Spring Cleaning the Throat Chakra
/"The words you speak become the house you live in”
- Hafiz
The source of our words is where their power lies. This is the reason that actions speak louder.
In this 7 minute practice, use breath, sound, visualization and movement to re-open the channel between your throat and the Earth so that your words come from a place of grounded authenticity.
This video practice is an intro to Mindful Bootcamp Class, join us LIVE each week as we create a new world from the inside out
As humans, we are blessed with the magic super power of having an ego-mind (ahamkara), which allows us to have multiple layers of experience. This quality is certainly unique and has been historically heralded as the pinnacle of civilization by patriarchal culture. But we know, and all spiritual traditions acknowledge, that this is also the root of most, if not all, of our personal and collective problems.
This fancy tool we know as our “mind” juggles between actual truth (experienced as raw information from fives external senses as well as our internal felt, intuitive sense), our perception of the truth (as limited by our experience, knowledge and cultural programming) and our ego’s need to feel safe and in control, which may require we frame our words in a specific way, both consciously and/or unconsciously, in order to achieve a specific result. This is sometimes called selective memory, lying or manipulation, though, thanks to the delusion of the ego, we don’t always think of it that way.
Compounded by the fact that many of us are trained out of freely expressing ourselves as children, many of us have a sticky energetic relationship between our truth and our words.
These throat chakra issues lie a spectrum anywhere between not speaking your truth for fear of negative consequences or outright lying to get ahead. They could also manifest as temporary or chronic illness in the throat region.
As humans, speech is more complicated than it seems!
Nature as Ultimate Truth
The Earth doesn’t use human language and yet, it’s impossible to not believe her. Rain or shine, summer or winter, she is always present. She doesn’t pretend to be something she isn’t or make promises she can’t keep. She doesn’t boast or berate and she doesn’t pick sides.
There is no intermediary between nature’s direct expression as pure life-force, sometimes called God, Goddess, Mystery, Shiva, Brahman, Adonai, Love, etc. Of course, these are all just words… simply arrows pointing towards an unspeakable truth.
What if all of your words came from a space of deep truth, ultimate authority and inner connection?
In other words, what if your speech emanated directly from the source of all life- the Earth?
Matrika Shakti: Master Marionette
One sanskrit word for speech is matrika shakti, fascinatingly translated as the "little mothers." The implication is that our words are powerful, they birth our reality.
The Yogic tradition warns us that if we merely speak from our mind, we can get “played” by the Goddess Matrika Shakti. If we are only living from the shoulders upward, she can team up with the ego-mind to toy with the truth and full expression of our speech, playing us like a marionette
However, if our root, our heart and our throat align, nourished by the primary source of life-force on our planet- the Earth- all the liberating potency of Matrika Shakti can be ours. When we clear blocks to this organic flow of energy, we can speak from truth as truth with no need for ego-mind’s mediation and our words will carry more weight and authenticity.
Out of Our Head and Into Our Root
If we are connected to our body and the earth herself, the ego-mind is less likely to take the lead because our nervous system is sending the body-mind ongoing signals of safety. The ego is less on-edge. As the genius comedian Robin Williams, who performed using his super power of speech in front of millions of people, said “when we’re relaxed we do everything better.”
“Conscious movement brings us out of our head and back into our heart and our root, reconnecting us with our animal body and its source, the earth.”
When we are connected to our body and the earth, our speech is more likely to reflect truth and less likely to express egoic delusion.
Healing Beyond Words
Our central channel, an energetic portal from the crown of the head to the perineum, ferries prana from both the heavens and the earth, carrying the simple, unmeditated vibration of nature or creation (aka truth).
When the complexities of being a human with a mind cause us to compromise between the actual truth of our experience and how we are encouraged or allowed to express or suppress that truth, especially as children, emotional wounding and energetic blocks interrupt our natural flow of vitality along the central channel, cutting off the connection between our root, the earth, our heart and the throat.
We can heal these obstructions to our natural vitality but it does require we go beyond words.
We can’t fix the problem with the framework that created the problem. To borrow a genius phase from Audre Lorde brilliant social justice work “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Conscious movement brings us out of our head and back into our heart and our root, reconnecting us with our animal body and its source, the earth.
Our embodiment practice is one of the most fertile playgrounds for spring cleaning the throat chakra and reconnecting to our organic flow of life force.
May all of our words be expressions of a deep inner connection with source.
Let us know how that went for you in the comments below and/or reflect on the following questions:
Do you notice that when you live from the shoulder’s upward you experience more conflict with yourself and others?
Do you notice that when you are connected to your body and nature you tend to have less inner and outer conflict?