The 7 Chakras and Kundalini Energy: Understanding Your Body’s Energy Centers

This table is worth returning to as you read — each section below builds on it.

In Swami Satyananda Saraswati’s Kundalini Tantra—a foundational text published by the Bihar School of Yoga—Kundalini Shakti is described as a dormant potential coiled at Muladhara, the root chakra. Not a metaphor so much as a specific technical claim within the tradition: a latent energy, present in everyone, that ordinary life rarely calls on.

Through sustained practice — asana, pranayama, mantra, and meditation, built up systematically rather than attempted all at once — this energy is said to be roused and to travel upward through sushumna nadi, the central channel running along the spine.

As it rises, it’s described as piercing through each chakra in sequence — a process traditionally called chakra bheda. Each chakra it passes through is said to require a certain degree of purification before the energy can move further, which is part of why the classical texts treat the chakras less as fixed points to “activate” individually and more as a graduated path.

Located at the perineum, Muladhara (“root support”) is governed by the earth element and is described as the seat of Kundalini itself — coiled here, dormant, in most people most of the time.

Psychologically, this chakra is associated with survival instinct, stability, and a basic sense of groundedness. When this center is described as imbalanced in the traditional model, the themes that surface are usually fear, insecurity, or a rigid over-attachment to safety.

Traditional practice at this level tends to emphasize physical grounding and steadiness before anything more subtle is attempted — a sequencing choice, not an arbitrary one.

Just above Muladhara, in the sacral region, Svadhishthana (“one’s own abode”) is governed by the water element. Satyananda’s tradition places particular emphasis on this chakra as the seat of the unconscious mind — the storehouse of samskaras, or subtle impressions, that shape unconscious patterns of desire and reaction.

Its themes are creativity, pleasure, and emotional fluidity. An imbalance here is traditionally described less as a “blockage” in the popular sense and more as an unexamined pull — old patterns running without awareness.

At the navel and solar plexus, Manipura (“city of jewels”) is governed by fire — the same agni that governs digestion, which is why this chakra is so often discussed alongside metabolic and digestive vitality in Ayurvedic-adjacent teaching.

Its themes are personal power, will, and transformation. This is the chakra most associated with a sense of agency: the capacity to act rather than simply react.

The heart center, Anahata (“unstruck sound”), is governed by air. Its name refers to a sound said to arise without any two things striking together — a reference used extensively in nada yoga, the yoga of inner sound.

Anahata sits at the literal and symbolic midpoint of the seven — three below, three above — and is associated with love, compassion, and the capacity to relate rather than simply transact. In the classical model, this is often described as the chakra where the ascent shifts from primarily physical and instinctual concerns to primarily relational and expressive ones.

At the throat, Vishuddha (“especially pure”) is governed by ether or space — the most subtle of the five gross elements.

Its themes are purification, communication, and truthful expression (satya). Traditionally, this is the center associated with the gap between what a person feels and what they’re able to actually say — and the work here is often described as closing that gap rather than simply “speaking more.”

Between the eyebrows, Ajna (“command”) is where the three principal nadis — ida, pingala, and sushumna — are said to converge before sushumna continues alone to the crown.

Rather than a gross element, Ajna is associated directly with the mind, manas, and with intuition. In the Kundalini model, this chakra functions as a command point: the place from which subtler perception is said to be directed once the lower centers have been sufficiently purified.

At the crown of the head, Sahasrara (“thousand-petaled”) is described in the classical texts as beyond the tattvas altogether — not governed by any element, because it represents the point of union rather than another station along the way.

This is where Kundalini Shakti is said to unite with Shiva consciousness, traditionally described as the culmination of the entire ascent. Some source texts debate whether Sahasrara is properly a “chakra” at all, since it represents totality rather than a discrete center — but it’s included as the seventh in virtually every standard presentation of the system, including this one.

It’s worth stating plainly: the classical texts don’t treat these seven as independent switches to flip one at a time. They’re described as a connected sequence, where the condition of one genuinely affects what’s accessible at the next.

This is part of why isolated “chakra healing” — treating, say, Anahata on its own, disconnected from what’s happening at Manipura or Vishuddha — sits somewhat awkwardly next to the tradition it borrows its vocabulary from. The classical model is a systems model, not a symptom-by-symptom one — which is also, incidentally, the same reason a scattered, one-center-at-a-time approach tends to underperform a properly sequenced practice built around all seven together.

A few claims circulate widely enough that they’re worth addressing directly.

• Chakras are not physical organs that can be located on an MRI, and the traditional texts never claimed they were — they’re described as psychic or subtle-energy centers, a different category of claim entirely.
• Kundalini “awakening” is not a single dramatic event that happens once and resolves everything that follows; the classical model describes it as a gradual, cumulative process, and most traditional teachers are explicit that a rushed or unsupervised approach is where the well-documented cautionary accounts actually come from.
• Having seven chakras doesn’t mean there are only seven — subtler texts describe many more secondary centers — the seven here are simply the major ones along the central axis.

We go into these and several other widely repeated claims in more depth in Demystifying Kundalini Myths.

None of this is presented in isolation from the body. Several of the chakra locations correspond closely to major nerve plexuses along the spine, and a growing body of teaching — including within this tradition — draws that correspondence out directly, without collapsing the subtle model into the physical one or vice versa.

That connection deserves its own full treatment rather than a condensed paragraph here; we cover it properly in The Science of Kundalini Yoga and the Nervous System.

Understanding the chakra system isn’t a prerequisite you clear before the “real” practice begins — it’s what makes the practice legible while you’re inside it.

Knowing that Svadhishthana governs the unconscious changes what you notice when old emotional material surfaces mid-practice. Knowing that Ajna is a convergence point changes what a moment of unusual clarity in meditation actually means, rather than leaving it unexplained.

The map doesn’t replace the territory, but walking without any map at all is exactly the pattern that leads to the confusion — and occasionally the real difficulty — that gives Kundalini practice its more sensationalized reputation. A structured, properly sequenced training addresses this directly, rather than leaving you to piece the system together from fragments.

Understanding the seven chakras is foundational — but it’s still theory until it’s held inside an actual practice, sequenced properly and taught directly rather than pieced together from articles.

If this system resonates, the fuller picture is in our Kundalini Yoga guide, and for guided, in-person progression through it, our Kundalini Kriya Yoga Teacher Training is where the theory in this article becomes an actual practice.