Sixth Chakra Love

To our delight this spring, these little beauties started popping up all over our yard!  The previous owners were masters of creating a space and a yard where there is *always* something blooming, and it is so much fun to watch it come up — what a gift!  I chose these crocuses for this post, as they are purple, and the chakra of the week vibrates at the frequency of purple.  Ajna, in sanskrit, the sixth chakra, is also known as your third eye, seat of enlightenment and intuition.  It is located in the middle of your head, between your eyebrows.

Ajna is connected to all four focuses of the body:  spiritual, mental, emotional and physical.  It’s where insight and intuition rest, and a fully functioning ajna can open our awareness to other worlds, and help us to deeply understand ourselves and the world that we live in.  The third eye is physically associated with the brain, eyes, forehead, neurotransmitters, pineal gland, and regulation of hormone function.  Because ajna is so intricately connected to the pituitary gland and hormone regulation throughout the body, keeping it in balance particularly affects some major systems in the physical body including the reproductive system, metabolism, oxygen utilization at the cellular level, insulin regulation, etc.

Like the throat chakra, your sixth chakra is a more ethereal one — so ways of bringing it into balance include eating intentionally, focusing on your food while you are eating, talking about the food you are eating with those you share meals with, etc.  Dr. Minich also talks about unpacking addiction to certain foods or food groups in working on your ajna.  For me, this addiction, prior to going macro, was sugar.  Although I have a pretty good grip on this now and tend to avoid sugar generally, I still like to have something a little bit sweet.  Now, instead of a snickers or a HFCS-filled cookie (incidentally, I looked at a box of Fig Neutons at the store yesterday and the FIRST ingredient was high fructose corn syrup!  WTF!?), I snack on a date, dark chocolate, or something I made with agave nectar or brown rice syrup.  She also talks about the intrinsic connection between food and mood, which I wrote about here. 

Now let’s talk foods to nourish the third eye.  As you might have guessed, caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol (all substances with profound effects on the chemistry of the brain) stimulate ajna — people that drink a lot of caffeine, eat a lot of sugar, drink a lot of alcohol - have an overly stimulated third chakra.  Spices are also stimulating and protective for the third eye, including caraway, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, ginger, nutmeg, tumeric, and many others.  Last but not least, there are lots of purple foods that contain antioxidants known as anthocyanidins (these are the strongest antioxidants for destroying free radicals in the body).  Include eggplant, purple kale, blueberries, figs, plums, purple grapes, raisins, and a few other purple fruits and vegetables in your diet to protect and nourish ajna.

Beyond food, you can nourish ajna by creating positive visions and images in your mind to focus on when you are distracted or consumed by negative emotions.  In yoga, do your practice blindfolded to bring your awareness more inside yourself, and practice many supported forward bends.  Balancing postures such as tree, dancer, and headstands are also stimulating to the third eye.

“I open myself to the inner vision which brings understanding of my spiritual truths.”