The week between Christmas Day on December 25th of one year and New Year’s Day on January 1st of the next is a week of great opportunities to reflect back and to plan forward, to review and to set goals.

I am always open to thinking about the importance of the seven major chakras of the body and to renew how I see them. This month, I have just finished reading Alberto Villoldo’s The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers. How did I not find this book earlier? Learning from the wisdom of the Laika Shamans of the Andes, Villoldo explains that there are nine chakras, the eighth chakra being our individual spirit and the ninth chakra being the entirety of Spirit.

I have drafted a simple representation of these nine chakras and I ask questions connected with each, questions that will stir you to reflect and plan, review and set goals.

1st chakra

1. How is your physical health?
2. Is your diet the best it could be?
3. Do you exercise sufficiently to maintain mobility, strength, and stamina?
4. Is your home the way you want it to be?
5. Is your home where you want it to be?

2nd chakra

1. Is your primary relationship in good health?
2. Are you supportive and positive in your relationships with parents, children, siblings, and in-laws without being intrusive or controlling?
3. How is your financial situation?
4. Is your career going in a useful and satisfying direction?
5. How are your business relationships?

3rd chakra

1. Are you being honest in all areas of your life?
2. Do you live with integrity, with authenticity?
3. Does your life energize you?
4. Do you allow yourself to dream of your best life?
5. Do you find the balance between work and play, concentration and relaxation?

4th chakra

1. Can you love your friends AND those you haven’t befriended, by employing agape, unconditional love?
2. Are you able to provide meaningful service somewhere?
3. Do you see other people as being unique chips off the “Divine block”?
4. Do you over- or undervalue your place in the world?
5. Do you feel peaceful?

5th chakra

1. How are you expressing yourself?
2. Do you express yourself through the arts – music, painting, sculpture, writing, blogging, taking photographs, arranging flowers?
3. Do you express yourself through hospitality – cooking, baking, entertaining at home, greeting the choristers at practice?
4. Do you express yourself through holding space with others – counselling, birth or death doula, being a friend who listens without advising?
5. Could you learn another way to express yourself?

6th chakra

1. Can you shift and release any thoughts that might keep you stuck in the past?
2. Can you create the future you want by visualizing with Divine help?
3. Can you accept coincidences as Divine pointers?
4. Do you meditate or practise self-inquiry?
5. If you have had a spiritually transformative experience of any sort, have you allowed it to give you direction?

7th chakra

1. Do you allow your soul to shine through your life, by following your passion, your purpose, and your path?
2. Does your world seem to be growing and expanding or collapsing in on itself?
3. Can you accept that there is a next step, even if you don’t know what it is?
4. Can you envision how closely we are all connected?
5. Are you compassionate in all situation?

8th chakra

1. Can you remember a past life?
2. Do you understand why you incarnated into this particular life?
3. Do you know your theme(s) within this life, the ones that still provide you with challenges? Examples of a theme are happiness, adventure, self-confidence.
4. Are you fulfilling your role in the world, the role you came to fulfill?
5. Do you value your challenges as opportunities for growth?

9th chakra
Being unindividuated Spirit, the 9th chakra just is.