Chapter
14

Energize: How Chakras Help You Feel Better

You can understand what chakras are, what they do, how they work, and what aspects of you are reflected in each one, but we know that what you really want to do is to be able to use their awakened energy for self-healing to make your life better. That’s what this chapter is all about.

Energy on Tap

If you have read these chapters in order, you’ve already learned how energy moves through the meridians in your body, pooling and circulating in your seven primary chakras. This energy comes into your body with the breath, and the chakras transform that breath into life force energy known as prana that your mind and body can use.

As you read in Part 3, the way each chakra translates prana is unique.

• The first chakra, or Root chakra, turns energy into instinct, the will to survive, courage, a sense of security, and the ability to make yourself safe.
• The second chakra, or Sacral chakra, transforms energy into passion, creativity, and connection.
• The third chakra, or Solar Plexus chakra, turns energy into personal power and action.
• The fourth chakra, or Heart chakra, transforms energy into love, compassion, and the balance that brings harmony and peace to your relationships.
• The fifth chakra, or Throat chakra, makes energy into messages and channels creativity through your voice to the outside world.
• The sixth chakra, or Third Eye chakra, turns energy inward to access inner wisdom and intuition.
• Finally, the seventh chakra, or Crown chakra, sends energy out into the Universe, so you can find your place in the scheme of things and experience bliss.

When you have to deal with real-life challenges each day, the different ways your chakras transform prana can be immensely helpful because you have access to that life force energy. You can use this energy even more effectively when you customize chakra healing you need for the task at hand. You wouldn’t put jet fuel into your car, eat gasoline for lunch, or heat your home with a sandwich. You also wouldn’t plumb the depths of your first chakra to hone your intuition or tap into your seventh chakra for better digestion.

But using chakra energy isn’t exclusive to a single chakra either. Many issues can best be served by tapping into the energy from more than one chakra, boosting the healing awakened in each in a way that makes the energy flow from several chakras that are greater than the sum of their parts.

Your chakras are energy centers of concentrated life force energy (prana) that correspond to nerve centers in your body.

Feel-Good Power

Working with your chakras makes you feel good for a variety of reasons. First and most obvious, chakra work helps to open blocked chakras and ease the pressure on overloaded chakras, so awakened healing life force energy flows unimpeded through your body. When every part of you gets its fair share of prana, you feel better than you do when part of you and part of your life get too much or too little energy.

Chakra work also feels good because it requires you to pay attention to you. It’s easy to put yourself at the bottom of your priority list, especially when you have to take care of other people and multiple responsibilities in your life. The more you increase your internal energy supplies, the more effectively you can provide care for the people who depend on you.

Chakra work literally feels good, too. When you have a physical problem, such as insomnia, chronic pain, anxiety, or fear, accessing energy from the right chakras can resolve the problem. Also, this energy can support and facilitate your other healing efforts to work on your issues. Here are some ways to awaken chakra energy to make your life work better.

Getting Your Zzzs

Americans, along with people all over our modern world, are chronically sleep-deprived. The World Health Organization and the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C., both stipulate an average of eight hours of sleep a night for adults. Yet, according to sleep expert Matthew Walker, PhD, in his groundbreaking bestseller, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams: “Two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep.” Because this is an average, it means that a lot of people all over the world get even less sleep. Plus, it is now known that sleep lost is gone forever; the harmful effects of missing sleep cannot be “made up” or “balanced out” by oversleeping. There is no catching up on missed sleep.

Too little sleep isn’t always just a matter of having too much to do or binging your favorite show too late at night. People with insomnia, a sleep disorder, can’t fall asleep or stay asleep, even when they try. Not only is this inability to fall asleep a miserable experience, but it also has been linked to physical illness, chronic pain, depression, and anxiety, among other issues. Insomnia is almost always caused by stress and tension in a person’s life that prevents them from falling asleep. However, insomnia can also be caused by a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea. Thus, discussing your sleep problems with a physician is important, so you can determine the cause of the difficulty getting those ZZZs.

