Chakra Awareness for Personal & Sadhana Development

We can use our chakra awareness to give clues about our physical, psychosocial and spiritual development. So by developing our chakras we can develop aspects of ourselves and also improve our yoga sadhana (our practice in its broadest sense).

This can be achieved by looking at it from two separate perspectives. We could look at our asana practice and examine where we seem to be restricted physically, for example backbends and then use this to identify the associated chakra (anahata or heart chakra) and proceed to work on developing this area physically (by, for example using the bridge to start opening the heart centre and improving our backbends). Or we can work from another direction and examine our awareness of our development in the chakras (for example, explore our psychological awareness of a blocked emotional centre, let's say restrictions about giving and receiving unconditional love) and then use our asana practice (backbends, for example) to develop this chakra.

Later on this site, you will be able to download a questionnaire, chakra by chakra and evealuate your own lifestyle, psychologocal and physical development. You will also be able to compare your own scores for each chakra with other yogi(ni)s who have previously completed the questionnaire.

Below I have described the six main "earthly" chakras and listed the major asana groups associated with each chakra. This can help develop our asana practice on a physical level. In the next section, I describe some mental and psychosocial aspects of chakra development to help gain further clues to help our personal development.