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Balancing the Chakras
There are a number of ways to balance the chakras in order to harness their power and live a life that is more in harmony with the world around you. If you are feeling stuck in a particular area of your life, try balancing your chakras and see what a difference it can make in your life.
The chakras are powerful energy centers in the body, associated with different areas of the body and different kinds of power.
The easiest way to balance the chakras is through focusing on the one’s you wish to balance, or working on the full set of 7. You can focus mentally though meditation, picturing each colored swirl.
Each chakra has a visual representation called a mandala, which means universe. Meditating on the mandala will focus your energies. So too will chanting the mantra for each of the chakras, either silently or aloud, as part of your meditation or yoga, as we will discuss in a moment.
Touching the chakra also works well. You can rest your hand on the area, front or back. Or if you wish to magnify the energy of the chakra, lay a chakra stone upon it.
Massage, either self-massage or massage done by a professional or a partner, also uses the power of touch to balance and open each chakra. You can reach all of your chakras easily from the front, and most of them from the back. If you want to reach your solar plexus and heart chakras from the back, either do it in the shower when your hands are slippery with water and soap, or rub them vigorously with your towel when you are drying off.
Massage can be done on its own, or with aromatherapy, that is, using special botanical oils to balance the chakras. There are a range of fragrant oils to choose from, to uplift, center, and surround yourself with wonderful scents.
All yogas are good exercise, but Kundalini yoga offers a range of ways to stimulate chakra energy and move it up and down the body to harness its power to create profound changes in your life. It uses a range of poses, or asanas, in sets designed to accomplish certain goals, such as losing weight or improving intuition.
Many of the poses drive the energy up the chakras to balance them and transform any areas in which you find yourself stuck. You will also chant a range of mantras, some of them related to the chakras. The most well-known mantra is OM, which is related to the third eye and crown chakras.
Use any and all of these methods to balance your chakras and see what a difference it can make to your health and energy levels.
Chakra Work to Increase Energy
If you’ve been walking around feeling like a flat battery recently, it’s time to balance your three lower chakras to give you a solid, healthy foundation so you can accomplish all of the important task in your daily life.
The first thing to remember is we are not human doings, but human beings. Allowing time for rest, meditation, contemplation and relaxation can often be as important as the hours we spend driving ourselves through our to-do list. In fact, they can be even more so, for they can help not only recharge your battery but channel powerful energies you never even knew you possessed.
The chakras are 7 energy centers in the body connected by the central channel. Learning the meaning of each chakra and the type of energy it contains can help boost your energy and improve all areas of your life.
The three lower chakras are the root chakra, the navel chakra and the solar plexus chakra. The root chakra is literally your foundation. It is associated with your buttock and anus and its energies are all to do with the essentials of life, such as food, water, shelter and warmth. These may be easy for you, or a struggle all the time.
Balancing the root chakra through yoga or massaging the buttocks when you are in the shower each morning should soon give you a life that is easier and more plentiful. The energy you harness can then be brought upwards through massage and meditation to the navel chakra.
The navel chakra or sex chakra is the seat of passion, creation and procreation. If you’ve been struggling at work to come up with inspired ideas or to complete all your projects on time and to a high standard, this is a good chakra to balance. If you have also been struggling with your intimate relationship because you lack energy, this is also a good chakra to focus on.
Then you can move the energy up to the solar plexus chakra, which is the seat of your willpower and personal power. Solar refers to the sun and plexus to a network. A very important bundle of nerves in this area below the center of your rib cage looks like the sun with rays of light spreading outwards, hence the name. Yoga such as sun salutations, deep breathing, and chakra meditation can all balance and move the energy upwards.
Once you have balanced your three lower chakras, you should be amazed at how much energy you have. Keep it circulating there, or move it up to the higher chakras for even more energy in your intellectual and spiritual life.
Chakras and Meditation
Meditation is a mental exercise in which a person tries to access a higher consciousness, gain wisdom, or both. Meditation is a vital tool for anyone who wishes to grow spiritually. It is particularly useful for balancing and focusing the energy in each of our seven chakras.
