Chakras, rationalism and science

Chakra overview

This is an attempt to present some of my thoughts on the usefulness of the chakras for living and for science.  I adopt a pro-science position, but one that views science as a process of publicly accessible knowledge that constrains expectations so that it’s a more useful means to live in/change the world and that separates out a particular strand of ‘rationalism’ from the definition of science.

First, I want to contend that the chakra system is a more useful template for psychology than Western rationalism.  This is not a systematic defense of that position, not the least because neither the chakra model nor Western rationalism have a single widely accepted model.

Rationalism tends to not just privilege, but nearly deify, the verbal over the non-verbal, the mental over the physical.  While I reject the anti-rationalist/naturalist position of merely flipping that division and even in some ways I accept it in a certain sense: in the sense of having a more holistic perspective, seeing how the mental is grounded in and is itself physical.  The neuroscience book The Brain That Changes Itself by Doidge would be great background reading for this post.  Something in it that blew my mind was an exercise that involved tracing complex patterns that lead to increased fluency in speech.  Why?  Because tracing the patterns trained part of the brain involved in coordinating micro-movements, and speech (and thought) are not just “words” but are created through micro-movements.  I also think that the chakra system is more useful than Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though I will not make that argument explicitly.

So let’s look at (one version) of the Chakras.  As in the above picture, there are seven, and here from the bottom up is one angle of looking at them, the right to exist, the right to feel, the right to act, the right to relate, the right to communicate, the right to perceive, and finally the right to create.

Seems pretty simply right?  Let’s look at what we can do with just that:   

• A template to replace Maslow (esp. if one uses a more detailed chakra model): one can ask “What right is being violated in my life right now?” as a quick test…or use it as a quick and sophisticated template for character-development in fiction writing.
• The unfolding and interplay between the chakras: Existence is the basis for feeling which is the basis for action which is the basis for…etc.
• The second level of interplay: The opposite ends parallel and especially relate: existence/creation, feeling/perception, action/communication, relation/relation.
• The third level of interplay: Moving up through the chakras is actualization, moving down is ‘grounding’: both are necessary processes and can be used as a psychological template/diagnostical tool as well for one’s self and characters, etc.
• Presents a model for the evolution of matter (rocks to bacteria to animals to nervous systems) contra idealism
• The Rationalist model (which concentrates on the top three in the reverse order) leads to a lecture mode of education, whereas the chakra model dovetails with both older and new educational models that are more effective than lectures.

 

Just the link between feeling and action makes it closer to our knowledge of neuroscience and the body than the rationalist view which too narrowly focuses on abstract conception and fails to explain many phenomenon (see research on neuroplasticity).

Another angle of the chakras is that each one is associated with a certain color (see above) and tone (as well as different chants, hand positions and other things).  This is difficult for the rationalist to accept, or it was for me at least.  Yet, think of “seeing red” or the “green eyed monster”–certain colors are strongly associated with certain emotions.  Note that those two colors correspond to the chakra colors above (anger relates to base level threats, jealously to relationship).  As for tones…I don’t know (but present an experiment idea below), but I do know that Doidge used tones for reading (?) training that had a side benefit of helping some autistic children.  My point is that most rationalist theories would dismiss the a relationship between tone, color, and emotional functioning out of hand and this is wrong.

More on chakras and the body: especially in the past but even now, the deepest feelings are often associated with…the gut.  Early Christian disciples would sign letters: “I love you in the bowels of Christ.”  We have “gut feelings.”  And now we know that…the gut produces lots of neurotransmitters, such that anti-depressants can affect digestion.  Of course the heart is strongly associated with love.  A rationalist views this with superstition, yet the work of people like Damasio shows how emotions are felt with the body, and the changes in heart rhythms and other aspects of the heart’s functioning are key to emotional experience.

Now let’s move more to the brain proper.

