Chakra

Chakra is the mixture of mental and physical energy. This is what powers ninjutsu and genjutsu, but not Taijutsu. There is nature Chakra (Wind, fire, water, earth and lightning), there is demon chakra and Kekki Genkai which mixes nature chakra.What is Chakra? Chakra is basically Chi or Energy that is present in everyone, whether they are sleeping or awake. It flows throughout our body, from head to toe or right hand to left hand. But chi is not limited to just providing the energy to do work and move around. Some believe we can use our chi to heal or form energy ball. It's all about how we incorporate our body and learn to utilities our inner energy that cannot be seen.

How does Chakra work in doing ninja jutsu? From what we learned, to perform any jutsu, one must be able to utilize their inner chakra. They must mold chakra deep inside their body (stomach), mixing the body chakra and the spirit chakra together to form a special chakra. One must use correct amounts of chakra along with the correct hand seals to produce a perfect jutsu. Each kind of jutsu require different amount of chakra (water, earth, wind, fire or lightning jutsu). Since they have to mix body and spirit chakra, the newly special chakra they created is what determines their fate. Releasing too much of this chakra will result in possible death. Practicing is essential to correctly use chakra and being able to produce the same amount of chakra at the right time and maintaining it. Chakra is used by every ninja. Sometime chakra is visible to the eyes as it flow out from the person's body. Different type of chakra colors display different power and are use for different purposes. Every ninja will display blue chakra. Green, blue-green, and red are very rare and can only be display by one person.

Normal Chakra
This blue chakra is known as the normal chakra and all ninja will produce this chakra no matter what. Normal chakra is not visible to the eyes when it is use to perform jutsu. This chakra is suppose to circulate inside the human body but sometimes it can surface outside the body. The only noticeable situation is when a person is really mad or want to increase all or as much chakra as possible, making it visible. Though this is rarely seen. The resulting form of energy produced when Physical and Spiritual energies are mixed together within the body. Then to use it, Hand Seals are performed. This allows the user to expel it out the body in the form of an attack, and requires different Hand Seals for different attacks. In these other animes, users can practically double their "Chakra-like energy" in what feels like 5 minutes. But in Naruto, Chakra takes time and lots of training to gradually build up.So what's really the key here is not actually having chakra, but being able to sufficiently control it. Because, everyone has Chakra, but only skilled ninja can correctly manipulate it to it's fullest extent. As an in-between stage here, some ninja, can partially control their Chakra. This means they can use their Chakra, but not effectively control it, which results in poorly executed justus, and more importantly, running out of Chakra early in a fight.Out of the many different types of jutsus: Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, Doujutsu, and so on, all require the use of Chakra. However, one of the types (Taijutsu) is different. It basically requires no Chakra use whatsoever. The ninja still needs Chakra to live, Taijutsu just doesn't use it. A standard attack like a punch or kick falls into this jutsu category.

Since Chakra is the resulting form of energy when 2 other energies are mixed together, having those other 2 energies become more powerful, will in-turn make the Chakra more powerful. These other two energies are Physical energy, which is collected from the body's cells, and Spiritual energy, which is built up through experience and meditation.

Therefore, practicing a jutsu repeaditly, will build up your expierence, thus giving you more spiritual energy, and then allowing more Chakra to be created. Which as a result then allows you to do that same attack with more and more power. This same cycle applies for Physical energy, except this time, instead of doing things like meditation, you could say, do push-ups.Molding Chakra means to extract energies from both the body and the spirit, then mixing them up in your body. And the amount of each energy will differ from the type of technique you wish to execute. In other words, the mixing will be different. You are not able to use your Chakra effectively. Even if you are able to mold a large amount of Chakra, If you cannot control the balance, your technique will only be half as effective or not executed at all. Wasting energy will create a weakness of not being able to fight for a long time

Elemental Chakra
Based on which jutsu the ninja uses, the type and amount of chakra will be different as would the elements you would be to employ. The five main elemental styles are also the five names for the Five Great Shinobi Countries: Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth and Water. Each ninja has the potential to better utilize one of these styles and potentially more. A special elemental detecting paper is used to determine ones type. The paper comes from trees which are specially grown with chakra. When the ninja imbues the paper with a portion of their chakra, the paper will alter to reveal one's type. The paper will rip in two for Wind, burn for Fire, become wet for Water, fall apart for Earth and crumple for Lightning. For example Kakashi is a predisposed Lightning type, while Sasuke is both Lightning and Fire for the Uchiha clan specialty.The five elements themselves form a cyclical strong and weak relationship against each other. The element of Fire is stronger than Wind, as the usage of Wind merely increases the strength of Fire. So if a Fire jutsu came up against an equal strength Wind jutsu, the Fire jutsu is more likely to win out. Wind in turn is stronger than Lightning. Lightning is stronger than Earth and Earth in stronger than Water. Water finishes the cycle by naturally winning out over Fire.

Eight Gates Chakra
By breaking all of the body's limits on how much strength can be used, a Ninja can access 100% of their total power. These restrictions are known as Gates, 8 gates in all. One's own muscles and Chakra are so powerful that using them to their full capacity will destroy them, literally making the muscles explode or rip into pieces. This Chakra can only be used temporarily, and kills the user after about 5 minutes if all gates have been unlocked. The fewer gates unlocked, the longer the user has until the attack kills them. Because this attack is so dangerous it is classified as a forbidden jutsu. This technique will cause some of the Chakra emitting from the user to green, but don't be fooled this technique still uses normal chakra, just in extremely high amounts.

Cursed Chakra
This type of Chakra can only be used if the user has been given the cursed seal and survived the 10% chance of being killed from it. However, it can only be accessed after all of that person's normal chakra has been drained. One their normal chakra has been drained, a black pattern will come out of the seal and cover most of the user's body. The pattern looks slightly different from user to user, but has virtually no effect on their power. So far the only person who seems to be able to give this mark is Orochimaru. But, it is unlikely he actually invented it. The more this Chakra is used, the more the user depends on it, eventually consuming them, and making them become a slave to whoever it was who gave them the seal. This Chakra type has multiple levels, each level giving the user more, and more power, and making them more, and more dependent on it, and more dangerous to use.

Demon chakra
In the Naruto world their exist 9 Biju (Demons/Beasts). Each demon with a certain number of tails. One tail being the weakest, nine tails being the strongest. Some of these Biju have been sealed away within a ninja, because they are simply to powerful to destroy. These ninja are called Jinchuriki. Naruto (9 tailed demon), and Gaara (one tailed demon), are good example of Jinchuriki. Highly trained Jinchuriki are able to tap into the Biju Chakra within them and use it at will. Lesser skilled Jinchuriki can only use this Chakra when in a life threatening situation. This is because if the Jinchuriki dies, the Biju within them dies. So the Biju wants to protect itself from being killed.