For those who ignore meditation, they tend to suffer from chronic dis-ease. Notice the origin of that word. Dis-ease and disease are the same thing, though one is mental and the other physical. Meditation can improve your overall health and well-being, plus make your mind more peaceful. You can reduce stress and gain a greater sense of contentment through skillful meditation on each of your chakras.
Meditation done every day for a short time a couple of times a day has been showing to change the brain and make it easier to perform complicated tasks. It is also used as a means of transcending ordinary thought and existence in an effort to achieve enlightenment, a heightened mental state.
Meditating by repeating the mantra for each chakra, either on its own or in a series, can move your chakra energy. If you can’t remember every mantra, just think or chant Om or Aum (which should sound like 3 syllables (ah-oo-mm) and you will vibrate the energies needed to balance and heal.
One very powerful chakra meditation is to picture each chakra one by one, starting with the root chakra and working your way up. As you picture each one, feel it spinning and spreading its energy through every pore in your body. Once you get to the crown chakra, picture yourself radiating love and blessings outwards to every living being in the universe.
Then work your way back down from the crown. Picture yourself receiving all sorts of blessings from the universe so that they fill your body with a glowing white light. Then have that white light split up in to the colors of the spectrum, violet, indigo and so on, as you work your way back down all the chakras to the root chakra.
You can do with meditation on its own, sitting or lying down. You can also do it lying down and placing your chakra stones. If you wish, you can also use your essential oils. Sit up in this case and be sure that your oils are lined up in a row correctly so you do not need to fumble for them and break your concentration.
Meditation is a great way to focus the mind. Use it for chakra work as well and see what a difference it can make to body, mind and spirit.
Getting to Know Your Chakras
By now, almost everyone has come across the word chakra, but what are the chakras and why are they important? If you have been struggling in certain areas of your life and feeling ‘stuck’ our out of balance, it’s time to get to know your chakras.
The chakras are energy centers associated with a certain area of the body and particular types of energy which can be balanced and even magnified in order to effect transformation in your life. The 7 chakras are described as being aligned in an ascending column from the buttocks and anus through to the top of the head. Each chakra has its own color and type of energy.
Starting from the bottom and working our way to the top, with the color of each chakra, we have:
1-The Root Chakra -red
2-The Navel, Sex or Sacral Chakra -orange
3-The Solar Plexus Chakra -yellow
4-The Heart Chakra-green
5-The Throat Chakra-blue
6-The Third Eye Chakra-indigo
7-The Crown Chakra-violet
If you look at the colors listed, you will notice that each chakra corresponds to a color of the rainbow or spectrum. The healing energy pictured as coming in and out of the crown chakra is often shown as white light, that is, the combination of all of the colors of the spectrum.
The purpose of the chakras is to spin to send out and also attract energy in order to keep the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical wellness of the body in balance.
What are the energies contained in each chakra?
1-The Root Chakra-stability, having life’s essentials, such as food, water and shelter
A balanced one means prosperity and ease. Imbalance triggers hardship and greed.
2-The Navel, Sex or Sacral Chakra-passion, creativity, procreation
Balance give confidence and sex appeal. Imbalance creates timidity and the feeling of being stuck in a rut.
3-The Solar Plexus Chakra-willpower and personal power
Balance gives the energy and motivation to achieve all your goals. Imbalance means a lack of ambition or momentum.
4-The Heart Chakra-love, compassion, empathy
A balanced heart chakra gives you harmony in all your relationships. An imbalanced one closes you off and makes you jealous of others.
5-The Throat Chakra-communication
A balanced one helps you with all your spoken and written communications and allows you to tap into your authentic self. An imbalanced one results in lying, gossiping and being a bad listener.
6-The Third Eye Chakra-intuition, wisdom
A balanced one helps you tap into your higher self and make connections with the spiritual. An imbalanced one makes you feel stuck or cut off from yourself.
7-The Crown Chakra-higher self
A balanced one leaves you open in mind, body and spirit. A closed one cuts you off from your highest potential and make you close-minded.
Balance one or all of your chakras and see what a difference it can make to your health and prosperity.
Meditating to Balance Your Chakras
We can used meditation or guided imagery to tune and balance our chakras, the energy centers of our body that store different kinds of powerful energy that can help us transform our lives.
