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Body Atlas

Explore five maps of the body, with a guide beside you.

FIVE MAPS, ONE BODY
The body, in five languages

Gathering the five maps…

Tibetan VajrayanaHindu tantraModern attributionsSun-doAnatomy & physiology
START WITH CURIOSITY

Choose a point. Follow a thread.

Traditional accounts, anatomy, and modern claims—each with its context.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE MAP

Atlas guide

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Ask a question and explore it on the map. Open the notes to see where each idea comes from.

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WORDS BEHIND THE MAP

Sources & context

Sources & the complete atlas

Read every point and its provenance, with or without the map.

The positions are navigation, not doctrine — we chose them, the way a map chooses north at the top. So is the drawn ornament — the flower on the sky's floor, the violet vessel that holds it, the seated figure at its heart — ours, claiming nothing. What is not chosen: every thread that crosses between traditions carries its source and its kind, and exactly one of them was ever measured — the breath's, at the pace the courses here teach. (One more measured thread exists, and it stays inside its own tradition.) Filter to measured and watch how much of the cosmos survives. That emptiness is not a flaw in the atlas; it is the finding.

All thirty-three, in writing

The same cards the sky shows when you touch a star — readable without touching anything, and without the sky. Each carries what it is, what kind of claim it rests on, which threads leave it, and where it may honestly lead. Only two of the threads below were ever measured.

Tibetan Vajrayana

The completion-stage wheel system, from a corpus with careful modern translations.

  • Crown wheel — 32 spokes
    textually attestedcrown height

    The wheel of great bliss at the crown, thirty-two channel-petals. Completion-stage system of the Six Yogas literature — a corpus with careful modern English translations, notably Glenn Mullin's, which is where these counts can be checked.

    threads from here

    • Sahasrāra shared tantric descent; counts diverge — 32 vs 1000

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Spirit medicine — one-to-oneThe upper field's territory — seat of spirit (신 · 神) — worked one-to-one. The service page carries its own scope and disclaimers.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Throat wheel — 16 spokes
    textually attestedthroat height

    The enjoyment wheel, sixteen petals. One of the two counts in this atlas that agrees exactly with the Hindu system's — follow its gold thread.

    threads from here

    • Viśuddha 16 = 16 — the one count the two systems share exactly

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Heart wheel — 8 spokes
    textually attestedheart height

    The dharma wheel at the heart, eight petals — where the Hindu texts count twelve. The two systems are family, and the divergence is data, not error: each map serves its own practice.

    threads from here

    • Anāhata same family, different counts: 8 vs 12 — divergence is data

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Counseling — one-to-oneFor when the question behind the exploring is about your own life rather than the maps. You ask for yourself; the consent rule is on the page.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Navel wheel — 64 spokes
    textually attestednavel height

    The emanation wheel, sixty-four petals — the hearth of the inner-heat practice. The most petals of any wheel, at the place the tradition does its hardest work.

    threads from here

    • gTum-mo the inner heat is worked at the navel wheel — Six Yogas corpus
    • Maṇipūra same station, different counts: 64 vs 10
    • The 64-tetrahedron grid the grid's literature links 64 to hexagrams and codons; the navel wheel's 64 spokes would join that list — the pattern-match, not the number, is the genre's engine

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Central channel · dbu ma
    textually attestedheart height

    Avadhūtī — the axis the wheels sit on, flanked by the right and left channels. In this system the channels, winds and drops are the anatomy; the wheels are junctions on it, not organs floating alone.

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Breath, wind and 氣 — the vocabularyFree — the one word four traditions each have their own version of, and what is actually shared between them once you stop translating it as 'energy'.
  • gTum-mo — inner heat
    textually attestednavel height

    The inner-heat yoga, worked through the navel wheel by breath retention and visualisation. A practice, not a place — which is why it sits beside the wheel it works on.

    threads from here

    • Navel wheel the inner heat is worked at the navel wheel — Six Yogas corpus
    • Lower danjeon · 하단전 heat cultivated below the navel by disciplined breath — furnace and gTum-mo, functional cousins with no textual contact. OUR analogy, labelled ours, and testable only from inside both practices — his own, on both sides: Sun-do from graduate study, gTum-mo's tradition from ngakpa ordination under Lama Glenn Mullin, December 2022

    go deeper

    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
    • Breath, wind and 氣 — the vocabularyFree — the one word four traditions each have their own version of, and what is actually shared between them once you stop translating it as 'energy'.
  • OM ĀḤ HŪṂ — seed syllables
    textually attestedthroat height