Because insomnia can cause so many problems, from daytime sleepiness and lack of focus to anxiety, depression, and irritability, solving a sleeplessness problem can make a big difference in your life.

Sleep is a survival act. Our bodies require sleep for physical healing, emotional balance, and mental decluttering. That means the energy for sleeping comes primarily out of the first chakra, or Root chakra, the place that reflects your survival instinct. Fear and a deeply rooted sense of insecurity can also be reflected in the first chakra, and if these issues contribute to sleeplessness, then the healthy life force energy of the first chakra can help to resolve this barrier to a good night’s sleep.

Other chakras also are related to insomnia because insomnia occurs when the mind can’t stop chattering. Thinking is the realm of the sixth chakra, or Third Eye chakra, and anxiety happens here. The Third Eye chakra also energizes and influences our dreams, helping us process mental activity. With insomnia, there is typically too much energy in the Third Eye chakra and a lack of energy, or grounding, in the Root chakra.

To receive the best, most regenerative sleep possible, get your energy moving down from your Third eye chakra into your Root chakra to decrease some of the anxious energy in your mind.

Try this whenever you are having trouble getting to sleep. As with other exercises, you can record your own voice or someone else’s reading these cues, or you can just read them over a few times, so you can guide yourself silently.

1. Lie down on your bed or any other place where you would like to fall asleep. Lie on your back and move your shoulder blades underneath you as if they are cradling your heart. Let your arms rest at your sides, palms facing up, leaving about a foot of space between your hands and the sides of your body. Stretch your legs out, then relax them and let them fall open.
2. Breathe softly, feeling your breath flow in and out, letting it flow naturally without any conscious effort to manipulate it..
3. Bring your awareness to your feet. Notice everything about your feet. Are they warm or cold? Can you feel socks on your feet, or are you barefoot and experiencing the weight of your sheet and blankets on your feet? Begin to experience your feet becoming heavy and warm, so heavy that your feet feel as if they are sinking into the surface upon which you rest.
4. Now visualize a warm red glow at the base of your spine. The light is comforting and makes you feel at home. It turns slowly, anchoring your body to the ground, and you experience its red glow descending down each leg into both of your feet, warming them. Imagine this light is protecting you, keeping you safe, and shielding you from any danger or insecurity.
5. When you feel secure in this red glow, move your attention to your forehead. Imagine a deep indigo glow like an evening sky filled with sparkling stars, slowly rotating like a galaxy over your forehead. Visualize all your scattered thoughts running around inside your head. Imagine the indigo light gently surrounding the scattered thoughts. All the chattering energy in your mind is quieted by this indigo light, and the excess energy here is transported down to your feet. Now imagine the indigo light forming a shield that extends beyond your body and beyond the red shield so that your entire body is encased in a two-layered cradle of red warmth and dark starry sky.
6. Now, imagine you are being gently rocked to the rhythm of the planet’s spinning. Your Root chakra still anchors you to Earth and provides safety, while your Third Eye chakra keeps thoughts far away from you, launching you safely into a sweet, quiet sleep filled with regenerating energy and gentle, nurturing dreams.
7. Stay relaxed. Let yourself rest in this quiet place for as long as you need to be there. If you feel compelled to turn onto your side or stomach, that’s okay, but if the new position starts to make you restless, return to your back. If you fall asleep, then congratulations! Your chakra energy provided your body with what it needed. If you didn’t fall asleep, that’s okay, too. This kind of deep relaxation is almost as regenerative as actual sleep.

Easing the Pain

Pain is also a first chakra, or Root chakra issue because our bodies launch into survival mode when we feel pain. However, the fourth chakra, or Heart chakra, is the compassionate chakra. Combining survival energy with compassionate energy can banish (or at least help ease) pain, no matter what the cause.

If you suffer from chronic pain, carefully read the chapters on chakras one and four, and work on the exercises provided in those chapters to energize, align, and balance those chakras. Accessing your inner resources for survival and compassion can make a big difference if you work regularly on healing these chakras.

