Seven energy centers, known to every yoga studio, mapped quite differently in the sources.
Documented
Ancient word, modern rainbow
Cakra appears in the early Upanishads and develops through tantric traditions with varying counts and locations. The fixed seven-wheel, seven-color rainbow mapping was assembled in the twentieth century from Theosophical sources and Christopher Hills's 1977 book.
Assessment: Documented: the word is ancient, the rainbow is younger than the microwave oven. Both facts can be held at once, and usually are not.
Stories
Blocked, aligned, cleansed
The wellness vocabulary: chakras are organs of the energy body that clog like drains, and modern life blocks them, but the right stretching, stones, or subscription can restore flow.
Assessment: The energy body is not documented in any anatomy. The practices attached to chakras produce documented relaxation, which the archive files under real effects, contested causes.
Interesting claims
A phenomenology, not a plumbing diagram
The sympathetic scholarly reading: chakra systems were maps of meditative experience, locations where practitioners reliably feel concentration effects, and the mistake was reading a map of attention as a diagram of organs.
Assessment: This reading reconciles the texts with the practice and requires no invisible plumbing. It will not sell crystals, which may be the strongest evidence for its honesty.
Sources and further reading
White, ed., Yoga in Practice (2012)
Judith, Wheels of Life (1987), the modern system
Hills, Nuclear Evolution (1977), the rainbow mapping
Worth asking
If the map works but the territory was never there, what were the ancient mapmakers measuring?