    Sound in this tradition is syllable, not pitch: OM at the crown, ĀḤ at the throat, HŪṂ at the heart. Nowhere in the corpus is a wheel given a frequency in hertz — hertz is 19th-century physics.

    threads from here

    • Gyuto chant the syllables, as actually sung: fundamentals ≈60 Hz on recordings — measured, not asserted
    • 136.1 Hz marketed as 'the OM frequency' — but OM is a syllable, not a pitch; the number is 1978 numerology

    go deeper

  • Gyuto chant — ≈60 Hz
    measuredthroat height

    The one place real hertz meets real monks: Gyuto and Gyume overtone chanting has measurable fundamentals around 60 Hz, on recordings anyone can analyse. One of only two measured facts in this entire atlas.

    threads from here

    • OM ĀḤ HŪṂ the syllables, as actually sung: fundamentals ≈60 Hz on recordings — measured, not asserted
    • 'Tibetan' singing bowls sold as Tibetan monastic sound; the monastery's actual instrument is the voice

    go deeper

  • Secret place wheel
    held — see a teacherbase height

    Held, not published. Completion-stage detail traditionally follows empowerment from a teacher, and an atlas that printed everything would be less trustworthy to the tradition, not more. This is the held tier of the provenance system, demonstrated: we say that it exists, and we point you to a teacher.

    why this one is empty

    This one is not published here, and the atlas is not being coy for effect: completion-stage detail traditionally follows empowerment, and printing it would make this map less trustworthy to the tradition it borrowed from, not more.

    The person to ask is a teacher in that lineage, not this website. Dr. Kwon holds the Korean-Taoist material taught here and reads across the others; he is not a Vajrayana lineage-holder and does not offer empowerment.

Hindu tantra

The system the West inherited — and the one most modern chakra talk descends from without knowing it.

  • Sahasrāra — the thousand-petalled
    textually attestedcrown height

    Crown of the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa system (1577), which reached English through Arthur Avalon's The Serpent Power (1919) — the one text most of the modern West's chakra knowledge descends from, usually without knowing it.

    threads from here

    • Crown wheel shared tantric descent; counts diverge — 32 vs 1000

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Spirit medicine — one-to-oneThe upper field's territory — seat of spirit (신 · 神) — worked one-to-one. The service page carries its own scope and disclaimers.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Ājñā — 2 petals
    textually attestedbrow height

    The brow centre, two petals. Different tantras teach five, six, nine or twelve centres — the seven-chakra scheme won by publication history, not by measurement, and that fact belongs in the atlas.

    go deeper

  • Viśuddha — 16 petals
    textually attestedthroat height

    The throat centre, sixteen petals — matching the Tibetan throat wheel's sixteen exactly. Where the counts agree, we show it; where they don't, we show that too.

    threads from here

    • Throat wheel 16 = 16 — the one count the two systems share exactly

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Anāhata — 12 petals
    textually attestedheart height

    The heart lotus, twelve petals, seat of the 'unstruck sound' — a sound not made by two things striking, which is a philosophical claim, not an acoustic one. The busiest junction in this atlas: four traditions have something to say at heart height.

    threads from here

    • Heart wheel same family, different counts: 8 vs 12 — divergence is data
    • Cardiac plexus & HRV anatomical neighbourhood at heart height — never identity
    • 341.3 Hz chakra-tuning tables disagree about this number — the disagreement is the evidence
    • 528 Hz some modern tables put 528 at the heart; others elsewhere; none derive it from anything

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Counseling — one-to-oneFor when the question behind the exploring is about your own life rather than the maps. You ask for yourself; the consent rule is on the page.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Maṇipūra — 10 petals
    textually attestednavel height

    The navel centre, city of jewels, ten petals. Its English nickname — 'solar plexus chakra' — is a naming crossover with Western anatomy; follow the cyan thread to see the migration.

    threads from here

    • Navel wheel same station, different counts: 64 vs 10
    • Celiac (solar) plexus the English name 'solar plexus' migrated from anatomy into chakra talk — a fact about language

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
  • Svādhiṣṭhāna — 6 petals
    textually attestedsacral height

    The sacral centre, six petals — attested in the same textual family as the rest of the seven-scheme.

    go deeper

    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • What a 'centre' is, in the glossaryFree — what the wheels and lotuses are claimed to be, and at which tier that claim sits. The honest reading before anyone offers you a session about them.
    • Breath, wind and 氣 — the vocabularyFree — the one word four traditions each have their own version of, and what is actually shared between them once you stop translating it as 'energy'.
  • Mūlādhāra — 4 petals
    textually attestedbase height

    The root, four petals. Traditionally drawn with its own colours per text — the red-through-violet rainbow everyone now 'knows' arrived in 1977, from California. Follow the clay thread.

    threads from here

    • The rainbow mapping the red root — and the whole rainbow — dates to 1977, not to any tantra

    go deeper

Modern attributions

Charted as objects of study, not as truths. Every claim here has a date and an author.

