Theme: I Talk
Acknowledging our impacts
Chapter 4: Creativity & Breathing
When the throat chakra is out of balance, the way we are trying to present ourselves is not in alignment with who we are, and in extreme cases we don’t feel connected to our purpose or a will to live. Building up a safe foundation to the throat chakra level is a huge achievement. But in getting to this step we look in the mirror and realize that it was one thing to be able to communicate, and want to express ourselves, and maybe have big moments of inspiration that we want to share, but the balancing battling features that come with these traits are big too: fear of being alive; guilt that our physical chakra needs are met but we don’t feel genuine or fulfilled yet; fear that our life’s purpose isn’t big enough, or worthy, that the next levels will be too hard, that maybe we have no purpose at all and that we’ll be exposed as empty or fake to everyone if we keep trying. These feelings are an intense hurdle when we’ve never seen the other side. What if we keep going and balancing gets harder? It will. What if we give it our best and fail? That will happen a lot too.
How do we keep going? Do we recede back to the safety of the lower chakras, call it good enough, and tell ourselves never to look up again, never to look within again, never try to be more? Just maintain something that looks good enough on the outside?
Or do we stop for a moment, reassess our feelings like an outside observer, and remember what we learned in the compassion chapter about effort and rest, effort and rest. Ocean waves work their way up to crash on the beach, and then glide back to the sea. Over and over. Sit still for a moment and just breathe in all the potential energy around you. Take a deep breath. Every idea anyone could ever have, every action you could ever make is out there. Hold them in and let them crash through you. Breathe out hard. Empty your lungs. Press out the fear and the guilt to make room for all of the potential that your next breath could hold for you. The ocean tides going out take a little bit of the shore with them, and tides coming in leave new bits from the mysterious ocean behind. A wave has no guilt or fear. It takes only what it has to, and leaves something new and beautiful and broken and raw behind for everyone to see. And then repeats. Each time a little different than the last.
Breathing connects your insides to the outside for different purposes. To live. To make sound. Either way you take in your surroundings, make them a part of yourself, oxygen for your bloodstream, and breathe out and leave something else in its place. Just like we learned in the energy chapter: nothing is truly created or destroyed. But we alter everything around us just by existing. Even in death our nutrients are returned to the earth and a new plant or animal uses them to sustain life and pass it on.
It’s a bit telling which level of chakra is blocked when it feels impossible to move to the next chapter without paralyzing procrastination and imposter syndrome. Especially when the chapter is about creativity and breathing; both of which I feel like I’m pretty good at. And both of these are innate human functions in everyone that we may not always notice we’re doing. They are our body’s way of processing our surroundings, and releasing a part of ourselves, growing and continuing on.
With the throat chakra in alignment, you feel the will to live in every breath. You have more ideas than time in each day. You see so much missing from the world around us, and you feel the answers buzzing inside you waiting to crash out. You may hit some walls, but you pull back and then go, and go again. You know your actions are authentic because you listened quietly and are communicating with your nervous inner child’s voice. You respect it and speak out on its behalf. You listen to your inspiration and follow your dreams. You take a leap to create something broken and raw and beautiful to leave behind.
Jet Tries 