulness techniques, including mindfulness meditation, can significantly reduce blood pressure as well as muscle tension and stressful feelings, including anxiety.

Mindfulness can also improve your performance in all aspects of your life. If you are exercising, including doing yoga, mindfulness can reduce the risk of injury because you will be so keenly aware of your body and how it feels as you move it. In your work, mindfulness can aid your concentration and improve the efficiency and quality of what you are doing. Your mind won’t be wandering off to what you will do next or what you did before. Instead, you can experience total absorption in your task through mindfulness.

Why do we bring up mindfulness now? Because mindfulness is a key element in healing your own chakras. It’s easy to imagine what your chakras might be doing, but through mindfulness, you can gain a more clear, unadorned perception of your chakras. Through mindfulness techniques, you can learn to feel your chakras, assess their current qualities, and even fix them.

If you ever eat while watching television, watch television while surfing the Internet, or surf the Internet while talking to your kids, you know about multitasking. However, you might not know much about mindfulness. Beginning to eat a bag of chips and then suddenly realizing the entire bag of chips is gone is eating without mindfulness. Listening without mindfulness occurs when someone is talking to you and you suddenly realize your mind has wandered , and you haven’t heard anything that person said to you. Multitasking is anti-mindfulness, so give yourself a break from it once in a while. When you need to do something, eat something, or listen to something, do that one thing and nothing else. Try it. You’ll instantly get better at whatever you are doing.

Pay No Mind

Mindfulness takes some practice because most of us aren’t used to paying attention to the present moment without letting our brains simultaneously wander elsewhere. Daily mindfulness practice helps to train your mind into increased awareness, and what better way to practice than by meeting and greeting your own chakras?

You don’t have to get all meditative about mindfulness. You can have mindfulness moments throughout the day, whenever you choose to have them. Just stop what you are doing, disengage from your thoughts, and expand your awareness so that you look at your thoughts, feelings, and sensory perceptions without letting them rule you.

You can tune in to your chakras in this way throughout the day, too, especially if you notice a physical sensation in the area of a particular chakra. Do you have a sore throat, butterflies in your stomach, chest pain, or an ache in your lower back? Bring your awareness to that area and without judgment, see if you can notice anything going on in your chakra.

But wait—tuning in to your chakras is pretty challenging work if you aren’t even used to tuning in to your physical body. Chakras are part of your energy body, so they require even more finely honed perceptive powers. Your energy body is part of you, not part of your physical body. Your energy body is the layer of you consisting of the energy that flows in and around your body and through your nadis, and it concentrates in your chakras.

Mindful Matters

This mindfulness exercise can be challenging, but we’re confident you can give it a try. You might have a hard time the first time, but every time you practice this exercise, it will get easier. It’s like a workout for your brain, and you get in better shape the more you practice.

1. Sit comfortably on a folded blanket or even in a chair; just make sure you are sitting upright and your spine is straight.
2. Lower your eyes to approximately a 45-degree angle and soften your gaze so you aren’t looking at anything. Keep your eyes open; closing your eyes makes it easier for your mind to wander.
3. Withdraw your awareness from your thoughts. In other words, step back mentally from your thoughts and look at them, as if they belonged to someone else. Don’t expect them to stop because they won’t. Just look at them. For example, you might notice you are thinking about whether you can do this exercise or not. That’s a thought. Visualize wrapping it up inside a bubble and labeling it as thought.
4. Now, expand your awareness to your physical body. Notice how it feels, as if someone else were telling you about it. For example, “That person’s knee itches”; “That person’s shoulders are rolling forward”; or “That person is hungry.” You can scratch your itches or adjust your posture if you want to. (Hold off on getting up to get something to eat for the moment!). Notice how it feels to do those things. Visualize wrapping every physical sensation you notice in a bubble and labeling it. For example, “itch,” “shoulder roll,” or “hunger.”
5. Now, expand your awareness to the room around you. What do you hear? How does the air feel on your skin, and how does the blanket feel underneath you? Do you smell anything? Notice what your senses perceive, but again, notice them as if they belong to someone else. Visualize wrapping every sensation you have in a bubble and labeling it, such as “cold,” “soft,” “radiator noise,” or “burnt toast.”
6. Now, expand your attention to include your awareness—be aware of your awareness. Has it shrunk to the size of a thought? Step back again out of your thoughts and your sensory perceptions. Mentally look at them all as if they belonged to someone else. Now, try looking away from them. What is left to perceive that is not thought or sensory perception?
7. Stay there as long as you can. When you get caught up in a thought or a feeling and it sweeps you away, notice it happening, and then step back off the ride, wrap it in a bubble, and label it. Then turn back around and step back into your unbridled awareness.
8. Try to stick with this for about five minutes. Repeat once or twice a day and see if you can work up to 20 minutes.