  • The rainbow mapping — 1977
    modern attributionbrow height

    Red root to violet crown: Christopher Hills, Nuclear Evolution, 1977. Not ancient, not Indian, not Tibetan — and now the most recognised chakra 'fact' on earth. The atlas charts it as what it is: a very successful modern artifact.

    threads from here

    • Mūlādhāra the red root — and the whole rainbow — dates to 1977, not to any tantra

    go deeper

  • 136.1 Hz — the 'OM frequency'
    modern attributionthroat height

    Hans Cousto's Cosmic Octave (1978): the Earth's orbital period doubled up ~32 octaves into audibility. A numerological construction — the doublings are arbitrary — though genuinely used to tune Indian instruments. Marketed as 'the OM frequency'; OM is a syllable, not a pitch. The same number sits in the playground's tone row, with the same note.

    threads from here

    • OM ĀḤ HŪṂ marketed as 'the OM frequency' — but OM is a syllable, not a pitch; the number is 1978 numerology

    go deeper

  • 528 Hz — 'the love frequency'
    modern attributionheart height

    The most famous of the modern 'solfeggio' set (1990s), promoted with DNA-repair claims that have no evidence. On this map because people arrive searching for it, and charting where it actually came from is more useful than pretending it doesn't exist.

    threads from here

    • Anāhata some modern tables put 528 at the heart; others elsewhere; none derive it from anything

    go deeper

  • 341.3 Hz — heart-chakra tables
    modern attributionheart height

    A mid-range figure from chakra-tuning tables. The tables disagree with each other about the middle of the range — which is itself the clearest evidence the numbers are not derived from anything.

    threads from here

    • Anāhata chakra-tuning tables disagree about this number — the disagreement is the evidence

    go deeper

  • The 64-tetrahedron grid
    modern attributionheart height

    Two interpenetrating tetrahedra — the 'star tetrahedron' — nested in the vector equilibrium, extended to a 64-cell grid. Buckminster Fuller named the vector equilibrium; the 'merkaba' star tetrahedron reached the mainstream through Drunvalo Melchizedek in the 1990s; '64 tetrahedra are the geometry of space' is Nassim Haramein, 2000s. The atlas draws the form gladly — it is genuinely beautiful — and dates every claim hung on it. It is also this cosmos's clay emblem: try form emblems.

    threads from here

    • Navel wheel the grid's literature links 64 to hexagrams and codons; the navel wheel's 64 spokes would join that list — the pattern-match, not the number, is the genre's engine

    go deeper

  • 'Tibetan' singing bowls
    modern attributionnavel height

    Standing bells exist across Asia; the chakra-tuned 'Tibetan singing bowl' is largely a post-1970s Western trade creation. Traditional monastic ritual sound is long horns, cymbals, the drilbu bell, the ḍamaru drum — and above all the voice.

    threads from here

    • Gyuto chant sold as Tibetan monastic sound; the monastery's actual instrument is the voice

    go deeper

Sun-do · Korean Taoist

The Korean-Taoist lineage behind the breathwork taught on this site. Three centres, not seven.

  • Upper danjeon · 상단전
    textually attestedbrow height

    The upper elixir field, seat of spirit (신 · 神) in Korean-Taoist internal practice — the map behind the breathwork taught on this site, and the system Dr. Kwon studied at graduate school. Three centres, not seven: a different body, because a different method.

    threads from here

    go deeper

    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Spirit medicine — one-to-oneThe upper field's territory — seat of spirit (신 · 神) — worked one-to-one. The service page carries its own scope and disclaimers.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
    • Sun-do, in the glossaryFree — the Korean lineage behind the breathwork taught here, described plainly and without inflation.
  • Middle danjeon · 중단전
    textually attestedheart height

    The middle elixir field at the chest, seat of energy-breath (기 · 氣). Note what this map does not have: no petals, no syllables, no colours — its vocabulary is furnace, field, and circulation, because its method is cultivation.

