Chakras or muscles?

Contemporary meditators love to talk about chakra.  It connotes lots of psychological and spiritual benefits, like being happy, de-stress, detox, slimming, becoming positive...you name it!  Old-school Tibetan Buddhist or Taoist meditators will probably frown.  Never mind, when one visits a Buddhist or Taoist temple of today, probably most will pray for their health or good fortune instead of seeking spiritual enlightenment.  It is a difference between social cultures (one petite-bourgeoisie [signified by being "posh"] and the other proletariat [signified by being "pragmatic"]).  To cut the story short, not withstanding popular wisdom as depicted above, there are indeed genuine different approaches in the way we use chi, as indicated by a difference in emphasis: chakras or muscles?

Religious seekers (the posh concept nowadays being spiritual seekers) traditionally look down upon seekers of physical objectives, like good health or martial art proficiency.  They consider the latter wasting their time on low level transient things.  "What is the use of a bag of nice bones and muscles if you can't save your soul?"  or "Putting on the same effort, losing the golden chance to redeem your soul?"

The question I want to raise here is: Can spiritual seekers neglect their bodies?  No, according to Taoist tradition.  One must train up one's body first before training one's spirituality. There is a famous Taoist saying: There is no sickly immortal!

One surely doesn't need to be trained into a seasoned martial artist before one can embark on the route to spirituality.  Having said that without proper body conditioning, one simply can't meditate on one's chakras with a focused mind - your imbalanced body will always alert you of its imbalance and drag you back into the reality of which every time you try to tread the path of deeper meditation.

Proper joint/muscles conditioning can help our body towards better balance.  Yoga-asana helps, tai-chi helps....If you're too much onto seated meditation, perhaps you can do more single nostril breathing as I discussed in a previous post.  Good luck with your chakras and muscles!

Balance your body with Asana