The Science Behind Your Chakras: What Are Chakras and How Many Are There?

According to the tradition of yoga and many New Age practices, the chakras are vital centers of energy that exist in all of us.

While these constantly spinning energy vortexes are not visible to the human eye, they’re thought to be essential to our ongoing development and health as human beings, says Karla Helbert, a licensed counselor, yoga therapist, and author of The Chakras in Grief and Trauma. 

“I think of them as invisible energy organs, each one self-contained and having functions that impact all parts of the whole,” says Helbert. 

If you're curious about the mystical realm of chakras, how many there are, and how to block them, you can learn more below about these energy centers and their potential for physical and spiritual wellness.

Chakras are believed to be energy centers, or points of spiritual power, in various traditional Indian spiritual and religious systems, particularly in Hinduism and Tantra. 

The word "chakra" is Sanskrit for "wheel," and it is used to describe these energy centers because they are often depicted as spinning wheels or vortexes of energy.

Some claim there are as many as 88,000 chakras in the human body. The chakras were first mentioned in ancient Vedic and Tantric texts, some of the oldest Hindu writings, dating from 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. Each one of our endocrine glands supposedly has something to do with the functions associated with that chakra. In modern times, the chakra system has been linked to the endocrine system, with certain glands correlated to certain chakras, says Helbert.

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According to Helbert, the chakras are constantly moving at varying speeds in an effort to maintain homeostasis in the body, each one governing different physical and mental components of our being.

The three lower chakras are linked to our “earthly” existence, including our survival instinct, reproduction, and self-confidence. The heart chakra is linked to empathy and acceptance of others, and the upper three chakras are linked to less physical attributes, including self-expression, intuition, and “our connection to the divine.”  

When our chakras go out of balance — or become “blocked,” a phrase you may have heard spouted by certain spiritual characters in pop culture — it purportedly causes certain negative results. For example, an imbalanced sacral chakra is associated with fertility issues and a blocked throat chakra means you have trouble expressing yourself.  “The chakras regulate functions that affect us on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, intuitive, spiritual, and sensory,” says Helbert.  

Chakra unblocking can be achieved through various methods, such as meditation, energy healing, yoga, and other chakra exercises. These practices can help release blocked energy and restore balance.

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The seven main chakras, according to some belief systems, are thought to be associated with the endocrine system in the human body as energy centers. Here are the seven main chakras, along with their locations and how they are associated with the endocrine system:

Associated Endocrine Gland: Adrenal glands

Function: The root chakra is linked to the adrenal glands, which produce hormones related to the body's fight-or-flight response. It plays a role in managing stress and survival instincts.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Gonads (testes in men and ovaries in women)

Function: This chakra is connected to the gonads, which regulate reproductive functions, including sexual development and fertility.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Pancreas

Function: The solar plexus chakra relates to the pancreas, which produces insulin and regulates blood sugar levels. It's associated with the body's metabolism and energy balance.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Thymus

Function: The heart chakra is associated with the thymus gland, which plays a crucial role in the development of the immune system and the body's ability to fight off diseases.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Thyroid and parathyroid glands

Function: The throat chakra is linked to the thyroid and parathyroid glands, which regulate metabolism and calcium levels in the body. It's also associated with communication and self-expression.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Pituitary gland (often referred to as the "master gland")

Function: The third eye chakra is connected to the pituitary gland, which controls various other endocrine glands, helping to regulate important functions like growth, reproduction, and stress responses.

Associated Endocrine Gland: Pineal gland

Function: The crown chakra is linked to the pineal gland, which produces melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles. It's also associated with spiritual awareness and consciousness.

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While these ideas fit snugly into a more modern explanation of the chakras, there’s no scientific evidence to back them up.

“This is really a Western point of view and we don’t have any data to prove the connection,” says Shamini Jain, a psychologist and researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health. 

As a whole, there’s currently no meaningful way of measuring the chakras scientifically. To Jain’s knowledge, it hasn’t really been attempted since 1978.

“The most robust work in trying to measure the chakras was under Valerie Hunt at UCLA in the 1970s,” says Jain.

Hunt used electrodes at various points along the chakra system — for example, an electrocardiogram at the heart — to measure changes energetically in the body. But to date, we haven’t been able to detect chakra energy partially because the chakras don’t work in isolation, they work in coordination, so it would be difficult to isolate one of them to study, says Jain.  

A 2005 paper published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine mentioned the non-visible energy of the chakra system but didn’t investigate the practice. “The chakras are the energy transducers for subtle energy.

Subtle energy is a healing energy that anyone can learn to perceive and utilize. It is a crucial, but often missing, component in health care,” the authors write.  Other research efforts have investigated similar systems of healing energy called Reiki. 

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Reiki is a Japanese healing-energy technique that employs the use of gentle physical touch, and its impact on lowering anxiety, depression, and pain, as well as improving wellbeing. 

While its effectiveness may vary from person to person, Reiki is commonly used for the following purposes:

• Stress reduction

• Pain management

• Emotional healing

• Energy balancing

• Improved sleep

Research has shown that the technique can be effective, but scientists don’t know the mechanism behind its success - for example, whether it’s due to this energy working or whether the practice itself is simply relaxing, therefore reducing the impact of stress on the mind and body.

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Overall, Jain says, it’s often difficult to get funding for the large-scale research we would need to better understand the chakra system and healing energy as a whole. This is largely because energy isn’t material, meaning you can’t see it. “We’re comfortable with the idea that a drug can fix problems but we’re not comfortable with energy doing the same thing because many don’t believe that energy is real,” she says.

But Jain hopes that this will change. “If you could measure changes in your energy biofield before you got physically sick, you could potentially prevent disease.” And that, says Jain, is a code worth cracking.  

Read More: Grappling With the Science of Touch-Based Healing Practices

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• Licensed counselor, yoga therapist, and author of The Chakras in Grief and Trauma. Karla Helbert

• Britannica. Chakra

• YouTube. Aang Opens His Chakras for Avatar State Control

• Pen Pen Wellness. 8 Easy Techniques You Can Do At Home To Unblock Chakras

• Healthline. The history of chakras

• Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine

• Everyday Health. All About Reiki: How This Type of Energy Healing Works and Its Health Benefits

• Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health. Biofield Science and Healing: History, Terminology, and Concepts

Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She's also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, (expected graduation 2023).