WHAT IS CHAKRA YOGA?
If you are a yoga practitioner, you know that yoga means “yoke” or “union.” Thus, yoga is the practice that aims to join the mind, body, and spirit. The ultimate goal of yoga is to achieve liberation.
Yoga is not a system of beliefs but of techniques and guidance for living a more enhanced life. It is a set of principles for well-being on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Yoga works primarily with the energy in the body through the science of pranayama or energy control. Prana also means ‘breath.’ Yoga teaches how, through breath-control, to still the mind and attain higher states of awareness.
It is not a religion, nor does it come from Hinduism any more than gravity comes from Christianity.
The word Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning “wheel” or “disk.” The Chakra System refers to the seven main individual spinning wheels of energy located throughout the body, containing bundles of nerves and major organs and our psychological, emotional, and spiritual states of being.
In her book, Chakra Yoga, Anodea Judith states, “As a yoke, the chakra system is a bridge between polarities: heaven and earth, inner and outer, above and below, matter and consciousness, mind and body.”
Yoga is not only a path to higher consciousness; it is also a path for bringing divine energy down into us, ultimately leading us to realize that our inner and outer worlds are one. The goal of the chakra system is wholeness and integration, and the arrangement of the chakras provides a map for the journey to awakening the Divine within you.
Chakra yoga is more about the inner world than the outer. It is focused more on the subtle energy than on the mechanics of a pose. It embraces the chakras as a profound path to divine awakening within your inner temple, which is what yoga has always been.
A Chakra Yoga workshop is about focusing your yoga practice on the chakras and how to use yoga to access your subtle energy by using postures, pranayama (breath control), mantras, imagery, and meditation. The practice and postures are categorized according to the chakras, although postures for one chakra may help open another. And many poses influence several chakras at once.
The Chakras are:
Root (First) Chakra—Root Support—Earth; Grounding; Poses: The base of every pose but especially relevant to standing poses
Sacral (Second) Chakra—One’s Own Place—Water; Flowing; Poses: Hip openers, forward bends, splits.
Solar Plexus (Third) Chakra—Lustrous Gem—Fire; Energy; Poses: Balance, warriors, torso toners. twists, plank
Heart (Fourth) Chakra—Unstruck, Unhurt—Air; Softness; Poses: Chest openers, shoulder openers, breath openers, backbends
Throat (Fifth) Chakra—Purification—Sound; Harmony, truth; Poses: Shoulder openers, stretches, shoulder stands, neck stretches
Third Eye (Sixth) Chakra—Perceive, Command—Light; Radiance; Poses: Sitting, balancing, inversions 
Crown (Seventh) Chakra—Thousandfold Lotus—Consciousness; Stillness; Poses: Sitting still, Savasana, headstand, inversions in general
The poses start with the Root Chakra and work their way up to the Crown Chakra—this is called Liberating the Chakras. When you liberate the chakras, you can work from the Crown Chakra down through the Root Chakra—this is called Manifesting Through the Chakras—and another workshop altogether.
The point to remember is that you cannot manifest through your chakras until you liberate or balance them.
For more information, schedule your 15-minute Free Assessment today.
