Are chakras real? Can you see them? What is kundalini energy? This is the topic I delve into in episode 10 of the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast.
Most yoga teacher training programs devote a few lessons to the idea of the “subtle energies” — chakras, kundalini, nadis, and the like. Some teachers make entire classes dedicated to these ideas.
Kundalini is like a cosmic serpent lounging in your sacrum, waiting for its big break up your spine towards enlightenment. Then there's prana, the breath of life, stealthily diffusing invisibly. And chakras: those mystical hotspots said to power your body like secret batteries. Nobody's seen them, and that makes describing them difficult. They live in the same realm as abstract yet undeniably felt concepts like love—imagine trying to dissect the essence of love. “Sorry doc, found no love tissue in the torso today!”
I’m not here to say that all of the ideas are mystical BS. I just want to share a perspective on how these ideas cannot be investigated scientifically because they’re invisible. But invisible abstract concepts like love can still potentially be investigated by science.
My conclusion is that, yes, you should continue learning about chakras and kundalini and prana and nadis if that’s your thing and you love it. I am sure many people have had healing experiences at chakra workshops or similar offerings. But these “subtle energies” which are so subtle that they cannot be possibly observed with any microscope (much like Bertrand Russell’s teapot in space) should not be described as physical entities.
Russell’s teapot is a philosophical analogy on the burden of proof. It goes like this: If I claim there's a teapot orbiting the sun, invisible to telescopes, the burden’s on me, not you, to prove it. Basically, we shouldn't be expected to believe what can't be proven. Kundalini, chakras, and such are in this ethereal category; unfalsifiable and esoteric, just like that cosmic teapot.
There is, after all, a beautiful landscape to discover within the actual physical structures that exist within the body — and that’s what science can actually explore. For example, in the pre-science era, holding the breath was said to make the kundalini rise up the spine to help you reach enlightenment. Here’s a bit of what we know about breath-holding from a science perspective: When you hold your breath, carbon dioxide builds up in your bloodstream, which then crosses the blood-brain barrier and directly affects brain activity, causing changes in perception and potentially leading to feelings of dizziness, lightheadedness, or even temporary loss of consciousness — which can then lead to altered states of consciousness! This is all information substantiated by scientific observation. Before science as we know it today existed, “kundalini rising” might have been the best explanation.
Learn more by listening to the full episode now. It’s just 16 minutes long. Or read the full transcript below. Thanks for listening to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast. A stellar five-star review on your preferred podcast player wouldn’t go amiss! Catch you next time for more science-based explorations that light up our paths! Also, be sure to download my free mini e-book
Full Transcript of the episode
Matt: Hello and welcome to the Enlightened Anatomy podcast. Today I'm going to be covering the topic of kundalini, chakras, prana, nadis, and basically all those invisible things that we're taught exist in the body and yet they kind of don't agree with science. It's going to be an interesting topic, so stay tuned and, uh, cue the intro music, Saz.
Saz: Welcome to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast, where we take a deep dive into the worlds of anatomy, physiology, and science to help you deepen your yoga practice. Now, here's your host, Matthew Huy.
Listener Question
Matt: So today's episode comes from an email that I [00:01:00] received and that email was in response to a webinar that my co-author Andrew and I hosted. It was a brilliant webinar and so that you make sure you don't miss the next one, be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter at MatthewHuy. com. Last name is H U Y dot com, by the way, okay, and you can also download the 5 Tooth Bombs Every Yoga Teacher Should Know.
All right, so we did this webinar and we covered three topics, one of them being critical thinking, which I covered, and another one being whether we should hold our breath in yoga, whether it's such a bad thing, you know, especially during asana, and then also Whether there's actually any benefit to potentially holding your breath during an asana.
Like, say, going into a handstand or something. And I went into intra abdominal pressure and all that stuff. Yeah, it was a great webinar, you know, fine, cool. [00:02:00] And, uh, afterwards I, I got a question of someone asking, I was taught by my teacher that holding the breath allows the Kundalini to rise. So, do you have any response to that?
And to answer that question, we need to take a step back and look a little bit at critical thinking.
