This blog is dedicated to a friend and subscriber who sadly and suddenly passed away earlier this year. He subscribed to this blog from its inception and often commented positively, providing invaluable feedback and ideas on a variety of subjects. Go well Mike…
Enigmatic: mysterious and difficult to understand. Energy centres: yet another challenging subject to write about and aim to portray with the photographic image!
“ I don’t argue things being spiritual or scientific, because I’ve never met anyone who knows enough about either to be convincing - including myself.”
S. Kelly Harrell
As I’ve written in previous blogs in this series, shamanic practice/healing is much about recognising energies within the body and beyond and working with them, either to reduce/remove those that are negative, or to enhance the positive. But what are these energies? How do we understand them, never mind work with them? How do they relate to our “known” physical body that science and medicine gives us increasing understanding about? And how can they be “healed”, if indeed they can be?
More than one body…
The shamanic tradition believes that the physical body - the Body Self in material form – comprises the “total human” including other energetic bodies: the Energy and Emotional (Etheric) Body impacting the Hidden Self; the Mental Body affecting the Human Self; and the Soul Body reflecting the Higher Self. These bodies/energy fields blur into each other: there are no distinct boundaries between them. During a lifetime, and at any stage, trauma, conflict or dysfunction can disturb the smooth inter-relationship of these bodies/energy fields and if acute enough can cause the malfunctioning of the physical body, manifesting some kind of sickness or disease, physical or mental. One just needs to think about the impact of severe stress through major life events such as the sudden death of a loved one, prolonged abuse, unexpected redundancy, divorce or a major accident to understand something of this. Lesser dramas have a more subtle impact on one’s overall health.
The energy centres
Within this paradigm, it’s believed that the body also contains a number of subtle energy centres, linked by a central channel and intertwined with the outer bodies in a complex web of “energic communication”. Different traditions suggest different numbers and roles of these energy centres, but in the modern Western world, there are generally believed to be seven, located at the Base centre (the lower end of the spine), Navel centre, Solar Plexus centre, Heart centre, Throat centre, Brow centre, and Crown centre (top of the head). The shamanic tradition adds an eighth, the Dreaming centre (nape of the neck). We’ll return to these later, but devotees of yoga, particularly kundalini yoga, might notice a great similarity with the Chakras and herein lies a conundrum: how does the ancient shamanic tradition reflect the more recent yoga mental map?
“Just as the body needs air, food and water, the spirit needs energy. Life force is a tangible energy that runs through the central vertical current of your spirit body...”
Deborah Bravandt
As I’ve written before, shamanism as a world view has been traced back 40,000 years. However, mention of the chakras first appeared in ancient Vedic Sanskrit scripts @ 1,500-500 BC - significantly more recently. So what might have been the cause of more traditional beliefs and practices integrating newer understanding? My own research hasn’t revealed a distinct era or place where this may have occurred. However, it’s reasonable to suppose that as the Vedic traditions became more widely understood and adopted in the East, they then began to move westwards during succeeding centuries, being experimented with in various ways, and finding their way eventually into the more recent Westernised shamanic world view. Hence, chakras become referred to as energy centres in the shamanic world: their qualities and functions are similar.
Are they real?
While there has been some scientific research about energy centres through the years, it has been rather limited with few positive results and, perhaps not surprisingly, many people reject the notion on this basis.
However, there is a view that, even if they cannot be proved scientifically, practitioners experience energy movements and healing through these centres by regular meditation, healing by gifted others, and other practices. Indeed, Vedic teachings suggest that anything visualised consistently over a period of time eventually manifests itself in the body – “mind over matter” - and the Tantric philosophy suggests one can create one’s reality based on the power of the imagination.
Locations, meanings, indicative colours, related glands and shamanic groupings
These eight energy centres are believed to be located at the points of intersection with the main energy channels of the body, each one having a sphere of influence. Some even go as far as correlating each one with a particular endocrine organ as well as a concentration of nervous energy. They are frequently compared to “energy transformers” - taking in vital energy from the atmosphere/environment around us and transforming it to be positively used by both the physical and more subtle etheric bodies. Shamanically, these also can be grouped into three “Cauldrons”, Head Cauldron: Upper World / Higher mind / Understanding of higher concepts, Heart Cauldron: Middle World / Conscious mind / Unconditional love / Solar energy, and Abdominal Cauldron: Lower World / Subconscious / Earth, sexual and lunar energies.
A recent synchronicity
I’ve recently been studying a complex book recommended on a course I attended in 2021, the philosophy of which is grounded in theosophy. The fifth and tenth chapters make reference to the seven energy centres suggesting that each is not only a key dimension of growth in itself, but also an enhancement of the physical body, to bring about a higher level of self-consciousness, transmitting spiritual energy to ultimately elevate an individual into a state of spiritual being. It even goes so far as to suggest connections with celestial forces in the cosmos that normally in day-to-day life we are not aware. Whilst some may be sceptical about this, consider for a moment Prof. Brian Cox’s support for the theory that each of us is made up of carbon and other atoms which originated from dying stars. Food for thought indeed!
“When I say practice I don't mean repeating an act until you get it right. It means to instil regular discipline to accomplish a specific task or ritual, without which we feel incomplete, and our experience of each day is less.”
S. Kelly Harrell
Photographic expression
So, as with other subjects, how does one express any of this in photographic form? I’ve concluded that this is best done using a highly subjective, creative, maybe even abstract approach. I’ve attempted to match each centre with an appropriate image, all taken with their subject in mind: a metaphor, an impression, partly or fully shaded to the colour of that energy centre. I’ve tried not to “shoe-horn” these, but some were more challenging than others…
Soul Centre (rainbow)
REINCARNATED TRUE BEING
Connected with the stars/true dreaming
Crown Centre (white/gold)
CONNECTION TO UNIVERSAL SPIRIT/INFINITY
Connecting with Higher Self
Brow Centre/Third Eye (violet)
“SEEING”, INTUITION & MIND-TO-MIND COMMUNICATION
Centre of “seeing”/Soul purpose
Dreaming Centre (indigo) Shamanic addition
ANCESTRAL CONNECTION
Significant dreams
Throat Centre (blue)
COMMUNICATION & CREATIVITY
Communication on all levels/Truth
Heart Centre (green)
LOVE & COMPASSION
Love/Gift of Healing/Judgement/Compassion
Solar Plexus Centre (yellow)
PERSONAL & MENTAL POWER
Personal power/Centred mind
Sacral/Navel Centre (orange)
FOCUS & EMOTIONS
Focus/True Will/Intention/Attention
Root/Base Centre (red)
INNER POWER & SEXUALITY
Grounded/Rooted
To conclude:
If you’ve read this far, thank you and well done! What are my own conclusions? Energy centres are not - so far as current technology can measure - physical entities, although who knows what further advances might be made in coming decades/centuries? Research in quantum physics and beyond might enable us to understand this more, just as X-Rays, CT scans etc. shed light on otherwise mysterious physical illness and conditions in the past. Given this, integrating these centres as part of my daily meditation and at other times I know I experience a sense of alignment and centering when I consciously “breath them in”. They also give me an additional connection with the universe during other practices. Their physical impact is very subtle and sometimes hardly perceptible, varying with my state of mind, body or emotion at the time, just as with anything else. They’ll continue to form part of my daily praatcice and world view.
What are your views, thoughts or experiences to add to the dicsussion?
“The task of writing is the quintessential spiritual act because it tests a person’s commitment to living a meaningful life: this is a self-prescribed shamanistic act of spiritual faith.”
Kilroy J. Oldster