The Chakras Revealed: Shattering 7 Common Misconceptions

WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT THE CHAKRAS IS PROBABLY INCORRECT (SORRY!)

my personal Preface

I first began my research and personal self-practice around the chakras in my teens in the 1990’s, gleaning information and meditations from library hires and Western yoga books I was gifted. I loved learning about the chakras and went even deeper into my studies in India in my 20s &30s, doing yoga teacher trainings led by both Indian and Western teachers. I read books like Anodea Judith’s “Wheel’s of Life” and eventually began leading workshops and teacher trainings on the subject myself. I was changed through this work, my students lives were changed and I loved the power of this body of work.

That’s why I was absolutely horrified to read an article by esteemed Sanskrit Scholar and Classical Tantrik teacher Christopher Hareesh Wallis which basically outlined that everything I had read, learnt and subsequently taught was fundamentally incorrect. I had this pivotal moment where I had to decide quite quickly, before a looming teacher training I was running- do I throw everything out and start again? And in all honesty, I grappled with it for several days, always knowing that I would come back to the same answer.

Yes Sian, of course you do.

So that began my deep dive and retraining into the Tantrik System of the Chakras, which resulted in the last 18 months of study, finding myself being mentored by a Tantrik scholars, and of course, creating a completely new curriculum for the Light Collective’s Yoga Teacher Training-teacher-training and The TLC Method Advanced Teacher Training. (That’s me in the new classes <<)

I have also been wanting to make this information available to non-teachers and the chakra loving public in general. So what I have compiled here is an overview of the misconceptions of the chakras, together with information on how they were originally intended and written about in the Tantras over 1500 years ago. I have done my best to condense many hours of research from reliable scholars, but it might not be perfect.

I hope this challenges everything you already knew about them, in the hope that we can all start imparting, learning and practicing the Chakras from a place of accuracy.

the chakras - a classical tantrik tradition

If you type “the chakras” in to any search platform from Google to Pinterest you will find an array of blogs, tattoos, jewellery, crystals and information on the chakras that has been created and innovated on over the last 100 years. This has come to be the popular understanding of the chakras- even if it isn’t entirely accurate. (More on this later…)

The chakras were part of a stream of lineage of yoga known as Classical Tantra (read our blog post here) which spread across India from around the 5th to about the 12th Century ACE. They were the creators of chakra yoga, the first of the yogis to perceive the chakras and the subtle energy body. They wrote many thousands of texts and manuals, however many of which were lost to time, invasion and a basic lack of interest in the Middle Ages.

So where did it go wrong?

There are a few reasons, one being that in the early 20th century a British translator called ‘Arthur Avalon’ discovered a late Hatha text (the period/lineage of yoga that came after Tantra.) He mistranslated much of this text into a book called “The Serpent Power” which became a big hit across the world and influenced everyone from Carl Jung to Joseph Campbell, Anodea Judith and every other person who wrote a book or blog on the chakras in the last 100 years.

If you want to read more about this head to our blog “Kriya & Kundalini Shakti”.

And while it did bring these ideas into the mainstream, of yoga at least, what it didn’t do was provide a whole picture of the chakras. And, due to the fact that there is a general lack of access to Ancient Tantrik manuals accurately translated into English (unlike say, the Vedic volume ‘Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras,’ which is very easily accessable to any yogi with an Amazon account) much of what you will read about in books has unfortunately been made up by well meaning new age philosophers and yogis.

So, for the sake of brevity we will define this new system of the chakras (or ‘Shahhkras” as they are often pronounced in the West) as the ‘New Age’ understanding of the chakras, as it is one that has been created mostly from a New Age Philosophy perspective.

What follows is an outline of the New Age ideas you might have been taught about in books, lectures and teacher trainings, or from your Google searches, that never actually came from the Tantrik tradition. All of the following ideas are 20th century innovations, some harmless, others with somewhat problematic consequences.

Cue dramatic music….

the 7 deadly myths

(of the chakras)

myth 1: the 7 chakras of the human body

Yes, you heard me right. This idea that there is a definitive number and location for the chakras wasn’t part of the Classical Tantrik tradition. The chakras were mutable (liable to change) in the tradition and each lineage or school of Tantra had a different way of relating to the chakras. Some schools worked with 5. Some used 9, others 16. None of them were considered ‘incorrect’, rather the number of chakras you worked with related to the kinds of practices your school focussed on. Some schools focussed on deities and others the 5 elements. For this reason a different number of energy centres made sense to the different traditions.

On top of that the Sanskrit names that we have come to know as meaning the different chakras:

Root chakra: Muladhara
Sacral chakra: Swadhistana
Navel chakra: Manipura
Heart chakra: Anahata
Throat chakra: Vishudda
Third eye chakra: Ajna
Crown chakra: Sahasrara

These were not the exclusive names for the chakras. In fact along with the varying location and numbers of the chakras, across different lineages, the names of each of the chakras varied too. So Swadhisthana doesn’t mean the sacral chakra, it’s just the name attributed to it in one Tantrik lineage.

