How chakra yoga can balance your chakras: a full guide

As you continuously practice yoga, you will eventually encounter the chakra system.

Chakras are points of power located in different parts throughout your body. Our spiritual and life energy flows through these points.

Throughout life, either our environment or our very own actions can cause chakra imbalance.

It can lead to physical illness, mental stress, or emotional turmoil.

Surprisingly, the best way to balance your chakras is by practicing yoga!

As you hold the poses, meditate, and connect with your spirit, you stabilize yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Here are the 7 ultimate ways how yoga can help to balance your chakras.

7 ways yoga will balance out your chakras

1) Yoga gives you stability and security

Muladhara is your rooot chakra. It’s tied to our most basic instincts such as:

• our survival instinct;
• our desire to belong;
• our guardedness or “fight or flight” response;
• and even our love for our family.

Your core childhood memories are also held here, along with whatever feelings of joy o trauma that your youth has instilled in you.

Since Muladhara is your root, it also serves as your foundation. Therefore a balanced Muladhara always equates to emotional, mental, and spiritual strength and confidence.

It also contributes to your physical strength too by boosting your immune system and it grounds you, granting you the sense of stability and certainty.

An imbalance in your Muladhara will make you feel insecure and emotionally unstable.

Your self-esteem will plummet, and you will feel clingy. Your head will be filled with doubts and this will lead to self-destructive behavior.

To regain or maintain balanced Muladhara, make sure your routine incorporates poses that:

• Ground you;
• Strengthen your lower body;
• Stretch your back.

These poses should build back your body’s physical and spiritual foundations. Here are some asanas that are good for your Muladhara:

• Mountain Pose – reestablishing your connection to the Earth will also reinforce your Muladhara;
• Chair Pose – this will strengthen, ground, and balance your legs, abdominals, and glutes;
• Pyramid – Destresses and encourages flexibility in your legs, hips, and spine;
• Five-Pointed Star – further strengthens your legs as well as your groundedness with the Earth.

2) It makes you more creative and passionate

Svadhisthana is your sacral chakra and it is based on your sexual organs.

It is therefore responsible not only for your physical fertility but also for your artistic and creative tendencies.

If your Svadhisthana is well-balanced, you will feel motivated, inspired, and energized. You are invigorated and full of life.

Do you have a positive outlook on life?

Your Svadhisthana is well balanced then!

Because sacral chakra is also associated with fluidity and movement, it gives us the ability to change, grow, and become more mature from our experiences.

It provides us with the confidence and security to move through life with grace and establish boundaries when needed.

If your Svanhistana is out of sync, you’ll feel emotionally unstable, depressed, guilty, or become overcritical of yourself.

If that’s the case for you, make sure to modify your routine to include poses that:

• Work your core and back;
• Encourage mobility and flexibility in your hips;
• Make you move your body often.

In particular, the Goddess pose is recommended as it stimulates your creative energies while stabilizing your psychological state.

Here are some other asanas you might want to look at. These focus on moving your hips and pelvis area, where your sacral chakra is.

• Bound angle – Makes energy flow into the second chakra;
• Knee circles – destresses your lower back while mobilizing your hips ;
• Lunge – Stretchesour your  hip flexors and quad muscles;
• Yoga Squat – A great way to stretch your groin area.

3) It will make you more confident

Your solar plexus chakra, Manipura, is also key to energizing you and giving you the self-esteem to take on challenges and work on problems.

If your Manipura is healthily balanced, you’ll feel like a reliable, responsible, and confident person.

But if its energy flow or balance is disrupted, you’ll become more insecure and doubtful. Your self-esteem will plummet, and you will have difficulty completing even the simpliest tasks.

Does that sound like you?

It’s critical to prioritize this chakra by balancing it during yoga sessions. To achieve that you need to incorporate yoga poses that awaken you to your true potential and encourage you to tackle life’s problems and take risks:

• Poses that work your lower back and abdominals;
• Facilitate the flow of heat and energy throughout your body;
• Twists that make you move and also aid digestion.

More specifically, prioritize core work that encourages both strength and balance.

What else?

