We can use our chakra awareness to give clues about our physical, mental and spiritual development. So by developing our chakras we can develop aspects of ourselves.
This process can work both ways -- so for example 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 work on them to develop this physical area (by, for example using the bridge to start opening the heart centre and improving our backbends). Or we can work backwards and examine our awareness of our chakras (maybe with psychological awareness (of a blocked emotional centre, say restrictions about giving and recieving unconditional love) and use our asana practice (backbends, for example) to develop this or another chakra.
Below I have described the six main chakras and listed the major asanas associated with each chakra. This is, of course, working at the physical level. In the next section, I describe some mental and psychological aspects of chakra development to help gain further clues to help our pesonal development.
ASANAS FOR CHAKRA DEVELOPMENT
First, what are chakras? Many of you will be aware that they are often conceived as energy centres and described as spinning wheels or vortexes of energy. Depending where in the body they are located (and they don't exist in the sense that you can "see them" with, say an X-ray for example) they have different qualities associated with them.
So first, here is a description of the major six chakras and their associated qualities and then I have listed the main asana's related to each chakra.