Your chakras tend to be open and strong after a yoga class, a massage, or energy work. When you are feeling particularly anxious or stressed, or you just experienced something traumatic, your chakras tend to close temporarily. Chakras can change from day to day and moment to moment. Long-term patterns are more significant than a chakra’s condition at any given moment.

Hello, Chakras!

After you have the concept of mindfulness in your head, you don’t have to master it to start checking out your own chakras. Go ahead and try this exercise, even if the previous exercise was challenging.

We go into more detail about actually visualizing your chakras in Chapter 19. For now, we just want you to focus on your perceptions. Let your mind be open and unengaged, and see what happens when you focus your awareness on your chakras. Mindfulness is a process, not a goal, and this chakra introduction exercise is part of that process.

1. Place a yoga mat or folded blanket on the floor and lie on your back. Tuck your shoulder blades under you so your chest feels broad and your heart opens. Stretch your legs out as far as you can and then relax them. Adjust your arms so they are about a foot from the sides of your body and rest your hands with the palms facing up.
2. Take a moment to step into mindfulness mode. Disengage from your thoughts. Don’t try to banish them; just step back out your thoughts and look at them. Look at your physical sensations. Look at your sensory perceptions. Let them be, disengage, and avoid any judgments you might feel toward yourself.
3. When you feel like you have stepped back from your thoughts and sensory perceptions, bring awareness to the base of your spine and into your first chakra. Theoretically, you know this chakra should be round, red, and turning like a wheel, but rather than just imagining it, try to feel and perceive it with your awareness.
4. As you bring your awareness to your chakra, continue to let your thoughts come and go as they will, but let your chakra be the focus of your concentration. Let images, feelings, and other sensory perceptions come to you. Don’t judge what happens or try to control it. Remember, you are standing back and being mindful; you are not immersing yourself in thoughts or feelings right now. Just notice. You might get some images or feelings, or maybe you won’t. Just let whatever happens, happen.
5. Now, shift your awareness to your second chakra. You know it should be round, orange, and turning like a wheel; again, rather than imagining how it should look, try to feel and perceive what is really going on in there, just behind your navel. Mentally record your perceptions.
6. Move your awareness to each chakra, in order:

   To your yellow third chakra under your rib cage

   To your green fourth chakra at your heart

   To your blue fifth chakra in your throat

   To your indigo/purple sixth chakra in your forehead

   To your purple or white seventh chakra at the crown of your head

7. Spend some time contemplating each one without judgment. Just perceive.
8. After you’ve finished perceiving each chakra with awareness, slowly wiggle your fingers and toes, bringing your awareness back to your physical body. Roll to your right side, and when you are ready, sit up.

Write down your perceptions about your chakras right away before you forget. If you’ve already forgotten, that’s okay. The exercise is the important part right now. (However, next time, you can also get up and write down what you perceive after each chakra, instead of waiting until the end if you really want a written record of the experience.) Record any sensory perceptions or thoughts you had about each chakra. Your perceptions are unique to you, so don’t worry about what they are supposed to be. Just consider what they are. Writing your perceptions by hand engages a different part of the brain than typing or dictating by voice, and it aids in enhancing understanding and memory.

Repeat this exercise at least once a week, so you can begin to perceive patterns in your chakras, such as which ones tend to be more noticeable to you and which ones you have a hard time perceiving.

