Balancing the Third Eye Chakra

Ajna is the Sanskrit name for the Third Eye or Brow Chakra.

Your brow chakra is located between your eyes and between your ears, in the middle of your head. 

The third eye chakra is the center for light, imagination, perception, clairvoyance, visualization, and projection. 

Many of my formative cultural references are from the 1960s through the 1990s.  If you are like me, you might remember playing Kreskin’s ESP game, or watching movies that reference psychic powers and mysticism such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Sleeper, Ghost, The Matrix, E.T., and Sixth Sense.

As a child of this era, I have always been fascinated by people who have accessed their intuitive gifts.

Perhaps you have heard about the third eye and have a level of understanding about this chakra.  Read on to learn even more.

Each one of your chakras is linked to a part of your body.

The brow or third eye chakra is linked to your eyes.  The element of the third eye is light.  We see with light; so the actual third eye functions with both physical and spiritual light.

The Sanskrit word Ajna means ‘to perceive.’

The eyes are the gateways to the soul.  ~William Shakespeare

While our physical eyes can give us valuable information, our third eye can tell us even more.

With our intuition, we can begin to form impressions.  We sense things and pick up information about people, places, and things around us.  This information registers in our body and we sense comfort or discomfort.

When your third eye chakra is balanced,  you perceive impressions even before your conscious mind is aware of them.  

The main task of the third eye is pattern recognition.  Information is assembled into meaningful patterns which become a whole.   

In the book Eastern Body, Western Mind, by Andoea Judith, she makes some memorable points:

“Pattern recognition requires the ability to see simultaneously into past, present, and future. In the recognition of patterns, we find our way to insight.  Each time we recognize a pattern, we move toward wholeness.”

The brow chakra is also important in relieving anxiety. 

Anxiety is caused by feeling trapped.   In stressful situations, we can experience both physical and mental ‘tunnel vision.’  

All your senses can become tunneled when you are stressed.  Vision and hearing become focused on a small portion of the larger landscape.  Your situational awareness is narrow and therefore it is easy to miss important peripheral cues as you become fixated on only one or two possibilities. 

When you have access to a balanced third eye chakra, you are able to perceive multiple other possibilities.

Then you understand that you are not trapped.  You realize that you can exercise your free choice to create another reality.

With the third eye chakra, we access our intuition.

We begin to see with our inner vision and perceive energies in a completely new way. 

Like many people who are engaged in spiritual development, I have encountered moments when I have not been certain that I could trust the perceptions that I receive through my intuition. 

Through the gentle guidance of teachers, I now view Ajna as much more than the psychic chakra.

As my teacher, Alan Seale says, Ajna is the inner window to the soul.  Psychic energy is just one small part of the much larger spiritual dimension.

We all have access to greater intuition.  

When you invest time in meditation, you connect with your own inner guidance system.  Over time, you begin to trust in your intuition and the synchronicities that enrich life.

How to Balance Ajna

Just like any of the spiritual chakras, Ajna is best balanced through meditation. Often, new meditators will report having a tingling feeling in the third eye or equate it to a headache. A tingling or pulsating sensation around the area of the third eye during or after meditation is a sign that you are tuning this chakra.

Exercise for Tuning the Brow Chakra

To begin, sit in a chair with your legs uncrossed. Next, close your eyes and breathe.  Then, feel the breath fill your brow chakra behind your eyes in between your ears into the middle of your head. 

Visualize and breathe in the color indigo  — deep blue, the color associated with this chakra. 

Feel your brow open and imagine light streaming through.  Allow this part of your body to come alive. You may feel warmth or sensation or some other signal that energy is moving there. If you experience resistance, be patient and gentle with yourself and ease your way into the brow chakra with your breath.  If there is a great deal of resistance, allow yourself several sessions of relaxed, intentional breathing to make your way in. 

Repeat the following Brow Chakra affirmations. Do they ring true for you? I:

• am imaginative
• dream what could be
• believe that I create my life
• want to connect with my higher guidance
• pay attention to synchronicities

More Ajna Balancing Techniques

The balancing techniques mentioned here are those that can be accomplished personally within your body’s own healing processes.

Besides meditating and tuning into your intuition in your daily life, you can also balance the sixth chakra using yoga, colors, gems, eating blue food, and using essential oils.

Yoga Asanas can balance the brow chakra.

In yoga practice, any asana where the forehead is pressed down is a good one for the sixth chakra. Try a child’s pose with your forehead pressed to the floor or a yoga block. The dolphin pose is another helpful pose for tuning Ajna.

The color corresponding to the sixth chakra is indigo. 

Gems that help open the Ajna chakra are amethyst, lapis lazuli, and azurite.

Chanting or toning sounds can also help bring Ajna back to balance. 

Sounds create vibrations in the body, and these vibrations help the cells work together in synchronistic harmony.  The mantra sound that corresponds to the heart chakra is the sound SHAM.  You can practice this in the linked video.

Eating foods, such as blackberries, plums, aubergine, purple grapes, purple broccoli, purple carrots, and goji berries is helpful for balancing the third eye chakra.  Wearing blue colors also helps balance Ajna.

Another tool for throat chakra health is sniffing essential oils such as lemon oil and sandalwood.

Asking your Inner Wisdom for Guidance

You can ask for guidance to make the right decisions. 

With Ajna engaged, you build on the abilities of your mind, intellect, and ego, and now include your soul in the decision-making process.  This is your inner wisdom or higher guidance system.

With Ajna chakra tuned and balanced, you learn to trust hunches, synchronicities, and subtle feelings telling you to move forward or hold back. 

If you are conflicted, ask for your sense of intuition to be opened to you in order to help you make the right choice.

Thank you for reading this post. Feel free to share it.  Special thanks to Kathy Kellum for the art images.

If you would like to learn more about the chakras, join us in the Soul Artist Experience.

Find out more about my journey through my book on Amazon: Vision Quest: A Journey to Happiness by Jane Ramsey.

Watch my YouTube video about freeing your inner artist.

Watch my YouTube video explaining the courses I teach.

To learn more about Chakras, read the Blog below:

Understanding Chakras

Practice gentle chakra tuning

Interested in the Universal Laws?  The Blogs for each of the 12 Laws are found below:

1. Divine Oneness

2. Vibration

3. Correspondence

4. Attraction

5. Inspired Action

6. Perpetual Transmutation of Energy

7. Cause and Effect

8. Compensation

9. Relativity

10. Polarity

11. Rhythm

12. Gender

Find out more about Jane Ramsey