By “internal energies” I mean the energy that moves, congests, connects, doesn’t connect, burbles up, squelches down, affects, doesn’t affect, pools, radiates, flows in “us”. Each of us. And, I’m so used to thinking, feeling, being in this construct that I have a tough time defining what I mean by this “energy”. I’ll start with what I don’t mean.

I don’t mean emotions. I don’t mean thoughts. I don’t mean any of our anatomical structures or physiological systems. I do though mean the thing is that is our life force and source. The same life force and source that affects and is affected by our emotions, thoughts and physicality.

As well and somehow, in my holding of this… our spirituality is either synonymous with this life force or our sprirituality is another “system”, analogous to emotions, thoughts and our physicality, affecting and affected by our life force. For me, this distinction depends on whether we live our spirituality as a separation or an integration, i.e. whether we live as a human being working to be spiritual or as a spiritual being having a human experience. It is in the latter “way” that I see spirituality synonymous with “life force” and it is the way I feel it.

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As an analytical and rather “abstract” female sort, I am comfortable giving names to concepts and I like seeings how these concepts relate and interact with each other. To this end, most of us “know” the difference between something we feel, something we think, and something we do. I don’t, though, think that any of us have mastered “being” and “acting” from and in all of these ‘realms’ simultaneously. Nor do I believe that most of are even completely and/or equally comfortable in a single of these realms. (I think that’s the “human experience” part.)

Most of us will at least admit that emotions affect our thoughts and our physical states (whether we acknowledge or allow ourselves to fully live this is another matter). And most of us know — at least theoretically — that our physical states affect our emotions and our thoughts. (And again, whether we “practice” “good physicality” is distinct from this.) I do believe that fewer of us “get” that our thoughts affect our emotions and physical states (and most of our formal education focuses on our “brain”) but I believe they do. So… in my view of “us”, in my view of “each” of us, we are a mixture of emotions, thoughts and a physicalicality all affecting each other.

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We have many ways of looking at these “distinct”systems — their states and their functioning — and we are ever-working (at least in some places) to integrate the others. Medicine, psychology, “sports”, “academia” per se and “religion” are but a few. But — in the meantime — with all of this going on, how do we look at the whole of “us” i.e. the combined effects and states and movement (or not) of emotional, physical, intellectual and, yes, the spiritual in us? How do we discern, describe, address the combination of these that is “us”? How do we leave room for the things that aren’t yet “explainable”, measurable, accepted as “understood”. For me I start by relating all of these systems to “energy”. And, notably, for most of us relating our emotions to “energy” isn’t too big of a jump.

We “get” that we don’t understand all of our emotions. We “get” that we can’t name them all. We “get” that our emotions — even though we view them as sourced in our heart — flow through all of us producing smiles, tears, clenched toes and fists, the want to curl up in despair and stretch out in joy. We “get” that our emotions are common enough that we use a gestural language (even if we gesture “unconsciously”) to illustrate and communicate how we “feel”. We touch our heart to show sadness, compassion, love. We, depending on the nature of the shock, grip our stomach, throat or forehead. And we speak of the “surge” of anger, the “punch” of shock, the “burst” of pride or joy, the “catching” in our throat, the “jumping”, “sinking”, “going out” of our heart.

We “get” that when our “emotions” are active and strong sometimes life is good and sometimes life is harder and that usually it’s a mixture of “all of the above”. We understand that we are always emotional beings in that we understand that even when we don’t focus on our emotions or allow them to the forefront or speak about them, they are there none-the-less. And we get that sometimes we are so full of mixed emotions or sometimes simply so “full” of “emotion” that we don’t even attempt to describe them beyond that. We get that the flow and ebb of our emotions is something that we can perhaps “manage” but certainly not something we can “control”. And… the jump relating these ephemeral, always moving “emotions” to something equally as “abstract” as “energy” isn’t too great.

For our physical selves, our physical energy… we are less articulate than we are for our emotions but we still do pretty well. We know about relaxed, stressed, rested, “energized”, tired “states”. We know about bursts of energy, the draining of energy, the need to recharge our energy, the rush of energy, the pooling of our physical energy around our feet. (We have all “dragged our butts”. We know exactly what this means, what this feels like and have I hope rarely if ever seen this “for real”.) All of us feel the variance, the changes in our physical states with respect to our physical energy to some extent. And… we name it as such.

