The Third Chakra (Ajna) captures the fascination of those new to subtle energy and the chakra system. There’s something mystical about the 3rd Eye. However, what undergirds any mystical experience is self-trust because it enables you to accept the extraordinary. Because you trust yourself, you believe what you hear, see, sense, and know.
Holistic Healing Nature of The Ajna and Other Chakras
Briefly, your chakras influence the expression of who you are physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. For this reason, it’s important to know what your chakras are and what they do especially when you want to effect a change in yourself or when you face a health or wellness issue.
Here, we look at the Third Eye Chakra; particularly, how it relates to your self-trust.
This post assumes you’re familiar with the chakra system, the energy centers of the body, and the importance of your energy flow within and around you. For an introduction, see What Are the Chakras and search my Mind Body Spirit blog for more posts on chakras and individual energy centers.
Third Eye Chakra Meaning
Other names for Ajna or the Third Eye Chakra are the Sixth Chakra, Brow Chakra, 3rd Eye Chakra, or Indigo Chakra.
The color indigo gives this energy center the name Indigo Chakra The center’s vibration is associated with the light frequency of indigo, a deep almost purple-blue color similar to the eye-like pattern in the photo above. However, the Third Eye Chakra color is sometimes depicted as a slightly lighter shade of blue and a range of purple or pink purple hues.
The point in the middle of your forehead marks the Third Eye Chakra location; just below the Crown (lavender to amethyst, to vivid purple) and above the Throat (light blue to deeper turquoise or cobalt). The seven chakra system is illustrated along the spin of this silhouetted seated person. The Sixth Chakra is the indigo dot second from the top.
Third Eye Chakra Symbol
A chakra symbol is also called a Mandala. In the 
center of the Ajna mandala is the seed syllable, OM. It suggests moving beyond the concrete and mundane and bridging subtle realms. This facilitates the discovery of the true self.
Ajna, the Third Eye, and Self-Trust
Your Ajna, the Sanskrit word for the Third Eye Chakra, influences and reveals how much you trust yourself. An imbalanced Ajna chakra will typically correlate with an imbalance of trust.
A weak Third Eye can present as a lack of self-trust whereas overactivity could appear as arrogance, over-self-confidence, or an inflated ego.
Ajna’s functioning is important because your self-trust is fundamental to how you see yourself and your abilities. In other words, the strength of your self-esteem (Manipura Chakra) and sense of self (Svadhisthana) also depend on the strength and clarity of your Ajna.
The Third Eye Center also affects how you show up in the world. It has significant influence over:
- internal and external vision,
- physical eye health and vision,
- insights,
- imagination,
- creativity,
- inner and subconscious awareness,
- aspirations,
- clarity of mission or purpose,
- inner harmony,
- intuitive ability, and
- extrasensory capabilities (your clairs or clairsenses such as clairvoyance or claircognizance).
Self-trust is pertinent because these capacities derive from subtle and often liminal sensing, internal perception, and visualization. Self-trust helps you let go, dissolve boundaries and duality, and engage with the free formation and concretization of what is arising from within.
One Reason People Don’t Trust Themselves
Today’s fast-paced world and constant stimulation and distraction crowd out critical alone time and opportunity to reflect and ruminate. There’s no time to pause, think, or just be. An abundance of interruptions fragments and limits the depth of day-to-day experiences. Furthermore, few people have or make the time for personal spiritual practice (something often separate from organized religion.)
If you’re like most people, it may seem as though others’ thoughts and opinions are more accessible than your own. The Internet, social media, and the thoughts and feelings of parents, spouses, children, friends, and neighbors can drown out your own.
While they’re good sources of information and perspectives, positive self-trust is only developed when you check within yourself and sense how true or false, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate those thoughts, opinions, and feelings are for you. And if you’re like most people these days, you don’t have the time or inclination to tap into your inside (your inner self).
Not tapping into yourself is a mistake, and only further weakens your self-trust.
What Happens When You Don’t Trust Yourself
Without sufficient trust in yourself and a clear and accurate sense of self, it’s difficult to have healthy self-esteem or be self-aware, decisive, confident, and committed. There’s too much indecision and entanglement.
If you can relate to this, you’re not alone. A whopping 85 percent of adults and adolescents worldwide have low self-esteem.
Thankfully, with some effort, you can build trust in yourself and improve your self-esteem and sense of self.
The Importance of Balance and Resilience
It’s generally the case that balance yields good functioning. For example, an overall integrated balance within yourself will support Ajna balance and vice versa.
This is why there’s much discussion about the benefits of balancing chakras. However, as a dynamic living being, you’re always shifting in and out of balance so resilience is also key.
Signs of Ajna Imbalance and Trust Issues
Many of my energy healing and coaching clients are unaware that they lack self-trust. But, when I listen to their thoughts and how they feel, signs pop out at me. Here are some common signs of an unbalanced third eye chakra I encounter. Do they resonate with you?