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • Counseling — one-to-oneFor when the question behind the exploring is about your own life rather than the maps. You ask for yourself; the consent rule is on the page.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
    • Sun-do, in the glossaryFree — the Korean lineage behind the breathwork taught here, described plainly and without inflation.
  • Lower danjeon · 하단전 — the furnace
    textually attestednavel height

    The lower elixir field below the navel, where Sun-do's cultivation begins: essence (정 · 精) refined by disciplined breath. The deepest convergence in this atlas runs from here to gTum-mo — follow the cyan thread, and read its label honestly.

    threads from here

    • gTum-mo heat cultivated below the navel by disciplined breath — furnace and gTum-mo, functional cousins with no textual contact. OUR analogy, labelled ours, and testable only from inside both practices — his own, on both sides: Sun-do from graduate study, gTum-mo's tradition from ngakpa ordination under Lama Glenn Mullin, December 2022

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • An energy reading — one-to-oneA session where a map like this one is read against your situation, by the physician who holds these lineages — not a diagnosis, and the page says what it is and is not.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
    • Sun-do, in the glossaryFree — the Korean lineage behind the breathwork taught here, described plainly and without inflation.
  • 調息 — breath regulation
    textually attestedheart height

    Josik: the regulated breath that drives the whole system. The courses here teach its pace — about 5.5 breaths a minute — and that number has a jade thread, because for once the physiology is measurable.

    threads from here

    • Baroreflex slow breathing at ~6/min couples with the baroreflex — the practice's pace, physiologically real

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
    • Breath, wind and 氣 — the vocabularyFree — the one word four traditions each have their own version of, and what is actually shared between them once you stop translating it as 'energy'.
    • Sun-do, in the glossaryFree — the Korean lineage behind the breathwork taught here, described plainly and without inflation.
  • Meridians · 경락
    textually attestednavel height

    The channel network of the Chinese-Korean map — the circulation the danjeon system feeds. A different plumbing diagram from the Indian nāḍī system; the atlas keeps them apart because the texts do.

    go deeper

Anatomy & physiology

The map that answers back. Every correspondence claim in the other four has to face this one.

  • Pineal & hypothalamus
    measuredbrow height

    The deep-brain structures that regulate circadian rhythm and hormones. Frequently equated with the crown or brow centres — an equation the atlas records as neighbourhood, never as identity.

    threads from here

    go deeper

  • Vagus nerve
    measuredthroat height

    The tenth cranial nerve, the parasympathetic trunk from brainstem to gut — the physical substrate of most of what breath practice measurably does to a body.

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Communication with Your Body — the courseInteroception, trained: learning to read the signals this jade territory names — vagal tone, the felt heart, the breath's coupling.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
  • Cardiac plexus & HRV
    measuredheart height

    The nerve plexus at the heart, and heart-rate variability — the one heart-signal in this atlas you can put a number on. Sits at heart height beside anāhata and the heart wheel, and the atlas resists the shortcut of calling them the same thing.

    threads from here

    • Anāhata anatomical neighbourhood at heart height — never identity

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Communication with Your Body — the courseInteroception, trained: learning to read the signals this jade territory names — vagal tone, the felt heart, the breath's coupling.
    • Counseling — one-to-oneFor when the question behind the exploring is about your own life rather than the maps. You ask for yourself; the consent rule is on the page.
  • Baroreflex — ≈0.1 Hz
    measuredheart height

    Breathe at about six breaths a minute and respiration couples with the baroreflex — a real resonance, in the engineering sense, at about 0.1 Hz. The pace this site's courses actually teach, and the only 'body frequency' here with literature behind it.

    threads from here

    • 調息 slow breathing at ~6/min couples with the baroreflex — the practice's pace, physiologically real

    go deeper

    • The breath primerFree, no account — the ~5.5-breaths-a-minute practice behind the one measured thread here.
    • Ancient Breathworks — the courseThe Korean-lineage breath cultivation this galaxy maps. It is not gTum-mo and does not claim to be — but disciplined breath below the navel is the shared fuel.
    • Communication with Your Body — the courseInteroception, trained: learning to read the signals this jade territory names — vagal tone, the felt heart, the breath's coupling.
    • The breathwork lessons, in writingFree to read in full, no account: the physiology of slow breathing tiered against the tradition, a complete practice script, and retention with its safety rules stated plainly.
  • Celiac (solar) plexus
    measurednavel height

    The great abdominal nerve plexus. Western anatomists named it 'solar' for its radiating fibres — and the name migrated into chakra English, which is a fact about language, not about physiology.

    threads from here

    • Maṇipūra the English name 'solar plexus' migrated from anatomy into chakra talk — a fact about language

    go deeper

  • Sacral plexus
    measuredsacral height

    The lumbosacral nerve network. The anatomy column exists in this atlas so every correspondence claim has to face it: neighbourhood is checkable, identity is not.

    go deeper