Some people find mindfulness exercises easy, but for others, they are incredibly challenging, especially when attempting to perceive subtle nonphysical phenomena like the chakras. If you try the chakra mindfulness exercise in this chapter and you don’t feel, see, or perceive anything, don’t worry. Try again later. The more you get comfortable with the notion of mindfulness and perceiving your own chakras, the easier the perceptions will come. Massage therapists and energy workers often have the ability to tune in to your energy and provide feedback about the health of your chakras. You might also consider enlisting a particularly intuitive friend who might be able to meditate on and perceive qualities of your chakras for you. Later, as you hone your mindfulness skills, you can return the favor.

Measure for Measure

After you start tuning in to your own chakras, things start to get interesting. Suddenly, you have a tool for determining what aspects of your life are working well and which ones need more attention (or less attention). Here’s another tool for you: you can actually measure your own chakras.

When you measure your chakras, you can see exactly how big they are, what shape they are, and which direction they are spinning. Betsy frequently measures her clients’ chakras, taking a baseline measurement at the beginning of therapy and then repeats the measurement on a periodic basis, such as weekly or monthly, to see what changes. Betsy explains that a single reading isn’t necessarily significant. Chakras change from day to day, even from moment to moment. Depending on what you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing at any given moment, your chakras can open and close, widen and narrow, change shape or position or direction of spin, then change back again.

However, regular measuring can reveal more overarching patterns. For instance, a closed fourth chakra during a single measuring session doesn’t necessarily mean that person is having heart issues. However, a fourth chakra that is persistently closed session after session is more telling. Perhaps that person has closed herself off from feeling love and compassion for others or refuses to take care of herself.

To measure your chakras, you need just two things: a pendulum and a partner. A pendulum is an object hanging from a chain, cord, or other similar apparatus, which can swing freely. Pendulums can be used as tools for measuring the chakras because they swing freely and can therefore be influenced by the chakra’s energy; this is similar to the way a wind chime or mobile is affected by air currents. You can buy pendulums, but you can also use a necklace with a weighty pendant on it. A tiny charm probably isn’t heavy enough. The pendant should weigh more than the chain or cord on which it hangs.

Your partner should be a relatively disinterested person. In other words, he or she should not care what your chakras are like. If you have an emotional relationship with someone, especially if that person has strong opinions about which of your chakras will probably be open or closed, then that person is not a good choice for this exercise. Choose someone who is open to the idea of measuring your chakras but has no stake in the information.

Grounding Your Partner

Before you and your partner begin the chakra-measuring process, your partner must get grounded and separate her energy from yours. This is how Betsy suggests you can accomplish this:

1. You lie down on your back on a bed or on the floor (on a yoga mat or a folded blanket). Ask your partner to stand or kneel beside you.
2. Your partner can now close her eyes and imagine her own energy rooting her down into the ground. She can visualize roots coming out of her feet or legs and anchoring her to the earth.
3. Next, your partner can open her eyes but visualize a heavy curtain of energy falling between the two of you. She can put her hand through it, but the rest of her body must stay on one side of the curtain while your body stays on the other side. Mentally, your partner can say to herself, “I am detached from outcomes. What is hers is hers, what is mine is mine, and nothing crosses the curtain. My stuff stays on my side, and her stuff stays on her side.” This separates your energy so the pendulum can read your energy and not your partner’s energy.

Some people wonder if chakras can pour out enough energy to influence a pendulum, why would you need another person to hold the pendulum? It’s true that if you were to hang a pendulum from an inanimate object over someone’s chakra, it would not spin. The pendulum must be in contact with energy to conduct energy. A wire can’t transfer electricity unless it is connected on both ends, and although prana is a little bit different than electrical energy, the concept is similar. (For example, the pendulum doesn’t have to touch you to pick up your chakra energy pattern.) Your partner is the energizing force that powers the pendulum to be able to pick up your chakra’s energy flow pattern.

