5 signs your third eye is blocked (and how to unblock it)

Are you struggling to make decisions? Do you feel like your sense of intuition is off?

This might mean that your third eye energy is blocked.

The third eye chakra symbolizes our ability to have a clear perception of the world around us. It’s usually associated with sensations in your head, particularly with the ears and just behind the eyes. So, if you feel out of balance in any of these areas, it’s time to take a closer look at the flow of your vital energies.

I’ve compiled a list of the most important signs to look out for, and what you can do about it.

What is the Third Eye Energy Center?

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

-Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

This system of chakra focal points can be rather esoteric. They are used in meditative visualizations in Tantric and Buddhist practices.

Just remember that these vital energy centers are not referring to specific areas of your physical body. Instead, they represent the psychological and emotional aspects of our human experiences, which are oftentimes called the “subtle body.”

The third eye chakra is the sixth chakra in the Tantric system. The Sanskrit word for this meditative point is “Ajna,” which means “beyond wisdom”. This chakra is also commonly called the third eye, because it is linked with our acute sense of perception, beyond our visual sensory system.

It is associated with our deeply rooted, clear and instinctive, almost animalistic, intuitive nature.

When your inner voice turns quiet and muffled or seems to scream for no reason at all, you will feel off-balance in several different ways.

Sign 1: Particular Physical Symptoms Present Themselves

There can be many reasons why physical symptoms surface and manifest in your body. But if your sixth chakra is blocked, you may likely feel several of these symptoms:

• Problems with your eyesight
• Difficulty concentrating
• Sinus issues
• High levels of rushed, overstimulated, mental activity
• Problems hearing
• Inflammation in the nose
• Clouded, foggy, and unclear thinking

What Can You Do About It?

If you are having persistent problems in the area of the eyes, ears, or head, it’s always a good idea to have them looked at by a medical practitioner. A thorough check can help you make sure that any major conditions or structural issues can be ruled out.

From there, you can also look at: how you are sleeping, what nutrition you are fueling your body with, and if there are any allergens or pollutants in your living and working space. These fundamental health factors can be addressed to improve your overall health and wellbeing.

Also, pay attention to any environmental factors that might particularly affect your senses, such as long exposure to the computer screen and blue lights, having headphones on too loud and too often, being around pervasive noise, or being exposed to concentrated air pollution, which can all trigger headaches, as well as soreness in the eyes, and ears.

If you find no immediate problems, you can also look deeper at any emotional and psychological events that might be continuously overstimulating your sensory system.

It can be beneficial to work with an analyst or therapist to see if there are any deeply embedded issues in your subconscious and any behavioral responses that find some resolve.

The more you investigate, observe, and inquire into what is happening in your physical body, the more you can form a picture of what might be impacting your subtle body, in particular your sensory and perception experiences.

Sign 2: You Feel Separated From Your Primal Instincts

“To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Our inner reasoning or a deep sense of knowing is related to your third eye energy center.

It is often called your guiding inner compass.

You know that feeling when:

• You walk down an empty street at night and it just feels eerie?
• Or something inside you not to take your regular highway route home?
• Or you decided to avoid going on a date because the man felt a little off?
• Or you turned down a promotion to take on a new career because the risk felt right?

The third eye energy center is associated with the areas of your body that allow you to see, hear and process information quickly. Our eyes are also areas where we most intimately connect with others.

Hence, this vibrant inner force is linked with our ability to perceive reality, relate, and survive. It tries to guide us out of dangerous and potentially life-threatening scenarios, and bring us into more prosperous, tranquil, and more pleasurable, and meaningful experiences.

When your third eye energy center is off-balance, you might feel like you are:

• Uncomfortable in a familiar environment
• Repeatedly making disastrous choices
• Feeling a strong aversion towards harmless things, and you don’t understand why
• Unable to make plans with your family and friends
• Slightly unhinged and disengaged with reality
• A little distrusting of those around you
• Losing a sense of meaning with your everyday experiences
• Destined to do something great but have no clue what it is
• Causing pain for others when you don’t intend to
• Feeling isolated and lonely
• Unable to see or empathize with the point of view of others

When you feel disconnected from your intuition, you might have the sense that you are lost in a sea of different points of view and perspectives.

It will be hard to understand what is going on with people. You might focus on someone and read their cues incorrectly.

It will also feel challenging to know how to respond to situations. You might be too focused on insignificant matters or worried about irrelevant issues and take some issues too personally.

Overall, when your third eye chakra is blocked, it will feel difficult to see the wider, clear, perspective of reality.

What Can You Do About It?

