Category Archives: Mindfulness

6th and 7th chakraThird Eye & Crown Chakra Yoga: Intuition, Awareness, and What Remains When We Let Go

Completing the Chakra Journey: The 6th and 7th Chakras

After a brief hiatus, I wanted to return and complete our chakra series by reflecting on our most recent group, which focused on the 6th chakra (third eye) and 7th chakra (crown).

The yoga sequence for this class was intentionally structured in two parts. We began with a flowing practice designed to open all chakras, allowing energy to move freely through the body. From there, we shifted into a slower, more focused practice that brought attention to the third eye and concluded with restorative postures and meditation.

Clearing the Path to Intuition

The intention of this practice was simple but profound:
to reduce physical and mental distractions so that intuition can emerge more clearly.

Stress, tension, and unprocessed emotion often act as “blockages” in the body. When energy cannot flow freely, it becomes difficult to access inner wisdom or clarity. By first tending to the body, we create the conditions necessary to quiet the mind and begin discerning what truly matters.

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) terms, this is the space where we reconnect with our core values — the things that give our lives meaning beyond productivity or obligation. When the nervous system settles, clarity often follows. From that clarity, true rest and restoration become possible.

Mantras for the Upper Chakras

During this practice, we worked with two simple mantras:

  • “I am connected.”
  • “I rest in awareness.”

These phrases supported a shift away from doing and toward being — a theme that carried into our closing meditation.

What Remains When Nothing Needs to Be Done?

We ended with a final reflective prompt:

“What remains when nothing needs to be done?”

This question often brings up discomfort for many people. When the distractions fall away, clients sometimes notice feelings of anxiety, emptiness, or sadness — especially if much of their life feels superficial or disconnected from passion or purpose.

This is where the wisdom of the upper chakras becomes especially relevant.

What remains is awareness.
What remains is the experience of witnessing life — seeing, sensing, and participating in the world as it unfolds.
What remains is connection.

On a broader level, this can include a sense of cosmic connection — the understanding that we are part of something vast and interconnected. We share this planet together. We come from the earth and, eventually, return to it. On an even larger scale, we are part of the universe itself — quite literally stardust.

For some, this realization brings deep peace and belonging.

When Cosmic Connection Feels Like Too Much

For others, however, focusing on the crown chakra can initially feel isolating rather than comforting. If physical or emotional connection is lacking, cosmic connection may feel distant or hollow.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this level aligns with self-actualization. But self-actualization cannot be sustained without the layers beneath it.

This is where the third eye chakra invites us to see clearly:

  • to notice where community already exists,
  • to recognize opportunities for connection,
  • or to acknowledge that we may need to actively build community through small, intentional steps.

Working Up — and Down — the Chakras

If clarity or connection still feels blocked, it’s often helpful to move downward through the chakras rather than pushing forward:

  • 5th chakra (throat):
    Do boundaries or unmet needs need to be voiced?
  • 4th chakra (heart):
    Is there work to do around self-compassion, self-talk, or allowing love in?
  • 3rd chakra (solar plexus):
    Is it time to build momentum, confidence, or take action toward what you want?
  • 2nd chakra (sacral):
    Are emotions asking for attention, expression, or understanding?
  • 1st chakra (root):
    Is there a need for grounding, safety, and reassurance — the reminder that you have the right to be here and to feel secure?

Self-actualization is not a straight upward climb. More often, it requires moving up and down, listening carefully to where energy feels blocked, and meeting ourselves there with patience.

Integration, Not Perfection

All of these layers are interconnected. To access higher awareness, we often must tend to foundational needs first. And as those foundations strengthen, clarity and meaning naturally rise again.


Continue the Practice

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Heart Chakra Yoga: How We Protect Our Heart Through Posture and Emotional Defenses


The Protected Heart: How We Guard Ourselves Physically and Emotionally

Many of us protect our heart without even realizing it.

