The Thing About the Throat Chakra
"Down. Down. Down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again." - Lewis Carroll
This might inadvertently be a story about nighttime acid reflux, so I apologize in advance!
I don’t think acid reflux is involved here. I feel reasonably confident to proceed, as this is intended to be a reflection on the throat chakra. However — it’s not unreasonable to mention to you that I gamble from time to time with late-night eating. Like last evening, for example. Anyway you’ve been warned.
Over many years and with intervals that lack any predictability (days, several months), I occasionally startle myself awake in the middle of the night totally convinced that I’ve just swallowed some kind of foreign object.
There is a general pattern to these episodes: I’m asleep for at least an hour, and just before my shocking jolt from bed, there is a moment in my dream where I believe that something – a thing – is sitting like a lump toward the back of my mouth. Sometimes it’s a metal object, sometimes it’s a comically large item, sometimes it’s a live animal – it’s been all of these and beyond. The thing slowly starts to slide backward. Then, with one final compulsive swallow, it’s totally gone! Down the rabbit hole! Pulled away from wonderland, my eyes open and my heart races.
I usually deal with this by bolting out of bed wheezing. Sometimes I’m doubled over the side of the bed, coughing. Sometimes I fully get out of bed to make strange throat clearing noises, ick! Other times I start gulping water, all in an attempt to dislodge the sunken “object.”
And how does my husband deal with this unexpected terror? Patiently. Thankfully!
We have a shorthand to refer to my nighttime theater – it’s aptly named the thing. So for example, while the thing is happening (Him) “Hey, I think you’re having the thing right now, you’re ok..” I turn in the direction of his voice and stop wheezing. “Oh,” is my reply, still about 40% unconscious. Back to sleep I go. The morning after the thing I’m excited to tell him about my dream (Me) “And guess what the thing was this time...a quarter!!”
There is never anything in my throat, in case that wasn’t clear.
I’ve checked online to see if other people experience anything like this. They do! I’ve read some pretty similar descriptions from other poor souls being deprived of their rest. The AI Overview cuts to the chase with headings like “undigested emotions”, “struggling to communicate”, “difficulty expressing yourself”, and “feeling overwhelmed”, among other things.
Wow…ok, so is that it?
I’ve been reading a little here and there on the seven chakras, or, the seven energy centers that are present in our bodies. I’ve found myself focusing on the throat chakra specifically.
Since the throat chakra is located between the heart and the third eye, its role is in connecting the energies of your heart with your head. It centers around communication, self-expression, processing emotions, creativity, and fears of being misunderstood. It’s also indicative of the ways we express ourselves openly, and how we might be holding ourselves back.
A surprising consequence of having blocked energy in the throat chakra is not just feeling unheard or misunderstood — it also affects our ability to listen. To ourselves, as well as to others.
One fun way to shake loose the energy of this chakra is to do any kind of humming, chanting, and singing that gets a good vibration going at the base of the throat.
I think about singers, with their constant vocalizing and sort of comic warmups. They might be the so-called divas of music, but I feel like at least some of that confidence is coming from the idea that their throat chakras are totally open and unimpeded. It’s literally their job to make their voices clear and heard! In all sincerity, it seems like the level of vibration happening inside their own heads is allowing their ears to be wide open, too – listening to themselves, listening to others, connecting their minds to their hearts, and sending those lyrics out. The message is beautifully and divinely received.
Instrumentalists, isn’t this why our teachers always wanted us to listen to singers? Didn’t they want us to find the most direct path to expressing a musical phrase by imitating how the human voice would do it? To play boldly and colorfully to the point? To communicate something very true and deeply felt? All of this is sound musical advice, and maybe also aspirational for living life.
In my younger student years, during my lessons, masterclasses, studio classes, and chamber music coachings, the feedback was often that I needed to play out. That my playing was very elegant and beautiful, but that I needed to project my sound out even more to the hypothetical audience in the distance. Can the audience hear me? is a question I’ve never stopped thinking about or working on in my cello playing. Producing a nice big sound is really great, but I’ve also decided: simply being clear on what I’m feeling inside, and doing my very best to express or manifest that on the outside, is the most satisfying goal in art making and in life.
As I develop my work in community engagement (the other, increasingly important part of my musical career) I’ve decided to name my own company Play Out. It’s a tribute to the necessity of self-expression, the need for communicating feelings and ideas, and listening to myself as well as others. I’m excited to see what develops.
A couple of months, ago during the thing, I sat up in bed but this time I didn’t freak out. I didn’t even pay attention to what the phantom object was, it didn’t matter. Instead, I said to myself: Throat chakra. This has gotta be the throat chakra. I calmly laid down again and reminded myself to work out tomorrow what was feeling blocked. Make some buzzy noises and shake out those thoughts. Talk it out with myself, or others. Write it down. Share. And, behold, this essay.