When you have a strong, tunnel-like vision on someone or a strong emotional or physical reaction that seems out of context, take a moment and watch what your thoughts, body, and breath are responding to.

• Firstly, is there anything to be afraid of or on guard with at that moment?
• Are you worrying about something that is happening to you or in front of you?
• If not, are you stressed about something in the future?
• Is your mind full of stress and negative emotions?

Try to notice if you are holding those sensations in any one area of your body.

• Can you ease that tension on your next exhalation?
• Try a few rounds of slow breathing?
• Does your breathing feel different? Is it more stressful, or more rapid than usual?

Try to find a calm place and ease your breath, focusing on a longer exhalation, and look into your thoughts a little deeper.

• Then scan your body again.
• Are there any areas of tension that arise when you think the negative thought?
• Relax, focus on your longer exhalation, and repeat.

The more you can try to relax and reprogram your physical-stress response, the more you will start to adjust it for moments of real duress and danger.

Sign 3: You feel extremely isolated from others

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

– Carl Gustav Jung

When you feel like you are a member of the grand family of life, you can more easily connect with a sense of universal unity.

Following your innate wisdom can make you feel like you are a vibrant and fully authentic human living a life of meaning.

Having an overall openness and sense of purpose also allows you to better connect with others, who are also especially open and receptive to sharing love, joy, and uplifting insights.

However, when your third eye center is out of balance, you might feel like:

• You have a hard time knowing who is close to you in your life
• You have difficulty intimately connecting with others
• You are trying to relate to people who want to focus on themselves
• Other people are causing you pain, hurt, and suffering from their selfishness.

This feeling of isolation can be incredibly hard to manage.

• You want to reach out but are unsure of how to do so.
• Interactions might feel strained and superficial.
• You might feel surrounded by people, yet still feel very detached and lonely.

But don’t shy away. Forming meaningful connections, a variety of relationships, expanding our perspectives through stimulating conversations are vital to our sense of happiness.

We need one another to challenge us to expand our worldview. And to snap us out of any limiting prejudices and mindsets, and misconceptions.

Even friction, pain, and conflict with friends and strangers can be our great teachers in life.

These uncomfortable experiences teach us lessons in patience, understanding, polarity, forgiveness, and acceptance.

We may also come to see that what we search for in others tends to mirror what we yearn to find ourselves.

So, if you are feeling particularly anxious, or down, or like you want to retreat into an introverted cave and stay there forever, it could be a sign that your third eye energy center is out of b

What Can You Do About It?

As much as it can feel difficult to be around others, try to take invitations out in small doses, and focus on short, one-to-one interactions.

Ask the person you are with a lot of questions. Try to find out what they are interested in, passionate about, thinking about, and doing with their day.

See if you can get into practicing, what the renewed hostage negotiator Chris Voss coins, tactical empathy.

By labeling how you observe the person in front of you to feel, repeating key phrases that your friend says, and mirroring his or her posture and gestures, you can immediately create a sense of security and connection.

Active listening can help the person you are speaking with to open up more and feel safe around you.

You also don’t have to share very much about yourself in the process.

With time, these small shifts in your communication skills can help you to form stronger connections with the people around you. And when you feel ready, you can open up as well.

The more you practice, the easier it gets to make more meaningful connections.

Sign 4: You find yourself stuck in harsh, judgmental thoughts

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

-William Shakespeare, As You Like It

• Do you ever feel misunderstood by others?
• Or like your beliefs are very different from those around you?
• Do you find that others don’t live up to the same set of morals and conduct that you would expect from yourself?
• Do you sometimes feel that you care more for others better than your friends and neighbors?

When we feel disconnected from our friends and neighbors, it makes it easier to judge and criticize each other. We start to form stronger opinions and think that we know how to live our lives better.

According to Psychology Today, our brains are wired to make quick judgments about others all the time. It’s necessary to do. It helps us to go through our day without spending too much mental energy trying to make sense of every single detail that we come across.

We often skim through all the information in front of us and only respond to the most immediate or dangerous threats first. From there we decide how to react to the interactions that we want to invest in.

If your third eye energy is off-balance, you might find that you are caught in some strong internal dialogues. These might include:

• Obsessively thinking very negatively about the people around you
• Ruminating over past encounters with your friends
• Thinking about how others should have acted differently around you
• Not being interested in trying to understand what the person in front of you is experiencing
• Operating in an overall, negative mode.
• Become unjustifiably and excessively judgmental
• Unable to lovingly accept another’s duality
• Thinking others should be more like you

As we fine-tune our awareness away from judging and towards observing others with love and patience, more conscious communication and interactions are certain to take place.

What Can You Do About It?