 

Sensory and motor maps in the brain

The brain develops models of the body for sensing and for movement (and it develops it: Doidge shows the research that shows how it can change over time: the hands are bigger in the motor model than the sensory one because of their relative use for instance, whereas if your hands are immobilized the map will shrink).  Something else we know is that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and “neurons that fire apart, wire apart.”  A phenomenon familiar in massage for instance is that relaxing certain muscles can release stored emotions.  Now this sounds woo woo to a rationalist (or it did to me), but besides the research literature showing the strong relationship (if not identity) between physical experience and emotion, if one hunches forward, frowns and breaths shallowly and then sits up straight, breaths into the abs, and smiles, one can easily experience the relationship between physical state and emotional state.

Add in the formation of neurological associations, and one can see a speculative basis for “the issues being stored in the tissues.”  As well as a possible basis for becoming associated with certain colors and tones and hand positions.

Take the throat chakra.  There isn’t as much of a physical correlate as with the GI tract and heart, but consider what censoring one’s self means.  A rationalist views it as a “choice” that happens…inside the little man in the head.  However, especially imagine a child having the impulse to speak and then having the impulse that “oh, daddy said not to say that.”  The “choice” to not speak doesn’t occur in the air, but at least at times occurs through an immobilization of the throat muscles.  One can imagine that the feelings of self-censorship could become associated with the throat area (through firing together, wiring together), and that therefor through the opposite (firing apart, wiring apart) massaging the throat area while concentrating on being relaxed could undo those associations.

Some aspects of the chakras I suspect are purely neurological but feel physical.  For instance, halos may be related to the feeling of contentment with the right to create associated with the crown chakra.  A healthy ‘crown chakra’ could feel like a ‘halo’ (perhaps as a sprandel/arbitrary side effect of other ‘architectures’) leading to a basis for that cross-cultural symbol.

Second, pro-science: constraint expectation for use-value.

For many reasons, but including feeling dismissed unfairly by the rationalist model, probably most who accept the Chakra model do not fully embrace science.  The question is: How do you avoid quacks?  How do you choose between the different systems?

If one says the different systems are equal, that’s the same as saying they’re mostly worthless: in general, if two contradictory things can explain or produce the same thing, then it’s something else that’s actually doing the work/explanation.

Three self-tests:

1. Try studying the chakra model and using it as a psychological diagnostic tool.  Compare to using other psychological models.
2. Try to distinguish between gut feelings below the belly button and those above.  In general, a ‘bad’ feeling below it stems from your own self-relationship (feeling) and one above it stems from you not taking an action your feelings want (action).
3. Put one hand on your heart and one on your gut.  Imagine breathing in through your heart into your abs, and contracting the abs to breath out, while massaging your heart and gut area (in a clockwise motion, as if the clock in on your chest facing out).

A more quantifiable experiment

I said I’d mention an experiment for the relationship of chakras to color and sounds.  I recommend a priming test, using colors and tones as the primers.  A priming test is when they give groups the same survey and the only difference is something in the background or a flashed picture for instance that the subjects don’t even know is part of the test.  For instance, one test showed people taking the survey with a screensaver showing money in the corner of the room lead to more greedy answers than people who took it without those symbols.  So one could construct very similar surveys and prime with tones associated with certain chakras to see if the answers change from the control groups.  One could also prime with self-massage on the chakra points (versus no massage or massage elsewhere) or with flashes of color or hand positions.

This is just one example.  The main point is that if the chakra system is at least partially true, it is useful and its results should be distinguishable from other systems.  Further, I would suggest that all aspects of our knowledge are under continual refinement, and especially if one looks at the many varied chakra systems, it too needs to be brought into the scientific process, if it is indeed useful for our lives.  The rationalists must cast off their prejudices against basically the body and knowledge that doesn’t come from double blind studies (see Bayes for instance), and perhaps more importantly, chakra supporters must begin to take the question of ‘evidence’ more seriously.  An incomplete and imprecise but useful definition of science is publicly accessible knowledge that constrains expectations.  The exploration of chakras meets this to some extent but fails in many ways.  The ways in which it fails represents either a limitation of its effectiveness or an area where it’s either useful or perhaps even damaging.  The present process of hard-nosed researchers ignoring it and practitioners being only very inconsistently scientific about it helps no one.

Chakra system