The Throat Chakra: Using your Voice
Throat Chakra Healing: How to Unblock for Better Health
On Sunday I briefly mentioned the chakra system when I was talking about my personal yoga practice. The human body has seven major chakras starting with the base, or root chakra, ending at the top of the head with the crown chakra. Although I have worked with all of these chakras during yoga, meditation and energy healings, the throat chakra or the chakra located at the center of the throat is the chakra that I had serious challenges during the last few years of my life. This is the chakra associated with communication and speaking your inner truth and it was largely blocked for me until recently.
As I mentioned in my previous post, you can not always control what happens to you but you can control how you respond and that sitting around complaining isn’t going to do anything. If any of you have seen my LinkedIn profile in the last two months you may be thinking “sure looks like she is doing a lot of complaining.” I am here to tell you that speaking your truth and standing up for yourself is part of the healing process . After being dismissed by some of my peers and bullied by “friends”, old-coworkers, and old bosses, I felt what it was really like to have a closed or blocked throat chakra.
A closed throat chakra, at least for me, felt like I was permanently being choked and I felt like my voice would never be heard. When the throat chakra is closed, it feels like there is a ton of excess energy in the body and that it has nowhere to go. It is kind of like the opening of a dam, all of the water accumulates at the opening of the dam if the dam is closed but if it is open, it will flow freely to its next destination. Without the dam opened, the water has no were to go, causing more and more water to build up until the dam can not hold it, eventually causing it to burst. This happened to a few times. When my throat chakra was closed, it felt like I was drowning and it felt like there was something inside of me that wanted out . I kept my mouth shut for as long as I could about what happened to me because truthfully, it didn’t seem like anyone around me really cared and I didn’t want to bring anyone down. I was also concerned about some of my other old coworkers and how it would effect them; there are some really amazing people there who are doing some amazing things and I didn’t want that to be overshadowed. The longer I kept my mouth shut about what had happened, the more misunderstood I started to feel but at the same time, part of the reason I didn’t talk was in fact because I was constantly being misunderstood, projected on, or totally shut out by people I had trusted.
After over a year of deliberation on trying to figure out what to do, I knew that speaking out in a big way was the only answer given my experiences in the past with some of these people. I reported what happened to me to HR and other “leaders” in the building and I was shut out and dismissed. No wonder the culture of silence still runs rampant in ALL of hockey today. I am speaking out because it is not only the right thing for me to do personally but because it is the right thing to do on a bigger scale. Hockey has a major problem with rape, racism, bullying, misogyny, and meangirls and it will only change when people speak up for what is right even it it means that you will be isolated and ostracized.
My post on Sunday will highlight the dark realities of the hockey culture and why I think it is important that these issues are continuously brought to light.
