Countless yoga sites will tell you how chakras affect our well-being. Here's one warning you that unbalancing your chakras through bad habits or negative environmental factors leads to health problems like anxiety and indigestion. Thankfully, yoga cleanses the energy of your chakras, each of which is associated with different functions. The navel chakra, for example, helps regulate your digestive system and willpower, and is associated with yellow and the element of fire. And if yoga alone doesn't restore your confidence and gut health, the Goops of the world will sell you overpriced essential oils, candles, and crystals to get those troublesome chakras unblocked.
That might all sound like nonsense, but you can believe it because chakras are an ancient concept that came from smart Indians, which is a real double whammy for impressing white people named Kemberly whose Sanskrit tattoo says “hoagie.” Now, the last thing we want to do is wade into centuries of revered religious beliefs ... but we don't have to, because the western understanding of chakras has almost nothing to do with their Hindu origins.
The misunderstanding began in the early 20th century when Westerners, anticipating the internet, began talking about foreign beliefs without a proper understanding of them. An influential 1927 book by the man who thought he'd found Jesus 2.0 tried to cram chakras into theosophy, and a 1918 publication was based on a poor translation of a 1577 text that wasn't especially authoritative. These errors and oversimplifications became mistaken for ancient wisdom and, over time, more and more pseudoscientific ideas were grafted onto them. Chakras became spiritual fanfiction.
The association of chakras with colors, elements, gemstones, bodily functions, emotional states, and even Jungian archetypes are all the invention of Westerners way too eager to try ordering in Hindi when they visit the corner Indian restaurant. But while your yoga teacher might tell you it's a simple fact that everyone has a red, earthen root chakra that affects their sleep and sex drive, ancient Hindus and Buddhists couldn't even agree on how many chakras there were. But that was okay, because they were considered visualization aids for meditative religious practices, not literal tanks of energy kicking around your body that need regular refueling. There's no scientific evidence for the latter; if everyone in a yoga class feels less anxious and more frisky after a session focused on their pelvic chakras, that's because they took an hour to do something relaxing.