21/03/2026
Myth: The Seven Chakra System is Ancient
When you ask a yoga practitioner about the chakras, they will most likely describe a system of seven centres, each with specific colours, qualities, and even links to endocrine glands. This is also what we teach on our YTT courses. It’s a beautifully synthesised, energetic system; however, it is not as ancient as is commonly assumed - it took its current form mainly in the 20th century.
The idea of subtle energy centres does have ancient roots in Ta***ic yoga. However, ta***ic sources describe many different chakra systems, including five, six, seven, nine, and twelve centres, depending on the lineage and the intended practice. In the ta***ic tradition, chakras were practical tools designed for particular outcomes rather than fixed maps of the body. They were ‘used’ for meditation and visualisation: practitioners would visualise a lotus at a specific point in the body, often with particular colours and symbols, and often activate a mantra within it. In this context, chakras functioned as structured visualisation practices, not as physical or anatomical entities that can be blocked, opened, or balanced.
The psychological meanings commonly assigned to the chakras, such as linking the root chakra to safety or the solar plexus to self-esteem, were introduced later, influenced in part by Carl Jung’s work and further developed by twentieth-century Western esoteric traditions. The familiar rainbow colour scheme also does not originate in the early texts. Likewise, commonly taught seed mantras such as lam, vam, and ram are not inherent properties of the chakras themselves but rather relate to the corresponding five elements.
This does not make the seven chakra system without value. On the contrary, it offers a rich and meaningful framework for practice and self-reflection. But, rather than seeing it as ancient, the chakra system we know today is a great example of how traditional practices evolve, and are interpreted, adapted, and combined with more modern disciplines such as psychology to create a system that is more meaningful to practitioners today; reshaped as a tool to help us better understand ourselves.