In the middle ages many schools were working with the 7 chakra system and so it became one of the more dominant systems. This system was discovered in the West (through Arthur Avalon’s infamous ‘Serpent Power’ text) and due to there being no other points of comparison, the 7 chakra system became the dominant system in the West.

Type Chakras into Pinterest and you will find a rainbow of discussion.

myth 2: the colours of the chakras

Ever read somewhere that to balance a chakra you need to wear a certain colour? Have you done a chakra meditation and been asked to breathe in a colour specific to the chakra?

Click on to Pinterest (see above) and you will see that the chakras are often represented by a rainbow of colours. Each chakra has it’s own designated colour.

For the colour lovers out there I am so sorry to break it to you, but none of this comes from the Tantrik Tradition. Colours were used and are certainly part of the tradition, bringing a colour into a meditation was part of practices and colours do hold meaning in the Tantrik tradition. However the one Tantrik text that is published and available to Sanskrit scholars describes only the colours red and gold, alternating between the chakras.

We are yet to discover the ancient text that describes the rainbow of colours. This one folks, is most definitely a New Age innovation.

myth 3: The chakras & your emotions

Your root chakra is related to survival, your throat centre to how you speak, your navel to personal power… have you ever come across this? (Or worse been told by someone else that you need to work on a chakra for these reasons?)

Well this one comes directly from the New Age tradition and can be tracked to the brilliant psychologist Carl Jung. After reading ‘the Serpent Power’ by Arthur Avalon, (that excellent mistranslation of a late Hatha text that described the chakras) Jung was inspired to create a series of lectures called ‘the Psychology of Kundalini Yoga’. Basically Jung overlaid his ideas of psychology and emotional states onto the chakra system, something that the tradition never did. 

The Tantrik practices didn’t do this because the idea was to move away from the limited mechanics of the mind and emotions that trap us, and practice in away that elevates our consciousness to create an integrated state of awakening.

Despite this, Jung’s ideas spread across the Western world and became almost biblical in nature for New Age followers and also yogis. This understanding of the chakras became so dominant it even spread back to India, as part of the interchange of ideas that has been going on for many hundreds of years. That is why you will still find many yoga teachers and schools teaching the chakras in this way.

Myth 4: The Chakras relation to organs, nerve plexuses and glands

This is for those who have gone deep into their (non-Sanskrit text) related studies of the chakras. There are many books and yoga teacher training manuals that will describe how the Third Eye relates to the pineal gland, or the Throat centre relates to Thyroid gland. Some get specific with nerve plexuses. Others relate to Organs, much like the Traditional Chinese Medicine System.

In the Tantrik Tradition the chakras were purely energetic. 

They were padmas, loci, centres, lotuses, focuses for highly specific energetic vinyasa (sequences of practice). Because they were based purely in the energetic realm, it meant that the chakras, like all aspects of the energy body, were mutable (changeable) in certain ways. 

When this energetic tradition came to the West, practitioners who were not drawing from source texts began to overlay the chakras (again) with Western ideas about the physiological body. This happened from both Western and Indian teachers, for complex reasons. 

This overlay is, problematic. 

It is problematic because it is part of a colonialisation of yoga that has happened over the last 2 centuries in many ways. By linking this subtle body system to a rational Western scientific model, represented a kind of justification, or the validity to this system. As in ‘the chakras are real because they also relate to tangible Western anatomy like the nerve plexuses and glands.’ To be embedded in a non-colonial viewpoint of the chakras would be to embrace them as subtle body phenomena, which can only be experienced through specific subtle body practices.

MYTH 5: The solar plexus

This is a quick one! No tantrik text ever describes a chakra as ‘the solar plexus’ or describes a chakra as being located in the region of the solar plexus. None of the 9 lineages and thousands of texts. Ever.

There chakras located in the navel and the heart, but never in between. The Solar Plexus is Hellenic (Greek) in origin and comes from Greek philosophy.

MYTH 6: The Chakra cleanse and removAL PROCESS

Has anyone ever told you that they can give you a root chakra healing? Or even better, remove that pesky root chakra for you? Or that they can use crystals to give you a chakra healing? If they have, you can be certain that they are not drawing from any  ancient text and probably never will.

The Ancient Tantrik tradition was highly erudite, producing many thousands of books and manuals, and fostering a great community of scholars and teachers. Over the span of around 1100 years these texts espoused a common thread of practices that involved breath, visualisation and mantra. These rites, or the vinyasa (sequences of practice) remained consistent across lineages and millennia.

