The communication chakra’s main responsibilities are communication of all kinds. This probably includes communication between us and other entities in ordinary reality and in non-ordinary reality. The communication chakra is responsible for communicating what you figure out with your mind or, perhaps, from a blinding flash of inspiration from the angels.

This chakra is also used to express what happens in the rest of the chakras. Words and facial expressions can describe how it felt to you. If the people you are talking to have had similar experiences, they will be able to understand. They will be able to translate your words back into feelings they have known.

One example of this can be found in communication from the heart chakra related to love and hate. Poets assure us that love cannot be put into words, not until the listener has had similar experiences. However, words can point the way toward an experience.

Non-Western traditions have two chakras in this region: talu and vishuddha.

The talu chakra is supposed to deal with a set of 12 emotions/feelings: respect, contentment, offense, self-control, pride, affection, sorrow, depression, purity, dissatisfaction, honor, and anxiety. When I first looked at this, I thought it was a curiously mixed set. It didn’t make a lot of sense that these emotions would all be grouped together. However, when I read about the work of Paul Ekman, I noticed that he describes six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Most of the emotions situated in the chakra can be thought of as combinations of Ekman’s emotions. For example dissatisfaction and pride fit in Ekman’s disgust category. Purity and honor might fit also, if they are based on avoiding things that disgust us. Sorrow and depression are parts of sadness. Offense is part of anger. Anxiety is part of fear. Contentment and affection might be included in happiness. Respect and self-control involve not showing negative emotions in inappropriate situations. I now believe that this chakra is responsible for communication with other beings through facial expressions of emotions.

The vishuddha chakra is clearly described as being responsible for controlling vocal functions, such as forming the sounds as we speak or musical notes as we sing. I believe it may also hold the template for the basis of our language abilities and work with the manas chakra in the mind region to help us understand language.