Sonia Choquette - True Balance: A Commonsense Guide for Renewing Your Spirit

Recently I had an urgent telephone message on my answering machine from a man named Steven, saying, Sonia, you dont know me, but I was referred to you by my massage therapist. I went to see her because Ive been feeling extremely drained and overwhelmed lately, and nothing in my life is going smoothly. She told me its because my chakras are out of balance. She tried to explain to me that chakras are energy centers that we all have, but honestly I didnt understand what she meant. Finally she referred me to you and said you could help! So can you? I need to know what these energy centers are and how to get them to stop messing up my life!

Receiving Stevens call was not surprising. In the past few years, Ive had many phone calls just like his, each one requesting guidance through one energy crisis after another. More and more people are discovering that what ails them is more psychic and spiritual in nature than physical. Steven, like many of my clients, had never even heard of the energy centers called chakras. To him, it was no more than a curious word, maybe a metaphor, but certainly not something that was intrinsic to his nature and essential to his overall well-being. He couldnt imagine that an invisible energy center, a chakra, could have anything to do with his problems, and in fact he laughed at the idea when it was suggested. But the truth is, his massage therapist was right. Most of our problems can be traced to one or more of our seven psychic energy centers, known to the metaphysically savvy as chakras, from the Hindi term meaning spinning wheel, which from an energetic perspective is what a chakra would actually look like.

Here in the West, we think of ourselves as solid bodies, but Eastern thinking correctly perceives us being more ethereal. When Hindus visualize a human being, they visualize our seven separate but interconnected centers of energy, each maintaining a certain center of human well-being. To the rational Western mind, the idea of such energy centers seems far-fetched, yet our own language accurately reflects our instinctive awareness of these psychic centers. We say, for example:

• Hes a pain in the neck, of someone who affects our throat chakra by making us speechless with rage

• She galls me, of the coworker who affects our third chakra by overriding our authority and ignoring our decisions

• He knocks me off my feet, of the new lover who overwhelms our routine and threatens our first chakra, our foundation, causing us to feel ungrounded.

Our energy system governs our energetic and psychic well-being. This system includes our foundation and survival instincts, our vitality and emotional sensations, our will and personal sovereignty, our ability to give and receive love, our creative expression, our psychic awareness and personal vision, and our capacity to connect with our Creator. It is the matrix that channels our spirit into our body and allows us to express ourselves freely on the physical plane. When these seven centers of energy are balanced, we feel grounded, emotionally safe, mentally in charge, receptive to love and loving, effective and creative in all forms of our expression, inspired and imaginative, and intimately connected to and guided by the Universe. This is the natural plan for human experience. Such a life is exciting, satisfying, productive, and fulfilling and allows us to channel our best into the planet. It is a life lived as the Universe intends. It is a life filled with love, creativity, and blessings.

But when one or more of these seven chakras falls out of balance or fails to operate as it is designed to, essential parts of our psychic and spiritual expression become dysfunctional or shut down. When this happens, we become insecure or feel threatened in the world. We fall out of communion with our emotions and fail to interpret their messages correctly. We find ourselves operating out of fear, with a reduced capacity to give and receive love. We lose touch with our integrity and begin to express other than what is in our hearts, coming to doubt ourselves, or deny our value and importance. We lose our capacity to see the truth in ourselves and in the world, and in the worst case, we become disconnected from our source, God. Such a life becomes an overwhelming attempt to avoid death rather than experience each day. It is a life filled with anxiety, terror, isolation, anger, dishonesty, manipulation, and loneliness. It is a sad and wasteful loss both to us and to the world, for in this condition we are unable to bring our gifts to the world and make our unique and essential contribution to the whole. We suffer, and the world suffers as well.