How to Measure Your Chakras

When your partner is grounded, it’s your turn to relax. Lie back and let the weight of the bed or floor support you. Breathe normally and close your eyes. Then follow these steps to measure your chakras:

• With the pendulum in her dominant hand, your partner can now hold the pendulum by its cord about two feet above your body, which will be above your energy field. Your partner then moves the pendulum above your first chakra (at the base of your spine) and lowers it straight down to about two to three inches above your first chakra, which should bring the pendulum into the energy field of that chakra. Your partner should try to keep her hand as steady as possible and hold the pendulum with a loose grip rather than with a firm and rigid hold, which could prevent the pendulum from spinning in response to the chakra energy. Have your friend concentrate on keeping her own energy to herself so she doesn’t influence the pendulum. You want your own chakra energy to get it spinning, not hers.
• In most cases, the pendulum starts to swing. The shape of the swing and the direction indicate the shape and direction of your chakra’s energy flow. You can both look at it, but try to stay still and centered. If the pendulum does not move, try moving it closer to your body. If the pendulum still doesn’t move, the chakra you are measuring might be closed. Remember, the pendulum not moving might be just a momentary reaction. Sometimes people get nervous about having their chakras measured, and all the chakras clamp shut. Try to relax. This is supposed to be fun!
• After you have determined the general state of your first chakra, your partner should lift the pendulum up about 2 feet, back out of the energy field, and with her other hand, stop the swing. Now, she can bring it over the second chakra, around the navel area, and again, lower it straight down to about 2 to 3 inches over the chakra. Wait for the pendulum to start swinging.
• Repeat this process over each of the other chakras:

• The third chakra at the solar plexus.
• The fourth chakra at the heart.
• The fifth chakra at the throat.
• The sixth chakra at the forehead.
• The seventh chakra about 2 inches above the crown of the head. (The pendulum will not actually be over your body; instead, it will be 2 inches higher than the top of your head.)

• Now it is your partner’s turn. You try it on her.

Using a pendulum to measure the fourth chakra, the Heart chakra.

What Do the Measurements Mean?

Now that you’ve watched the pendulum swinging in response to your energy fields and your friend’s, you can interpret the results. Here are some guidelines to help you understand what your measurements mean:

• Movement: Once the pendulum is brought into the energy field of the chakra, the pendulum will start to move if the chakra is open. If there is no movement of the pendulum and it is about 1 to 2 inches above the body, this likely means that the chakra is blocked or closed.
• Direction: A healthy chakra should spin in a clockwise direction. If the pendulum is going back and forth, it may mean the chakra is skewed in an oblong shape, which could mean the chakra is taking in energy sporadically. A right-left swing could mean that chakra is more skewed toward its physical aspects. An up-down swing could indicate that chakra is more skewed toward its psychological or spiritual aspects. (See Chapters 7 through 13 for more on the physical and psychological/spiritual aspects of each chakra.) If the pendulum goes counter-clockwise, it could mean that chakra is closed or that chakra is releasing energy instead of taking it in.
• Diameter: Ideally, all your chakras are spinning in the same direction with the same diameter. This indicates balance. In general, the diameter or distance across the circle created by the pendulum’s spin should be about 4 to 6 inches. If it is less than this, it might mean the chakra is open but weak. If the diameter is greater than 6 inches, this usually signifies an excessive chakra that is overloaded with energy. You might find that if one of your chakras is excessive, the chakras on either side of it will measure a bit deficient or small.

Remember, a single measurement doesn’t mean much. Measuring your chakras is best for establishing long-term patterns. However, a single measurement can be good at helping you to assess your mood or feelings at the moment. Maybe your second chakra is temporarily huge, and this helps you realize you are being overly emotional about something. Or maybe your first chakra is closed, and this helps you recognize that you are feeling insecure or unsafe about something.

Mindful attention to your chakras is fun, interesting, and helpful in so many ways that we think it is well worth a few minutes out of your day. Tune in and see where you are. You’ll begin to achieve a whole new level of self-awareness. Writing your chakra perceptions in a journal dedicated to this practice can help you recognize patterns and identify which chakras you want to focus on and work with specifically. You’ll find that healing your chakras is whole-body healing that can open your life in so many beneficial ways.