I was reading my daily inspiration this morning, and came across this line: “The more we stuff between our heart and our daily experience, the more we have to work through to feel life directly.” The topic was to ex-press so we don’t de-press.
I recently met up with an old friend. While we were out, I was asking some of the general kinds of questions you might ask another person you hadn’t seen for awhile: How are the kids? How is your job going? Do you stay in touch with old friends? That sort of thing. She was having such a hard time expressing herself with each question I asked, though these weren’t tough questions. Most of us have our stock answers for just these occasions. In the course of our conversation, I truly did not learn anything about her life. She could not express herself at all. She had become so good at stuffing her words and feelings, she had lost the ability to say them verbally. The flip side of that coin is that she is very depressed. She has literally lost her way in life right now.
I can sometimes be accused of the opposite. I have a tendancy to have verbal diarrhea. I say more than people probably care to hear. But I can state that I don’t get depressed.
To live life to its fullest, we have to be direct. We need to state our feelings. We need to stop stuffing our words and feelings. We need to stop being invisible. We have to DO THE WORK.
In yoga, we practice opening our throats in many poses. Working with our throat chakra, we want to keep that area open for improving our communication with others. Many times, when we get into a pose, we will find ourselves concentrating so hard in the pose, that we tuck our chins under, thus engaging a throat lock. There are times to practice throat lock (especially for those of us who have a tendancy toward verbal diarrhea), to keep things in balance. However, most people will find themselves with a throat lock all day long. And so we are reminded to lift the chin slightly to open the throat and allow ourselves to communicate.
Just the physical act of opening our throat chakra is doing the work. We are clearing the energy channels of communication. With them clear, our ability to express ourselves will become stronger. Many yogis talk about becoming more confident in who they are, after having practiced yoga over time. That is because they are DOING THE WORK.
Today, we remind ourselves to lift our chins to a neutral position so that we keep our throat chakras open. We consciously EXpress ourselves.