- Confused, entangled, or scattered emotions
- Difficulty distinguishing your feelings from those of others
- Unable to define your authentic wants, needs, and interests
- Difficulty determining truth from fiction
- Disjointed or fragmented thinking
- Demissive of your intuitive senses or gut feelings
- Lack of focus and prone to distraction
- Excessive daydreaming or obsessing over dream storylines
- Feeling fragmented or at odds with yourself
- Indecisive or difficulty making decisions
- Obsessive thinking
- Difficulty staying committed to decisions or regularly reversing decisions
Signs of Third Eye Chakra Balance and Self-Trust
- Clear and balanced emotions
- Focused and perceptive
- Flexible and open-minded
- Able to discern truth from fiction
- Clarity of personal vision and purpose
- Accurate and compassionate self-awareness
- Self-confidence
- Decisive and committed decision-making
- Acceptance of your intuition, gut feelings, and heartfelt senses and able to integrate them with your mind’s logic
- Strong inner vision unobstructed by limiting beliefs
- Strong imagination and visualization
- Grounded, centered, and able to maintain a presence
Consider whether your third eye chakra is balanced if you have one or more of these symptoms, If not, address it.
Third Eye Opening
When most people hear the word third eye, they think of opening a portal to their intuition and other psychic and spiritual communication. For example, students in my energy healing classes often expect me to open their 3rd Eye and activate their intuition and psychic abilities.
But, the truth is all their chakras are already open. They are for everyone. An attunement only strengthens, expands, and opens the chakras to the frequencies of the new energy healing modality.
It’s energy healing and other modes of charka healing such as toning that can enhance the expression of a chakra’s beneficial attributes.
The Weakening of Esoteric Human Skills
Unfortunately, with the help or corruption of modern Western views, we learn to downplay or completely ignore what the third eye picks up. Ultimately, it becomes difficult to tap into it when we want.
Trust Can Expand Your Reality
Hopefully, you’ve gleaned from the discussion above that self-trust and an open Third Eye are similar and interdependent. Each requires you to stay open and pay attention to subtleties within you and around you. Each supports the other.
When you trust what you sense and perceive, it becomes more real and true.
When you distrust it, it becomes less certain, less real, faint, and ultimately fades.
Getting Beyond Your Head Brain
Self-trust comes from the inside. Building self-trust requires getting beyond the mind as the sole source of knowledge, information, and truth. And, it means relying on you and your direct experience. This is all that you know for sure anyway. Everything else is second-hand, in-direct, or filtered.
Third Eye Chakra Healing
Healing a chakra essentially means balancing it. Balance promotes optimal functioning.
Seven Ways to Balance the Third Eye Center
1. Toning the Ajna
The Sixth Chakra bija is Om. To promote balance and well functioning of this energy center, you can chant, sing, and breathe Om with or without the explicit intention to balance Ajna.
2. Chakra Therapy
Chakra therapy is a powerful tool for chakra health and works with or treats the overall system or individual centers. Vibrational healing such as tuning forks, singing bowls, drums, rattles, or sound produced another way. Energy work and other healing modalities often incorporate chakra therapy.
3. Meditation
There are many Ajna meditations. Moreover, most meditations engage the Ajna in some way. The process draws upon aspects of the self, which this energy center governs. This includes inner vision, inner awareness, imagination, inner harmony, creativity, etc.
A good chakra mediation incorporates breathing (prana) to stimulate and tone the flow within the chakras, auric field, and even the physical body to some extent. Many Third Eye Chakra meditations will focus on the brow at some point.
Look for meditations with these attributes to balance your 3rd Eye. Establish a meditation practice directed at Third Eye Chakra healing. Meditate regularly for a time. Check-in with yourself and then assess the change.
4. Working With Third Eye Chakra Crystals or Stones
Crystals are vibrational and healing in nature. For Third Eye Chakra balance pick crystals that have attributes that support the type of healing needed or generally atune or balance this chakra.
Lapid Lazuli is probably the best-known crystal for Ajna healing. Additional healing crystals are Kyanite, Labradorite, Purple Flourite, Azuirte, and Amethyst.
5. Subtle Aromatherapy
Subtle aromatherapy employs the vibrational or energetic properties of essential oils. See also my blog post on Sixth Chakra essential oils, or my ebook on Aromatherapy for the chakra in general.
6. Energy Healing
Various forms of healing energy such as Reiki, Integrated Energy Therapy, or Shamanic Reiki can regulate the energy flow within an energy center. It can enhance and treat an energy deficit, or release excess energy to address hyperactivity. It can remove energy blockages and restore proper interaction between and among the chakras throughout the system.
7. Third Eye Chakra Asanas
Yoga was designed to facilitate the flow of subtle energy through the body. You can choose specific Ajna yoga poses (asanas) to address issues of the 3rd Eye as well as all the other chakras and energy flows throughout the body.
3rd Eye asanas most often focus on the head, brain, pituitary gland, and to a lesser extent the pineal gland. Legs up the wall, lotus, tree, and child’s poses are easy and less stressful. Plow and poses are considered intermediate. Half and full headstands are more advanced. Choose the pose that feels right for you, your level of skill, and fitness.
Pick one or more of the above practices to address Ajna’s imbalance and improve its functioning. Combine your practice with the theme of self-trust or elements that build self-trust such as inner awareness, self-appreciation and gratitude, and curiosity and compassion directed toward the self.
For More Information on the Ajna, Third Eye Chakra, and Self Trust See:
- My Mind Body Spirit Blog posts, and, in particular:
- Download my FREE introductory-level Getting In Touch With the Inside guided meditation
- Join an online or in-person self-development workshop
Updated December 10, 2024
