Chakra frequencies: seven centres, seven tones

Which frequency belongs to each chakra?

That depends on the chart, because no single list exists. The one met most often climbs through the Solfeggio numbers, one tone for each centre from the root to the crown, and it is the map we play on the Solfeggio collection. A second map comes from the planetary tones of Hans Cousto, a Swiss mathematician and music researcher. Here are both, side by side.

Two chakra frequency maps, root to crown

Centre	Solfeggio map	Cousto's planetary map
Crown	963 Hz	172.06 Hz, the Platonic year
Third eye	852 Hz	221.23 Hz, Venus
Throat	741 Hz	141.27 Hz, Mercury
Heart	639 Hz	136.10 Hz, the Earth's year
Solar plexus	528 Hz	126.22 Hz, the Sun
Sacral	417 Hz	210.42 Hz, the Moon
Root	396 Hz	194.18 Hz, the Earth's day

Neither list is ancient. The Solfeggio numbers were first printed in 1999, a story the guide to the Solfeggio frequencies tells in full. In a list from 2002 the set still had six tones, from 396 Hz to 852 Hz. By 2012 a tuning fork seller was colouring those six "for each of the 1st Six Chakras": red for 396 Hz at the root, up to purple for 852 Hz at the third eye, with no fork for the crown. The crown tone in today's map, 963 Hz, belongs to the later set of nine.

Cousto took a different road. He raised the cycles of the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and the inner planets by octaves until they could be heard, the method the guide to planetary frequencies sets out. A German page on his chakra tones says the pairings rest on long practical experience, and quotes him: he counts the Earth tones as settled, and the Mercury and Venus pairings as rather hypothetical, still in need of testing. His heart tone, 136.10 Hz, is the year tone he also named Om, which the Om frequency guide follows further.

Where does the seven-chakra map come from?

From a Sanskrit text written in 1577. Its author, Purnananda, described six centres along the spine and a lotus of a thousand petals above the head: six plus one, the seven people count today. John Woodroffe's translation, published as The Serpent Power, brought the text to English readers a century ago.

It was never the only map. Christopher Wallis, a scholar of Sanskrit and tantra, notes that across the older tantric texts "Five-chakra systems, six-chakra systems, seven, nine, ten, twelve, twenty-one and more chakras are taught". The texts also teach a practice rather than describe the body: a lotus or wheel of coloured light to picture at one point in the body, with sacred syllables placed in it. In his words, "The chakra systems are prescriptive, not descriptive."

The seven centres in the 1577 text, in Woodroffe's translation

Centre	Petals	Colour in the text
Crown, Sahasrara	1,000	whiter than the full moon
Third eye, Ajna	2	white, like the moon
Throat, Vishuddha	16	smoky purple
Heart, Anahata	12	the bandhuka flower
Solar plexus, Manipura	10	heavy rain clouds
Sacral, Svadhishthana	6	vermilion
Root, Muladhara	4	crimson

Read the colours from the root up: crimson, vermilion, heavy rain clouds, the bandhuka flower, smoky purple, then white and white. Kurt Leland, who wrote a history of the Western chakra system, puts it plainly: "the chakras have colors, but there is no rainbow". Western writers added the rainbow between the 1920s and the 1950s, and the familiar chart, a rainbow colour and a list of qualities for every centre, "did not come together in print until 1977". Leland adds that "The idea of chakra balancing is never mentioned in the scriptures."

Western writers moved the map as they went. Woodroffe noted that the Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater "substitutes for the Svadhishthana centre a six-petalled lotus at the spleen" and counted the crown at exactly 960 petals instead of a thousand. A frequency for each centre is a later step again. Our own tone colours follow the modern rainbow too, red for 396 Hz up to purple for 963 Hz: a key for the eye, not a claim about the body.

How many frequencies has Harmonance given one chakra?

Five, for the root. In 2023 we made 27 chakra videos for YouTube in three series: the Solfeggio tones, a set built on 432 Hz and the planetary tones, with one video that blends all three. Read back from their own descriptions, they pair 30 different numbers with the seven centres, between three and five for each.

