In my last post, I wrote about how understanding the seven main chakras can help create more dynamic characters in our WIPs. We covered the lower three chakras, so this post will go over the upper four.
We left off at the navel chakra, so the next one is the heart. Popular teaching says Buddha was born from his mother’s right side. He took seven steps and lotus flowers sprung from where his feet touched the ground. This is a great example of how we first feel love within ourselves and then allow it to flow outward. Our characters are the same. Before they can truly love anyone, they must first love themselves.
This leaves us with A LOT of material to work with!
The heart chakra is smack in the middle of the other seven and provides a boundary from the lower to the upper. It is no accident that it is love that unlocks access to higher consciousness. When this chakra is blocked, sadness takes over. This can be manifested through heavy limbs, endless fatigue, and all the other things we’ve felt in the last two years (*cough pandemic cough*).
This is where your character acts on faith or takes a tangible risk so that they ultimately accept the conditions of their life. Only then can they level up (in whatever capacity that is for your character).
Next is the throat chakra. As writers, we risk over using swallowing, dry mouth, and tangled tongues as much as stomach calisthenics. That’s because voice is the way we express our feelings, and since we like to torture our characters, we take theirs away often.
The cool thing is there are multiple ways to express what our characters are feeling with the throat chakra. Since an open one embodies our ability to speak truth, honest characters can be well-spoken, poets, or other types of people that are good with words. Maybe they sing when they’re happy or hum melodious tunes when they drive.
If our characters are lacking, they might manifest their throat chakra blockage with a stutter, laryngitis, or even an overbearing cough. Maybe the tone of their voice is unbearable to those who have to listen to them. Shyness can be a way to show a character’s inability to speak their truth, and so can isolation, self-imposed or otherwise.
Now we come to the top two chakras, those that show true intuition and enlightenment, the true gift of the hero’s journey. The third eye chakra sits in between the eyes and sees all. While the logic part of us sits in the root chakra when we’re grounded, this third eye teaches us to trust that inkling we get that nags at us in that quiet voice when we aren’t looking.
Characters who are struggling with this can be indecisive or second guess the decisions they do make. It would be fun to play with this chakra in a fantasy or speculative project, especially if the character has achieved openness in all the other chakras. Of course, contemporary pieces can always use intuition… *eyes own main character*
Finally, we come to the highest chakra, the crown. We can use this toward the end of our character’s arc once they’ve risen from their dark moment and have accepted their fate you so evilly gave them (nice going, btw). If your character has made it this far, they would walk tall and with purpose. They would humbly accept that which they never would before, meaning if they weren’t a hugger before, they would welcome a human touch now.
If your character isn’t here yet, they would hate to be alone with their own thoughts. Their ego would overpower their belief in something larger than them. Maybe their narcissism gets in the way of what they need. This could manifest as talking over people, dismissing others’ opinions, or maybe even scoffing at a prophecy.
There are so many ways to make our characters’ reactions visceral for our readers beyond the basic stomach clenching. Take it from me, though, my first drafts are FULL of alllll the stomach action. It’s only as I revise that I find better, more interesting ways for my characters to express themselves.
Thanks for hanging out with me! If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe as I’ll be talking more about how myth and depth psychology can make writing more realistic for both the writer and the reader!