You also need to regulate the ebb and flow of energy in your body to ensure that any negative energy can make its way out. To do so, try these asanas:

• Sun salutations – generate heat and energize your body;
• Child’s pose – stretches out your entire back, as well as massages your internal organs;
• Plank – A stabilizing exercise for a strong core;
• Warrior 3 – Enhances stability and concentration.

4) You will become a more loving person

Your heart chakra, Anahata, plays a crucial part in your relationships.

If it is blocked, disrupted, or out of balance, you might become insecure, possessive, or even apathetic to your loved ones.

What does that mean for your current relationships?

They’ll suffer, unfortunately!

You may even avoid having relationships in the first place due to insecurity, fear of rejection, or frustration.

Sounds scary…But there’s a solution!

A balanced Anahata makes you able to be a loving, empathetic, and affectionate partner, friend, or family member. It even boosts your immune system!

If you think your heart chakra is not ideally balanced, prioritize poses that:

• Strengthen your back and arms (specifically your shoulders and hands);
• Activate and expand your chest;
• Use your lungs for strong, deep breaths.

By strengthening and maintaining balance in your Anahata, you will awaken your power to love sincerely and genuinely.

It’s highly recommended that you regularly stimulate your Anahata during yoga if you have trouble with past trauma, dysfunctional relationships, or your ability to forgive.

If you want to further work on your heart chakra, try out breathing techniques and focus on the area around your heart, such as your chest, shoulders, and upper back.

A few examples of yoga asanas that’ll help you stimulate your heart chakra are:

• Forward Bend with yoga mudra – Opens up your chest and shoulders while stretching out your upper back;
• Cow/Cat – Expands your chest and improves spine flexibility ;
• Downdog to cobra – Great for your chest, triceps, and hands;
• Puppy – opens up your shoulders and stretches your back.

5) It will help you communicate better

Our ability to communicate is regulated by Vishuddha, our throat chakra.

When Vishuddha is out of balance, you’ll find yourself having trouble communicating. You’ll struggle to develop your own voice or to speak out the truth.

It can also affect your relationships or how you interact with others. You might become overly talkative but not listen enough. Inversely, you might be a good listener but have trouble expressing yourself.

A functional, balanced Vishuddha gives you a strong, confident voice that will help you express your thoughts and emotions in a healthy and effective way. It also makes you an active listener.

To improve the state of your throat chakra, perform poses that:

• Relax your throat with deep breathing;
• Stretch and strengthen your neck;
• Include chants to help you improve your voice.

Another good technique to balance your Vishuddha is this: sit in a relaxed manner and practice deep breaths that will purify your throat chakra of disruptive energies.

Try out chanting!

It’s crucial for a strong voice that resonates throughout your own body as well as with other people.

Here are other yoga asanas you should try for your happy balanced Vishuddha:

• Neck stretches/shoulder shrugs – Strengthens and reduces stress in your shoulds, giving your throat a strong but relaxed base;
• Fish pose – Opens up your neck and throat;
• Shoulderstand – Stimulates your thyroid and parathyroid glands to help with your voice;
• Prayer twist – Helps improve lung capacity to help with prolonged speaking.

6) It clears your mind, allowing you to truly focus

Ajna, also called a third eye chakra or forehead chakra is what gives you intuition or a “sixth sense.” It is highly important as it also regulates your other chakras.

When your Ajna is working well, you will have more insight and wisdom to help you navigate life.

However, a blocked or unbalanced Ajna will make you cold, cynical, and close-minded.

Your forehead chakra is closely linked with your mental capabilities. A balanced Ajna is associated with sharper perception and good memory.

To work on an unbalanced, unhealthy Ajna chakra, make sure to perform yoga poses that:

• Mentally destress you;
• Work on your sight and focus your gaze;
• Make you still.

While most yoga poses, in general, help you calm down, you want to prioritize sitting, balancing, and inversion poses to specifically target your Adjna. Some of the examples are:

• Eye exercises – Works on your focus and eyesight;
• Warrior 3 – Trains your concentration and balancing skills;
• Dolphin – Strengthens your limbs in preparation for inversions.

7) It makes you appreciate the here and now

Sahasrara is the crown chakra that connects us to the divine, the beautiful, and the spiritual realm.

