The euphoric pangs of first love you can feal in your chest in early puberty are brought about by the same hormonal imbalances and growth spurts that create acne and adolesent mood swings. At least that's how my mother put it, she had the medical degree. It is a human ability, very ancient, to put that pleasent feeling into poetic metaphor, so often the brain is confused with the heart; that's the poetic answer. The scientific answer is that the brains first reaction to sudden strong emotions is to send an adrenilin surge across the nerve lines in your rib cage from both sides. The surges collide at mid chest, some of it sprays outward into the heart before subsiding. Your heart feels like "..it skipped a beat." because it just got hit with adrenalin. A sudden fear makes you "want to jump out of your skin" (...out of your chair.....out of your whatever) that's the adrenalin surge hitting your nerve endings i.e. your brains survival instinct kicking your poetic metaphoric ass. And the brain don't care if the heart gets the credit, the brain just wants you to survive.

It is true that many different ancient peoples had views of the heart as the seat of consciousness. The function of the heart did not become known until the 17th century with William Harvey. I often repeat his immortal lines when theists tell me to "look into my heart and I will find deity X (or, for Christians, his offspring). "It's not good appealling to my heart-it's only a pump!"

The reason that many ancient peoples believed the heart to be the seat of consciousness was because the heart superficially appears to be the primary seat of emotional change. Fright induces heart rate to speed up, as do a number of other emotions. Others induce it to slow down, and pump less vigorously. The ancient Egyptians went far as to consider the brain to be virtually of no importance in the Embalming process when organs were preserved along with the body for mummification, and was the least regarded organ.

We've already been through this. Energy is a physical term which is described by physical equations, and has nothing to do with vague and meaningless, inarticulable propositions which do not make testable predications, hence cannot make assertions pertaining to what is "necessary for life".

Everything else that followed the assertion above is equally mendacious. In addition to most of it being simple gibberish, it is very difficult to get an argumentative foodhold on that which is inarticulabe, as Jefferson pointed out.

Blood flow is not controlled by "chakras". I can tell you exactly in terms of atoms in molecules what controls blood flow. Autonomic nerves control the release of the acetylcholine signalling molecule into post-synaptic cells based on the rate of action potential firing due to an inducted membrane depolarization which is induced by a transient signal in the pre-synaptic membrane. In olfactory receptors, for example, G-linked protein receptors bind to an extracellular ligand which induces the activation of a trimeric-GTPase which is linked via the plane of the plasma membrane to an enzyme which controls the rate of production of cAMP via guanyl cyclase, which in turn opens the Na+ cAMP gated ion channels which allows a membrane depolarization necessary to carry the electrical signal from the epithelial projection on the nasal cells into the back of the brain. Blood flow control works in an identical fashion. For 100 years, the explosive nitroglycerine has been used to treat angina. Acetylcholine receptors in the endothelial cells of the heart muscle respond to Acetylcholine concentration rising which results from an inhibitory signal from the pre-synaptic membrane. These channels raise the concentration of a soluble bloodstream gas called NO. When Nitro enters the bloodstream, it is almost immediately converted into NO and hence has a similar effect. The NO binds to cGMP gated ion channels which open as a result which allows the endothelial cells to remain relaxed (some ion channels have hyperpolarizing effects such as K+ efflux leak channels). Viagra works more directly, by inhibiting cGMP phosphodiesterase, which raises cGMP concentration and allows vasodilation to occur as the more of the ion channels that link the nerves to the endothelial cells open. This allows blood to flow into the penis in response to appropriate electrical signals such as those induced by the neurotransmitters associated with sexual arousal in the glands underneath the base of the brain. These signalling molecules have identical effects in the nerve cells that send action potentials which induce vasodilation at the endothelial cells at the base of the penis, as they will induce an action potential by allow an Na+ influx which depolarizes the neural cell membrane.

I invite the readers of this thread to judge whose explanation is better.

Arent Chakras sandles?

wait... im thinking of chanklas

deludedgod: please, you could spare this. I mentioned it just for curiosity. Also, I didn't claim that blood flow is controlled by chakras, but, that it is affected by conscious concentrating at a body part. I guess it's done by relaxing a muscle tonus, or something like that, I don't know.
If you're not OK with using a therm of "energy" for a non-material "energy", then you should first have a look at the "atom" therm. It means "undividable" and atom is pretty much dividable, isn't it? But when you say it, you don't mean anything undividable, but a specific thing we today adress as "atom".
So, some non-material effects are called "energy", because they feel like energy, right? These, who are able to sense it, for example me, says the "energy" is the best way how to describe it. This is a common therm spreaded among eastern teachings and some martial arts, New Age Movement (which is a huge range of various people) and everyone who ever experiences this effect on own skin.

I am quite against the traditional astrology, because it doesn't count with a radical paradigm shift, which is coming with the age of Aquarius. This paradigm shift is greatly noticeable since the hippies movement and it changes pretty much most of methods, meanings, even a purpose of astrology itself. Also, it means including a lot of other helpful teachings, therms and science into it, which further extends its possibilities. I can imagine the old astrology could work in these times, but now it's morally obsolete.
My father is an astrologer of Aquarian age. He researches and practices AAA (a. age astrology) for about 6 years. AAA is basically a method (I'm afraid to write a "science" here) of effective finding a purpose of an individual in modern society.
AAA is originally based on a work of Dane Rudhyar, the american astrologer, but it also keeps up with modern consciousness research, 25 years of dad's experiences in spiritual teachings (and practicing them), and so on.
He wrote and published a book "Introduction to the Aquarian Age Astrology" which is in process of translating and publishing in USA, and writes two next on this topic, this time in English.
AAA seems very popular, my father does a lot of personal horoscopes over these weeks (for example today one for a woman from Austria) and he did maybe hundreds of them already, also he taught many new AA astrologers on his courses.
http://home.tiscali.cz:8080/aquarian_astrology/index.html - here's the homepage. I don't say AAA is good for everything and everyone, there's a specific kind of people who can use it best, and you've got there clearly written it's greatly based on author's personal experience and worldview.

Dunno, I haven't watched Naruto yet, (I probably should improve my anime education even more)  but it's common that in fiction or fantasy films/literature there's used something from a real world, mythology, religion... For example, a philosopher's stone in Full Metal Alchemist or letting be possesed by a spirit in Shaman King. It's no wonder that Naruto chose an ancient description of a chakra system. Dunno how authentically, though.