Cleansing chakras through yoga

I attended a workshop on Saturday for cleansing the chakras using a vinyasa flow. I’m in total awe of what happened to me during that class. It was entirely a mind-altering experience that seems to have adjusted the flow of my life. At least for now.

The instructor, Jacqui Bonwell, was amazingly peaceful and had a beautiful, powerful energy around her.

She walked us through each of the 7 main chakras explaining which poses help to balance each of them, and asked us to concentrate on a particular color while working with the poses.

For example, the Root Chakra benefits from downward dog and warrior 1. Concentrating on the lower portion of the body—legs, ankles and feet. The element for this chakra is earth. Involvement with the earth helps balance the energies in this chakra. We concentrated on red.

The Sacral Chakra benefits from hip-opening poses such as warrior 2, horse, malasana and half-pidgeon. The element for this chakra is water. We concentrated on orange.

The Solar Plexus chakra benefits from poses I consider to bring fire into my body—poses that burn. Crescent lunge, various twisting poses and runners lunge. The element for this chakra is fire. We concentrated on yellow.

We were told that with a healthy Heart Chakra, all can be healed. Back bending poses helped balance energies in this chakra—bridge, wheel, fish and bow. We concentrated on green. I do not recall what the element for this chakra is.

Chakras 5-7 are less involved than the first 4, and the poses we worked for each of them were more subtle and concentrated more on meditation than the physical aspects—at least, that’s how I experienced them.

For the throat chakra, we concentrated on a light blue color. The element is air, and we worked with inversions.

For the Third Eye Chakra we sat in meditation, exercised our eyes by keeping our heads still, but moving our eyes as far to one side as possible, resting there, moving them back to center, then to the other side, resting there, moving back to center, then looking up. We then closed our eyes very tightly for a brief moment, and opened them abruptly allowing in much light. The element for this chakra is light, and the color is a sapphire blue. Child’s pose was also worked.

For the Crown Chakra, she asked us to concentrate on either white or violet. We rested in savasanah and breathed.

If anyone ever gets an opportunity to work with Jacqui or any other chakra yoga instructor, I highly recommend giving it a try. After class I felt like an entirely new, fresh being, completely reborn and ready to slowly adventure out into the world—a very emotional experience.

Old emotions were brought to the surface. I couldn’t tell you exactly what they were, but I was sobbing after class. It took me a little while to readjust to being in society. As I walked into the parking lot, everything seemed so foreign, and I was amazed how we humans can live in a world of sidewalks, buildings and cars.

As I sat in my car and cried, and “pulled myself together” I wondered why I had to do such a thing to function. I felt as though I had to close something down, that had just been opened during the class, in order to continue my day in society. I can’t help but wonder about that.