Forget Spinning Wheels: The Physical Reality of Your Chakras

Chakras. The biggest buzz of energy workers and spiritual leaders in the field. And they are spoken of so loosely that people think that clearing your chakras and maintaining them is the secret to a successful spiritual life. They aren’t. There is no miracle that happens when you work your chakras. Are they important though? Absolutely. Just highly misunderstood.

The word chakra means spinning wheel. Again though, this can be ancient wording that could only describe within the limitations of those times. For example a chakram is a bladed ring that would spin as it was thrown at enemies. Famously used by Xena, Warrior Princess. But see how one letter changed what we were talking about but not the concept?

Therefore we need to explore chakra not from “the spinning wheel” definition but by the concept of what a chakra is.

A chakra is also called an energy center. That is more accurate than just a spinning wheel in what chakras represent in energy work. But when we say an energy center in a spiritual context we are immediately going to turn our minds towards the esoteric nature of energy and not the physical. That’s not what I am trying to do though. I want to always keep a reminder that what is spiritual is also physical. How do I do that with chakras though?

I go back in time again. Remember how energy remembers the things we were before we became human? Well before any creatures developed a spinal column they had very simple nervous system structures with primitive brains. A primitive brain is not what we think of when we picture a brain. Most people would think a primitive brain is just smaller than what we have now. A primitive brain is a series of tiny nerve centers that were along the notochord of our ancestral creatures. A notochord is what came before spinal columns.

The nerve centers were first called nerve nets which later evolved into ganglia and then finally into complex brains and the spinal columns we know today. But what we want to focus on here is the ganglia stage. Ganglia are nerve clusters that act independently of each other but still in concert with each other. They help to regulate different functions of the body in two ways. Sensory receptivity and Autonomic functions. Sensory ganglia process external stimuli and send signals to the central nervous system. Autonomic ganglia process involuntary functions like heart rate and digestion.

Now let’s look at the mainstream talk about Chakras. The mainstream talk says that each chakra is related to a specific gland in the body. Most of the glands in our bodies act independently yet in concert with the central nervous system as well. They produce hormones which signal the central nervous system to respond in different ways. In medical fields the heart is also called our second brain because it does not need the brain to function. What controls these glands? The ganglia. 

Ganglia are not nerves themselves but do produce electrical signals to send to the central nervous system informing it of what functions it needs to take. That moment when your heart starts racing and your fight or flight response kicks in before your brain even knows what is going on is because ganglia sensed something and began giving orders to the rest of the body. 

Most ganglia are found towards the front of the body and the sides. It’s easier to sneak up on someone from behind to scare them than it is to come at them from the sides or the front. Again, ganglia. 

Energy centers from either the chakra traditions or other less known systems like the Mayan or Celtic systems were simply ways of understanding that we have ganglia which “sense” things or create that sense of knowing called intuition. This is another reason why I emphasized the importance of the physical body in both the foundational series and in the energy fields previously. We took ancient “ideas” and created a mystical story instead of merging that limited verbiage with current scientific knowledge. 

What are chakras and energy centers often described as? Light centers. What do ganglia produce? Electrical pulses. What do electrical pulses give off? Light.

When we work with chakras we are not working to eliminate wasted energy. We are working to integrate that subliminal communication from our bodies into our conscious thoughts. The more we work with our energy centers, our ganglia, the more awareness we bring to both our inner and outer worlds.