Every number the 27 videos gave each centre

Centre	Solfeggio series	Other numbers in the videos
Crown	963 Hz	172.06, 183.58 and 216 Hz
Third eye	852 Hz	144, 207.36, 210.42 and 211.44 Hz
Throat	741 Hz	141.27 and 192 Hz
Heart	639 Hz	128, 136.10 and 221.23 Hz
Solar plexus	528 Hz	126.22, 144.72 and 182 Hz
Sacral	417 Hz	183.58, 210.42, 221.23 and 303 Hz
Root	396 Hz	144.72, 147.85, 194.18 and 228 Hz

Every number in the 27 videos (CSV)

The root got 396 Hz from the Solfeggio series and 228 Hz from the 432 series. The planetary series gave it three more: 194.18 Hz for the Earth's day, 147.85 Hz for Saturn and 144.72 Hz for Mars. The heart was given 128, 136.10, 221.23 and 639 Hz, and the third eye five numbers between 144 Hz and 852 Hz. Some planetary tones were given two centres at once: Venus, at 221.23 Hz, went to both the sacral and the heart.

No series was wrong on its own terms, since each followed its own map. Put side by side, they show why a chakra frequency means little until the map is named. This guide names its map, the Solfeggio one, and the collection's player starts from its root, 396 Hz.

Do the Solfeggio chakra tones make a musical scale?

Not one a musician would recognise. From the sacral tone upwards the numbers climb in near-equal steps of about 111 Hz, but the ear hears the ratio between two pitches, not the difference. Measured in cents, hundredths of a semitone, the steps shrink as the tones rise.

The first step, 396 to 417 Hz, is 89 cents, a little under a semitone. The next, 417 to 528 Hz, is 409 cents, more than a major third. Then come 330, 256, 242 and 212 cents. The whole climb from root to crown spans 1,538 cents, an octave and a little more than a minor third. The numbers were found by arithmetic, not tuned as a scale, so the steps fall where they fall. For how a tuned scale divides the octave into equal ratios, the guide to 432 Hz and tuning goes further.

What does research say about chakra frequencies?

Nothing yet about the pairings themselves. A search of PubMed, the index of the US National Library of Medicine, found no study that tests whether one tone suits one chakra, or compares two maps. The nearest is a small pilot from 2023: 15 volunteers spent 45 minutes in Nada Yoga, a meditation on sound, on one day and 45 minutes lying at rest on another. Their "chakra energy" was read with electro-photonic imaging, a camera technique. It compared a practice with rest, not one map of tones with another.

Studies of sound meditation as a whole are small too. In a study of 62 adults, people reported less tension, anger and tiredness after a singing bowl meditation, and the authors name its main limit themselves: there was no control group. A review in 2020 found only four studies of singing bowls and concluded, "we cannot recommend singing bowl therapies at this stage". The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says meditation is usually considered to have few risks, though few studies have looked for harm, and that much of the research on meditation and health "has been preliminary or not scientifically rigorous".

Woodroffe did not expect a laboratory to settle it. He wrote that "physiology does not know the Chakras as they exist in themselves", that is, as centres of consciousness. A chakra frequency is best taken for what it is: a modern way to give each centre of an old meditation map a sound to listen with.

How do you listen through all seven chakra frequencies?

Slowly, one centre at a time, at a low volume. Start with 396 Hz, the root, on the player above. Give it a few minutes with your attention resting low in the body, then move up through 417, 528, 639, 741 and 852 Hz to 963 Hz at the crown. Let each out-breath run long, and stop whenever you like. Speakers or headphones both work.

The Solfeggio collection plays every tone in the set, and Harmonance Studio lets you layer two centres' tones, each at its own volume. The grounded page, for when you want to feel grounded, sets 396 Hz beside 174 Hz and Saturn's 147.85 Hz. Then notice the quiet afterwards.

Sources and limits

The chakra history comes from Woodroffe's translation of the 1577 text and from two modern writers on it. The frequency maps come from the people who made them, quoted for what they paired, not for what they promise. The count of our own videos is read from their published descriptions. No study has tested any chakra frequency map.

1. Arthur Avalon (John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power, fourth edition (1950): the 1577 text, its petals and colours, and Leadbeater's changes.
2. Christopher Wallis (2016), The Real Story on the Chakras: the many chakra systems of the tantric texts.
3. Kurt Leland (2017), The Rainbow Body, Quest magazine: when the rainbow colours arrived.
4. SomaEnergetics, The Solfeggio Scale Frequencies (2002, archived copy): the six original tones.
5. SomaEnergetics, tuning fork page (2012, archived copy): six tones coloured for six chakras.
6. Planetware, Chakren und Töne, quoting Hans Cousto (in German): the planetary chakra map.
7. Veerabrahmachar and others (2023): Nada Yoga and electro-photonic imaging, 15 volunteers.
8. Goldsby and others (2017): a singing bowl meditation, 62 adults.
9. Stanhope and Weinstein (2020): a review of singing bowl studies.
10. NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety: what meditation research can and cannot say.
11. Harmonance's 27 chakra videos of 2023, read from their descriptions: the download beneath the chart lists every centre, number and video.