Picture the red root chakra at the bottom of your spine. Image it is a round red light twirling like a record on a turntable in the area you sit on. This chakra is the seat of all of your basic energies as a human being and what you need in order to survive: food, water, shelter and so on. If you are struggling for paycheck to paycheck like many people, focus on this spinning chakra and imagine a life that is easier and full of the better things in life.
Now move up to the navel chakra, also known as the sex chakra. Picture an orange vortex at the level of your belly button. This is the center of power for your passion, creativity and procreation as well. If you have been struggling with relationships because you are stressed about finances, or having trouble getting things done at work, imagine orange light radiating outwards to boost your energy in these areas. Also picture it moving up to the next chakra.
The third chakra is your solar plexus chakra. It is the highest of your lower chakras. Think of the power of the sun and how it radiates energy. This is the seat of your willpower and personal power. If you have trouble getting tasks done, or saying no and meaning it, focus on the yellow swirling vortex. Then move the energy up to the first of the higher chakras, the heart chakra.
The heart chakra is the seat of love and compassion. Imagine your heart area flooded with green glowing energy to connect you with all living beings. Many people have a closed heart chakra due to difficult relationships in the past. Balancing this chakra can lead to love and harmony once more.
Now move the energy up to the throat chakra. Picture a glowing blue vortex. If the heart is all about connection, the throat is about communication, such as telling the truth, saying what you mean, and meaning what you say.
The throat chakra connects to the heart chakra below and the third eye chakra above. The third eye color is purple and balancing it or stimulating it will give you more spiritual insight and wisdom, which you can then express as part of your inner truth.
The crown chakra’s color is violet. Through your intuition and spiritual awakening, you can connect with the universe and the universe with you. Picture the disk spinning and you sending out healing energy to every living being. Then imagine yourself receiving this healing energy in return.
Do this meditation every day and see what a difference it can make to your health and all aspects of your life you wish to improve.
The Body-Mind-Spirit Connection and the Chakras
The understanding of the connection between body, mind and spirit has been known in the Far East for millennia, but has only recently come to the West. Traditional forms of medicine such as the Ayurvedic (EYE-your-VEE-dik) from India, Qigong (CHEE-gung) from China and Reiki (RAY-key) from Japan are all based on the connection between the energy centers of the body being tapped into for both health and vitality, and more mental powers and spiritual understanding.
The chakras are swirling energy centers in the body that contain certain type of energy. The three lower chakras are the root, navel and solar plexus chakras and are situated at our buttocks, bellybutton and the point just under our rib cage in the center of our body. Each of these is related to our body and our connection with our self and our needs. A strong root chakra will give us everything we need, such as food, water and shelter; it is literally as well as figuratively the foundation of our bodily existence.
Our navel chakra, also known as the sex chakra, controls our desires, sexual and otherwise, and our ability to create and procreate. In conjunction with the solar plexus chakra, the seat of our willpower and personal power, we can satisfy our desires and achieve our worldly goals.
The 4 higher chakras are the gateway to the mind and spirit. The four are the heart, throat, third eye and crown chakras. Moving the energy up from the 3 lower chakras through the solar plexus chakra can give the heart chakra a good massage that can open us up in terms of body, mind and spirit. It improves circulation and ‘listening to your heart’ and acting upon what you know to be right. This in turn can lead to better relationships with others and with the soul or spirit.
The throat chakra enables you to speak from the heart from a place of truth and authenticity. The throat chakra links the heart and third eye chakras, so it allows you to also speak your higher truth and wisdom as you tap into your intuition and spiritual aspects. The third eye chakra is depicted as being just above the bridge of your nose, between your two eyes. The mantra to chant while meditating is OM, a sound that resonates and helps bring us in tune with the universe.
Once we have a strong body and mind, it is easy to access our spirit in order to achieve our higher self. The crown chakra is the culmination of our spiritual accomplishments. It also allows us to connect with the universe and for the universe to send healing energies to us.
Moving energy from the lower to the higher chakras connect bod, mind and spirit into a balanced and unified whole that can transform your life.
Mindfulness Helps You Tame and Eliminate Stress
Because stress is so widespread, most people have started to believe that it’s something they just have to put up with. But you don’t have to live with stress. Mindfulness is a technique that can help you control and get rid of the stress in your life.
