Our nine Chakra activating events are now underway and proving to be very popular. Many people have heard about Chakras (see image) and in Yoga Classes, you are often encouraged to breathe into your Chakras.
The first time I paid attention to Eastern traditions in our Western world, I imagined Chakras to be massive colourful buttons. Similar to the ones you see on a clown’s outfit but stuck to the front of my body. Then I picked up a flyer for Kundalini Yoga, which after reading found out is a mix of many yoga traditions that aims to “awaken your Kundalini”. Before committing any time, I searched what exactly I was supposed to ‘activate’ or ‘wake up’.
In yogic theory, Kundalini is described as a powerful energy source lying ‘coiled’ at the base of the spine. The primary chakras are 7 points of energy intensity positioned inside the body in a line from the perineum to the crown of the head. These are all parts of the energy anatomy empirically gathered through the ages. They are also called the “subtle energy body” which have recently been scrutinised by researchers to provide proof.
Tradition claims that when your Kundalini is dormant, like a sleeping serpent waiting to be awakened, and your Chakra energy is stagnant you miss out on a vast vital energy potential. This potential if unleashed could quantum leap your everyday life from being hard work to being filled with effortless joy.
Would that interest you?
Your Chakras are in exactly the same location as your vital and most electrically active organs; your heart, your brain, your endocrine glands and your gut together with their major nerve plexuses and networks of blood vessels are their direct counterparts. Many of these organs are composed of excitable cells. This means that in addition to their baseline electrical membrane potential they are also spontaneously electrically active which generate particularly strong electromagnetic energy fields (EMF).
There are other forms of energy in your body; thermal energy, chemical energy and vibrational energy. Your 50 trillion cells are very busy. Every single cell deals 100 000 biochemical reactions per second, atoms and molecules bumping into each other, transitioning to different energy levels, emitting bio photons within the visible spectrum of 200-800 nm (bioluminescence). If you pay enough attention this energy becomes tangible to your senses primarily in your chakras and eventually in your entire body. This is known as your life force, or Chi.
As for your Kundalini, recent medical research has discovered that all your muscles and organs are covered like clingfilm, by one single fascia. This is a smoothly gliding three-dimensional continuum of connective tissue allowing for your efficient, dynamic functional movements. It’s not because of the muscles that frogs can trampoline 100 feet high, but because of their effective fascia.
Clusters of nerve endings are concentrated in the fascia exactly where the Acupuncture points and the Meridians in traditional Chinese medicine are described. This makes sense because you can feel your Meridians tingle after a good stretch or an acupuncture treatment, leaving you feeling alive and full of vitality. The highest concentration of nerve endings is located at the bottom of the spine from where Kundalini is known to arise.
But why would you even want to feel that energy; activate your chakras and wake a sleeping serpent?
Consulting the wider literature, I found that “waking up” the Kundalini and activating the Chakras can create a whole range of powerful physical sensations and emotions. Mostly positive and exciting; for example, your body is set alight in brilliant rainbow colours, feeling universal connectivity or the bliss and pleasure of a whole-body orgasm.
Curious and reassured, I decided there is only one way to find out… I have to make my own experience.
My Kundalini awakened a couple of years after I started yoga and meditation. It happened, as I was able to find deeper states of stillness and greater balance. I also had regained much subtlety of my body, in particular my lower spine. Releasing a tight and stuck fascia can feel like felted wool is suddenly giving way. It creates greater mobility and a sense of space and aliveness in your tissues.
The first time, it took me by surprise. My Kundalini manifested as an irresistible force, spiralling in a wave of light pressure and pleasant sensations inside my spine. “It”, this powerful energy, travelled from the base all the way to the crown of my head moving my body anti-gravity in a distinctly serpentine motion. Effortlessly, I sat straight upright, which could be likened to being lured by a snake charmer.
This extraordinary experience happens as you transition from disciplining and controlling your body to being in control of allowing your body to be naturally out of control. You must be perfectly relaxed. Of course, you stay in control, you can easily override this subtle life force. We do this all the time. That is why we have never learned to feel it in the first place.
Once you ‘awaken’ your Kundalini you will want it to be there always. Now you can fully appreciate the meaning “You are as young as your spine”. Kundalini is perpetually uplifting and energising, like an inner re-chargeable battery, allowing you to move with ease with greater efficiency that puts a spring in your step. It’s like you finally managed to take your foot off the brakes as you move through life.
Activated chakras are a sign that your associated organs are healthy and fully functional. You benefit from the positive emotions of a balanced energy physiology (see table).
Let me illustrate this on your heart Chakra. The heart generates the most powerful, rhythmic electromagnetic field (EMF) in the human body. It’s 5,000 times stronger and its amplitude 60 times greater than the EMF produced by the brain. The EMF of the heart can be measured up to three meters around the body but like all waves, it is infinite. The physical qualities of your heart EMF change continuously depending on your nervous system activity and interference from other EMFs e.g. from other organs in your body, the environment and of course that of other people.
You have to pay close attention but it’s possible to feel the EMF of your heart right in the centre of your chest. You can interpret the nuances of the electromagnetic energy of your heart as the subtlest of emotions. And you will notice how it changes in response to your thoughts and the people and situations around you. And of course, you will recognisethe iconic emotion of the heart – LOVE – in all its shades of pink, its lightness of being and its overflowing abundance.
This is in stark contrast to a chronically ‘closed heart chakra’ where your chest feels tight, dull and heavy (not unlike angina pectoris), empty like an absent heart, or cold and heavy like the fabled heart of stone. With chronic stress, lack of exercise and unhealthy lifestyles the desires of your heart are ignored and neglected, you starve it of health boosting neurochemicals, you shut down its blood supply and your heart-rate variability (a physiological measurement of fitness and longevity) becomes dangerously fixed.
With a numbed heart your prevailing thoughts and actions are dominated by pain, fear, envy and anger or despair; a sense of separation and loneliness prevails. Your heart is telling you in no uncertain terms that it is slowly dying. Unless you do something about it you will “break” your own heart. As you know, heart diseases with all the serious consequences are a leading cause of death in our modern world.
Targeted and effective chakra opening exercises can reset your energy physiology to greater health and balance. (It’s what we teach in our experiential workshops).
Feeling happy, healthy and energised is not a reward for working hard but it is natures sure sign that your physiology is fully functioning, and your body is naturally flooded with a soup of health, pleasure and efficiency boosting neurochemicals; well-knownas Anandamide, Dopamine and Endorphins. In this optimised state, you feel your best and you perform your best. Call it the “sweet spot” of your physiology and make it your reference point for how you want to feel and function every day.
Interested in connecting more deeply with your “subtle energy body” so you can transform how you feel? For more details of the workshops and 1-2-1 tutoring we offer visit Our Events page.