Sometimes, though, you might be suffering from a flare-up or temporary, acute pain from an injury. Or maybe you have an emotional wound. Both physical and emotional pain can benefit from this quick healing exercise, so try it whenever pain is distracting you from what you are doing. It will only take two minutes and could make a difference in how you feel.

You might find this exercise even more effective than you could have hoped.

1. Sit, stand, or lie down in a comfortable position that does not aggravate your pain. Relax as much as you can. Close your eyes.
2. Take a slow, deep breath through your nose, taking about 10 seconds to fill up your lungs. Pause for five seconds and imagine the energy from your held breath lighting your Root chakra like a struck match flaring into flame.
3. Exhale slowly through your mouth, taking about 10 seconds to empty your lungs. As you exhale, imagine the spark spreading into a warm, red glow all around your Root chakra that is getting warmer and brighter, as if fueled by a bellows filled up with the air of your exhaling breath.
4. Keep that idea of warmth at the base of your spine, and then inhale again for 10 seconds. Pause for five seconds and imagine that held breath igniting your Heart chakra like a struck match.
5. Exhale slowly, taking about 10 seconds to empty your lungs. As you exhale, imagine the spark in your Heart chakra spreading into a bright green flame that surrounds your heart.
6. Slowly inhale one more time for a count of 10 seconds and imagine the warm, red glow rising up and the warm green glow descending down until they meet in the light of the yellow jewel set right in the middle of your Solar Plexus chakra. Hold your breath for five seconds and imagine the energy from your Root and Heart chakras combining and strengthening in the power of the Solar Plexus chakra.
7. Slowly exhale one more time for a 10-second count, and imagine that healing power you’ve generated pouring into the part of your body that hurts. Allow each exhale to be a release of pain and discomfort. Feel the warmth as your body begins to heal itself and the pain floats far, far away. Visualize that energy knitting the broken pieces back together and putting everything back in alignment. Move your body in any way that it feels like it wants to move, such as shifting positions, sitting up straighter, or standing up. Your own healing energy might be making beneficial adjustments to your physical body.
8. Breathe normally for a few more breaths and continue to feel healing energy processing and eliminating your pain. When you are ready, open your eyes. You will feel more relaxed and alert. Experience the awakened healing strength of your prana life force energy moving through your chakras and surrounding you with safety and compassion.

If you have a medical problem or suffer from severe or persistent unresolved pain but aren’t sure why, please consult your doctor for a referral to a pain medicine clinic, in addition to practicing chakra healing exercises. Clinicians trained in pain management techniques can work with you to awaken healing and restore comfort and health. Any use of pain medications must always be managed under the supervision of your doctor.

Calming Down

Sometimes, stress gets the best of all of us and we find ourselves freaking out. Whether you are having a full-blown anxiety attack or you are just pacing back and forth and incapacitated by worry or excessive negative energy, your chakras can help process and eliminate some of that overload so you can feel calmer faster.

Anxiety often comes from your first chakra, or Root chakra, if you feel scared or unsafe. However, it can also come from your second chakra, or Sacral chakra, which reflects your emotional state. Lastly, anxiety can come from your third chakra, or Solar Plexus chakra, when you take on too much and suddenly feel overwhelmed, like you just don’t have the inner resources or personal power to deal with everything.

In other words, anxiety is a chakra “one-two-three” problem. Even if you aren’t sure why you are feeling anxious or can’t calm down, try this healing exercise, for a security, emotional, or power boost that will help you let go of the anxiety and relax.

Don’t panic! Use this exercise whenever you feel super stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, or panicky. Be sure to do the exercise in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for at least five minutes by family members, friends, pets, your computer, or the sound of a ringtone from your phone telling you that you have a new text.