This chakra allows us to transcend our understanding of ourselves and the world beyond its physical existence.

Sahasrara is all about spirituality.

That’s why it’s not actually located inside the body but outside of it: it hovers above our heads like a crown.

A person with a balanced Sahasrara is often wise, intelligent, contemplative, and spiritually in tune.

A closed or dysfunctional crown chakra will make you overprioritize and overindulge in Earthly pleasures such as money, fame, lust, and so on.

You need to work on this chakra to balance out the materialistic and spiritual sides of life.

To do so, perform yoga poses that will:

• Calm your mind;
• Bring you peace and stillness;
• Enhance your spiritual awareness.

Try out these techniques to unclog your crown chakra and balance it out:

• Meditation – The best practice to directly work on your Sahasrara;
• Headstand – Directly stimulates the Sahasrara, as well as other upper-body chakras;
• Savasana – Brings your chakras into alignment and heightens your awareness of them.

Why do you need to balance your chakras?

Yogic beliefs state that each human body carries seven types of chakras.

We can think of these chakras as key interaction points for the different energy fields and channels throughout our bodies.

Each of these seven charkas dictates an aspect of our behavior and tries to stir us towards certain life values like love, communication, and spirituality.

Chakras are not just spiritual, though. They have direct effects on how our physical bodies function too.

What do I mean?

Well, chakras are so powerful that they can affect our mind, our immune system, our voice, and many more aspects of our physical body.

Each chakra is also linked with one of nature’s five elements and is represented by a different color in the rainbow.

Personal habits or environmental factors can block your chakra points or throw them off balance.

You’ll instantly feel that something is wrong, depending on what that chakra is responsible for or what it is associated with.

Once your chakra is imbalanced – you might get sick, your relationships may suffer, and your overall quality of life may significantly decrease.

This is why it’s so important to keep them balanced.

So if you want to live a healthy, fulfilling, and well-balanced life, keeping your chakras open, balanced, and healthy is vital.

How can you align or balance your chakras?

Simply trying to relax and destress yourself regularly is an excellent way to get your chakras balanced. After all, stress is one of the biggest factors that damage your chakras.

Doing yoga is one of the best ways to reach all the chakras at once. A well-organized routine will help you to target every chakra.

At the same time, you can add specific yoga techniques, practices, and poses to your practice that is aimed at specific chakras.

To sum up, try out chakra yoga!

Chakra yoga

Chakra yoga is when you center your yoga practice to unblock and balance out your chakras.

By doing so, your energy will be able to flow freely throughout your body and your chakra points.

A chakra yoga routine can include particular asanas, that we’ve mentioned above.

You may also want to add breathing techniques or pranayamas to your practice, familiarize yourself with specific hand positions (mudras), and try out meditation.

By doing all these, you’ll gradually unclog and purify your chakras and restore harmony and balance between them.

Integrating meditation and pranayama with chakra yoga

Yoga is far more than just the asanas you perform. It is also about meditation, breathing, and spiritual connection.

Having an organized routine that incorporates all three will result in well-balanced spiritual energy and chakras.

Start your practice with pranayama. This will calm you down and clear your mind, preparing you to fully concentrate and immerse yourself in the yoga session.

Pranayama does this by activating and balancing the two brain hemispheres. It also cleanses your Nadis, the energy channels connecting between chakra points. This allows for energy in your body to flow smoothly and freely.

As you move on to chakra poses, make sure to meditate. Hold each pose for at least a minute, all while taking deep, focused breaths.

You can also divert your mind’s attention to the part of your body where your targeted chakra resides. Visualizing that body part will facilitate the flow of energy there.

Chakra yoga: summing up

Even if your chakras are already balanced, it is still important to do regular check-ups, monitor your physical and mental health, and enroll in balancing practices if needed.

While yoga is a great practice to work on your chakras, you may also add other techniques such as breathwork, mudras, or meditation – to keep your physical and spiritual self in harmony.

Overall, chakra yoga is essential to any yoga practitioner’s routine. It helps to naturally balance your chakras, enhance your self-esteem, stabilize your relationships, and many more.

With well-balanced chakras and free-flowing spiritual energy throughout your body, you will establish a profound connection to your higher self and the entire universe.