There were specific times when the teacher or Master would perform the spiritual rites on or to the students. But mostly the practices were part of the Tantrika’s daily Sadhana (self practice). These students were householders, men and women, with jobs and families who would perform their daily Sadhana and personally connect to their energy body and chakras themselves. It was a personal, phenomenological, spiritual experience. The practice so refined that it could guarantee liberation within one lifetime for the dedicated student!

Needless to say at no point was any Tantrik Master doing psychic surgery to remove their student’s chakras as part of this tradition.

MYTH 7: THE chakraS & Bija Mantras

Again, this misnomer is for all those who are deep in the chakras world. Maybe you’re a teacher. Maybe you have been to a chakra workshop. Or maybe you’ve done one of my chakras classes pre 2022 (sorry!!!!)

Usually it goes that each of the chakras has a specific bija (seed) mantra that correlates to it:

Root chakra: LAM
Sacral chakra: VAM
Navel chakra: RAM
Heart chakra: YAM
Throat chakra: HAM
Third eye chakra: AUM
Crown chakra: AUM or silence

None of this is correct and I will explain why.

But firstly I would like to soften the blow by saying that working with mantras is actually the primary practice of the Tantrik tradition. So the intention is correct! In fact the Tantrik path was known to itself not as ‘tantra’ but as mantra-marga, the path of mantra. And using these mantras isn’t too far off either.

It’s just that correlating these bija mantras with the chakras is fundamentally incorrect for a few reasons.

Firstly, every text that mentions this thread of mantras relates them not to the chakras but to the 5 elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Space. In the New Age tradition these elements were cemented to the 7 chakras (not the elements) in a way that wasn’t found in the ancient texts. 

The traditions that did work with the bhutashuddhi (5 element) practice, would probably have used them in connection with a 5 chakra system. And, across the different lineages and systems, the elements were connected to different chakras (but always in the same order- that they got right.) So in some systems the water element might have been in the navel or heart. The wind element in palate chakra. Because New Age chakra-philes had no reference to these other lineages or texts, they assumed that the bija mantras and elements were cemented to the chakras in a way that was fixed. They assumed that the mantras were for the chakras. Which they weren’t.

Secondly, the way the Tantrik texts were written was in a kind of code that would prevent non-initiates (for example Arthur Avalon who wrote the Serpent Power in 1910) from understanding them.

They did this through a system that use complex cross referencing. So when describing a mantra or practice, they wouldn’t outline it clearly, they would reference other texts, other parts of the same text, the Sanskrit alphabet and also use analogies and cultural references that are now anachronistic. 

Why am I telling you this? Because the mantras Lam, Vam, Ram, Yam & Ham are also fundamentally incorrect. When you return to the Sanskrit texts where these exact bija mantras for the 5 elements are outlined, they use this complex referencing system, that, until recently, hasn’t been correctly translated.

So what are the correct mantras for the 5 Elements? Well sorry I can’t give them to you, unless under initiation. These mantras a very powerful and so despite being available through a few Sanskrit scholar practitioners, aren’t going to be found anywhere within easy access on the web. 

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

You still as yet won’t be able to do much google searching on the real story of the chakras just yet, and there aren’t really many books that you can find and purchase to get this history outlined properly. BUT- as the word gets out and more yoga teachers are retraining in this work it will slowly slowly spread. In the meantime:

The Light Collective Method: We run a one year course and go into some serious detail into what the Chakras are actually all about from the Classical Tantrik Tradition. This includes not only history and philosophy around the chakras, kundalini shakti and the energy body, but actual practices using the actual sacred techniques as outlined in the tantrik texts. I don’t believe there is currently another course that has this. That i know of.

Christopher Hareesh Wallis: The man who started this absolute chakra mayhem (in my life) is also an incredible resource on all things Classical Tantra. His book ‘Tantra Illuminated’ is a tome but a beautiful read and includes some information on the chakras too.

Christopher Tompkins: Harvard and Berkley sanskrit scholar and practitioner/ teacher, Tompkins Phd research on the chakras provided an in depth study that has influenced his peers (including Wallis) and many other yogis. He provides some online courses but his focus is mostly still on his important work as an academic and translator of the lost Tantrik texts.

THE AUTHOR

Sian Pascale is the founder of The Light Collective, an Online Yoga School focussed on working with practices that help her students access the subtle body, such as movement, pranayama, kriya yoga and meditation. She focusses mostly on a Shakti-centred yoga and the Tantrik lineage. She is currently based North of Byron Bay in sunny Australia where she practices and teaches. Read more about her.

THE TLC METHOD

Want to train with Sian in a traditional Indian style? Dive deep into the history of the chakras, their Ancient Tantrik context and learn the sacred practices that awakened Tantrikas for centuries.

Head to our website for full details.