Hi,

Color: Yellow-gold

Element: Fire

Sense: Sight

Healing Stones: Amber, topaz, citrine, yellow calcite, yellow jasper

Affirmation: “May I be able to honor myself, be how I am in the world, and express that power without fear.”

Mantra: “I am free.”

Fire personalities, whether you are a Pitta dosha or are born under the sun signs of Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius, are passionate, dynamic, enthusiastic, and expressive. Common emotions ruled by the fiery planet of Mars include happiness and humor.

You’ll know a fire person because they are joyful, warm-hearted connectors. Their inner essence shines out!

How Fire Transforms Us

Historically, the power of fire was in the hands of alchemists, who could take simple elements such as base metals and transform them into gold. Its story is part magic, mythology, and chemistry combined. In our lives, this power can impact us on a spiritual, physical, and mental basis.

Spiritually, fire can force us to face our fear in order to create dynamic change within our lives. It is positively expressed as inner strength and assertiveness. People who lack courage to take risks usually have a deficient third chakra; they are afraid to express themselves due to a scarcity of confidence.

A healthy fire person will assert themselves as who they really are.

Physically, fire governs our metabolism which could make it helpful if we want to lose five pounds. Bringing the fire of digestion (converting food into energy) might mean an increase in vitality and improve a sluggish metabolism. Or we can use it for more far reaching emotional or sensory changes.

Mentally and emotionally, fire cleanses and burns off the negative and lights the path forward so we no longer avoid change.

As Jon Kabat Zinn says about life, “it’s like the lottery, you got play to have a chance at winning.” Each day, we have a choice to show up or not. We have a constant opportunity to make decisions that guide our lives.

When we avoid what scares us, we turn over all our power to someone else. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about life when you lack the fire in your belly to make decisions.

I know this is not easy. The choices we make are bound to cause friction. The Alchemy of Fire gives us the courage to transform our lives and evolve into who we are meant to be! So nourish your third chakra, and enjoy the freedom from fear it brings

Color: Green

Element: Air

Sense: Touch

Healing Stones: Emerald, tourmaline, aventurine, malachite, rose quartz, rhodonite

Affirmation: “May I be at home in my heart. May I be free to feel my true feelings, desires, and passions.”

Mantra: “I am love.”

Psychology of Anahata

The heart chakra is where dharma resides in each of us and deals primarily with our capacity for love and devotion, openness and compassion, our ability to connect and relate well with others, self-acceptance and self-confidence, and balance and forgiveness.

An overactive anahata results in codependency, jealousy, clinginess, excessive demands, or excessive sacrificing. When underactive, this chakra can cause depression, isolation, and loneliness, judgmental and antisocial tendencies, a fear of intimacy, and a lack of empathy and narcissism.

When extremely out of balance, this chakra can bring about grief, anxiety, anger, fanaticism, excessive criticism, the inability to maintain deep relationships or to express feelings, severe codependency and poor boundaries, and addictions to marijuana, tobacco, and sugar.

To heal and bring the anahata back to balance, practice breathing exercises, journaling, psychotherapy, and yoga.

Focus on the Heart Chakra

Yoga is, after all, a way to really feel the pulse of life. This pulse or spanda mimics your own heartbeat.

Science now views heart intelligence as being on par with or even more powerful than our intellect. Our heart’s constant dialogue with other’s hearts can now be measured.

It is natural to feel each other's vibration, and this is part of what leads us to find connection and build relationships. We can try to put up barriers to this innate intelligence, or we can embrace our capacity to love and grow it bigger.

It took me many years to realize that being vulnerable opens me up to greater pathways of love and healing. Our capacity to be vulnerable is directly linked to our capacity for intimacy and love, especially the kind of unconditional love that doesn’t sit in judgment.

Color: Bright blue

Element: Sound

Sense: Hearing

Healing Stones: Turquoise, aquamarine, lapis

Affirmation: “May I be able to express my feelings with ease and be balanced between heart and mind.”

Mantra: “I am truth.”

The Psychology of Visuddha

When your throat chakra is overactive, you may have a tendency of talking too much or of using hasty or inappropriate language, an inability to listen to others, a habit of gossip, and a penchant for dominating most your conversations.

An underactive or deficient visuddha, on the other hand, is characterized by a fear of speaking or hesitation in communication, shyness and introversion, a weak voice, tone deafness, stuttering, and difficulty in putting words together.

A sustained or extreme imbalance in this chakra leads to dishonesty, repressed communication, and addictions to substances like opiates or marijuana. To restore balance in your visuddha, focus on opening and closing the throat, and practice yoga poses like Camel, Plow, Fish, and Shoulder Stand.

