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Section 6 of 14
Body & Energy
Chakras, qi, prana, meridians, auras and the many maps drawn over the same body.
This section covers the maps drawn over the human body that anatomy does not contain: chakras and
channels, prāṇa and qi, meridians and points, auras and energy fields.
It has the widest gap on the site between what a practice claims and what a practice does, and the
gap runs in both directions.
Some of it works and the explanation is wrong. Slow breathing genuinely and measurably shifts
the autonomic nervous system, for reasons that involve the vagus nerve and the baroreflex rather
than a vital force. Needling genuinely produces physiological effects, none of which require
meridians. A practice can be worth doing and be wrong about itself, and this section says so in
both directions rather than treating the two verdicts as a package.
Some of it is much younger than it looks. The seven-chakra system with rainbow colours that
appears on every yoga studio wall is not the classical Indian system. Classical texts describe
four, five, six, nine or twelve centres depending on the lineage, with colours that do not match
the rainbow at all. The rainbow mapping was published in 1977, in California. Similarly, the
unified "Traditional Chinese Medicine" taught worldwide was substantially standardised in the
People's Republic from the 1950s, out of practices that had been regionally diverse and
theoretically contested for two thousand years.
And several of these are living traditions whose material is not ours to teach. Techniques are
described here, not instructed, and nothing on these pages is medical advice. Where a practice has
documented risks — and kundalini practice, intensive breathwork and prolonged retreat all do —
those are stated plainly rather than left to a disclaimer.
The honest summary before you start: the body is genuinely full of sensations that ordinary
anatomy does not explain to most people's satisfaction, and interoception is a real and
under-taught faculty. What these traditions map is real experience. Whether their maps describe
anything outside the person having them is the question every page here returns to.