The chakra system seeks balance. People often look for remedies to blocked chakra centers or weak energy flow, but the truth is problems also arise when too much energy is passing through a chakra center.

For instance if your base chakra is overactive you might become extremely angry and explode over the smallest provocation. Or, if your third eye chakra is working too hard you may experience nightmares and unpleasant waking visions.

Balance is the key to bliss and happiness. I know it’s sometimes easier to talk about this than to embody it, but we must seek a balance if we are to grow to our full potential.

Pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. If you find yourself obsessing over one or two subjects much of the time, you are unbalanced. If you experience sadness or anger for long periods on a daily basis , you may be noticing an imbalance in your subtle energy. Ideally your thoughts and emotions engage a full spectrum of topics and feelings.

The subject of balance is HUGE and can range from physical health to psychological and emotional wellbeing. Clearly it is beyond the scope of this blog post.

But what I want to emphasize here is the importance if finding an intuitive balance. Without even meditating on individual chakra systems you can stop at any moment and get a feel for how balanced or unbalanced you, as a person, are right now.

Deep breathing exercises, meditation, regular exercise, and actively voicing your opinions and feelings to avoid bottling them up are all healthy balancing routines. You deserve to feel calm, centered, and neither under stimulated or overactive in any one area of life.

You can include each of your main seven chakras in a simple visualization and breathing meditation to help keep each center in a balanced state. After lowering your heart rate and relaxing deeply with a few minutes of breathing, simply pass over each chakra with the palm of your hand. Visualize the correct color and find the subtle, warm sensation of each individual point. Feel/see the chakra pulsing with colored light, freely receiving energy from the previous charka and releasing energy into the next chakra. This exercise will only take a few minutes and will help to bring your subtle energy body into balance.

There is no such thing as a real lack of energy. All the energy in existence is available to us here and now; what matters is that we accept and embrace it.

And there is no need for an excess of energy. Overcharging our chakras and our mental/emotional processes is not the solution to problems in our lives; we must learn to trust the flow of life and avoid excess strain.

A balanced chakra system reflects a balanced life and vice versa. Anything you can do within or without to promote healthy balance will serve your greatest good.

Many schools of thought connect specific crystals to individual chakra centers. There are a wide range of meditation, toning, visualization, and physical placement practices whereby you can use crystals to cleanse and empower specific chakras.

The benefits derived from such practice could be the result of subtle electromagnetic energy within crystal formations, or it could simply be a placebo effect that results from strong belief.

But I suggest the why/how is not important. Rather than worrying about the mechanical details, why not just try one or more chakra stone exercises for yourself to see if you can strike the right chord?

The simplest approach to using crystals within chakra mediation is to find one or more colored stones that coordinate with the colors given to the specific chakra points. So you could find…

• a deep red stone (like jasper) for the base chakra
• a deep orange stone (like orange carnelian) for the sacral chakra
• a bright yellow stone (like citrine) for the solar plexus chakra
• a deep green stone (like jade) for the heart chakra
• a nice blue stone (like angelite) for the throat chakra
• a steady indigo stone (like polished lepidolite) for the third eye/brow chakra
• a deep purple stone (like amethyst) for the crown chakra

You can choose to hold each stone in your receptive hand while visualizing colored light flowing through your chakra, or you can actually lie down and place each stone on the correct chakra point. The latter method is a great cleansing meditation you can use to manifest a fresh start or a sort of “recharge” on many levels.

A trained Reiki master or Yoga instructor can also help you apply crystals to your chakra meditations. And a good book for this purpose is the crystal bible; this handy reference provides pictures and property descriptions for many useful stones.

The best way to explore the idea of chakra stone treatments is simply to get hands-on right away. Begin handling stones, visualizing, and practicing basic breathing exercises along with simple chakra meditations.

You’ll know soon enough whether or not these practices are right for you.

When first discovering the chakra system and learning of the connection these subtle points have with many aspects of physical, emotional, and psychological health, many people have the tendency to fret. They take the whole matter too seriously and automatically assume their chakras are not healthy, need cleaning, etc.

It’s certainly possible that a long-term health problem can be treated with chakra knowledge. But if you’re basically a healthy person please don’t start obsessing over the state of your chakra system; this will cause real problems.

You should approach exercises like chakra breathing & visualization, chakra color therapy, toning, and other chakra meditations with a light spirit. Embrace these practices with joy and a positive attitude.

Your goal is to love and empower your subtle energy system, not to bring stress and worry into your chakra centers. So lighten up and even have fun when you are meditating or working with your subtle energies.

Combine exercises like yoga, basic meditation, emotional freedom technique, and other breathing and channeling methods with your chakra focal work for best effect. But never bring stress into your sessions; always have the best in mind before you start and then clear your mind to allow the peace and clarity of the moment during your actual sessions.