one or to hold hands with the people on your sides.
When we work through our first three physical chakras and into the fourth chakra of love and connection, we can open the spiritual chakras more completely. Our need for connection manifests itself in young adulthood as the most powerful. As we move and mature through adulthood, getting wiser, our needs change, as should our awareness.
Fifth chakra: The fifth chakra, located in the area of the throat, is our source of communication, verbal expression, and the ability to speak our highest truth. The fifth chakra includes the neck, thyroid, and parathyroid glands, jaw, mouth, and tongue.
Sixth chakra: The sixth chakra is located between the eyebrows. It is also referred to as the “third eye” chakra. It is our center of intuition. We all have a sense of intuition, though we may not listen to it or heed its warnings. Focusing on opening the sixth chakra will help you hone this ability, thus making choices that are in alignment with your values.
Seventh chakra: The seventh chakra, or the “thousand-petal lotus chakra,” is located at the crown of the head. This is the chakra of enlightenment and spiritual connection to our higher selves, others, and ultimately, the universal divine.
Figure 2.1. The seven chakras
Awareness: A Powerful Tool for Aligning the Chakras
Being aware when your chakras are out of balance is the key to aligning them. Our bodies are in constant flux between balance and imbalance. Unless you have an apparent problem in one area of the body, imbalances can be difficult to detect. That being said, building awareness of your body-mind connection is a good start in learning its signals and clues.3 Awareness is a way to find equanimity in the midst of the perturbations of life. By becoming aware of where we might be stuck in our thinking, by adopting a mindful attitude and a relaxed posture, we can allow energy to flow more freely. Yoga and meditation show the way to achieve this.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
When we are focused only on our physical needs, energy is unable to flow freely to help us achieve balance between physical and emotional/spiritual needs. Of course, this does not mean that physical needs are unimportant. In fact, as posited by Abraham Maslow, human beings have a hierarchy of needs composed of five levels, from basic survival needs to self-actualization:
1. Survival: food, shelter, and clothing (base chakra)
2. Safety: both physical and economic (base chakra)
3. Love and belonging: friendship, intimacy (middle chakra)
4. Esteem: confidence and achievement (higher chakra)
5. Self-actualization: achieving one’s full purpose with creativity (highest chakra)
Physical needs related to survival and safety need to be met first before moving up to love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. When we feel threatened, we revert back to our survival and safety needs. When this happens, our focus is on hoarding energy to survive: Appetite is increased, especially for calorie-dense foods loaded with sugar and fat, and the body enters the mode of being thrifty so that the energy “burn rate” is slowed down. Thus, the impairment of metabolism that leads to diabesity results from the state of feeling threatened and shifting into overeating, energy hoarding, and “thrifty metabolism survival mode.”
The ancient yoga philosophy — which first systematically documented the chakra system in 800 BCE — long ago figured out what Western philosophers found out in the early twentieth century. The chakras correlate closely with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The base chakras are concerned with survival and sexuality, which is the base of the pyramid in Maslow’s hierarchy! The love and communication chakras around the middle (heart and throat) correlate with the love, belonging, and esteem portion of Maslow’s hierarchy. The crown and brow chakras of spirituality and intuition correlate with “self-actualization,” which was described by Maslow as the highest need.
Of course, these days, we might relate to an even deeper, more basic need than all the others: the need for Wi-Fi. I’ve modified Maslow’s pyramid accordingly!
Figure 2.2. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
The Triune Brain Model
According to the triune model of the human brain, first theorized by American neuroscientist Paul MacLean in the 1960s and described in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution, we actually have not one but three brains, or at least three independently functioning parts of the brain active at all times. We need to understand and master all of them to achieve Turbo Metabolism.
The most primitive part of the brain, the hypothalamus and brain stem, controls things like appetite, temperature regulation, and the survival instincts. This reptilian brain is designed to help us stay alive, and we could not live without it. Our “survival brain” would kick in if we were dropped on a desolate island or another planet.
This brain is designed to focus on the four F-words of survival: flight, fight, feeding, and fornication. It prompts us to run away from or to fight threats that might harm us, to eat whatever and whenever we can, and to have sex with whomever we can. The reptilian brain functions correlate nicely with the base chakras of survival and sexuality and with the base of Maslow’s hierarchy, the needs of survival and safety.
The second brain refers to the limbic system, which is the seat of emotion, including fear, rage, and happiness, and everything in between. This system also relates to our automatic, often irrational reactions and decisions: to eat the cookies in front of us, to engage in road rage, to impulsively yell at a loved one. This part of the brain can be found in most mammals, such as cats, dogs, horses, and chimpanzees. This correlates with the middle chakras of love, power, and communication. This would correlate with the emotional needs for belonging, love, and esteem in Maslow’s hierarchy.
The most recently developed part of the brain, the neocortex, is the site for abstract reasoning, processing, and long-term memory. The cortex makes up one-third of the human brain and is unique to more evolved species, such as some species of dolphins. In humans, this part of the brain does not fully develop until the age of twenty-five and is needed for making decisions that involve delayed gratification, things that may feel difficult in the short-term but beneficial in the long-term. This correlates with the highest chakras of intuition and spirituality. When we operate at the level of the neocortex, we make thoughtful, pragmatic decisions that take into account all the ramifications of our actions. Mind mastery is all about operating at this level, or having willful control of the decision-making system all the time.
Figure 2.3. The triune brain
Rewiring Your Hardware and Software
With awareness, we can reset our hardware and operating system so that we can acquire the beliefs and the skills needed to achieve our goals. To paraphrase master coach Tony Robbins, Turbo Metabolism is about story, state, and strategy. To achieve Turbo Metabolism, you must first and foremost believe in and tell yourself the right story: the belief in self-efficacy (the idea that you actually have control over your destiny)