Stress can impact your brain. It impacts the way that you think because it causes your brain’s cortex to actually slow its ability to reason when you’re under stress. This is why people who experience stress can often make choices that aren’t in their best interest.
What practicing mindfulness does is calms the brain’s reaction to stress – which in turn calms the body’s reaction to stress. You’ll gain a healthy way to cope with and get rid of anxiety.
During mindfulness exercises, what you’ll learn to do is to be fully present in your life. You’ll learn how to be aware of what’s around you, of how you feel, and of the thoughts that are going through your mind.
These exercises can focus on a portion of each – such as thoughts and feelings – or they can separate them out so that you are only focusing on one at a time. You might simple direct your attention to how you’re feeling in the moment.
Or you might instead pay attention to the sounds of the birds you hear or to the movement of the wind in the trees. The idea is that you’ll be paying attention to what’s going on where you are right now rather than focusing your attention on whatever it is that caused you to experience stress.
To deal with stress, something else that mindfulness does is help you let go of the need to judge whatever it is that’s going on. You won’t get on the hamster wheel of running the heavy situation over and over again in your mind.
Mindfulness is used so that you don’t carry the negative emotions stress can bring with you into the present moment. It also prevents you from continually thinking about the stress.
You learn to let go and to simply be, to accept what your present moment in time is offering. When you can utilize the ability to practice mindfulness, you can eliminate stress.
You can do this because the negative feelings and thoughts from the past won’t be what you focus on. By using mindfulness to remain in the present, you also don’t reach for the future.
So much stress enters into our lives because of past issues. We worry about the past, but we do the same about the future. We spend hours, days, months and even years fretting and stressing over things that haven’t happened and may never happen.
Dwelling on the past and worrying about the future increases stress. Mindfulness controls stress. It teaches users how to let go of anxiety and tension and live fully in the present.
When you practice mindfulness, you don’t allow your mind to wander and dwell on things that can cause stress or keep the stress alive. Pick something specific to focus on and allow it to give you clarity about what really matters.
Mindfulness Addiction Therapy
Seeking therapy for an addiction can be a good way to set yourself free from a behavior that you don’t want to have any more. Some therapy treatments focus only on one particular addiction.
Mindfulness addiction therapy can be used to successfully treat any addiction. Because mindfulness helps people to focus and be aware of the present, this can help them to learn how to react when their body starts sending out signals for the substance.
There are many triggers that cause the body to react with a signal for a substance and one of these is stress. When you feel stressed, the emotions that go along with stress can trigger whatever addiction you may have.
Mindfulness addiction therapy teaches people ways to deal with addiction and how to bring them under control by changing the way that they respond to the emotions and desire for a craving.
When you practice mindfulness, it can center your focus on your breathing and help you to learn how to be more conscious of your thoughts and actions. Because of this, it can help you when the addiction cravings begin.
You’ll gain a better sense of control as well as being more mindful of making better choices for yourself and what’s healthier for you. One of the things that can cause an addiction to hold people in its grip is the cycle of a habit.
Negative emotions can trigger a negative response, which then causes a reaction in you that’s negative but you might have set up as positive. For example, the addiction smoking is often triggered by stress or negative emotions in relation to negative situations.
The negative response is that you then choose to smoke. When you smoke, the nicotine release causes you to feel relief from the stress, so you see that as a positive.
This reinforces the effect of smoking. Mindfulness can break the habit by allowing you to deal with the nicotine craving. Practicing mindfulness will show you that a craving is simply a feeling that you can focus on rather than run from.
It teaches you to find the connection between the craving and what’s going on internally. It’s the same concept with having a food addiction. People who have a food addiction will turn to food to deal with emotion.
Plus, certain foods do have an addictive quality to them. When you eat food, it makes your emotions feel better for a while. These emotions, such as happiness, then reinforce that the habit is good.
Mindfulness can help you break the food addiction by showing you how that food is neither good nor bad and by being aware of the sensations within your body, you can control the cravings.
Taking drugs is something that people often do in order to escape from the pressures of their life. By taking the drugs, they gain the escape which also reinforces the addiction.