We protect the heart physically through posture.
We protect emotionally through distance or defensiveness.
We protect psychologically through busyness, humor, or emotional armor.

These protective patterns develop for good reasons — survival, loss, disappointment — but over time they can begin to restrict not just emotional connection, but physical wellbeing as well.

In heart chakra yoga, the heart center (Anahata) becomes a helpful lens for understanding this pattern. Whether you view chakras as scientific, symbolic, psychological, or spiritual, the heart chakra represents our capacity for connection, compassion, vulnerability, and breath.

When the heart becomes overly protected, we may stay safe —
but we stop fully living.


How Posture Physically Protects the Heart

Take a moment to check your posture.

Are your shoulders rounding forward?
Is your upper back slightly hunched?
Is your chest collapsed inward?

This posture is extremely common in modern life — phones, driving, stress, emotional fatigue — all gradually pull the body into a protective shape.

The physical effects of closed posture:

  • Limits lung expansion
  • Restricts deep breathing
  • Shortens chest muscles
  • Weakens upper-back muscles
  • Increases neck and shoulder tension

The emotional impact:

The body is always sending messages to the nervous system.

A collapsed chest communicates defense.
A shallow breath communicates threat.
A braced body communicates unsafety.

Over time, the nervous system begins to associate safety with contraction rather than openness.


Emotional Defenses Are Learned Body Patterns

Just as the body adopts protective posture, the heart develops protective behavior.

Common emotional heart protection looks like:

  • Emotional distancing
  • Hyper-independence
  • Avoiding closeness
  • Expecting disappointment
  • Staying busy to avoid feeling

These patterns are not flaws — they are adaptations.

But what once kept us safe can eventually limit our relationships, emotional wellbeing, and even our physical health.


The Cost of Emotional and Physical Guarding

When the heart chakra remains chronically defended, many people experience:

  • Emotional numbness or detachment
  • Chronic shoulder and neck pain
  • Shallow breathing
  • Loneliness even in relationships
  • Fatigue that doesn’t resolve with rest

The body and emotional system operate together.

When one closes, the other follows.


Opening the Heart Chakra Does NOT Mean Losing Boundaries

Heart chakra healing does not mean being naive, passive, or exposed.

A balanced heart chakra knows when to open and when to protect appropriately.

Opening the heart means:

  • Allowing connection where it is safe
  • Softening when guardedness is no longer helpful
  • Choosing vulnerability intentionally

Health is not about staying open all the time.
It is about knowing when to soften and when to strengthen.


How Heart Chakra Yoga Supports Emotional Healing

Heart-opening yoga poses gently stretch the chest, shoulders, and upper spine. But more importantly, they communicate safety to the nervous system.

Practicing heart chakra yoga can help:

  • Improve breathing
  • Reduce emotional tightness
  • Increase body awareness
  • Support emotional resilience
  • Encourage vulnerability in safe ways

When the posture opens, the nervous system learns a new experience:

It is safe to breathe.
It is safe to soften.
It is safe to feel.


Emotional Balance Requires Both Protection and Openness

True heart healing does not come from extremes.

We live best not from:

  • a closed heart
  • or a recklessly open heart

But from a heart that is regulated, aware, and responsive.

A balanced heart chakra allows:

  • connection without collapse
  • vulnerability without overwhelm
  • compassion without depletion

Heart Chakra Yoga Sequence (Free Download)

This week’s Heart Chakra Yoga Sequence focuses on gentle backbends, chest expansion, and breath awareness — designed not to force openness, but to invite it slowly.

If your chest feels tight…
If your breath feels shallow…
If your heart feels tired…

This practice is for you.

👉 Sign up for our newsletter this week to receive a free Heart Chakra Yoga Sequence. (This will be uploaded to Members Bonus Content library area as well this week.)

