Chakras are amazing! If you haven’t heard about them before here are the top ten things you need to know.

Chakras have been known about in India since ancient times – possibly for 5,000 years.

Chakras are our vital link to the energy that keeps us alive. In yoga terms this is called Prana.

Like electricity, chakra pranic energy cannot be seen or touched, but lack of it results in increasing levels of physical illness, whilst balanced chakra energies bring vitality, mental strength, management of anger, inner sight, tranquillity and compassion – to name just a few qualities.

Looking after our chakras and auric field is preventative medicine, an ‘energy medicine’ that keeps us well. Imagine these energies playing together in a dance of nourishing rainbow coloured light bringing this essential energy into your body and returning any unwanted or disharmonious thoughts, feelings and energies into the earth.

Chakras do this for us all the time – we don’t even have to think about it, but if we do it improves our conscious connection to our body, mind and what some call ‘spirit’.

Yogic teaching tells us that there are seven major chakras and around twenty-one minor ones.

Focussing upon each of our seven major chakras in turn (from Base to Crown) means that their delicate coloured light frequencies can be fine tuned and balanced, leading to optimum health and wellbeing.

There are many ways to re-balance our chakras, including Yoga asanas, correct breathing, aromatherapy oils, crystals, herbs, mindfulness meditation and other stress reduction techniques.

Our chakras respond to colour, in our environment, in meditational visualization and even in the colours of the clothes we choose to wear.

When our chakras are functioning well, we become like a rainbow of energy to those gifted people who can see auras. Actually, we know our own chakras very well – after all they are with us all the time!

Discover all you need to know in Patricia Mercier’s latest book, ‘The Little Book of Chakras’, just published by Gaia/Octopus, brings chakra teachings to life with easy explanations of chakras and prana and how they can be balanced with simple relaxation techniques, colour, essential oils, yoga and meditation. She is also the author of the best-selling ‘The Chakra Bible’, ‘The Complete Chakra Workshop’, other books on Chakras, New Awareness, Maya Cosmovision, as well as being a trained yoga teacher and holistic healer/practitioner.