Episode 42 - Mapping Your Subconscious Framework - An Introduction to the Chakras

If you recognize that subconscious programming shapes how you show up in the world, then exploring the chakras is essential—regardless of whether you believe in energy. The chakra system offers a profound framework for understanding both our psychological patterns and energetic anatomy. Each of the seven centers governs a unique aspect of the human experience, from our sense of safety to our capacity for wisdom.

• Chakras can be viewed as programming centers governing safety, emotions, self-esteem, love, communication, intuition, and wisdom
• The three primary energy channels (Sushumna, Ida, and Pingala) create the framework for the chakras and balance manifestation with liberation
• True spiritual growth requires balanced development of all chakras—not just racing to the "higher" chakras while neglecting the foundation
• Each chakra has specific "demons" that block its healthy expression (like fear blocking the root chakra)
• Understanding your chakra system helps explain patterns in your emotional reactions, relationships, and personal challenges
• Chakra imbalances often interact with each other, making it important to address the system as a whole

Join me every Monday for the next seven weeks as we explore each chakra in depth, starting with the root chakra. Subscribe so you don't miss any episodes in this transformational series.

Related Episodes:

Episode 66 - The Seventh Chakra: Connecting to Understanding and Spirituality

Episode 63 - the Sixth Chakra: Seeing Yourself and the World with Clear Vision

Episode 60 - The Fifth Chakra: Unlocking Authentic Communication and Self-Expression

Episode 57 - Fourth Chakra Introduction

Episode 52 - Third Chakra Introduction

Episode 47 - Second Chakra Introduction

Episode 44 - First Chakra Introduction 

Further Resources:
The Chakras by  C. W. Leadbeater
Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith

