The 7 Chakras For Beginners And 7 Healing Crystals

How do you balance your chakras? What are the 7 chakras and why do we need to balance them in the first place? What does it mean to “balance” your chakras?

Working with the 7 chakras is essential to achieving and maintaining balance. It can play a huge role in supporting your wellness. With the new season amongst us, we wanted to give you a few pointers on how working with your chakras can help kick off your summer season so you can take full advantage of this new energy.

The word ‘chakra’ is actually Sanskrit for ‘wheel’. The chakra system is a part of ancient Indian teachings called the Vedas, which originated anywhere from 1500 BC to 500 BC.

They’ve been described to me as “energy vortexes within us, where energy can both enter and leave”. There are 7 main chakra centers within our beings. Each chakra is designated to a specific region in our body and each chakra is associated with different ailments.

At times, our chakras can be unaligned and crowded with negative energy, which has been said to lead to emotional, mental, and physical distresses. But when our chakras are clear and balanced, it seems as if we can go through our days with ease and grace.

When you take time to focus on your chakras, you can rejuvenate and restore the energy in your body which often opens your heart to new opportunities, a positive mindset, and relaxation. When our bodies are clear, balanced, and aligned, we move through our days with confidence.

Over time, I’ve learned that pain and trauma (we all experience it on some level) are inevitably harbored in our chakras. And when we work with each chakra to clear this heavy energy, we work on ourselves; we encourage the alignment with the truest, highest part of ourselves. I believe we have an undying inner light that craves to shine. When we frequently work on clearing, balancing, and aligning our chakra centers; our light shines brightly.

But the truth is, inner work is not easy. Working to clear your chakras can include processing: sometimes this means tracing the heaviness in a chakra(s) to a past event and allowing yourself to feel the emotions that arise so you can let them go. It can also include journaling, crystal meditation, energy work, using your intuition, and facing your fears. This experience can be different for everyone and it’s important to acknowledge that there’s no right or wrong way to balance your chakras.

It’s about what feels good to you and what works best with your daily lifestyle.

There are seven main chakra centers starting from the crown of your head and ending at the bottom of the pelvis. Below is a brief description of the ailments tied to each chakra and stones or crystals that help to balance, align, and heal each one:

• Crown Chakra (top of your head) deals with emotion, connection, and the ability to receive.
  Color: White/Gold/Lavender.
  Crystals: clear quartz, selenite, lepidolite. Clear quartz possesses the ability to both clear and raise the vibration of the vessel it is working with. Selenite clears and protects, while lepidolite helps to attract abundance and good fortune.
  
  
• Third Eye Chakra (between the eyes) deals with inner vision, understanding things as they are, one’s concept of reality, the ability to receive, awareness, and thought processes.
  Color: Purple/Indigo.
  Crystals: amethyst, sodalite. Amethyst calms the mind and possesses the ability to provide emotional clarity. Sodalite also calms the mind and can help to bring forward the truth and provide mental clarity.
  
  
• Throat Chakra (center of the throat) deals with self-expression, speaking one’s truth, voicing opinions, and moving through fear.
  Color: Royal Blue.
  Crystals: angelite, lapis lazuli. Angelite can help ease tension and reduce stress, and lapis lazuli helps one see and speak truth.
  
  
• Heart Chakra (between breast bones) deals with love, kindness, one’s empathic abilities, compassion, acceptance.
  Color: Bright green.
  Crystals: rose quartz, noble green serpentine. Rose quartz is the stone of unconditional love and is helpful in moving energy. Noble green serpentine is soothing and can help to provide reassurance to the wary mind and heart.
  
  
• Solar Plexus Chakra (two inches above the belly button) deals with self-confidence, standing in your own power, moving forward.
  Color: Bright yellow.
  Crystals: tigers eye, citrine. Tiger’s eye helps one to establish a sense of confidence within oneself and helps with standing in your power, while citrine restores and charges your energies.
  
  
• Sacral Chakra (above pubic bone) deals with passion, creativity, sexuality.
  Color: Bright orange.
  Crystals: orange calcite, carnelian. Orange calcite is beneficial to the creative and sexual energies in the body and promotes a healthy flow of each, while carnelian helps to silent unwanted or negative thoughts.
  
  
• Root Chakra (low back-perineum) deals with feeling safe, being grounded, stability.
  Color: Deep red.
  Crystals: shungite, black tourmaline. Shungite is highly protective and not only protects the physical body from radiation but can be of assistance in staying grounded. Black tourmaline transmutes negative energy into positive energy and is fiercely protective as well.

In order for ourselves as a whole to feel balanced, it’s important to maintain balance throughout our chakras. Having imbalance or lack of clarity within the chakras is totally normal -  it’s something that we all experience on the daily. This can happen throughout your day - you may feel angry, stifled, trapped, or afraid, which is why it’s so important to check in with yourself each day, and if not every other day, to view and assess which chakras need to be restored and rebalanced.

Here are 3 techniques that you can start implementing today to help balance your chakras:

1. Diet can have a major impact on the chakras and eating the colors of the rainbow has been said to aid chakras in their functioning.
   
   
2. As mentioned above, crystals can also play a major role in the upkeep of the chakras. You can simply place a corresponding crystal onto each chakra center and ask that your chakras be cleared, balanced, and aligned. This can be done from anywhere to ten minutes up to multiple hours.
    
3. Smudging your auric field as well as your physical space (your home, office, or car) can also help to maintain the balance of your chakras; the mind-calming and soothing effects of smudging can bring forth peace and clarity amongst your energy fields which also benefit your chakras.
   
   

Here’s one of my favorite ways to balance my chakras on a daily basis. It’s a brief meditation that I do with my crystals for ‘maintenance’: 

First off, cleanse your auric field and your favorite crystals (preferably one for each chakra) with palo santo or sage. This helps to clear any negative or low vibrational energy so you can meditate with a sense of peace.

Next, connect to your higher guidance or support system - call in your angels, your favorite deity, God, the Divine - whatever feels good to you. Ask this higher being to be present and hold space for you. Ask that you only receive the highest, purest, divine source of truth there is. Envision a white light running through you and expanding all around you so that you are now within your own bubble of divine light.

Ask your guides for grounding and say your name three times in your own head - this encourages you to feel safe in your body. This process is important because it is highly protective and reassures that you will perceive your chakras as they really are.

Now begin at the root chakra, close your eyes, focus at the point between your brows, and be open to receiving inner visions. Ask your source of Divinity for the clearing, balancing, and alignment of this chakra. Take deep belly breaths through the nose and out the mouth. Envision all negative, lower vibrational energies flowing out of you and dissipating into white Divine Light.

Repeat this process for each chakra going up. The next chakra for example would be the second chakra, the sacral chakra, and you would finish with the seventh chakra - the crown chakra. You can hold your corresponding crystal to help tap into each chakra.

I’ve been taught to conceal the root chakra up to the throat chakra once the process is over to protect each one and maintain the balance and clarity achieved as much as possible. You can do this by envisioning zippers on each of the chakras, both back and front.

For the third eye chakra and crown chakra, we can allow these to be open in order to receive and see clearly. I like to envision a flower around each of these two chakras, both back and front. This allows the chakras to function while still providing protection to them.

Checking in on your chakras and balancing them on a regular basis can help you find mental, emotional, and physical clarity. Adapting these daily practices can have a huge long-term impact. We hope this embarks a similar journey for you, and that it aids in making your days that much brighter

Written by: Chandler Westphal
Inspired by the teachings of Jennifer Montero at Monteroguidinglight.com
Jennifer is a spiritual teacher and master energy practitioner, and is available for free consultation via her website above.