Control. Speaking your truth. Communicating non-violently.
How has 2020 challenged you on these fronts? How has your neck registered and held those energies?
Add looking down into a small, seemingly inescapable device...does anyone need some therapeutic yoga for their neck right now?
I'll be teaching a workshop on Saturday December 5 on this topic, and (thank you quarantine) it will be recorded for those that can't make it live, and for anyone registered who wants a recording for later use.
The neck houses the 5th chakra. Imagine the most beautiful blue sky. That healing color bathes this vulnerable chakra. Every time we "stick our neck out," have someone "breathing down our neck" or feel like we're "up to our neck in something," we describe vulnerability, anxiety or overwhelm. Often we will gladly keep our mouths shut to avoid feeling this way.
So in order to grow into the ability to speak our truth, we actually have to know how we feel, and learn to value long-buried instincts. This connects the throat chakra to the sacrum, the second chakra. So students in this workshop might find quite a bit of release for their sacral area once they learn how to unlock and free the neck.
The 5th chakra is also associated with the master skill of Listening. Could we use our yoga practice to disentangle listening from control, from the fight or flight response? The social justice movements that are finally being heard in deeper ways because of quarantine challenge us to listen without the need to respond, defend, or be right.
And let's feel what happens in the throat, neck and shoulders when we attempt to listen to our fellow citizens of the opposite political party. Could we practice a nuanced, sophisticated listening to the needs, fears and concerns behind words that immediately trigger us or turn us off? Is it possible to love one another and to know that we each love our children and want the best for our families?
The throat is the narrow conduit between the heart and the head, and it's easy to burn that bridge of connection over and over again. The throat is the war-torn front line claimed equally by our secrets, our irrational unspoken fears, our perfected arguments, and the lonely but generous and forgiving heart.
Eventually and inevitably Yoga gives us the space and courage for our truth to scour our throats clean while it also demands that we confront our persistent and dangerous demons.
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