The Crown Chakra Explained: How to Unlock Your Spiritual Potential

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Highlights: The crown chakra is your gateway to higher consciousness. Discover how to open your seventh chakra to reach your spiritual potential.
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The crown chakra is your ultimate connection to cosmic consciousness. It links you to the divine energy that creates everything in the Universe. 

The last (but definitely not the least) chakra is a great integrator, uniting all seven energy centers with their individual qualities.

Opening this energy center is also essential to mastering manifestation. It’s through the crown that you receive insights and inspiration beyond the known.

What Is the Crown Chakra?

The crown chakra, or Sahasrara, is the seventh chakra in the seven-chakra system. It’s all about spiritual awakening, enlightenment, and self-transcendence.

Anodea Judith, a leading chakra expert and trainer of Mindvalley’s Chakra Healing Quest, describes it as a portal to higher states of consciousness. It’s here that you can experience a sense of unity with the divine and access spiritual insights. And the lower chakras are the stepping stones to getting there.

The crown chakra, which represents the center of consciousness itself, is the consciousness that we all possess. — @judithwosi Click To Tweet

She explains that the crown chakra is about questioning what you’ve been taught about the world and creating your own worldview—your authentic understanding of the bigger picture and interconnectedness of all things.

So when this energy center is balanced and open, you experience mystical oneness with all there is through expanded consciousness.

Chakra system showing all seven chakras, including the crown chakra

Where is the crown chakra located?

It is located at the top of the head (at the crown of the skull), connecting you with a higher power. So when it’s balanced and open, cosmic energy flows freely throughout the body and facilitates your infinite spiritual growth. 

What color is the crown chakra?

The seventh chakra is associated with the color violet. This hue corresponds to the seventh color in the visible light spectrum with the shortest wavelength of around 380 nanometers.

It represents different things from different worldly views:

  • In ancient Hindu tradition, the color violet represents the culmination of a person’s being, place, and time. It is the color of cosmic awareness and cosmic consciousness.
  • In color psychology, it’s also linked to spirituality, higher consciousness, creativity, and imagination. 

So violet is considered a powerful and transformative color that can help you connect with your higher self and tap into your inner wisdom and creativity.

Also, in other traditions, Sahasrara is associated with white, gold, or silver, the colors of oneness and spirituality.

The crown chakra symbol

Associated with Hindu tradition, the symbol for the Sahasrara is represented by thousands of multi-colored petals arranged in twenty layers, each of which has fifty petals. This symbol also features a golden pericarp with a circular and a downward pointing triangle.

It represents the infinite nature of this energy center, purity, spiritual unfoldment, and a transcendent state of consciousness. 

Symptoms of Blocked Crown Chakra

When the seventh chakra is unbalanced, most individuals will feel like they have become spiritually disconnected, as if they are living a life without a higher purpose or direction. Various diseases and physical ailments may surface continually without an obvious cause or a root trigger.

According to Anodea, when the crown chakra is blocked, you are:

  • Overly anchored in the mundane world,
  • Attached to the material possessions,
  • Spiritually skeptical,
  • Close-minded to learning new things, and
  • Judgemental.

It may also lead to feeling incomplete or lost in life without a purpose, disconnected from your body and spirit, and living in constant worry, headaches, and mental depression. 

How to Open the Crown Chakra

The opening of the crown chakra allows you to obtain a view of the “bigger picture,” which is extremely important, especially in a state of fear or confusion. 

An open crown chakra is your ultimate access to the utmost clarity and enlightened wisdom. On top of that, it’s a gateway to your cosmic self—universal consciousness and intelligence. 

Here are five methods to open this gateway:

1. Chakra meditation

According to Anodea, your crown chakra is about greater awareness—the divine mind that’s aware of you and your consciousness. So chakra meditation connects you to that greater wisdom through the symbol of the crown chakra. 

Here’s how to meditate on the crown chakra:

  • Imagine that there’s a greater awareness that’s looking at you, the divine mind, a universal intelligence, and a greater wisdom that’s aware of you and your consciousness.
  • Recognize that you are aware of this greater consciousness as well.
  • As you prepare to conclude this, draw this greater awareness around you like a thousand-petal lotus, the symbol of your crown chakra.
  • Imagine that awareness is holding you the way a mother holds a child. That awareness is guiding you, understanding you, and loving you, and it’s always there around you.
  • Imagine those thousand petals holding you in a loving embrace.
  • And as it does, your awareness remains in the exact center of that lotus, the center of your crown chakra.
  • Hold that awareness for a while.

Learn more: A Beginner’s Guide to Chakra Meditation

2. Practice Isha Kriya

Isha Kriya is a spiritual practice taught by Sadhguru, Indian yogi guru and trainer of Mindvalley’s A Yogi’s Guide to Joy Quest. The essence of this powerful process is to remind yourself that you aren’t the body, and you aren’t even the mind.

You can do it during the day as often as you remember or practice it as a guided meditation:

Isha Kriya: A Guided Meditation for Health and Wellbeing | 15-Minutes

3. Let go of attachments

The main challenge for this energy center is attachment. Some of them are necessary for commitments, but others keep you from surrendering to something greater than your material life.

