Week Three - Ajna Chakra, Sixth Sense
Hello everyone,
I hope you had a happy pancake Tuesday and Lunar New Year! As I'm sure you've heard, according to the Chinese Zodiac we have just transitioned from the Snake archetype into the year of the Horse - an auspicious symbol of freedom, arriving in combination with the element of Fire. Apparently, the last time we had a Horse and Fire combo was in 1966!
In Winter there comes a natural time for death and restoration - this must be especially true in a Snake year, where that shedding of what no longer serves may happen a bit harder and more severely than you're used to. But now, if you're open to these fun archetypes, contemplating on what a year of 'fire and horse' might look like for you could bring some hope...a soft spark of relief, perhaps. This new image of a great flaming steed galloping into the sunset...or a beautiful stallion charging into battle...or maybe a sweet filly cantering into an open field of daisies...It's difficult not to feel a sense of excitement and await renewal. Fresh energy. Passion. Travel. Speed. Sun. Lightness.
Light. The theme for this week's yoga!
This Sunday at Thrive we will have Hatha yoga at 5pm and Soft Stretch at 6:30pm, moving together with the theme of awareness and light. Expect to find your dristi - your focus - explore your balance, strengthen and stretch out your full body, and set some powerful intentions for the Spring. I have a few drop in spaces available in both classes, if you'd like to join just let me know :)
As we continue our way up the energy centres of the subtle body this term, we arrive now at the Third Eye centre, Ajna Chakra. A mystical one! In many traditions, this is thought of as our sixth chakra, associated with the colour indigo and the element of light, spinning in between and just a little above our eyebrows. You've probably heard the term 'sixth sense' - the intuitive knowing that something has happened, or that something will happen, without any tangible or rational cause to believe it. Ajna Chakra is the seat of this intuitive energy, linked closely in yoga to the vijnanamaya kosha, the wisdom body. A balanced ajna chakra is associated with traits of awareness, peacefulness, clarity, wise insights, imagination, and purpose.
The famous psychologist Carl Jung considered intuition to be a basic psychological function, and defined it as an experience of perceiving reality through the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is this incredibly personal dream-like world full of seemingly random images, impulses, and feelings; rampant with associated sensations and memory. If you have ever tried to analyse your dream; sitting down to consider what those strange and scattered images - so loaded with feeling - meant to you, you likely already know something of the unconscious mind. Jung wrote that, just like the cryptic messages uncovered in our dreams, waking intuitions (these inexplicable insights that we experience while awake) often present themselves as "whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence". They arrive suddenly, with clarity, and are impossible to deny (but not impossible to ignore).
Intuitions are powerful, wonderful things. As with anything, though, they can cause harm when misunderstood. I've been told since I was a kid that I am an intuitive person - a classic 'introvert intuitive irrational function type', as my mother would say. But there have been moments where I've found myself afraid that something terrible will happen, and instead of being able to calm myself down by saying that it's all in my head - I worry that I'm having an active intuition; that maybe this is real, or it will be real; maybe I am predicting something terrible here. Apparently, this is common among people who experience anxiety. This is also a clear indication of a blocked ajna chakra. Having a busy mind. Experiencing headaches. Nightmares. Confusion. Lack of clarity. The experience of imagining a million and one possibilities as a way to feel prepared for anything...believing in your fears...as if you have the ability to predict the future.
A balanced ajna chakra is said to be the experience of a calm awareness; the ability to see and recognise what is true, outside and in. To be connected to nature and intuition, to observe fear for what it is, and to know the mind for its many tricks.
One of the best things I have ever heard is that you can recognise the difference between fear and intuition if you understand how they both feel. Intuition will always feel clear and expansive when it occurs - even if it's about something negative. There will be a sense of calm certainty, even a factuality about it. The experience of receiving intuition will likely feel sudden and out of your control, as if you're being told or given something new. You recognise it because it comes clear to you all at once, it cannot be altered once it arrives, and it remains whole like a nagging certainty in your belly until you honour it, or until it comes to pass.
Fear, on the other hand, will always feel loud, scary, and restricted. It may be very believable as an intuitive warning - until you notice that it feels oddly comfortable to you; you can change it, move it around, in some ways you understand that you are creating it. It is coming from you, not to you. That's the trick to watch out for. There is a natural doubt that comes with fear, a moving narrative, and almost always a feeling of panic or restriction in your chest. That is never intuition. Intuition always feels like a gift, even when it is in warning. It feels calm and clear. Fear of the unknown is always created, encouraged by the ego as a means to strengthen it. Intuition feels different; uncomfortable, eery, but certain; drawn up as a message from your unconscious mind.
I did say we were starting to get into wacky territory here with the ascending chakras! If you're still with me, I hope there was something helpful or interesting here for you. I am really looking forward to seeing you this Sunday for yoga! Let me know if you'd like me to save you a space :)
"The soul has been given it's own ears to hear things the mind does not understand"
Rumi
Le grá,
Macha