For thought “energy” we know the circling of confusion, the flow of focused and “effective” effort, the overactive-ness of stress and worry, the calm of acceptance, the “no room” feeling of preoccupation, the “floatiness” of dreams, the what else? I’m sure there are more than come to mind at the moment, but for a brain-centric society I find it surprising that we are the least articulate of all in describing our thought “states” and changes of state. (And this even though we do seem to like measuring our potential “thought” energy in terms of IQ.) And, even though most of us view our thoughts as being housed in our brains (and often use it as an insult when we refer to someone as thinking with other parts of themselves :o), even though most of us view our thoughts as “the objects” of our intellect, we do describe thought process and state and potential as well: someone who thinks “quick on their feet”, someone who is “slow to catch on”, someone is who is “dense” or “bright” or “brilliant” of thought. And again, regardless of our ability to name or articulate our thought states or thought processes, seeing our “intellect” as another form of “energy” — potential and “real” — makes sense to me.

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Discarding the distinctions between emotions, physicality, intellect and spirituality and seeing them all as “energy” means that we can then describe/view “the overall” of us — the “me” part — in terms of, simply, “energy”. Yes, this energy is manifested in some form and combination of emotional, physical and intellectual energy. And yes, this energy is either coming in (from what we perceive/receive) or going out (what we are internally generating/giving). And yes, although this could be perceived as a bit of “a mess”, for me this is an example of “breakdown before breakthrough” :o)

Notably we often use “I feel” with respect to our emotions, our physicality and our thoughts. When we say “I feel good” we can mean “I emotionally feel good” or “I physically feel good” or “I believe/think that this is good.” And the distinction, although important, sort of doesn’t “matter”. In whichever context, it is the “I feel good” that is key.

And… we do feel much. And most of us want to “feel good”. Whether we manage this, live this or not is the point of looking at all of this is the first place.

We feel more than we realize and, so, more than we can (or do) articulate. (Have I made this point yet? :o) It is this “feeling”, the practice of this feeling, the focusing in on this feeling, the learning to be and act in this complex and rich feeling, the learning to be smarter and more aware and more able in and with this at-times-oh-so-‘messy’ feeling in order to live more of the at-times-oh-so-everything’s-right-with-the-world feeling that pushes me into much of this “estoric” world. And, yes, my spirutality, my “life force” has to be — and is — the center of this. It defines, is my “good”.

So… now that I have — at least in me — scooped all of me (and all of you in my view :o) into a mass of mixed up energy that has my/your/our life force at the center… now what?

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In the “esoteric” world, one — at the very least “conceptual” — system that I can overlay onto this “messier” view of “us” is the “chakra” system. This sytem helps me to describe/name/discern states and movement of energy “first” and then relate these to my emotions, my physical, my thoughts and my spirtual.

In it’s most “simple”, this system describes seven centers of energy aligned and connected along our vertical center. To jump from the image above to the image on the left, I see the image above as a top view. My “core” — my life force, my spirit — is my vertical center. And, the “mass” of moving energy remains a mass of moving energy but the “centers” of it are “housed”, “sourced”, “treated”, “cared for” in these seven centers of energy named in the chakra system. They communicate to each other through the “core” which, again, runs from the top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top of us.

Each center or “chakra” has a name. And each chakra is most commonly described/felt/seen as “spinning”. Each chakra is further described/felt/seen as connecting/flowing to/from the chakra above and below it, when there are these. For the extremities, the base chakra is seen as connected into “ground” and the crown chakra as connected into “sky”.

Each chakra is attributed with a certain functionality (something in us that it “looks after” i.e. our “heart” energy) and there is no chakra more important than any other. When we are at our “best” our chakras are said to each be spinning evenly, connected and flowing above and below, none more active than any other.

Chakra “work” is around centering (getting us back to or re/opening our central “core”), grounding (re/connecting us, our core, to our earth and sky “ground”), aligning (getting our chakras active on/through our core), opening/unblocking/calming (activating and/or ridding our chakras of “stopped up” or overactive energy i.e. getting each to “spin evenly”), balancing (evening out the activity across all of the chakras) and strengthening (getting the energy level up acoss the chakras and our core).

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The Chakras

Starting from the ground up…

• the 1st chakra — the Root chakra — our connection to earth and our physical being
• the 2nd chakra — the Sacral chakra — our connection to our creating physically
• the 3rd chakra — the Solar Plexus chakra — our connection to our power
• the 4th chakra — the Heart chakra — our connection to our love
• the 5th chakra — the Throat chakra — our connection to our verbal expression
• the 6th chakra — the Third Eye or Brow chakra — our connection to our intuition
• the 7th chakra — the Crown chakra — our connection to the sky and our spiritual being

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It is possible and often necessary to elaborate “more”, to go deeper, to name “further” and there is much in that direction “out there” but this is the base. And although this may seem simple as a system, it so isn’t. It is — in my opinion — brilliant in its clarity and in its completeness.

There are many exercises, many meditations, many healing practices that work on and towards this system. I certainly and definitely use it as my “base model” for how our internal energy “works”. I appreciate it more and more with time.

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Still to come…

• Descriptions of chakras.
• “Care” of chakras.
• Resources.

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