Something you can try when you get particularly caught in an obsessive, judgmental thought about someone else, is to ask yourself a series of four questions, which is a specific form of inquiry therapy pioneered by Byron Katie.

Finding a place where you can quietly let your heart speak to you ask yourself:

• Is what I’m thinking true? Try to explore this from your heart and less from your mind
• Can I be certain that it is true?
• How do I feel when I believe that thought to be true?
• Who would I be without that thought?

This small thought exercise can be an effective tool for inner inquiry. It may help bring to light any underlying beliefs that lie behind your persistent thoughts.

Other techniques like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping can also help with repeated, anxious thinking.

Sign 5: You have a feel disconnected from nature

“Going to the mountains is like going home.”

– John Muir

The third eye chakra is associated with the feeling of unity and wholeness.

Though nature is most certainly a force to be reckoned with, as it can cause great devastation and feel uncomfortable to be in, having moments where we can feel its power and beauty is vital for our primal nature and mental state.

Feeling fully connected with nature is your birthright. You are so very closely interwoven with it.

It can quickly remind us of an expansive majesty that we are a part of, and help to realign our sense of perspective and connection.

Living in the city, and spending all day and night indoors, and in between cars and public transportation, can keep us feeling extremely distant from the natural world. It’s easy to segregate yourself into a fabricated material world.

When you feel disconnected from the expressive force of nature, it can be a sign that your instincts and perception are off-center.

What Can You Do About It?

One of the easiest ways to tap into this sensation is to be outside, in an expansive landscape, or gazing at a horizon:

• Try looking up at the night sky, away from city lights.
• See if you can find an area away from buildings and human life where you can listen to the sounds of animals and birdsong.
• Try to access a natural body of water to bathe or swim in. Even floating on the surface, watching the sky from below can introduce a feeling of expansion and openness.
• Can you access a beach or river banks to walk along and enjoy being fully immersed in a natural space?
• Explore new paths or trails in parks or natural areas where you can walk and spend time simply watching what is around you, or try the Japanese art of  Forest Bathing.

How Can I Unblock, Shift, or Rebalance my Chakra System?

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

– Aristotle

After identifying some of the major reasons why your third eye energy center may be blocked, it’s important to look at why your perception and thinking became stuck and unclear.

You can start to ask yourself:

• What is driving and directing my choices?
• Do I feel any pressure to be a certain way to act in a particular manner?
• Is this pressure coming from within or from external factors?
• What unpleasant feelings and sensations get stirred up?
• Where do I feel this in my body?
• How do I handle these sensations?
• Do I distract myself from them? Or avoid them? Or transfer them onto others? Or take them as truth?
• What happens when I watch, feel, and let my emotions flow through my experience without acting upon them?

With more time, you can start to truly feel your emotions, settle, and act from a place of calm confidence. This helps you to reconnect with your authentic voice.

You will be better able to take control of the reins of your life and move onwards graciously, with conscious and intentional decisions.

Some of the ways you can get more energy flowing through any chakra blockages are with other practices of deep internal introspection.

This can be addressed with:

• Formal therapy
• Personal inquiry
• Intentional meditation practices
• Breathwork exercises
• Disciplined athletic training
• Sound healing
• Calm immersions in nature

You need to get in and start looking at your thoughts, beliefs, patterns, and behaviors. Try to understand where your fear lies, where your prejudices build-up, and what triggers you to become anxious, angry, and uneasy.

From there, we can meet these harsh attitudes and energy blockages with self-compassion.

As you get to know them more deeply, you can gain fresh perception again, and recalibrate your system.

This is a lifelong journey of learning and readjusting.

Remember that nothing happens quickly. This change will be a gentle and subtle shift deep within yourself, over a long period.

A Balanced Third Eye Energy Center

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

– William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

As the energy in your third eye chakra starts to flow freely and smoothly again, you may feel a change in your mindset, sense of intuition, and overall mindset. When this aspect is in balance, you will feel like you can:

• Look at the world optimistically
• Recall details well
• Have clear, insightful, and wise insights
• Sleep easily and wake up feeling refreshed
• Bee at ease with your decisions
• Embrace the diversity of conflicting opinions
• Feel more connected to nature, others, and yourself

As you connect more with your deep intuitive wisdom, whatever circumstances you face, you will be better able to cultivate and utilize a calm and clear attitude. You might come to feel more like a spiritually gifted person.

When the third eye center is balanced, life doesn’t seem particularly difficult or dramatic.

It can appear amusing, delightful, and exciting.

Looking deeper within will also inspire others around you to tune into a vision of the world filled with love, peace, and beauty.

It’s a process worth exploring.