Transcript

Introduction to Chakra Exploration

Programming Questions

Understanding Chakras as Programming

The Chakras as part of our Energetic Anatomy

Locating the Seven Major Chakras

Balancing Liberation and Limitation

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope. How often do you think about your subconscious programming? Do you wonder, gosh, why did I do that? Why do I keep doing that? Today we're going to talk about one model for approaching these types of questions. I want to start by asking you just some basic questions. So just see what comes up for you as I ask these things. Do you generally feel safe or unsafe, anxious or at peace? How often do you feel fear? Is it easy or difficult for you to regulate your emotions? How's your self-esteem? Do you like yourself? Do you find it easy or difficult to connect with other people and form meaningful relationships? Have you ever experienced your throat closing up and being unable to speak because you're so angry or sad or afraid? How easy is it for you to speak your truth? Do you find it easy to visualize things? Are you someone who likes to imagine things? Or is that difficult? How attached are you to your belief systems? How easy is it for you to pivot and integrate new information? If you found any of those questions thought-provoking, if you wonder, huh, I'm not sure why I'm so emotionally reactive, or oh, I definitely have walls up with people, well then an investigation into the chakras might be something you'll want to dive into because each of the questions I just asked connects directly to one of the seven major chakras. And that's exactly what we'll be focusing on over the next seven, yes, seven weeks. Every Monday, I'll be sharing a brief overview of one of the seven major chakras, and then we'll spend the rest of the week exploring themes related to that chakra. For example, next week we'll start at the beginning, the root chakra. This energy center is all about safety and security. So throughout the week, I'll be talking about what it means to feel grounded in this world, what kinds of experiences can knock the root chakra out of balance, and some strategies for healing and reprogramming it into a healthier, more supportive state. Because at their core, that's really what chakras are. Programming. Yes, they're part of our energetic anatomy, but you can explore them just as meaningfully through introspection and self-inquiry. That's something I really want to emphasize in this series. You don't have to like quote unquote believe in energy for learning about the chakras to be useful. Of course, we will touch on the energetic aspects too, but don't dismiss the chakras just because they might sound a little woo-woo. They're getting more mainstream, but they're still considered a little out there for some. Trust me, there's wisdom here, and I'm really excited to share it with you. There is a lot we can get into. So let me be clear that this is not meant to be a deep dive. By listening to these, you know, few episodes that I'm going to do, you're not going to understand all there is to, you know, know about the chakra system. I want to give you just some basic information so that you can decide whether or not you want to do a deep dive on your own. I'm going to link resources for you, some book recommendations that can help you go deeper if you want to, but that's not the purpose. This is meant to be surface level, give me the basics kind of information. All right. So look, I think we can all agree that we all have programming related to some basic things like survival, our ability to feel safe or unsafe. We have programming associated with our emotions, with sexuality. We have the way that we think about ourselves, our connection to others, to communication, our ability to visualize, and also to wisdom, to our connection, not just to self-knowledge, but greater knowledge, greater connection. And what I just described to you, in essence, is the seven chakras. I know I'm dating myself, but I like to think of the chakras as being floppy disks that contain all of our programming related to certain areas or aspects of our life. You can think of it as being just another accepted and well-known system for understanding ourselves. Freud has uh, you know, the id, the ego, the superego. Well, here we're looking at essentially a seven-lay-leveled, a seven-layered philosophical model of ourselves. We all have programming. And what else do we know about programming? It can get a virus, it can get damaged. We can upload programs that hurt the overall operating system. So we can have faulty programming, say, related to how we interact with emotions. Maybe we have a hard time regulating them, are quick to anger, or have an inability to feel much of anything at all. Likely this programming was installed by how we were raised. Not to put everything on the parents, but a lot of who we become has to do with how we were raised, right? So how emotions were treated in our family, whether or not we were allowed to safely express what we felt, whether we were around an emotionally uh volatile environment, you know, all of that impacts how we are able to deal with emotions later in life. If we struggle with this, it means we have some, let's call it not so healthy second chakra programming. So, what else do we know about viruses and bad programming? They can be rewritten. They can even be uninstalled, completely taken out altogether. So that's one way to think about it. You can also think about it in terms of it being part of our subtle energetic anatomy. And the chakras are essentially energy centers within the body. They are a non-physical energetic part of us that is superimposed on our physical. They are the organizing centers for the reception, assimilation, and transmission of life energies. So we want to understand that there are these basic energy currents that run through the body, similar to acupuncture meridians, but not exactly the same thing. Uh, they're called the nadis, and they are these energetic channels. We have about 72,000 in the body, but there are three main ones that I just want to touch on briefly. So the first one is called the sashamna, and this is the central integration channel. It connects the chakras and it's kind of like a super highway where the energies travel, bringing psychic energy from the manufacturer, if you want to think of it that way, which would be consciousness, to the consumer, which would be the mental, physical individual here on earth. The second channel is called the Aida, and this is the downward current of manifestation. This is what gives us a sense of being grounded. Without it, we become aimless. The pingala is the upward current of liberation. This is what takes us out of the limitations of this manifested plane into a more expansive and freer state of being. This is what brings about personal liberation. If we cannot liberate, we cannot grow, change, or expand. We become unconsciously stuck in patterns. What cuts us off from this is physical pain, trauma, social programming, things like that. The Ida and Pingala create this dance of what feels like two opposites, masculine versus feminine, upward and downward motion, intuition, rationality, consciousness versus kind of our egoic self. We need both. We need both. One isn't better than the other. We need both sides of things in order to be balanced. So let's talk a little bit about where each of the chakras are located and what they're all about. We'll start at the top. The seventh is located slightly above the head and is associated with awareness, self-knowledge, greater wisdom, that kind of thing. The sixth is commonly referred to as the third eye, and we kind of typically reference it as being between the eyes on the brow. This isn't entirely accurate. It's really located within the brain, within the third ventricle of the brain at the pineal gland. So even though it's commonly thought to be on the brow, that's really because that's the most superficial aspect. That's the easy place to point to, but it's really deeper than that. Actually, all the chakras, while we may give them a surface-level reference point, are located within the body. They are a sphere of energy. Chakra means wheel or disc, but don't think of it as being something thin. It's it's more a globe, it's a sphere. Anyway, the sixth is about being able to see