Semiotics is the Root of All Chakras

Image from www.dancingshakina.com
When I was in graduate school, I had a couple of ridiculously brilliant roommates. One of them became completely obsessed with semiotics in theater. She tried explaining the concepts of semiotics to me, but I quickly found myself over my head.

Fast forward 20 years later (YIKES!) and I am trying to understand semiotics for my own reasons. I still am struggling, but I have a clarity about why I might have a personal need to grasp it. One of my great frustrations in communicating with others about the kind of health care I provide and teach is helping them understand that all systems of healing operate based on metaphor. Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, and yes, western-AMA-medicine, all have a metaphorical foundation. The problem comes when the metaphorical aspect gets lost. People become overly attached to the symbol, confusing it with the thing itself.

Why do I care? The danger of this literalism is that it leads, almost inevitably, to a kind of dogmatism, and a dogmatic approach is diametrically opposed to the Healing Presence.

We have a saying around here that "the map is not the territory". Investing in the "realness" of any of these metaphors is like gasoline on the flame of the ego. The need to cling to some kind of "fact" or "system" is a way of fooling ourselves into thinking we have more "knowing", more control, than we actually do.

I am so often questioned about the most prevalent and most firmly embraced of any of these symbolic systems - the Chakra system.

Sigh. The chakras. People are always screwing with each others chakras. Do I clear/balance/unblock, spindle, fold or mutilate them? I have to tell you, I don't know how to answer this. It's not like I do; it's not like I don't. It's not as though I'm not familiar with the metaphor; I know the designated locations, colors, correspondences and effects with which they are associated. But I realize, it's all semiotics. I don't know anything, but I know that.

I had an "Aha!" the other day when I realized that the chakras line up with places in the body I've found to be ripe for energetic and physiological logjams. They show up where there are structural transitions and, for whatever reason, these transitional areas tend to be prone to misalignments, divergent patterns, and lack of movement. This is my metaphor. Do I sometimes associate these with the chakras? Yes, sometimes, when it occurs to me. Does it change anything I do? Maybe. It's impossible to know what you'd do if you didn't know something you do know.

Maybe that's semiotics...