Noticing that different traditions have different goals, and different ideas about things, this is something I've been thinking about recently. I'd be interested in what others think about this.

Many systems of yoga describe chakras as structures in the subtle body that modify the quality of energy in the subtle body. In some more modern systems where people practice yoga postures mostly for the physical performance benefit, I hear people talk a lot about working on opening each chakra.

In my understanding, which comes more from an older kriya yoga system, instead of trying just to open each chakra, the goal would be more to balance them. Since each chakra is associated with a specific type of psychological tendency, if the chakra is too closed up, relative to the others, that associated tendency would be underexpressed in one's life. In the same way, if one chakra was too open relative to the others, the tendency would be overexpressed. Both cases would lead to an imbalanced state.

As one example, the manipura chakra (solar plexus) can be associated with agression. If this chakra is too closed up, relative to the others, the person might be unable to stand up for his own decisions, and be easily dominated and frustrated. If the chakra is too open, the person might tend to be abusive towards others, or overly power-hungry. Either condition would represent an imbalanced mental state.

If the goal is to learn to recognize and identify with the spiritual self nature, and this is difficult because the identification with the ego gets in the way and distracts us from the self nature, then these imbalanced states would prevent progress towards that goal. This is my understanding of why balancing the chakras is important. If one seems too closed up, then work on opening it up, but if one is already too open, relative to the other chakras, then working to close it down would seem to make more sense.

I know there are a lot of different traditions that have different goals and different ideas about these things. What ideas do the rest of you have about this? Do your systems focus more on opening them up, working to balance them, increasing the energy of each one? I'd be interested in knowing more about how different systems approach this.

Thanks!