Exploring Kundalini, Chakras, and Prana
Matt: So, all of these terms that you often hear about in yoga, like Kundalini, you know, which is this, supposedly, invisible force or energy, which is at the bottom of the spine in the sacrum, and it moves up through the spine, and when it It basically shoots up through the top of your head, that's when you reach enlightenment. And then prana is considered to be a life force, which is also invisible, um, but then is, you know, carried through the body and particularly on the [00:03:00] breath. And then there are chakras. If you haven't heard about these, uh, they are energy centers in the body. And depending on which text you're reading, actually, there are about 40 different descriptions of chakras.
All of these things have something in common in that they're talking about energy, and they're talking about something which is there, but cannot be seen.
Russell's Teapot and the Burden of Proof
Matt: And this reminds me of Russell's Teapot, which is an analogy by Bertrand Russell, a science philosopher from the early 20th century.
And I remember first learning about this analogy when I was working on my master's, and we looked at research methods and critical thinking, and it has stuck with me ever since. So what is this teapot that I'm going on about? First of all, as an introduction, he said, "Many orthodox people speak as though [00:04:00] it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas, rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake."
So what he's saying is, people who believe firmly in a, in a subject, sometimes they say, well, how can you prove that it's not there? Right? And so he's going to now use an analogy of the teapot to describe where the burden of proof should lie. So he says, "If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a teapot revolving about the Sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided, I were careful to add, that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes."
So what he's saying is, in simpler language, because back in the [00:05:00] early 20th century they spoke in long sentences What he was saying was that,
If I tell you that something exists, but there's no possible way that you could ever see it, but you just have to take my word for it, I shouldn't expect you to believe me. Because I can't prove it, right? And the burden of proof should be on me to actually prove it. Then he goes on further and he says, "If I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, It is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it. I should be rightly thought to be talking nonsense."
So what he's saying is, if I tell you, well it can't be disproven, so therefore it must exist, well that is nonsense, right? I am talking nonsense if I say such a thing. So this is all about the burden of proof and we shouldn't expect other people to believe [00:06:00] us until we can provide some evidence, some proof of the thing, okay?
Abstract Concepts in Yoga
Matt: So that's a nice little background about kundalini, chakras, and all that stuff. I'm not saying those exist or they don't exist or anything like that. All I'm saying is they fit in this idea of "there is something there but it cannot be seen." So, maybe these kundalini, chakras, things are, you know, an abstract idea.
Like love. You know, the idea of love. Like, you cannot dissect a human and find love. There is not a pink love fluid stored in the spine. And, you know, when you're more in love, the pink fluid, you know, expands more, or something like that. No, there's no dissection that can reveal love in the body,
And yet, as humans, I'm sure almost all of us can agree that we know what love is, and we agree that love exists. But it's an [00:07:00] abstract concept. Just because there is an abstract concept --and that abstract concept can exist-- that does not mean that is a literal, physical, physiological thing. So I think the idea of kundalini, chakras and all that stuff can be likened to love in that it is an abstract concept.
It might still be there as in an energy, a description. And the best description for chakras I've heard has been from Dr. Christopher Wallis, who has read the ancient texts in Sanskrit on chakras and when they were first mentioned and he says they were first described as meditation points and that totally makes sense to me.
I can totally get behind that because it's not saying that it's this physical thing in your body but rather it is a point to focus on to visualize within your body. So I hope you, dear listener can see ,this difference. Just because we say that there is something to focus [00:08:00] on, something to put your attention to, that does not equate to meaning that that thing is a physical thing in our bodies. So a lot of these topics, like kundalini, chakras, and nadis, prana, are unfalsifiable. They're like Russell's teapot. You can say that they exist, but there's no way to disprove them, and there's also no way to prove them. So we kind of just have to take someone's word for it.
We shouldn't describe Kundalini and, energy channels as physical things, because if you do a dissection you'll find you won't, they're not there. But what we do find are nerves, blood, of course, connective tissue, muscles, all of those things that you cover in an anatomy training.
And then if you dive into neuroscience and endocrinology, then you can start [00:09:00] to understand synapses, and how we think, and how thinking is actually a chemical reaction, how whether we feel hungry or not is a chemical reaction based on hormones and that sort of thing. Even how happy you're feeling or sad that you're feeling can be measured rather quantitatively based on certain hormones being released in the body, including serotonin, dopamine, all those hormones that we often think of as happy hormones.
