Chakra Basics: Shift from the Physical To The Spiritual

By Ilchibuko Todd
President of Sedona Mago Center for Well-being and Retreat

The chakras are the seven main energy centers in your body. They are major tools for your spiritual journey that can help you awaken your soul. If you have healthy chakras with a harmonious flow of energy through them, you can complete your purpose on Earth and awaken and reach enlightenment. 

If your chakras are blocked, you could be stuck with low mood, stagnancy, sickness, or dis-ease. You could also suffer from pain in your body around those chakras. So in our practice, it is important to clear and cleanse your chakras regularly to have the best energy flowing through them to improve your well-being and empower your physical and spiritual bodies.

Physical vs. Spiritual Bodies

Our physical bodies are simply our physical vessels. Our physical world is much more fixed and limited. Whereas our spiritual bodies and world are much more in a state of flow. Our physical bodies house our spiritual bodies, i.e. our souls or spirits, and also house this flow of energy.

Our spiritual bodies have an infinite nature and are our connection to the Divine. It goes beyond our thoughts, emotions, and old patterns. It is the most authentic version of ourselves made up of energy, or light sound vibration. Through clearing and activating the chakras, we can begin to live as we are: as spiritual existences residing in the physical world.

Unfortunately, most people see themselves as physical existences living or pursuing some sort of spiritual life path, part-time. When we do that, we attach ourselves only to our physical bodies and we can easily shift into unhappiness or fleeting emotions and thoughts. We focus on external benchmarks like success from a job, relationships, or external roles to “manage” our lives.

You are not here to “manage” your life but to become enlightened and continuously uncover your spiritual nature for yourself. You can use the physical world to awaken to more of the essence of who you are by learning what you are holding onto that is keeping you from enlightenment. This is where your emotions, thoughts, patterns, and habits come into play. They can simply be a guide for you teaching you what needs to be released and uncovered so you can come to a state of completion or total awakening to your true divinity.

How do chakras work?

As you awaken more to the fact that you are a spiritual existence living in the physical world you can work with your seven main energy centers to help you know what is limiting you from your divine self.

Chakras are also related to different parts of your body. If they are blocked, it can lead to problems in that area of the body or different systems or functions in your body. You can also store painful memories in the chakras which can turn into physical, emotional, or mental pain. When you learn about how your physical experiences are hindering your spiritual existence, you can heal yourself through clearing and cleansing dense or stagnant energy through the chakras, through meditation; and circulating a healthy flow of energy throughout your body.

What are the chakras?

The 7 main chakras can be categorized into three segments, physical power, heart power, and brain power. The first chakra is located at the perineum, your second chakra is located around your sexual organs. Your third chakra is two inches above your navel. Your fourth chakra is located at your heart center. Your fifth chakra is at your throat. Your sixth chakra is in the middle of your eyebrows. And, your seventh chakra is at the crown at the top of your head.

Through the practices and principles of the Sun Tao, we meditate to circulate Qi (CHEE), or the energy of all that is, throughout all the chakras in your entire body to clear, cleanse and activate your chakras towards better mental, emotional, and spiritual healthiness. 

Lower chakras

Your lower chakras make up your physical power. This is your: first chakra, root, the second chakra, sacral chakra, and the third chakra, solar plexus. Your physical power represents your physical world and that includes your body. The lower chakras tend to store information from parental relationships, significant others, and colleagues and are also related to the desires you may have.

Any desires you have for security, control, and recognition are all related to the lower chakras. Through healing those chakras, you will release the need for these desires and feel grounded in who you are without these external values.

Your first chakra, the root, is related to your safety and security. It can be related to how safe you feel in yourself and how safe you feel in your relationships with others. When it is unblocked, you tend to feel very grounded. You can focus on a new flow of energy flowing throughout that part of your body and see in your mind’s eye yourself anchored to the physical world, rather than letting your thoughts, emotions, and old habits float you away.

We focus a lot of our practices on circulating energy through our sacral chakras. This chakra tends to be related to your desire for control. When we work with this chakra specifically, we can release old grudges and move through challenging situations because you can store light energy there as if the sacral is your body’s energy reserves. Through circulating the energy through your second chakra, you can detach yourself from emotions that no longer serve you and maintain well-being in your physical condition.

The solar plexus chakra is about the desire for recognition. Blockages can result from issues about authority and one may think of themselves as unworthy. When you heal and open the solar plexus chakra, you can gain confidence, develop a good character, and empower yourself.

As all three lower chakras are activated and energy circulates throughout our body (the state is called “water up, fire down” which means that we practice balancing our energies so that we maintain a warm belly, open heart, and a cool head.) Once you reach this optimum balance of energies, you can experience calm and peace, and enhanced physical health.

When all three of the lower chakras are in balance with one another, you can move through challenging situations with ease. Instead of reacting to challenging situations or difficulties in your physical body; you are able to observe yourself consciously, stay grounded, and enhance your health.

Middle Chakra

Your middle chakra is your heart chakra or your heart power. Tapping into your heart chakra is where your soul resides and the true nature of yourself. When your lower chakras are more grounded and healed, your heart can open and expand its energy without hesitation. 

Inside your heart chakra is where your spiritual and physical body meet. As you continue to work on your heart chakra, circulating healing energy, that is when you can shift beyond your physical body and tune more into your spiritual body. Clearing and connecting to the heart chakra will allow you to hear your soul’s voice louder than the old emotions that you have stored there. As a result, you will no longer satisfy just your physical desires and wish things would be different in your external world. You begin to feel into your soul and feel more empowered. Through this awakening you can also stimulate new energy into your lower charkas and feel that energy moving all around your body, expanding your heart, and allowing you to access your soul. 

Upper Chakras

Your upper chakras represent your spiritual body. You move past the soul’s gate, which is considered the 5th chakra, or throat chakra, the one that if cleared and healed, can help you to speak more authentically from your soul. Then, you reach your brain power, or upper chakras, which represent your connection to the Divine and the “God” that resides within you.

Your third eye chakra, your sixth chakra, is your connection to your own inner light, or the heavens that reside within you. When you access this freely, without allowing your thoughts or your brain to confuse or disturb this connection, you access infinite wisdom that already exists inside of you. The sixth chakra represents your own inner knowing.

Your seventh chakra is the crown chakra and it is your connection to God, but that God is not an external being, it is your own divinity, through the connection to the Source energy, also known as life force energy. When you access this part of you, you access your infinite potential and all possibilities are available to you.

When accessing both your sixth and seventh chakra it is important to “take back your brain” and tune into the depths of your own inner knowing. Usually what we mean by this is that we have been trained to be servants to our brain, we may operate like a robot where we are controlled and driven only by our thoughts. When these chakras are unblocked and we are accessing them freely, we can own our lives and be guided by our infinite wisdom and nature toward enlightenment.

Join Sedona Wellness Retreat to learn more about the chakras and how to circulate energy through them to balance your emotions and improve your overall health and well-being. Learn how to develop an energy practice that can allow you to tap into higher levels of consciousness, detox from old behaviors that no longer serve you, and be a better human to your loved ones and to the world.