To strengthen your perception and intuition make sure your third-eye or sixth chakra (Ajna) is balanced and well-functioning. Likewise, to feel integrated, coordinated, and complete. This is because the chakra governs all of these functions. Fortunately, in most cases toning your chakras is relatively easy. You can use simple holistic methods to balance your sixth chakra naturally. Some examples are crystals, plants, sound, and energy healing. Because all of these healing modalities are fundamentally vibrational, they communicate well with your energy centers and provide natural healing and rebalance.

Here, we’ll discuss using plants in their vibrational and highly-concentrated form of high-quality essential oils.

Sixth Chakra (Ajna)

Your sixth chakra, also known as the Ajna in Sanskrit, is located in the middle of your forehead, between the crown and throat chakras. Its color is indigo or deep purple.

Chakra Functions

Perhaps the most well-known functions of your Ajna are related to your perception and intuition. When balanced it instills openness and an ability to learn from experience as well as integrate the ideas of others. The Ajna is the center of both conscious and subconscious beliefs. Thus, it’s often thought of as your window onto non-ordinary reality.

Your Ajna works a bit like a control center for the chakra system. For example, it integrates the other chakras much like the pituitary gland regulates hormones and integrates the physical body. Therefore, it’s not surprising it’s aligned with the pituitary gland, the brain, and the nervous system.

It is also connected to the sensory systems through the eyes, ears, and nose. Your sense of touch, on the other hand, is governed by your crown chakra. Some people associate the pineal gland with the sixth chakra and third eye, but in actuality, it’s most closely linked with the crown chakra.

A Balanced Sixth Chakra

People with vital and balanced sixth chakras are open, preceptive, and intuitive. They tend to draw from and use information from all of their senses and are easily able to integrate. They’re also comfortable with new ideas, and their beliefs often evolve with their experiences. Having an open and unconstrained sixth chakra, they are typically at ease with psychic, energetic, and other spiritual concepts and experiences.

An Imbalanced Sixth Chakra

Imbalance or dysfunction of the sixth chakra can manifest in rigid thoughts and beliefs, dogmatism, prejudice, clouded reasoning or thinking, inability to access or assess intuition, and fear of what cannot be known with a degree of certainty or proven. People with a weak or imbalanced sixth chakra often remark that they feel disjointed, incomplete (not whole), or unintegrated.

Sixth chakra imbalances tend to physically manifest in the central nervous system and related physiology. This can include nervous disorders, learning disabilities, spinal issues, strokes, brain tumors, vision and eye problems, hearing issues, and deafness. Problems associated with pituitary dysfunction are also present with sixth chakra imbalances.

Balance Your Ajna Naturally With Aromatic Plants

Some common essential oils for the sixth chakra are:

• Bay laurel (Laurus nobilis)
• Carrot seed (Daucus carrota)
• Galbanum (Ferula galbaniflua or Ferula gummosa)
• German chamomile (Matricaria recutita)
• Grapefruit (Citrus x paradisi)
• Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha)
• Nutmeg ( (Myristica fragrans)
• Palo Santo (Bursea graveolens)
• Petitgrain (Citrus aurantium)
• Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile)
• St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
• Sandalwood (Santalum album)

Medicinal and Metaphysical Expansive Properties

Bay laurel, galbanum, and carrot seed are quintessential Ajna chakra essential oils. Bay laurel works on energetic, emotional, and physical levels, and is energetically integrative. It promotes and strengthens initiation and psychic abilities. It releases old outmoded thought patterns and provides an opening for new thoughts and perspectives. Bay laurel also has a significant calming tonic effect on the nervous system and has been used to address psychoses and other forms of mental dysfunction.

Opening to Purpose

Galbanum also helps to shed outmoded thought patterns and beliefs and aligns the brain with one’s spiritual purpose. It aids in the clarification of one’s life purpose and expansion of the auric field and energy bodies. It encourages channeling and reception of psychic information. Both galbanum and carrot seed clear psychic blocks. The latter also expands the sixth chakra, increases inner vision, integrates the spiritual with the physical, opens one to others’ views, and, in so doing, extends one’s own perception.

Nutmeg is liberating. It releases old stagnant or inflexible thought patterns opening one to fresh new and expansive mental activity. Palo Santo helps to reveal one’s personal path and life purpose and integrates the spiritual with ordinary reality.

St John’s wort, sandalwood (Santalum album), and palo santo aid the sixth chakra in its role of balancing the chakras. St John’s Wort also opens the mind to psychic dreams and helps one remember and understand them. Opopanax (Commiphora guidotti) opens to the mystical. Both German and Roman chamomile facilitate connection with non-ordinary realities, source, and angelic realms and their vibrations.

Other essential oils that strengthen and expand the intuition are black spruce (Picea mariana), cistus (Cistus landiferus), grapefruit, jasmine (Jasminium grandiflorium), Siberian fir (Abies sibirica), and silver fir (Abies alba). Yarrow, cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), and nutmeg promote psychic awareness. Cinnamon along with German and Roman chamomile promotes the flow of chi through the physical and subtle bodies.

Working On Physical Issues

Everlasting (Helichrysum italicum) works on the physical manifestations of sixth chakra dysfunction such as depression, debility, nervous exhaustion, trauma, and phobias. Grapefruit is another essential oil that works on the physical level. It addresses depression, headaches, and nervous exhaustion and stimulates and sharpens the senses.

While many people classify frankincense (Bowellia carteri) and sandalwood as sixth chakra essential oils, I associate them more with the crown chakra. However, on the physical level, both are very useful for and significant to nervous conditions. German and Roman chamomile are sedatives as well. Manuka (Leptosperum scoparium) balances or rectifies the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responses.

For More On the Sixth Chakra, See:

• Aromatherapy, Essential Oils, and the Chakras ebook
• Ajna | The Third Eye Chakra and Self-Trust
• Personal Growth, Natural Healing, and Wellness Workshops

Updated July 17, 2022
Update December 17, 2022