Chakra 5 Vissudha: Speaking Your Truth

Vissudha Chakra, located in the throat, is the center of communication where you develop your voice and speak your truth.

It is directly linked to your personal integrity, your power of choice and your expression of creativity. Its related element is ether with its symbolic color of sky blue. Ether also governs  breath, prana, life force.  Visshuddha supports your unity with all things, and it governs clairaudience.

Focus: Communication

Color:  Blue

Seed Sound: Ham

Sense Organ: Ears and Mouth

Associated sense: Hearing and Speech

Essential Right: To Speak

Essential Oils: Can be used in bath or specified oil burner prior or during meditation

Bergamot – facilitates the ability to express the truths that arise in your heart

Chamomile – allows you to voice the truth calmly

Eucalyptus – aids in rejuvenating creativity

Tea Tree – releases creative energy that helps you reach your potential

Peppermint – assists you in making ethical choices

Frankincense – helps you feel more secure and confident

Sandalwood – boosts confidence

Crystals & Gemstones

Turquoise – improves communication and clarifies intuition

Aquamarine – reduces stress and helps creativity

Amazonite – increases pychic abilities

Lapis Lazuli – acts as a natural antidepressant, raises self-esteem

Flourite – cuts through woolly thinking, assists in the completion of projects

Blue Calcite – fosters trust

Chrysocolla – facilitates stability and serenity

Incense: Myrhh, resin

Foods: Natural sweeteners; raw honey and fruit juices. Liquids in general; water herbal teas. Tree growing fruits; apples, pears, plums, peaches and apricots. Purifying herbs; horehound, slippery elm, salt and lemongrass.

 Physical body: neck, throat, esophagus, ears, mouth, vocal cords, trachea, jaw, shoulders, teeth, tongue, cervical spine, thyroid, and hands.

Chakra location: Throat

The rhythm of music,  dance, singing, and communication through writing and speaking are all fifth chakra expresions.

Visuddha means “pure” or “purification.”

Some yogis notice that drinking more water and letting go of tobacco and dairy helps to loosen up the neck and shoulders and clear the voice of Visshuda.

Singing, reading poetry aloud, scripting all support vibrations and rhythms positively affect your body, down to the cellular level.

Deficient Visshuda chakra leads to neck stiffness, shoulder tension, teeth grinding, jaw disorders, throat ailments, an underactive thyroid, and a fear of speaking.

Excessive Visshuda energy leads to excessive talking, an inability to listen, hearing difficulties, stuttering, and an overactive thyroid.

Depending on the ailments, neck stretches and shoulder opener asanas, including Camel Pose and Pranayama can aid the fifth chakra.

Balanced Characteristics: You communicate articulately, are a good listener, have a good sense of rhythm,  creativity, discover your vocation/career, have integrity and are non-judgemental

Pranayama breathing

breathing deeply, expanding your lungs and exhaling through your mouth focuses energy on your throat.

Dandayamana-Bibhaktapada-Janushirasana 

tucking your chin into the throat chakra also activates your thyroid and parathyroid glands, the glands associated with the 5^th chakra

Sasangasana 

Again, tucking your chin firmly into the spot between your collarbones where your throat chakra is located, as well as your thyroid and parathyroid glands, the glands associated with the 5^th chakra become activated, balanced, healthy with blood flow

Meditation for Vissudha Chakra

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Chakra 6 Ajna: Third Eye Open

Ajna: the big picture to live life intuitively

Ajna Chakra opens your psychic faculties. Conceptually, this chakra is about “seeing” the spiritual;  it governs psychic vision, inner knowledge, and inspiration.

Focus: Intuition

Color: Indigo

Seed Sound: Om

Sense Organ: The Eyes

Associated sense: Insight

Essential Oils:

Lemon – cleanses the third eye

Juniper – Helps relieve tension and nervousness, clarifies inner vision

Rosemary – clears your thoughts

Lavender – harmonizes all the chakras, relieves stress and anxiety

Neroli – relieves depression

Geranium – has a harmonizing effect on the mind

Crystals & Gemstones

Amethyst – helps raise spiritual awareness

Tiger’s Eye – helps thread relevant information

Sodalite – frees you from preconceived notions, opens mental horizons

Sugilte – helps maintain our point of view despite pressure or conflict

Azurite – facilitates astral travel

Angelite – facilitates communication with the spiritual realm

Jet – repels nightmares

Selenite – aids in telepathic contact

Incense: Frankincense resin, Sandalwood

Foods: Fasting or other forms of detoxification, consuming water, fruit juices and eating juicy fruits, organic foods, and dark chocolate.

