Part 2 - On the rEvolution of Women: Throat Chakra & Thyroid Health
An Essay on Offloading Childhood Programming, Shadow Integration, & the Oracle
Surviving childhood we conform, we learn to be who we need to be, we get humiliated, we get left out, we get judged and we feel it. Alterations in the truth we were born with simply happen.
We give away our authenticity for a sense of belonging and we trade some needs for other more pressing needs. I.e., we trade our voice or boundaries or creative expression for love and acceptance. This is all normal and part of the developmental process.
However, we get stagnant and imbalanced when we do not continue the developmental process as adults. Just because growing up has happened and we are "adults" now, doesn't mean we have truly matured.
“Adulting” in modern America is different from becoming a true, initiated “adult.”
In the sense that you may be functioning while adulting , you might be doing so more from immature parts or coping mechanisms that are rooted in survival and fear rather than inner strength and vulneraiblity. In contrary to the ideal that adulting = high functioning, sometimes “initiated adulting” means that you actually “function less” in a toxic culture built upon superficial trends, extraction, productivity, and homogenization - all trumping creativity.
It is this inner strength, vulnerability, and inner rEvolution that occupies the terrain of the throat chakra.
As I will illustrate below, there is a certain loose order to things when we talk about healing: we must transform to evolve, i.e. keep developing. The first stage is trauma integration which includes inner resourcing and reparenting our “inner littles” still stuck in old programs. Later on comes more of the shadow integration piece - once we have shored up our extreme reactions and are able to self-regulate “well enough.”
It’s not exactly as linear as this, but I have found that the more trauma healing you do, the more resourced you are to confront and integrate shadow.
On Becoming Real
Shaman, teacher and author, Martin Prechtel talks about initiation as a form of becoming "real" - humans who have been initiated have unburdened themselves of the “programs” that directly or indirectly exiled their truth, their deep belly fire of authentic aliveness.
When we grow up, creative expression becomes more complex, but it never loses its core of playfulness. When we are adulting and creatively expressing we are playful, unapologetic, and we are in flow. Truly, the freeing of the throat chakra breeds nothing less than a spiritual felt sense of freedom and with freedom comes a natural impulse to play.
The evolved woman with a healthy throat chakra is articulate, fiercely loving, and she embodies her passion with discernment and tempering, while having access to her “outlaw” energies.
Women's “Outlaw" Energies
Your outlaw or shadow energies are non-negotiable when it comes to full inner cultivation of your voice, creative expression, and bringing your gifts and dreams into the world. (Outlaw energies from the book The Vital Spark by Lisa Marchiano)
Disagreeableness
Shrewdness
Trickster
Desire
Sexuality
Rage
Authority
Ruthlessness
It is beyond the scope of this article to go in depth into each one, but you can probably see how some of these direclty relate to getting into our authentic expression, leaving behind “being nice,” “staying naive,” “being in control,” “apathy,” “lack of eros,”, “boundary issues,” and “a passive timidity or cruelty.”
Moving from Self-Care to Self-Awareness to Self-Mastery
It is through INNER CULTIVATION that she has the capacity to know herself, to unpack the "programs" she runs versus the truth of who she is, what she wants, what she stands for and what she doesn't stand for.
Throat chakra work is warrior work and self-mastery.
It is nothing short of an inner rEvolution. At the beginning of our healing joureny, we practice and grow and learn to show up for + love ourselves (self-care) into self-inquiry through becoming aware of the subtle programs working behind the curtain of our conscious awareness (self-awareness), and even deeper, into the blood, sweat, and tears of getting to know our whole self, especially the darkness and pain we wish we didn't have to (self-mastery).
This. is. soulwork.
The Initiatory Passageway of Refinement
The neck/throat is a narrow channel and a bridge, and is a transformational pressurizing of energy, where we pass from one world to another. A bridge between head and heart, but also between girl and woman.
In Taoist physiology, we know that the throat energy center or upper sea of qi is understood to act as a crucial energy transformation point where the "raw" qi from the lower centers is refined into more subtle forms of energy.
“Refinement” is an aspect of the Metal Element - the lungs and large intestine. Just think of the stone carver, chipping away all the stone until a piece of beautiful sculpture is manifest. Or the metalsmith alchemizing metal into a sword or a delicate pendant. It is the same here. By the time we get to the throat chakra, we have traveled the serpentine path upward from the lower chakras (self-care) and their unrefined but powerful energies, traversing into the love and (self-awareness) of the heart chakra, and finally into the throat, third eye, and crown chakras - our portals of self-mastery.
Here in the Land of Voice, it is a place of refinement where the bigger instinctual impulses (from below) and life dreams (from above) get funneled into the authentic + practical + service + creation that can be experienced "in the flesh" - both metaphorically and literally.
The throat chakra allows us to manifest our instinctual desires and dreams seeds into the world where we can see it, feel it, hear it, and know it. And so can the world.
An INITIATED woman owns herself and thereby "convinces with her presence", an embodiment of the hills and valleys she has traversed in her inner soulwork. So even though she can speak her mind, she doesn't have to.
The Oracle
The definition of oracle is "message from a god expressed by divine inspiration through a priest or priestess, in answer to a human inquiry, usually respecting some future event." In Old French, oracle means "temple, house of prayer" and ōrare "to pray to, plead to, beseech".
This speaks to the powers of the old ways where divination through oracle were not only common, but also the oracle priestesses themselves held the most powerful positions in the ancient world. In today’s world, women are reclaiming their “inner priestess”, their oracular nature, and creative expression.
In Old Norse, oss is the root of oracle and means "mouth of a river." The back of the third eye chakra, which is actually in the occiput at the juncture of the throat chakra is called the mouth of the goddess. This is where our third eye and throat chakra come together, and you could say that this connection creates the Oracle.
The Oracle is also a channel (River) just like the throat is a channel, a narrow passageway from one realm to another. The paradox with the throat chakra is that it takes self-mastery as we discussed above. It takes getting to know oneself. It takes integration of shadow. Big time. And we often talk about this aspect of being able to be authentic and creatively express ourselves. But what we don't talk about is this paradox of getting “out of the way”, getting out of our ego and our own desires, and being the “empty vessel or hollow bone” as the Oracle. Because the actual Source of all creativity, is the Divine.
Oracle work - whether it be intuitive readings, shamanic healing, or producing art or craft - is accomplished by altered states of consciousness where we access something greater and more wise than our tiny ego selves.
So, when we cultivate our throat chakra, we are balancing getting to know ourselves, our authentic nature, integrating our shadow, but also learning how to get out of our own way, learning how to be a vessel and to receive information from a place beyond ourselves.
Want more?
Feeling called to cultivate your inner oracle, evolve your throat chakra, or heal your thyroid? Please reach out to cadie22@gmail.com or book a free consultation.