Chakra colors: the seven chakras and color in practice

Chakras are centers of energy in the subtle body, as described in Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions. The neat system of seven chakras, each with its own rainbow color, is much newer: it took shape in the West during the 20th century. This guide covers the older ideas, how the modern system formed, and how people use chakra colors in meditation and daily life today.

What chakras are in Indian traditions

The word chakra is Sanskrit for “wheel” or “circle.” In some forms of Hinduism and in Tantric Buddhism, chakras are understood as centers of psychic energy, the places where psychic forces and bodily functions are said to meet. Artists and teachers often show them as spinning wheels or as lotus flowers with a set number of petals.

The chakras belong to a larger picture that Tantric yoga calls the subtle body. The Encyclopedia of Religion describes this subtle body as a network of channels called nadis, traditionally said to number 72,000, along with knots and energy centers. The subtle body lines up only roughly with physical anatomy. It is a map for meditation, not a diagram of organs.

The tradition does not give a single fixed count of chakras. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that some accounts speak of 88,000 chakras in the body. Of these, six major ones sit along the spine and a seventh sits above the crown of the head. Buddhist systems usually describe four major chakras instead.

In kundalini practice, the chakras serve as stages on a path. Practitioners describe a coiled energy, called kundalini, that rests at the base of the spine. Through meditation, breath and posture, this energy is said to rise through each chakra in turn until it reaches the crown. In this tradition, that rising is linked with spiritual awakening.

How the modern seven-chakra system formed

Most people who know about the 7 chakras today learned a version that came through the West. That version goes back mainly to Sir John Woodroffe’s 1919 book The Serpent Power, a rough translation of a Sanskrit text from 1577. The Sanskrit work itself describes six chakras, and the crown center above them makes the seventh.

Western interest started earlier, in the 1880s, with the Theosophists, who presented chakras as energy centers within a wider spiritual philosophy. Woodroffe’s book shaped that interest, and so did Charles W. Leadbeater’s 1927 book The Chakras. Over the following decades, writers and teachers added new layers to the system:

• psychological attributes for each center, such as emotional themes and life lessons
• the rainbow colors, running from red at the base to violet at the crown
• correspondences with other systems, including astrology and crystals

The result is a modern synthesis. It draws on Indian sources but combines them with Western ideas about psychology, color and correspondence. Knowing this does not make the modern system worthless. It helps you see which parts come from the older texts and which parts are recent additions.

The seven chakras and their colors

The table below shows the chakras as they appear in the modern Western system, with the English name, the Sanskrit name, the location and the color most books use today.

Chakra	Location	Modern color
Root (Muladhara)	Base of the spine	Red
Sacral (Svadhisthana)	Lower abdomen	Orange
Solar plexus (Manipura)	Upper abdomen	Yellow
Heart (Anahata)	Chest	Green
Throat (Vishuddha)	Throat	Blue
Third eye (Ajna)	Between the eyebrows	Indigo
Crown (Sahasrara)	Top of the head	Violet

These rainbow chakra colors are a modern Western addition. The traditional texts assign the chakras different colors, so the familiar red-to-violet sequence should not be treated as ancient teaching. It took hold because it is simple to remember and maps neatly onto the order of the spectrum.

Some older markers survive alongside the new ones. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that the ajna, or third-eye chakra, is commonly marked with a bindi between the eyebrows. Many people searching for chakra meanings now find each center described with psychological qualities as well. Those meanings belong to the modern layer of the system, and different teachers describe them in different ways.

Color in modern practice

People who work with chakra colors today mostly use them as a focus for attention. The color gives the mind something simple to rest on while you move through the body. Common practices include:

• Visualizing each color in turn. During a sitting meditation, you picture red at the base of the spine and move upward through each color to violet at the crown. A guided chakra meditation walks you through this step by step.
• Color breathing. You imagine breathing in a color and letting it fill a part of the body.
• Clothing and objects. Some people wear a color or keep an object of that color nearby as a reminder of a center they want to reflect on.
• Journaling. You write about the qualities a modern teacher associates with a chakra and notice how they show up in your own life.

If you want to try color breathing, a simple version looks like this:

1. Sit comfortably with your back upright and your eyes closed or softly lowered.
2. Bring your attention to the base of your spine and picture a clear red.
3. On each inhale, imagine the color growing a little brighter. On each exhale, let your body soften.
4. After a few breaths, move up to the next area and the next color, until you reach violet at the crown.
5. Finish by resting for a minute with no color in mind before you open your eyes.

Many practitioners describe this work in terms of energy. They speak of a center being open or closed, or of raising one’s vibration. Some also connect the chakras with the aura, the field of color that some traditions say surrounds the body. This is the language of the tradition, and you can use the practices without adopting every part of it.

Color is also used in a different way, with stronger claims. Chromotherapy, or color therapy, holds that colored light can treat disease. Health experts regard it as pseudoscience. There is no good evidence that colored light or color visualization treats any illness, and chakra practice should never take the place of medical or mental-health care.

A grounded view

Chakras are best understood as a meditative map from Indian traditions, not as physical structures that a scan could find. The seven-color scheme is a modern Western synthesis built on top of that map, and the traditional texts describe the colors differently. No one can confirm from the outside what a meditator experiences when they focus on a chakra, and claims that colored light treats illness are not supported.

That still leaves room for the practice. Moving your attention slowly up the body and pairing each area with a color can be a pleasant, steady focus for meditation. You can value it on those terms, as a way to settle and pay attention. You do not need to treat it as settled fact.