intuition, imagination. Next, we go down to the fifth, which is in the throat, our ability to, as uh you might guess, communicate. The fourth is in the heart, and the basic issue is really love, relationships, connection. The third is in the solar plexus, and its central issue is basically self-esteem, our power, our will, how we feel about ourselves. The second is located about four inches below our belly button, and this is the seat of our emotions and sexuality. The first is the root chakra at the base of the spine, and its core focus is on safety and stability. To connect all of this back to the three main energy channels, the sashamna, the ida, and the megala provide the framework for the chakras. These three major lines of energy all connect from the root to the third eye. The difference is that the sashemna is kind of a central straight line of energy, whereas the aida begins at the base and spirals up. The pingala begins at the third eye and spirals down. And these two spiraling energies crisscross at the chakras. If you want a visual, look at the caducias. It's a staff that has two snakes intertwining from the bottom up. At the bottom, their tails touch, which would be where the root chakra is. And as they wind their way up, they intersect four times, and the heads meet almost at the top. So that would be, you know, it starts at the first with the four intersections being the second through fifth chakras, and they end at the third eye. Now, is this very interesting? I think so. But do you really need to know it? No. You can get into all of the uh discussions about whether or not the Idat and Pingala make the chakras spin in alternating directions, one going uh counterclockwise and the next going clockwise, or if they all spin in the same direction. There's a lot of nuance that you can get into if you decide to, but honestly, especially for day to day's purposes, it's not necessary. I think the real beauty and power in chakral exploration is in understanding what our programming is related to each of these seven broad topics. The one thing I do want to point out, though, in relation to this idea of upward and downward energies, energies of liberation versus energies of manifestation, is that in order to manifest anything in our life, we must have both. Liberation without limitation leaves us scattered, vague, and confused. Limitation without liberation is dull and stifling. We get caught in repetitive patterns. And that's why we need to focus on both. There's been a big push uh in the past to focus on liberation, right? You hear it all the time. Like we must transcend. There's all this focus on developing the third eye. Um, and that happened during a time that the general focus was on mind over matter, which really denies the existence of the spiritual within the mundane. The goal should not be to climb to the crown chakra as quickly as possible, thinking that our journey ends at enlightenment. Instead, what we need to focus on is being able to be as conscious as possible throughout the entire journey, about the entire journey, bringing as much depth and wisdom as we can to every level. It is so common to see people who have really developed their upper chakras, but have major issues in their lower ones. I mean, this is part of the reason why I called this podcast what I called it. We need to root to rise. Otherwise, we see things like gurus having sexual or financial shenanigans, or I've had the experience of someone excitedly coming up to tell me about their enlightened seventh chakra experience with no recognition of how rudely they interrupted the conversation I was having with someone else. I mean, we've seen these things. The system has to be addressed as a whole. As we go through these upcoming weeks and we talk about each of the chakras individually, likely as we talk about each one of them, you're gonna think to yourself, ooh, this is where my problem is. Oh, I've got a first chakra issue. Oh, you know, oh, it's my fifth that's really messed up. It's not actually the question you need to be asking or thinking about because, you know, it's seldom that simple. Linking specific symptoms to specific chakras is not enough. Let me give an example. Let's say we have a really timid person. While they might have a deficient third, that's where self-worth, self-esteem lives, but they also could be suffering from poor grounding, that would be a deficient root chakra, a deficient first. They could be having tumultuous feeling states, that would be excessive second, where the seat of emotions is. I mean, it could be any number of things. It's not so simple. Rarely is it just one chakra that's out of balance. From a personal perspective, I thought before I really learned all about this, that I had a, you know, faulty fifth, shall we say. Fifth is the throat. It's where we have, you know, the right to speak. And I had a really hard time with speaking up for myself, speaking my truth, or even actually speaking truth in general. Uh, and I'll talk plenty about that when we get to the fifth chakra. Basically, I thought it was just a fifth chakra issue. Well, sure, there was some dysfunction there. But the real problem was my third, was the fact that I had incredibly low self-esteem. I didn't think I had a right to speak, a right to share anything that was real for me. So it gets tricky in that way. And we also need to recognize that there are no standards. We can only compare a person's chakra to the other chakras in their own system. Okay, so some other basics. I'm talking about the seven master chakras. That is generally accepted to be the number. Some traditions hold nine, twelve, more, less. Um, so there is some debate, but generally speaking, most agree that there are these seven widely accepted, partially because they're located near the seven major nerve ganglia from the spine. Regardless of whether you're thinking about the chakras from the perspective of mental inquiry or as part of our energetic anatomy, what they show us are tendencies or patterns. It's important to understand what Anadea Judith, who's written two of the books I recommend below, calls the demons of each chakra. The demons are what keep us from moving forward, they are what fixate our energy at a particular place in a particular pattern. Once they're acknowledged, we're able to move forward and gain deeper understanding. So, to give you an example, a demon of the root chakra, which we'll talk about on Monday, is fear. The root is all about safety and security. So, can we feel safe and secure while we're feeling fear? No, they're in opposition to one another. So that's just one example. We'll go through this with each chakra. There is so much more than what I've touched on today. Maybe you've heard about chakras being closed or open, blocked, excessive, deficient. I'm not going to get into all of that because it would frankly just take too much time. This is about giving you a broad overview. So, what do we need to know about the chakras? They are energy centers of the body. If you don't want to think about them as energy centers, you can simply think about your own programming related to things like feeling safe, your emotions, your sense of self, connection to love, your ability to communicate, to see, and to know. And sometimes this programming can be faulty. It can have a virus, so to speak, that leads us to repeated patterns that maybe aren't so good for us. The good news is that these patterns can be changed. We can heal from the virus. So as we move forward and I begin discussing each of the chakras with more specificity, we'll be talking about that. Okay. What is the orientation, the identity, the basic issue for each? When does that chakra develop? What is the right and the illusion or the challenge for each of them? What does it look like when it's balanced? What does it look like when there's something going wrong with it? What creates dysfunction in the first place? And also, what are the healing strategies that we can employ if we realize that there's something out of balance? So if that sounds interesting to you, make sure you follow or subscribe so you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes. Also, if you have any specific root chakra questions, please email me at roots of the rise at gmail.com or click the text me link if you're listening on Spotify. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.