Yoga Positions

Five six or seven chakras

In the human body there are seven main chakras located along the vertebral column and in the head. Of course, many minor chakras are placed throughout the whole body, and they even exist in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Above the highest chakra related to human evolution, there are also chakras which belong to the divine realm.

All these chakras function at varying vibrational frequencies, and are therefore perceived as vortices of light, which vary in colour depending on their rate of vibration. The rishis who perceived these chakras in deep meditation saw that they resembled lotus flowers of different shades with different numbers of petals. Therefore, in the yogic texts they described them as the lotuses of the body.

The lowest chakra is called mooladhara, then moving up the spine are swadhisthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddhi and ajna. Further up we come to sahasrara. Mooladhara is the equivalent of sahasrara in the animal kingdom. It is from mooladhara that man's primal energy can be transformed into a spiritual force, and it is from there that ida, pingala and sushumna originate. At the end of the circuit they merge again in ajna and proceed as one to sahasrara at the crown of the head.

Sahasrara is totally free from the influences of ida and pingala and, therefore, it is not always considered to be a chakra. Many yogic scriptures only talk about five chakras along the vertebral column, others include ajna, but few include sahasrara. Mooladhara to vishuddhi belong to the range of the five basic elements of creation. Ajna is concerned with mind and intuition alone. In the lower centres, matter is denser and awareness is dimmer, while in the higher centres awareness predominates and matter becomes increasingly more subtle up to sahasrara, which is pure awareness devoid of matter.