Kate Allen

The Sixth Chakra – The Third Eye Chakra

Written by Kate • June 14, 2011 •
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The Sixth Chakra- The Third Eye Chakra

The sixth of the seven chakras is known as the Third Eye chakra. It’s located between and above your brows, which you can locate by putting your finger between your two eyebrows and moving your figure up to just above a slight indention in your brow. It should feel differently than the rest of your forehead.  Its function is to provide you with insights your “left-brain” can’t give you with its logical outlook, with an inner voice that provides guidance and clear seeing on what is truth and right for you.  It is associated with the color indigo and is associated with light rather than an earthly element.

This is the seventh post of 10 posts on the 7 Chakras System. Here is the first post, an Overview of the 7 Chakras, here is the second post, the Root Chakra, here is the third post, the Sacral Chakra, here is the fourth, the Solar Plexus Chakra, here is the fifth post, the Heart Chakra, and here is the sixth post, the Throat Chakra.

As Sonia Choquette states in her book, True Balance, the Third Eye chakra “is our headlight, so to speak, leading us out of the darkness of internal confusion and distortion and into a clear, thoughtful, and balanced world. It awakens our desire to look for the wonder and beauty in all things. It is the center from which we evaluate the conditions of our life, record our experiences, and activate our inspirations and direction, showing us our path and purpose…and it bestows upon us intuitive flashes, thus paving the way for action“.

Open and Balanced

When your third eye chakra is open and balanced, you have a strong internal voice that can guide, that you trust to follow, that you will be able to discern what needs to be, and helps you visualize and imagine where you need to go.

Unbalanced or Weak

Signs of an unbalanced or weak chakra are the loss of your internal voice or vision, feeling like you don’t have any intuition, trust other’s vision more than your own for how you should live your life, and over intellectualizing life. You may suffer from headaches, and feel tension in that area, as well as difficulty concentrating and remembering/feeling like your in a fog.

Causes

A weak or unbalanced sixth chakra can be caused by a generational belief that what you can’t see or touch is silly, or not true, or just plain weird. Our culture is such that we expect to be able to reason and intellectualize our way forward and if we hear a subtle voice inside saying that the “experts” or “they” are wrong, the small voice is often ignored. We can continue to do this so often that we no longer even hear the voice, ignoring it has been become ingrained.

We also put away creative visualization and imagination about what we want in our life and often instead just check out, daydreaming about something else rather than continuing to cultivate our imagination – which taps into the subtle voices and guidance provided by our body and spirit.

And when do take the time for stillness, for meditation, for turning off the busy, noisy urgent but unimportant tasks that swallow our day, weeks, months, and years? For it is in stillness that we hear the quiet, subtle voices of intuition and internal guidance- which get drowned out by TV, internet surfing, and busy work.

Symptoms of a Third-Eye Chakra Imbalance

The following statements are from Sonia Choquette‘s book, True Balance:

• I see beyond the surface of a situation.
• I have vivid dreams, often.
• I see into people and situations.
• I am open to another’s point of view.
• I have an open mind.
• I seek accurate information.
• I trust my own thoughts.

If you answered no to some or many of the above-listed questions, your third eye chakra is probably out of balance.

Ways to Balance Your Sixth Chakra

Many of the balancing methods below don’t cost a thing and can take just a few minutes each day.

Trust In Yourself

• Expect to receive valuable insight through intuition.
• Listen to the small voice in your head and follow through with what you hear [so long as it’s healthy and not harmful]
• Continually ask yourself for guidance, as in what’s the next best step. Listen and follow what comes up.
• Imagine yourself as the best possible version of yourself. From that place of imagining your best you, ask yourself what is the next best step. “What would I do” from the best place?

Cultivate Stillness

• Meditate for a few minutes each day, starting with 5 minutes. Grow that into 20 to 30 minutes. Meditation is a way to distract the intellect so you can hear the subtle voice.
• Every hour or so, take a break from noise and distraction. Tune into your body and spirit and ask yourself, after centering yourself, what you have to say. Listen.

Exercise Your Third Eye

• Anodea Judith recommends the following exercises for balancing and strengthening the third eyechakra:
  • Yogic Eye Exercises
  • Color Meditation

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

Unfamiliar with EFT? Check out this page to show you the basics, for free. There are many other sites that have a more thorough explanation of the technique but they require you to provide your email address. Your choice!

EFT at the highest level: you first state your concerns and that you deeply love and accept yourself. You then release each of the specific ideas, anxieties, and fears that you are feeling. Then you state affirmations or better ideas that should replace your anxieties and fears and that make you feel better, more empowered by thinking them.

Deeply Love and Accept Yourself

You first touch the karate chop point [as shown on the link] while releasing the block through stating, “Even though I feel _______ [like others know better than me, like I don’t know what I want, like I’ve lost my way, like I’ve lost my intuition, like I’m disconnected from inner voice… etc], I deeply love and accept myself.

Release

Then go through each point tapping three or four times at each point; eyebrow, side of eye, under the eye, under the nose, under the chin, the collar bone, under the breast/ribcage, under arm, and crown – while releasing whatever it is you’re experiencing.

You can go around the tapping circuit a few times until you’ve fully release what you need to.

Starting tapping at the eyebrow and going through each point: I release the feelings that I don’t know, that I’ve lost my way, that I can’t discern the right path for myself, that others know better than I do …etc [Keep tapping].

I release all of this from my body. [Keep tapping].

I release from my third eye chakra, from my whole body:

Lack of seeing, lack of listening to myself, loss of creativity, judging others, giving my power away, ____ … [fill in whatever you’re feeling that is keeping you from following your own path, hearing your own voice, knowing that you can have intuitive leaps -as you keep tapping]

Affirmations

Now you begin replacing the feelings and beliefs you’ve just released through saying affirmations that work for you, while tapping through the entire circuit again.

[Start tapping] I see clearly. I trust my inner voice and my sense of intuition. I have released my limiting beliefs. I follow my own path. I don’t need permission to know what I know for me….  [Fill in what works for you….]

Keep Going

Continue with any of these suggestions from yoga to EFT, to help heal yourself so that you can hear, trust, and follow your inner voice. These balancing techniques will help balance your third eye chakra and make you able to feel more able to see and intuit the truth, and trust what you hear and see.

Once you feel balanced, with clear seeing, and able to trust your own voice, consider looking at your next chakra, the seventh chakra.

Do you follow your internal voice? Do you listen to the subtle energies and your intuition? How do you make space to hear your intuitive voice?

Next up: The Seventh Chakra- the Crown Chakra