The physical body: governs the eyes, neck, pituitary and pineal glands, forehead, side and back of head and carotid plexus.

Chakra location: Above the eyebrows in the center of the forehead

NOTICING AJNA CHAKR:

Ajna chakra is involved in both the creation and perception of art with a powerful impact.

When the third eye is excessive with too much or blocked energy, we experience headaches, hallucinations, nightmares, and difficulty concentrating.

When this chakra is deficient, we have a poor memory, experience eye problems, have difficulty recognizing patterns, and can’t visualize well.

As a yoga teacher, we guide students to focus on a present-moment, fully engaged experience which supports Ajna chakra: no distractractions. After class, profound insights often come because Ajna vision is directed more deeply inside.

Positive images and visualizations in Savasana create a healthy Ajna chakra. Affirmative feelings draw the imagined into your life.

Balanced Characteristics: Strong intuition, ability to visualize and manifest, greater vision of your purpose, creative imagination, good memory, development of psychic gifts, good dream recall.

Hot Yoga Poses that Support Ajna Chakra:

Dandayamana-Bibhaktapada-Janushirasana 

6^th chakra (third eye chakra) Anja: You are massaging your pituitary gland, the gland correspondening to your 6^th chakra.

Ardha-Kurmasana 

6^th chakra (third eye chakra) Ajna: massaging your pituitary/pineal gland as you press on it physically and bring circulation to these glands associated with 6^th chakra balance.

Janushirasana with Paschimotthanasana 

6^th chakra (third eye chakra) Ajna:  massage your pituitary gland, the gland associated with your 6^th chakra, as you press forehead to knee.

Meditation for Ajna Chakra

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Chakra 7 Sahasrara: The Crowning of Higher Consciousness

The crown chakra is the energetic passageway to the Divine You.

Sahasrara Chakra relates to pure awareness, a oneness with a higher energy; an inner light.

And it is a direct connection to your Inner Guidance (or Inner Genius)

This happens easily when we sleep. It is often during sleep that we receive intuitive messages from the awakened higher consciousness.

And even more powerfully - during meditation

As the center of spirituality and enlightenment,  Sahasrara chakra is about higher consciousness and your highest dreams.

The crown chakra is governed by the pineal gland near the cerebral cortex which is the gland that regulates the sleeping/waking cycles of the body.

Focus: Understanding

Color: Violet or White

Seed Sound: Om

Sense Organ: Cerebral Cortex

Associated sense: Central nervous system

Essential Right: To Know

Essential Oils:

Brahmi Ayurvedic Oil – calms, enhances energy flow of the crown chakra

Lavender – facilitates connection to the spiritual realm, calms central nervous system

Hina Ayurvedic Oil – Strengthens the body and mind, induces mental clarity

Spikenard – helps you connect to the world beyond materialism

Neroli – reconnects you with intuition

Frankincense – links Sahasrara to Muladhara assisting you to stay grounded during meditation

Crystals & Gemstones

Amethyst – connects you to the realm of spirit and transmutes negativity

Angelite – increases telepathic connection with others

Rutilated Quartz – used for channeling angelic wisdom, increases clairvoyance

Herkimar Diamond – enables you to see a much wider picture of your own life

Clear Quartz – increases energy spiritually, harmonizes chakras

Ametrine – enables you to embrace paradox

Kyanite – emanates energies that stimulate the pineal gland activating psychic abilities

Incense: Sandalwood, Cedar, Frankincense Resin, Myhrr Resin, Copal Resin, Juniper

Enlightening Foods: A pure, vegetarian diet; any form of detoxification or fasting.

The physical body: pineal gland, verebral cortex, central nervous system, top of head.

Chakra location: Pineal Gland

NOTICING SAHASRARA CHAKRA

Sahasrara chakra is the highest function of the mind

As we thinkg, so we create our lives.

Excessive energy in this chakra appears as being overly intellectual - thinking "too much"

Deficient energy manifests as apathy, spiritual skepticism.

 

Balanced Characteristics: inner peace, wisdom and presence, a sense of alignment and clarity, the gift of self healing. 

Savasana

Savasana and other forms of meditation bring this chakra into balance.

Every chakra is being actively balanced and re-energized in Savasana.

When you are completely still in meditation, completely relaxed, your chakras align naturally.

You are actually opening your Seventh Chakra at the crown of your head, and your connection to your higher self flows easily.

MEDITATION FOR SAHASRARA

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