Chakras

I never fully understood the chakras, only in churches people would say "ooh your chakras are out of line" or "you need to cleanse your chakras" and i'd go home and google everything on chakras and i became a little obsessed with wondering if "my chakras are clean!"
Basically your chakras are your body's own energy lines, similar to the earths lay lines and you have a LOT of chakras, and they're all colour coded! But the main ones are, Root chakra at the base of the spine (red), orange sacral chakra, yellow solar plexus chakra, green heart chakra, blue throat chakra, indigo/violet brow chakra (third eye) and cerise pink crown chakra. The bottom three (red, orange, yellow) are based in the material life and the top three (blue, indigo, pink) are based on your spiritual side. As i learnt more about them i learnt each chakra coincides with a part of the body and can affect health in certain areas.
I was also being told of friends i had to have crystals to cleanse each chakra, but ive since found this not necessarily true (i've got a good collection of crystals that i collected, but they are ornamental more than anything, tho i do use them with crystal healing at times).
I thought about it, are chakras real or has someone made them up at some point?
I rationalise it like this, when my thoughts are out of balance, maybe im being self centred too much or when im not in the best place mentally and im taking too much notice of negative thoughts etc the spiritual side of my chakras are out of line, when ive got £50 to my name and a phone bill, but instead fixate on wanting the latest tv because everyone else has it or i want to go somewhere that i can't really afford but i really want to because it looks or sounds good etc so my material side is kicking in. It's really all down to common sense and getting my thoughts in check, which is when i come down to earth with a bump and have to knuckle down and i sit back, think and reevaluate and put things into perspective, so that in my opinion is when my chakras are out of line or how i can tell my chakras are out of line and the reevaluation is the cleansing and restoring balance for me and my needs at that time. No one's balance will be the same though, whats important to you won't be of the same importance for someone else. Does that make sense?
So do chakras exist and are they serving a purpose to us? yes i believe they do.
What's your thoughts on chakras?