1. Sit on the floor on the edge of a folded blanket. Sit straight, as if you were rising from the crown of your head. Pull your entire torso up, as if making space between each vertebra in your spine. Feel a lift in your chest and at the crown of your head, but keep your tailbone tucked in and down.
2. Visualize your first three chakras: the red Root chakra at the base of your spine, the orange Sacral chakra at your navel, and the yellow jewel Solar Plexus chakra just below your breastbone. Imagine each of them, glowing in their separate bright, clear colors.
3. Now, imagine each chakra getting bigger and radiating so that its circle merges with the others. Red becomes orange, orange becomes yellow, yellow becomes orange, and orange becomes red. This continues until each individual chakra dissolves into one bright glowing super chakra that encompasses your entire lower body.
4. Visualize this super chakra turning faster until it begins to generate suction like a funnel. See each individual worry, anxious thought, and panicky feeling getting sucked into this funnel and taken out beyond the perimeter of your physical body. As it continues to spin and suck out anxious feelings like a vacuum, imagine this super chakra getting larger and stronger and radiating and forming a secure shield around your body that keeps those extracted feelings out.
5. Now, imagine this super chakra expanding and encompassing all your other chakras—Heart, Throat, Third Eye, and Crown—reaching beyond the boundaries of your physical body until it encloses you in a safe, secure, warm, and private space. The super chakra expands by pushing individual thoughts even farther back so you can still see them, but they do not activate your mind into a worried state. You stand in the middle of this super chakra, calm, clear, and quiet, with an objective view of your external situation. Let ideas come to you, but not worries or scenarios about the future, which aren’t allowed into this sacred space.
6. Continue to exist grounded in this expanded space created by your three lower chakras—Root, Sacral, and Solar Plexus—until you feel steady and calm. During this time, you might suddenly know what to do to improve your situation. Or you will feel clear enough to move ahead without worry because your lower chakras have helped you bring things back down to Earth.
7. Repeat whenever anxiety builds up again.

Courage comes from your Root and Solar Plexus chakras, where you project your feelings of security and personal power. Your chakra power can ground you and light the way, so you can accomplish almost anything without fear stopping you.

When you feel fearful or nervous or are trying to get yourself to do something brave (such as getting up in front of an audience to speak, playing your guitar at a party, or confronting someone with a difficult truth), try this easy exercise. You can do this wherever you are and whatever you are doing:

1. Visualize your deep, red, and strong Root chakra anchoring you to the rich soil like a massive network of thick heavy unassailable tree roots reaching straight down into the Earth.
2. At the same time, picture your third chakra, the Solar Plexus chakra, radiating like a brilliant jewel casting rays of sunlight from just below your breastbone, blinding everyone with power, strength, and the light of truth.

Master of Concentration

Everybody has trouble concentrating once in a while, but concentration is crucial sometimes. When that happens, tap into the energy in your Throat and Third Eye chakras, which are the centers for communication, creativity, thought, and understanding.

The combined power of the fifth and sixth chakras can bring clarity and focus to anything you do, not to mention a creative spark that can carry your work, play, or interaction with others to new levels of brilliance.

To amp up your focus, you just need a warm-up, like stretching before a workout at the gym. Dharana is one of the Eight Limbs of Yoga, and it means concentration. Try this mini dharana exercise, and then turn your newfound focus to the task at hand. You’ll be amazed at how well this works.

1. Sit quietly anywhere. A seat at your desk is just as good as a seat on a yoga mat. Sit up straight so you are not leaning back against anything. Relax your shoulders.
2. Look around and find some small thing to look at. This can be anything small, like the eraser on a pencil, a flower petal, a font chosen for a word typeset in a book, or an earbud for your phone. Center your attention on this visual point of focus.
3. Imagine a deep indigo beam radiating from your Third Eye chakra and hitting this object. At the same time, imagine a bright blue beam radiating from your Throat chakra and hitting this object. Let indigo blue light surround the object and imagine sending energy through these beams to the object. Imagine the energy circulating back, as if the object is beaming the energy or reflecting it back to you.
4. Stay focused on this object for just one or two minutes. Now, get to work!

