Chakras & the Nervous System: Two Maps of the Human Experience
I’ve been avoiding writing this blog, which is kind of funny, considering the subject.
For more than 25 years, the chakra system has been woven into my personal and professional life. My work began in yoga, and if you’ve ever taken one of my workshops, you may have heard me jokingly refer to myself as the “Chakra Queen.”
This is familiar territory for me. Territory I love and am passionate about.
And yet, when it came time to sit down and write about the chakras and the nervous system, I kept finding other things to do.
Have you ever done that? You know what you have to do, even what you want to do, yet somehow you can’t seem to do it?
I loaded and ran the dishwasher. I did an abdominal workout. I roasted some vegetables. You get it.
Then it finally dawned on me: I’m in avoidance.
There wasn’t anybody here to let me know that. 😂 Sometimes it takes a while to become conscious of what in the hell is actually going on!
Rather than judging the avoidance or pushing myself through it, I got curious.
What is the avoidance protecting?
Underneath it, I found something much younger.
A little girl who learned long ago that being fully seen and expressing herself could be dangerous. A little girl who, in her own way, was waiting for annihilation.
That may sound like a very big word, but the body can carry very old conclusions.
It isn’t safe to be seen.
It isn’t safe to speak.
It isn’t safe to take up space.
It isn’t safe to fully exist.
My adult self knows that sitting at my computer writing a blog is not dangerous. But our nervous systems don’t operate solely from what we consciously know. They carry the imprint of what we have experienced.
Suddenly, my avoidance didn’t look so much like procrastination. I recognized it as protection.
And perhaps this is the perfect place to begin a conversation about the chakras and the nervous system.
The Chakras Have Been With Me for a Long Time
My relationship with the chakra system began through yoga and has continued to deepen through decades of teaching, studying, and exploring the body.
I’ve had the privilege of studying with extraordinary teachers, including Anodea Judith, Wendy DeRosa, and Cyndi Dale, as well as through my many yoga teacher trainings. My work at Hartford Family Institute added another dimension, exploring the chakras through body-centered psychotherapy, developmental psychology, character structure, energy, and animal imagery.
When I think of the chakras, I don’t just picture seven colorful circles running up the spine. I think of them as a map of the human experience.
A map that invites us to explore:
Do I feel safe? Do I belong?
Am I allowed to feel and want?
Can I act on my own behalf?
Can I love and stay connected to myself?
Can I speak what is true?
Can I trust what I perceive?
If you’ve been following my nervous system series, those questions may sound familiar.
Our nervous systems are continually gathering information too:
Am I safe? Do I need to protect myself? Can I stay present with what I’m feeling? Is there enough safety here for me to fully be myself?
Two Different Maps
The chakra system is an ancient energetic and spiritual framework. The nervous system is a biological system studied through anatomy and physiology. Both have value.
I like to place the two maps side by side and ask:
What might each one help us notice?
The chakra tradition describes places where our life energy can become constricted, excessive, depleted, or more freely expressed. Nervous system work helps us understand how our bodies adapt to safety, threat, relationship, stress, trauma, and connection.
Developmental psychology gives us another piece of the puzzle. Chakra models associate the chakras with particular developmental needs and stages of life. When those needs are not adequately met, we adapt. We protect. We compensate.
And those adaptations don’t live only in our heads.
We experience them through the body.
Which brings me back to my avoidance.
Through a nervous system lens, I can understand it as protection: something in the present, being seen and expressing myself, brushing against an old experience of danger.
Through the chakra system, I can explore that same experience through the root chakra and the right to exist; the solar plexus and the right to act; and the throat chakra and the right to speak what is true.
One experience. Different doorways into understanding it.
The Root Chakra: Where Safety Begins
The root chakra is associated with survival, safety, belonging, grounding, embodiment, and our fundamental sense that we have a right to be here.
Before my body can open to connection, creativity, expression, or expansion, my nervous system is gathering information about something more fundamental:
Am I safe right now?
My thinking mind may know I’m safe, but my body may have learned its answer long before I had words.
Perhaps I learned to brace, become hypervigilant, disappear, disconnect from sensation, stay busy, or make myself small. Perhaps I learned that belonging required leaving parts of myself behind.
Through the chakra lens, we can explore questions of safety and belonging. Through the nervous system lens, we can explore protection, activation, shutdown, regulation, and the body’s remarkable capacity to adapt.
Different languages. Different traditions. Yet sometimes they lead us toward remarkably similar places of inquiry.
This is where somatic exploration becomes so powerful.
Instead of asking, What’s wrong with me? we can ask:
What has my body learned? And what does my body need to experience now?
Listening Through the Body
Perhaps that is the invitation of both maps. Neither asks us to judge what we find. And neither, in my mind, is about “fixing” ourselves. They invite us to listen.
Which brings me back to where this blog began.
There I was, doing abdominal exercises, loading the dishwasher, and roasting vegetables instead of writing. 😂
Once I recognized the avoidance, I could have overpowered it. I could have told myself to stop procrastinating, sit my butt down, and get the damn blog written.
Instead, I became curious. I connected to my little girl. I sat with her. I held her. I breathed with her. I reassured her she was safe and I could be present with her in all of her feelings.
I didn’t need her to go away before I could write. Her protection made perfect sense in the context of what her body had learned. What she needed was a new experience.
She could be seen and still be safe.
She could have a voice and still belong.
She could take up space and still be connected.
She could fully exist.
And then, together, we began to write.
This, to me, is the heart of somatic work.
Healing doesn’t mean our old protective patterns never appear again. It means we can recognize them, become curious about what they are protecting, and meet ourselves differently when they arise.
Whether we enter through the chakras, the nervous system, developmental psychology, or simply the wisdom of our own bodies, the invitation is the same:
Notice, not fix. Listen. Get curious.
What has my body learned?
What has it been trying so beautifully to protect?
And what does it need to experience now?