So I'm not saying don't teach about chakras and kundalini and all these invisible subtle energies. But at the same time, don't teach them within the science remit and say they are physical things, because they're not. But actually, we can measure really amazing things through data and through measurable ways.
Scientific Perspective on Breath Holding
Matt: For example, going back to the first question about whether holding [00:10:00] your breath can allow the kundalini energy to rise and, you know, move towards enlightenment. Well, what we can measure is that when you hold your breath, your carbon dioxide in your blood increases.
And as you increase your carbon dioxide levels in your blood, You're going to decrease the amount of oxygen available to your tissues, including your brain. As your brain starts to have less oxygen, it can go into a different state. And so through a breath hold, just looking purely at science, we can see that a breath hold can potentially lead to an altered state of consciousness. And that can be measured! And so maybe that is what this whole discussion around kundalini and holding your breath is about. You know, a lot of these terms were developed Before science existed, before [00:11:00] what we know about the body existed. And so it was the best way of describing it at that time. Whereas now, we know about carbon dioxide. We know about how neurotransmitters work. We know about aerobic respiration. We know about even altered states of consciousness. Okay. So, if we are going to talk about anatomy and physiology, I think we need to have a basis of the current knowledge of what's going on. We need to have an understanding of the collective awareness that scientists have of what structures exist in the body and don't.
Balancing Yoga and Science
Matt: It's going to be really difficult to find a scientist who is going to agree that there are [00:12:00] physical chakras in the body.
But maybe you're thinking, how can you explain the spiritual experiences that I've had in yoga? And let me tell you, I've also had spiritual experiences in yoga. And I've also struggled with balancing yoga with science at times, because there was this beautiful side to yoga that I loved, and it worked really well for me, particularly asana.
And then this other side where they would talk about chakras and kundalini, and I couldn't connect with it. It didn't make sense to me. So how can we explain someone's potential personal spiritual experience? Well, it is entirely possible to have a profound experience by taking time out of your life and focusing on your breath, paying attention to your thoughts, paying attention to your body move, how your body [00:13:00] moves, and reconnecting with your body.
That can be a profound thing for someone. And again, all of that can be explained through science and through measurable ways.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Matt: So in conclusion, should we stop teaching chakras and kundalini and all that stuff? No, I don't think so at all. Go ahead and teach them, especially if they are an integral part of your yoga teaching, of your understanding of yoga.
But we should not be teaching them as physical things that exist in the body. We should not be teaching them as things that can be described through a scientific lens.
Science is not just measuring boring things like blood pressure and heart rate and that sort of thing. Actually, through the scientific lens and through rigorous scientific study, we can even ask [00:14:00] questions like, What is happiness? What leads to happiness? Why are some people happier than other people? And that can take into account sociology, it can take into account biology, and even demographics and that sort of thing.
So, Don't think that just because we're looking at science means we have to not look at spirituality. It's just that our information has evolved, and these terms, which were best described at a certain time, and which still might describe things well in an abstract way, might not be pertinent through the scientific lens.
And it's okay that information changes, like, it's, it's good. In fact, there's this Buddhist principle known as Anicca, thanks Rachel and Jill for teaching me this, which describes how everything is changing. Anicca basically means change. Life is change. [00:15:00] It's always changing. So why should we expect our knowledge to always stay the same?
Let's instead accept that change is a very normal, natural part of life. In fact, all life is change.
So I hope that gives you a new perspective on what's often described as these subtle energies in yoga, and how or whether science can fit in with these ideas of subtle energies. And it's not my role at all to try to say, oh this is total BS what you've been teaching. No, I just want to offer a new perspective, a new lens through which we might view these ideas.
If you have any comments I'd love to hear back. You can leave a comment if you're listening to this on Spotify or download my " Five Truth Bombs to Make You a More Confident Yoga [00:16:00] Teacher/Yoga Practitioner.". You can just be a normal yoga student to benefit from this and you'll get my email address and let me know what you think.
Saz: Thank you for tuning in and until next time, let's get enlightened and help others. Thank you for listening to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast. We would be grateful if you would leave a review and a five star rating. Be sure to tune in next time for more science based knowledge to get enlightened and help others.
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