Mindfulness can help to take away the control that a drug has over a person’s actions. An alcohol addiction can also benefit from practicing mindfulness. Learning mindfulness can make you understand the feelings that you’re experiencing that are causing you to have the alcohol addiction.
You’ll learn not to judge yourself for the feelings that cause you to crave the alcohol and you’ll also learn to accept yourself with positive reinforcement rather than giving place to negative self-talk. Mindfulness can set you free from situations that may cause you to want to give in to the addiction.
Mindful Living Can Help Slow Down the Aging Process
From the time that you’re born, your body begins to age. Some people end up aging faster than others. Some people know that the key to slowing down the aging process is found in mindful living.
When you practice mindful living, you not only add years to your life, but you live a better quality of life as well. Scientific studies have shown that there’s a direct link between the emotional health of a person and his or her physical health.
When someone experiences negative emotions such as ones fueled by stress, it can speed up aging because it has a negative effect within the body. When you practice mindfulness, you can slow down the aging process because you’re fighting back against the causes of aging.
Inside your body, you have DNA that act as caps on the end of your cells. These caps are called telomeres. These are needed to help your cells continually divide. As time passes, these telomeres would gradually lose their length and the result would then be cell death.
You can prevent the shortening of the telomeres by practicing mindful living. The connection between mindfulness and the length of telomeres rests in an enzyme known as telomerase.
This enzyme is responsible for keeping the telomeres at a healthy length. One of the key factors that can impact the length of the telomeres is stress. When you have stress, it damages your cells and can lead to cell death.
There are many health conditions that can be linked with the telomeres once they begin to shorten. Among these are heart disease and some types of cancers. When you have stress, especially if you have a lot of it, this will cause the telomere length to shorten faster.
But, you can change that by learning how to live mindfully. When you live mindfully, you can defeat the stress that’s causing so many negative reactions within your body. You can learn how to do mindful exercises that can boost the grown of the telomeres.
When you practice mindful living, you focus on the present and you don’t practice self negativity and you don’t judge what you think or feel. What mindfulness does is it boosts the amount of telomerase that’s present in your body.
You learn how to stop the cycle of negative emotion and thoughts that tie in to stress. Mindfulness also boosts positive thoughts and emotions which are linked to physical well being and the aging process is slowed.
Mindful living will allow you to have better concentration, gain self control and allow you to have more compassion for yourself and toward others.
Mindful Fitness Tips for a Better Workout
Mindfulness is a technique that you can use to make your workout more effective. When most people exercise, they don’t realize how closely associated the mind is with it. What you think and how you think can have a great impact on your workout.
Mindfulness can make a difference in whether you can stick with an exercise routine long enough for it to become a habit. When you practice mindfulness, it can help you to have a better workout because it lets you focus on the goal that you have at that moment.
One of the reasons that some people have an ineffective workout or give up working out completely is because they fail to keep the focus on the present. They look at where they want to be.
Any goal that’s in the future can seem a long way off. Instead of projecting where you want to be with your workout goals, it’s better to keep your mindset on what you’re experiencing at the time of your workout.
You should want to get better and be able to have more stamina and do more repetitions, but that should not be where your thoughts are. Rather than concentrating on wanting to be able to make it to thirty reps in two weeks, mindfulness can help you keep focused on adding a few additional reps for that day.
More often than not, when people work out, they’re not even paying attention to what they’re doing. They’re working out and listening to the conversation around them. Or they’re listening to music or watching the television.
These actions take away the focus from the working out. By focusing, you increase your stamina and strengthen your mindset. By using mindfulness to keep your thoughts on the present, you can teach yourself how to gain consistency.
A lack of consistency is one of the main reasons that people quit a workout routine. It’s easy to blow off exercising when you’re not practicing mindfulness. Using these tips can help you be mindful for a better workout.
When you’re exercising, think about how it feels to move your body. Pay attention to the sensation of moving your arms and legs as you’re on the treadmill. Picture the body weight going down and your strength rising.
Focus on your muscles as you’re working out and picture them lean and powerful. Through each exercise that you do, choose one tense to focus on – such as what you can hear or feel.
Keep your mind focused on that sense only. This will help to keep you in the present. For the times when you don’t feel like exercising, mindfulness can help keep you motivated.