Here is the list of common attachments:

  • People
  • Places
  • Possessions
  • Your home
  • Money
  • Looking good (physically)
  • Pleasure
  • Self-gratification
  • Power
  • Being right
  • Staying young
  • What other people think
  • Knowing the answers
  • Suffering
  • Freedom,
  • Spiritual practice
  • Success
  • The past
  • The future

As you release your attachments, you’re letting go and going into surrender.

4. Practice yoga nidra

Yoga nidra is a potent practice that allows you to access deeper levels of consciousness and connect with your inner self. 

How does it work? It promotes deep relaxation and conscious awareness, putting you in an altered state that you can utilize to connect with your inner self and tap into the divine energy of the crown chakra.

According to Anodea, Savasana is the best yoga posture to learn how to surrender, and yoga nidra fully utilizes this posture.

5. Sound healing

Sound healing is a holistic therapy based on the scientific idea that everything in the Universe is made of energy that vibrates at different frequencies. So it utilizes sound vibrations to promote healing and balance in the body, mind, and spirit, including your chakras.

The frequency that corresponds to the crown chakra is 963 Hz. This frequency activates the crown chakra and promotes higher spiritual development, according to studies.

You can listen to music that utilizes this frequency or play crystal singing bowls or tuning forks attuned to 963 Hz.

Learn more: Everything You Need to Know About Sound Healing

6. Chakra stones

Different crystals vibrate at different frequencies, and chakra stones are the crystals whose vibrational rates correspond to those of the chakras.

When choosing a crystal for the crown chakra, there are two ways to go about it:

  1. Pick up violet crystals, such as amethyst, purple garnet, purple fluorite, or charoite.
  2. Choose crystals that have high frequencies, such as Herkimer diamond, clear quartz, selenite, and moldavite.

While there are no scientific studies on the efficacy of crystal healing, this type of treatment may induce a placebo effect in a patient who receives it, according to this research.

7. Transcend the ego

Anodea explains in her Mindvalley Quest that the last two chakras, the third eye and the crown chakra, are transpersonal energy centers. It means that they go beyond your personality, transcending your personal stories and traumas.

Call it ego death or ego transcendence, it’s essential for developing a higher mind that doesn’t dwell on the illusion of separation. Instead, it sees the interconnectedness of everything and oneness with the divine.

Learn more: Ego Death – All You Need to Know About It, According to Mindvalley’s Spirituality Trainers

Anodea Judith
Anodea Judith, trainer of Mindvalley’s Chakra Healing Quest

Integrating the Divine Into a Mundane Life

Opening and balancing the crown chakra is paramount for your spiritual development, as it connects you to the ultimate ground of all beings. But most importantly, it’s not just about this spiritual connection but about integrating that connection into daily life. 

And this integration process starts with the opening and balancing of all seven chakras.

If you aspire to embark on a chakra healing journey, Chakra Healing Quest with Anodea Judith is for you.

The thing is, this Quest has helped thousands of people around the world heal their minds, bodies, and spirits, with over 18,000 success stories. You can take inspiration from Stephanie Rank, a student of the program, who says, “I now pay much more attention to what’s going on in my life and connect it much more with the chakra work.”

And the best part is that you can sample classes from this quest by unlocking your free access. Welcome in.


Featured image generated on Midjourney.

Watch the First Lesson of the Quest

Anodea Judith Ph.D., One of the Modern World’s Most Revered Energy Workers, Teaches Chakra Healing

Discover how to heal and align your seven chakras to elevate your life and bring your boldest dreams into realityGet started for free

Irina Yugay

Irina Yugay

As a former self-development and self-transcendence writer at Mindvalley, Irina uses words to transpire empowering ideas, transcendental feelings, and omniversal values. She's also an ascension coach who helps her clients grow their spiritual awareness and actualize their true nature. With a deep empirical understanding of the spiritual journey, Irina shares her insights and experiences with the readers to inspire them to transcend their limiting beliefs and achieve higher states of consciousness.
Written by

Irina Yugay

As a former self-development and self-transcendence writer at Mindvalley, Irina uses words to transpire empowering ideas, transcendental feelings, and omniversal values. She's also an ascension coach who helps her clients grow their spiritual awareness and actualize their true nature. With a deep empirical understanding of the spiritual journey, Irina shares her insights and experiences with the readers to inspire them to transcend their limiting beliefs and achieve higher states of consciousness.
Expertise by

Author of Mindvalley’s Chakra Healing. Anodea Judith, PhD. is a master manifestor, whose writings and teachings are followed throughout the world. She is the author of 9 books on chakras, psychology, yoga, social change, and manifestation, which have been translated into 28 languages.

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Mindvalley is committed to providing reliable and trustworthy content. 

We rely heavily on evidence-based sources, including peer-reviewed studies and insights from recognized experts in various personal growth fields. Our goal is to keep the information we share both current and factual. 

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To learn more about our dedication to reliable reporting, you can read our detailed editorial standards.