Weight Loss Made Easy

Okay, disclaimer: weight loss isn’t easy. However, chakra power can make it easier than it would be without it. That’s because agni, the digestive fire, resides inside your third chakra, or Solar Plexus chakra. This is the seat of digestion and metabolism. When agni is stoked, you burn your food and fuel rather than storing it as fat.

However, becoming overweight also tends to be a function of the second chakra, or Sacral chakra. Many people overeat because of emotional reasons rather than pure physical hunger. Using food to pacify or smother strong feelings is pretty common, especially among people who are overweight. Process emotions in a healthy way by opening the second chakra, and you won’t need to try to smother them.

If you need to lose weight, spend time reading the chapters on the second and third chakras, and do all the exercises for activating, aligning, and balancing these chakras. Losing weight takes a while and works only if you change the habits and ways of thinking that caused you to gain weight in the first place. Temporary diets usually result in regaining the weight and then gaining more after the diet ends.

We could write a whole book on using the chakras for weight loss (and maybe we will someday), but for now, we’ll tell you that if you make it a habit to do a once-daily chakra balance of the passionate Sacral chakra and the powerful Solar Plexus chakra, you will stoke your digestive fire, feel more personally empowered, and find yourself better able to manage strong feelings, so you don’t keep turning to food when you aren’t really hungry. When you do eat, this exercise will also help you burn that fuel faster. You might feel warmer after doing this exercise, but that’s a good thing. Your metabolism and your motivation are stoked.

This exercise is based on a yoga pranayama practice called bhastrika, often called Bellows Breath, a yoga pranayama exercise involving quick exhalations to stoke the body’s inner fire. Practice Bellows Breath once a day before your first meal or before your largest meal. Don’t go too fast before you get used to doing this kind of breath work, or you could hyperventilate. Don’t do this exercise before bed, or you might have trouble sleeping. With regular practice, you will increase your metabolism and build your abdominal strength.

1. Sit comfortably on the floor on the edge of a folded blanket. Cross your legs. Rest your hands on your knees.
2. Envision your second chakra, or Sacral chakra, as a bright clear orange light behind your navel, and your third chakra, or Solar Plexus chakra, as a bright clear yellow jewel shining just under your rib cage. Imagine both lights growing brighter.
3. Now, imagine a tiny flame right between your second and third chakras. This flame is small but bright and active, with tongues of orange and yellow.
4. Pretend you are going to blow on this flame to make it brighter and stronger. At the count of one second per inhalation and one second per exhalation, begin breathing in rhythm through your nose—in and out, in and out.
5. Slowly increase the force and sound of your exhalation so that you inhale silently but exhale sharply with a HHM or HA sound while tightening your abdominal muscles to help force out the air. (You might need a tissue!) Keep your jaw relaxed and your mouth softly closed.

Exhale sharply from the abdomen when practicing Bellows Breath.

6. Repeat this inhale-exhale 10 to 20 times. Every time you exhale, imagine the inner flame getting brighter, larger, and hotter.
7. Repeat once each day, adding a few more breaths each day until you work up to 100. Don’t go too quickly, though. It should take you at least one month to reach 100 of these breaths.
8. Enjoy increased metabolism, more inner fire, more confidence and strength, and slow, gradual, and healthy weight loss.

Increase your inner fire even more effectively by spicing your foods with warming spices like ginger, cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, red pepper, and black pepper. Before bed, relax with a cup of warm milk (soy milk or almond milk works, too) with a dash each of ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric, or enjoy ginger or cinnamon tea.

Over time, as you gain strength, Bellows Breath can warm to activate the elements through the lower chakras to the Heart chakra. Coiled Kundalini energy is summoned from the Earth-grounded seat of the Root chakra. The serpent energy rises to stir the desires of the Watery Sacral chakra. The powerful bellows of the Solar Plexus chakra stokes the Fire of the breath. The lungs fill and release prana in the balanced exchange of Air that activates Kundalini compassion in the Heart chakra. The physical being is now primed and ready to nourish itself through awakening the spiritual bliss of the upper chakras—the healing food of the soul.