“Vibrating Into Full Expression”

This title from Anodea Judith’s “Opening the Seven Windows to the Soul”, captures the essence of Vissuda, the fifth chakra.

When you open yourself to love, you create from your heart. The energy rising from the lower chakras through a balanced heart center, becomes the power of creative expression at the throat chakra. Here, when in balance, you confidently speak your truth. You communicate clearly with a good sense of timing and you listen to what others have to say. You express yourself freely through speech, song, music or writing. You go with the flow vibrating into full expression.

However, this center is a very vulnerable spot for it is here that the inside comes out.

Vissuda, the chakra of sound, develops roughly between 7 and 12 years of age. As you begin to acquire communication skills, you also develop symbolic thinking and creative expression. But as you learn to express yourself, these new skills are often shut down by authoritarian parents, through excessive criticism or verbal abuse. To protect yourself, you learn how to lie or you shut up and become tone deaf as you stop listening. Free speech until the advent of the internet was a very relative thing, mostly conforming to rigid cultural parameters. Very few parents would listen to their children or encourage them to be themselves. Fear of being ridiculed, misunderstood or simply ignored may have been enough to suppress your voice.

The inability to freely express emotions and your truth, eventually shuts down this center and in the process inhibits conscious creation.

According to Anodea Judith, “…blocks in this chakra are pretty universal and often intensely charged”.

“The lower chakras must be functioning in order to give proper support to an open throat chakra. We need a good, solid ground in chakra one; we need to be in touch with our feelings in chakra two; willing to take our power in chakra three; and be emphatically connected to ourselves and to others in chakra four. If any of these are missing, then it is no surprise that chakra five would be affected.”

Blockages appear in the throat, ears, voice, neck, mouth, thyroid, shoulders and hands. When this center is deficient, it is difficult to verbalize feelings. A shy and introverted individual may have a small and weak voice. An excessive fourth chakra will appear as continuous talking as defense, the inability to listen or constant gossiping.

Eventually, when not addressed, sensations in these areas become hearing problems, constant colds and sore throat, locked jaws, laryngitis as well as gengivitis and other diseases of the mouth, ears and throat.

There are, however, many ways to balance this center.

Singing, chanting or storytelling are great healing practices for the fifth chakra as are writing and journaling. For an excessive chakra, practicing silence helps to balance it.

A simple yet effective way is by visualizing breath like a blue river flowing through your throat. The Ujjayi, or ocean breath brings awareness to the throat, expanding Prana into the thyroid area at the base of the neck.

Move with the sound of the breath. Allow the sound to vibrate in your body and then release with an open mouth through the Haaaaaaa. Experiment with sounds as in Brahmari or bee sound breath as well as mantras, feeling the vibrations in your throat, your ears and your upper chest.

In healing yoga, we use breath flow to loosen the shoulders and neck. Shoulder stretches, lifts and rolls release years of protective holdings in this center.  Asanas like Camel, Bridge, Shoulder Stand, Cobra, Fish and Plow work with this area. Mindful head rolls and gentle neck stretches bring awareness to sensations that are a result of withholding. Anything that impacts us strongly creates a vibration within us that needs to be somehow expressed, otherwise it contributes to the density and disharmony of the body.

And while it is important to say what we need to in order to keep this center in balance, this communication has rules – What you’re saying needs to be true, kind, necessary and timely. Good communication begins by listening and then speaking from the heart. Truth is a vibration that comes from the core and when it is spoken it is freeing and elevating.

Inspiration, from the Latin “inspirare”, to breathe into, is the energy of breath joining the heart and the mind and it is behind every form of divine expression. The neck is the physical bridge here. It is only when this center is in balance that you can live creatively and be fully alive.