During a conversation with a student after class, she said “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that job. I knew it the moment they offered it. But I talked myself out of my own knowing.”
She wasn’t asking for advice. She was just… recognising something. The way we override our own intuition. The way we dismiss what we know in favour of what seems more logical, more reasonable, more acceptable to everyone else.
“What did your gut say?” I asked.
“That it was wrong for me. That I’d be miserable. That the money wasn’t worth it.”
“And what did your head say?”
“That I was being impractical. That I should be grateful. That I was overthinking it.”
She’d been in the job three months. Already looking for a way out.
The third eye chakra lives right here, in the space between what you think you should know and what you actually know. Between logic and intuition. Between the voice in your head and the quieter, steadier knowing underneath.
And most of us stopped listening to that knowing a very long time ago.
What Ajna Actually Means
Ajna translates as “to perceive” or “to command.” It sits between your eyebrows, at the centre of your forehead and governs intuition, insight and the ability to see clearly – not just with your physical eyes, but with deeper perception.
It’s associated with light. The capacity to see beyond the surface of things. To recognise patterns. To know something without needing external proof.
Here’s what happens to many of us by midlife: we’ve learned to be very good at analysis. We can weigh pros and cons. Gather opinions. Research thoroughly. Make lists. We’ve developed sophisticated rational frameworks for every decision.
But somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting the immediate, embodied knowing that doesn’t come with a logical explanation. The feeling that something is right or wrong. The sense of a person before they speak. The answer that arrives fully formed without you consciously thinking through the steps.
We’ve been taught to dismiss that as irrational, emotional, unreliable. As something that needs to be overridden by proper thought.
Your third eye remembers. And it’s waiting for you to listen again.
When Your Inner Vision Gets Clouded
An underactive third eye shows up as difficulty trusting yourself. Constantly seeking validation from others. Needing proof, data, consensus before you’ll believe what you already sense is true.
You might notice yourself overthinking every decision. Analysing until you’re paralysed. Unable to see the bigger picture because you’re lost in the details. Or defaulting to other people’s frameworks – what they think, what they’d do, what makes sense to them – because your own inner compass feels unreliable.
There’s often a disconnection from imagination too. Everything becomes literal, practical, concrete. You’ve lost access to the part of you that can envision possibilities, that dreams, that sees beyond what already exists.
When the third eye is overactive, you might swing into living entirely in your head. Detached from your body. Lost in fantasy or analysis. Unable to be present because you’re always interpreting, always trying to see meaning in everything, always seeking patterns that might not be there.
Neither serves you. Both are just ways of avoiding the quiet, steady knowing that doesn’t shout but also doesn’t lie.
What Balance Actually Feels Like
When Ajna is balanced, you know things without needing to justify how you know them.
Not because you’re psychic or special. Just because you’re paying attention. To the subtle cues your body picks up. To the patterns your mind recognises unconsciously. To the wisdom that comes from decades of lived experience, even if you can’t articulate exactly where it comes from.
You make decisions more easily. Not impulsively – you still think things through – but you don’t get stuck in endless loops of analysis. You gather information, you sit with it and then you trust yourself to choose.
There’s clarity. You can see situations for what they are rather than what you wish they were or fear they might be. You’re less easily swayed by other people’s interpretations. You have your own vision.
And you start noticing synchronicities. Not in a woo-woo way, but just… connections. The book that appears exactly when you need it. The conversation that answers a question you hadn’t voiced. The way things seem to line up when you’re moving in the right direction.
I’ve watched students rediscover this. Someone mentions they finally trusted their instinct about a relationship. Someone else says they stopped asking for opinions and just made the choice. The relief is enormous. Trusting yourself is so much easier than constantly seeking external validation.
The inner eye is open. The vision is clear.
Working With Third Eye Energy in Practice
Balasana (Child’s pose), with your forehead resting on the ground. The gentle pressure on your third eye centre can be profoundly calming. It’s not forcing anything open – it’s just bringing your attention there. Reminding your body that this centre exists.
Forward folds in general help quiet the mental chatter. When your head drops below your heart, the constant thinking slows. There’s space for something else to emerge.
Balancing poses require you to find a focal point – a drishti – and hold it. Vrksasana (Tree pose), Garudasana (Eagle pose) anything that asks you to steady your gaze and your mind simultaneously. That focused attention is third eye work. You’re training yourself to see clearly and hold steady despite distraction.
I also love visualisation practices. Lying in Savasana (Corpse pose), imagining indigo light – deep, rich blue-purple – at the centre of your forehead. Not trying to make anything happen. Just bringing awareness to that space. Letting it breathe.
Or this: in meditation, gently close your physical eyes and imagine looking through your third eye instead. What do you see? It won’t be literal images, usually. More like… impressions. Feelings. A sense of something. Trust whatever arises.
And Nadi Shodhana – alternate nostril breathing – helps balance the left and right hemispheres of your brain. Logic and intuition. Analysis and insight. Bringing them into conversation rather than competition.
Off the Mat
Start noticing your first response to things before your brain gets involved.
Someone invites you somewhere. Before you check your calendar, before you weigh the pros and cons, what’s your immediate response? Yes or no? That’s information. Your third eye already knows. Everything after that is negotiation.
Keep a dream journal if you remember your dreams. Not to analyse them obsessively, but to notice patterns. Your subconscious is always working. Dreams are just another way of seeing.
Spend time in low light. Candlelight. Twilight. Dawn. Your third eye is associated with light, but not harsh, bright light. Soft, subtle light. The kind that asks you to look more carefully.
Wear indigo or deep purple if it appeals. Or bring it into your space. It’s a colour that invites depth, reflection, inner vision.
Limit screens before bed. The constant input, the endless scrolling – it drowns out the quieter signals. Give your mind space to be still. To receive rather than constantly consume.
And practice this: when you need to make a decision, gather your information. Think it through. And then put it aside for a night. Sleep on it. See what clarity arrives in the morning. Often your inner knowing just needs space away from the noise to make itself heard.
Trust that. Even if you can’t explain it. Even if it doesn’t make logical sense. Even if other people would choose differently.
You know what you know.
What This Really Means
The third eye is asking you to stop outsourcing your knowing.
Not to ignore advice or dismiss rational thought. Not to make reckless decisions based on whims. Just to recognise that you have an internal guidance system that’s been operating your entire life – and it’s probably more reliable than you’ve been giving it credit for.
For those of us who’ve been taught to defer to experts, to doubt ourselves, to need external validation before we trust our own perception… this is foundational work. It means accepting that sometimes you’ll know things you can’t prove. That your gut feeling deserves weight. That your intuition has been honed by decades of experience even if you can’t cite the data points.
Here’s what changes when you trust your inner vision: you stop second-guessing yourself quite so much. You make decisions and move forward instead of circling endlessly. You recognise patterns earlier. You see through things – situations, people, your own stories – with more clarity.
And you reclaim a part of yourself that’s been dormant. The part that knows. The part that sees. The part that doesn’t need permission to trust what it perceives.
Ajna doesn’t ask you to become mystical or transcendent or disconnected from reality. It asks you to see clearly. To trust your perception. To honour the wisdom that doesn’t arrive through logical steps but through deep, embodied knowing.
If you’d like to work with the chakras more deeply, The Chakra System is a dedicated course exploring each energy centre in turn – a lovely way to bring this understanding into your own practice.
Next in the series The Crown Chakra ~ Sahasrara