People often expect me to defend the chakra system before explaining it. I would rather offer it the way I use it in practice: as a precise language for describing where emotion gets held in the body.
You already speak this language. A lump in your throat when you cannot say something. A knot in the stomach before a difficult conversation. A heaviness in the chest after loss. The chakra map simply organises those observations.
The seven centres, in plain terms
- Root — safety, belonging, money and survival. Blocked: chronic anxiety, financial fear, feeling unsupported
- Sacral — pleasure, creativity, intimacy. Blocked: guilt, numbness, difficulty enjoying anything
- Solar plexus — confidence, boundaries, personal power. Blocked: people-pleasing, indecision, shame
- Heart — love, grief, forgiveness. Blocked: resentment, difficulty receiving affection
- Throat — expression and truth. Blocked: swallowed words, over-explaining, silence to keep the peace
- Third eye — clarity and intuition. Blocked: overthinking, second-guessing, mental fog
- Crown — meaning and connection. Blocked: purposelessness, spiritual disconnection
Read that list slowly and you will probably recognise one or two immediately. That recognition is the useful part. It gives a vague discomfort somewhere specific to go.
How blocks build
Emotion is designed to move. When it cannot — because expressing it was unsafe, or the timing was wrong, or you simply had too much to do — it stays. Over time the surrounding area adapts. Held long enough, that adaptation becomes your baseline, and you forget it was ever a response to something.
What chakra healing does
In a session I work through these centres with Reiki, noticing where energy feels stagnant or agitated, and inviting movement rather than forcing it. Clients frequently report emotion surfacing at a specific point — grief at the heart, frustration at the throat — without knowing why. That is stored feeling finally getting permission to leave.
The coaching conversation afterwards matters just as much. Release without understanding tends to fade. Understanding without release tends to stay theoretical. Together they hold.
Something you can try tonight
Lie down and place one hand on your belly, the other on your chest. Breathe slowly and scan upward from your pelvis to your head. Notice where the attention snags. Do not analyse it, just stay there for a few breaths with a simple sentence: I notice this, and I am not going to argue with it.
That is not a technique that will transform your life in one evening. It is the beginning of a conversation with your own body, and for many people it is the first one they have had in years.
Over a series of sessions, most clients find that one or two centres keep asking for attention. That repetition is not a setback, it is direction. It tells us exactly where the coaching conversation needs to go next, and it usually points at something they had been describing as just stress for a very long time.
Written by
Rashmi N Bhartia
Life & Mindset Coach, Healing Coach and Reiki Grandmaster. Recipient of the Healer Luminary Award 2024, with 8,000+ lives transformed through coaching, chakra healing and inner child work.