Grounded for Peace Newsletter



Continue Your Heart Healing Journey

If you’d like guided practices, audio meditations, journaling exercises, and nervous-system-informed tools, you’re invited into The Grounded Path — a growing library for healing, reflection, and emotional balance.

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Integrating Chakra Work Into Clinical Yoga Therapy

Exploring a Mind–Body Lens for Mental and Physical Wellness

Since completing my yoga therapist training, I’ve been slowly weaving more yogic therapeutic elements into my clinical counseling practice. One of the most helpful bridges between traditional mental-health models and yoga therapy has been using the chakra system as a lens for understanding health, behavior, and emotional patterns.

Whether a client approaches chakras and “energy medicine” literally or metaphorically, the framework gives them another way of exploring what’s happening in their body and mind—and often opens new pathways for healing.


How Chakra Inquiry Supports Clinical Work

A simple example: a client arrives feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Instead of diving straight into cognitive or behavioral interventions, we might do a brief check-in with each chakra to identify what feels “off” or unbalanced.

If we notice root-chakra themes—such as feeling unsafe, untethered, or unstable—we would work with grounding practices.
The Root Chakra (Muladhara) relates to:

  • Safety and survival
  • A sense of belonging and the right to exist
  • Grounding, centering, and stability
  • The earth element

Because the client is experiencing the opposite of these qualities, our work might include:

  • Breathwork with slow, steady rhythms
  • Grounding postures and simple yoga sequences
  • Connection with nature (walking, sitting on the earth, sensory awareness)
  • Steady, rhythmic music—like a heartbeat
  • Mantras or self-talk such as “I am safe. I have a right to be here.”

These interventions mimic many of the skills we use in counseling—particularly mindfulness practices from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). First, we help the client step back and regulate. Then, with clearer awareness, they can move toward the chakra’s core value—like security, grounding, or stability—and take committed action.


Chakras as a Lens for Physical Concerns

The chakra model is just as useful for physical symptoms.

For example, someone experiencing lower-back pain may benefit from practices associated with the root chakra. By focusing on grounding and opening through yoga postures, we help release tension and bring awareness to both the physical and emotional layers of discomfort.

Root-supporting postures might include:

  • Mountain Pose
  • Bridge Pose
  • Child’s Pose

These movements lengthen, strengthen, and create spaciousness in the low back while reinforcing feelings of stability.

To help with pain, other root chakra focused practices like 3 part breathing or grounding in nature can be used to help a person take a step back and not “fuse” or panic with the pain but hold space for the pain so it can provide them feedback on what their body needs.


This Week’s Root Chakra Group Sequence

We launched our chakra group this week at the office—starting, of course, with Chakra One: Root (Muladhara). Below is the grounding sequence we practiced together.


🌿 Gentle Rooting Flow

  1. Mountain Pose (Tadasana) — Feel the soles of your feet; establish your root.
  2. Chair Pose (Utkatasana) — Build strength and stability.
  3. Tree Pose (Vrksasana), Right — Explore balance and grounding.
  4. Chair Pose
  5. Tree Pose, Left
  6. Goddess Squat (Utkata Konasana) — Inner strength, willpower, courage.
  7. Wide-Leg Forward Fold
  8. Return to Mountain, then Forward Fold, step back to Tabletop.
  9. Child’s Pose (Balasana) — Safety, surrender, breath into the back body.
  10. Cat/Cow
  11. Thread the Needle, Right
  12. Thread the Needle, Left
  13. Pigeon Pose (Kapotasana), Right
  14. Transition to Fire Logs Pose (Agnistambhasana)
  15. Move into Cow Face Pose (Gomukhasana)
  16. Shift into a gentle backbend, lifting the pelvis and looking behind.
  17. Butterfly Pose, then repeat steps 13–16 on the left side.
  18. Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana) or Supported Bridge
  19. Legs Up the Wall (Viparita Karani) — Grounded rest; nervous-system reset.

For an audio guide with the above practice and playlist used for the group today, subscribe here to our bonus content.