There is much more to all of this than most people realize. The Chakra system is just as much a part of your body as your nervous and endocrine systems. Yoga is being rediscovered by people all over the world who have begun to practice it because they need something to help alleviate stress and restore the vital energy they feel they have lost. As they begin to get rid of the stress and learn to relax their bodies and minds, it is natural to want to learn more.
Who doesn't want to feel better and know more?
Yoga is the comeback kid...and for obvious reasons. We have traveled so far away from Nature and everything that our ancestors knew. Families are no longer a unit, but rather bodies bumping into one another throughout their scheduled days of work, school, eating and sleeping. Opening the Chakra system is one of the most natural and positive ways to bring back harmony between people, to open up the hearts and minds of the masses. This is another reason to try to get everyone to open up to it. It could help to bring peace in the world, because you would not be able to treat anyone unkindly if your Chakras were open and flowing. Anyone who is truly conscious of this is also loving.
The best way to understand what Chakras are is to experience them. It is my hope that after you have read this series of articles, and practiced the techniques provided, you will begin to feel that rush of energy that comes from opening blocked Chakras.
There are teachers who warn that you should not be working with the Chakras without an expert to guide you. To this, I include the response by T.K.V. Desikachar in The Heart of Yoga to one of his students who asked, “I have read that the moment the Kundalini is freed, it feels like a powerful electric shock running through a cable. It also said that if the cable is not strong enough for the current, it will burn out. This is dangerous and you must be prepared for it. Do you have any thoughts on this?”
His response. “It seems to me that Kundalini must be described in this way because it is surrounded by a lot of mystery and a lot of superstition. It seems mysterious because we cannot simply cut the body open and see this power. But if we relate this power to prana, there is no longer anything mysterious about it. That is the beauty of a text such as the Yoga Yajnavalkya. On the experience of the rising of prana in the susumna, it quite simply says, 'How could I describe what a person then becomes aware of?' There is no shock as the one you described. When someone sees the truth, the only shock is to have to see what he or she was before.” I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to work with the susumna to release the kundalini power within.
There is nothing dangerous about exploring the colors of your Chakra system either. In The Powers of the Rays, S.G.J. Ouseley wrote that “the Aura is a living map, as it were, of a man's life—a color chart of his mind and soul, a key to his character, his personality and potentiality, as well as his faults and complexes.” When one considers the fact that color and light are both produced in the cosmos, it is easier to understand how using color and light to heal is a natural phenomenon, not something weird or mystical. If you practice moderation, self-awareness, and go through these methods slowly, your body will guide you. You will know when to rest and when to continue. Nice and easy does it is always the best way. Nothing happens overnight, unless you are just lucky and it happens spontaneously (which is what happened to me in 1969 before I knew anything about Yoga.) As for how Chakras look, there are images interspersed throughout this series to help you, both on my site and on other sites. When I was teaching large classes of people in Sweden, I saw what appeared to be miniature tubas (yes, that big instrument, but really tiny) spinning, and an endless number of “sparks of light” flowing rapidly through space—seemingly right into me! These points of incredible light move with a speed I cannot even comprehend when I think about it. There are seemingly millions of them. They are everywhere. And they are not coming from me, but at me. I was told by my shaman teacher and organic chemist (alchemist) in Sweden that these are vitality globules —PRANA.) Don't be surprised if you have some very unusual mental visions as the Chakras start to open like a lotus flower does in one of those fast-moving camera sequences of flowers blooming. You know the ones I mean. Visualize that inside of you, except that it's in very slow motion. There are also some spectacular astronomy sites provided later in this series with images that look exactly the same as what I have seen. They are in constant motion, spinning like a top. And everything that spins seems to also release the energy of color. They reach out to the aura of the astral body, which is also connected to the physical body. Chakras spin differently for men and women. The male spin direction is usually clockwise. The female spin direction is counter clockwise. However, this is not always true. For this reason, I give the rotation in Section 2 of each individual Chakra to be sure you are visualizing this rotation appropriately.