Throat Chakra Tune-Up

Take a moment right now to really tune in and listen. cover your ears and breathe in, — shhhhh as you exhale, cover your heart and breathe in, — shhhhh as you exhale, cover your navel center and breathe in, — shhhhh as you exhale.

Listen to what your mind, heart, and body are trying to tell you. If you can't hear anything, ask better questions and wait again.

Once you hear a truth that resonates—something that is relevant to living a more inspired life from this practice of question and answer—then you must find the courage to do something about it. You must act on it.

As the Buddha says, "An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea." As big as your intention may be, keep it simple enough to actually start it and keep it going to completion.

Intentions set in yoga and in meditation bring together the power of communication and the dialogue of heart, body, and mind. For the magic to happen in your throat chakra, stay true to yourself, and allow others to know who you really are.

Color: Indigo or white

Element: Light

Sense: Thought

Healing Stones: Lapis, iolite, amethyst

Affirmation: “May I see and perceive clearly on every level.”

Mantra: “I am understanding.”

The Psychology of Ajna

Also known as the third eye chakra, Ajna controls our discernment and intuition, imagination and dreams, wisdom and insight, vision and color, our spiritual awareness, our perception of the truth, and our ability to see using our third eye or our clairvoyant sensibilities.

When this chakra is overactive, we experience nightmares, obsessions, delusions, and even hallucinations. Conversely, an underactive third eye chakra causes poor vision, memory, dream recall, and imagination, difficulty visualizing, difficulty seeing into the future, denial, and insensitivity.

Extremely drawn out imbalance in Ajna causes headaches and difficulty concentrating, poor memory, damaging hallucinations and delusions, and even addiction to marijuana and hallucinogens.

Healing the Third Eye Chakra

To bring balance back to the third eye or brow chakra, drawing, coloring, and creating art are great therapeutic activities. Practices such as dream work and guided visualization, as well as treatments like past life regression therapy and hypnosis, also serve to cleanse and rebalance our Ajna.

When healing your Ajna through asana, poses like Bridge, Downward Dog, Child’s, Shoulder Stand, and other standing balancing postures like Tree and Eagle are recommended.

The Realm of the Third Eye Chakra

Once we get past initiating the unknown territory of deep personal growth, it can be challenging to sustain the effort. We convince ourselves that we have to power through by ourselves, which often leaves us exhausted.

Instead of giving up, admit the weakness, see it as the door of your strength and reach out to friends or family to help you. This place of "wise silence" is the realm of the third eye chakra. It is spiritual maturity that urges us to not do it alone.

Remember that old habits can be strong. Due to layers of fear and attachment, the stuck places can be heavy and tiring. Know that they are part of your humanity: everyone has them. We can support one another by working together to lift the burden.

Color: Violet or white

Element: Thought

Sense: Intelligence, also called the seventh sense

Healing Stones: Quartz, diamond, white amethyst

Affirmations: “Love surrounds, nourishes and protects me. May I live in the present moment.” (From here, we can choose consciously and see that everything has a point.) “May I have a clear and open connection with source energy (spirit) and live in the present moment.”

Mantra: “I am aware.”

Psychology of Sahasrara

The crown chakra is concerned with knowledge, consciousness, awareness and self-awareness, truth and reality, the release of attachment, spirituality, transcendence, and bliss.

It governs our sense of ethics and karma, our idea of God or Goddess, Divine discontent, our spiritual awakening, our capacity for symbolic vision and unconditional love, and our search for meaning, grace, and ultimate liberation.

Excess in this chakra is marked by spiritual addiction, over-intellectualization, confusion, or dissociation from the body, while a deficient seventh chakra is given to spiritual cynicism, mindlessly rigid belief systems, or excess in lower chakras resulting in attachment, materialism, and greed.

Focusing on the Crown Chakra

The way to focus the seventh chakra is to ask ourselves these key questions.

1. Who am I?
2. What do I believe about the universe?

Meditating on the crown chakra opens the door to a stronger understanding and intuitive knowledge of your inner spirit. As a result, you experience the universal connection within all beings. Your spirit is strengthened through infinite joy, which yoga tells us is our true nature.

When connected to Sahasrara, your personal vibration increases along with the human vibration. What you do for yourself, you do for humankind. As you go about your day, contribute your unique voice to making this world a better place.

The limitless light in me recognizes and celebrates the light in you. And when we are both in that special place, we are one.