Understanding of the chakras was established in ancient India as part of the vital energy system that helps our body function.

Like all energy systems, chakras impact us physically, emotionally, and psychologically. When our chakras are blocked and out of balance, then we too are out of balance in these vital parts of our lives.

There are 7 chakras which are:

1. Crown – located on the top of the head
2. Third Eye – located on the forehead, above and between the eyes
3. Throat – located at the base of the throat
4. Heart – located at the center of the chest
5. Solar Plexus – located in the stomach area
6. Sacral – located near the navel
7. Root – located at the base of the spine

Reiki is based on the flow of energy in our lives. This includes the energy that flows through the 7 chakras within us. To have our chakras in balance means connecting with the flow of energy in our lives through Reiki and using this energy to help restore and maintain balance within our body.

To help restore balance within the 7 chakras we can use Reiki over each of the 7 positions in our body using our hands. As we hold our hands over each chakra we can focus our energy on correcting any imbalance and restoring healing.

As you become more open to the world of Reiki and its healing energy, you will learn new terminology and concepts that form part of the understanding of Reiki and its usefulness in your life.

Remembering all of this new terminology can be overwhelming, so it’s useful to implement some helpful learning techniques.

The way we learn new information is individual to many of us. For some, we learn better using visual aids such as video, others learn better listening to audio, and others learn more from reading.

There are also many who learn more by incorporating a variety of techniques. You might start with reading the information and then reinforcing what you’ve learned through watching a video.

As we go through the education system we’re often taught information one way through a teacher, however, as an adult, we can explore alternative methods to learning and implement a strategy that is most helpful to us and our learning style.

One of the most important aspects of learning is through practice and repetition. This doesn’t mean that we need to learn information by rote by repeating the same information over and over. Instead repetition can be done across a variety of methods. This ensures we remain interested and also gives us the opportunity to review the information from a different perspective.

One of the most useful strategies of learning information is to become the teacher yourself. This means that once you learn the basics of the new content, you then attempt to teach it to someone else.

Relaying information to others means we find the easiest way to explain the new information and summarize the information in its most basic form to facilitate clearer understanding. As we present information to someone else, we also solidify the content in our own mind.

Some of the ways we can learn the 7 chakras includes:

MNEMONICS

This is a learning technique that involves coding and retrieval of information to create a shortcut for learning new information. The most basic form of mnemonics is to take the first letter of each new word you want to learn and turn it into a memorable song, rhyme, phrase or sentence.

For the 7 chakras this might be something like the below:

• Crown – Can
• Third Eye – This
• Throat – Turtle
• Heart – Hop
• Solar Plexus – So
• Sacral – Slowly +
• Root – Restfully

You can create your own mnemonic that is easy for you to remember. Using unique characters such as a hopping turtle above can help you remember the mnemonic based on its quirkiness.

VISUALLY

Alternatively, it may help to learn the 7 chakras by reviewing a visual aid such as the one below. This image shows the visual location of each chakra in the body. You can review this image and see the chakras as aligned through the center of the body.

Often using a visual aid can create an image in our minds to use as a memory aid to retrieve information such as the 7 chakras.

AUDIO

You can use audio aids to help you remember the 7 chakras if this style of learning is more beneficial for you. This may include listening to a lecture on the background of the 7 chakras. For some people a lecture presentation style of information is helpful as it includes background information that can give context to the core information that you are attempting to learn.

Other audio strategies include podcasts where information can be presented in a lecture style series or round table discussion with other presenters.

PRACTICE AND/OR TEACH

Another audio method may include following meditation guides that incorporate the 7 chakras. This involves stepping you through the process of balancing your chakras. The more you undertake these practice sessions, you will begin to learn the position of each chakra as you become more familiar with the information each time.

As part of the practice methods of learning new information you can also teach the 7 chakras to someone else as a method of reinforcing your newly acquired knowledge.

COMBINATION OF METHODS

The best approach to learning new information is often using a cross range of learning strategies. This ensures that you regularly cover the information across a variety of methods that will help you maintain your interest in the material that you are learning.

Sometimes when we learn new information in one way, we can begin to habituate the learning process but not absorb the new information. This is relevant in the case of guided meditations for example. In guided meditations we can become reliant on the guide reminding us of the order of chakras instead of learning the information independently ourselves.

From this perspective, using a variety of methods can help reinforce the information as well as test us as we aim to retain and retrieve the information in the future.

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