Chakra Series - The Throat Chakra by Donna Thomson

Peaceful Willow - your guide to Balanced Living in all areas of life

Chakra Series - The Throat Chakra
by Donna Thomson

blue throat chakra

This article is the first in a series that I feel drawn to write about the chakras. If you haven't already read Peaceful Willow's 'Introduction to Chakras' article it is a good place to start to get an overview of what the chakras are and how each one relates to a colour, different parts of your body and different aspects of your consciousness and life.

In this article I am going to intuitively share what I feel is most important and helpful to know about the throat chakra, what it relates to and how to tell how your own throat chakra is functioning. I'll also share some easy techniques you can use to balance your throat chakra.

Introducing the throat chakra

As energy travels towards us, we take it in via our chakras or energy vortexes that align down our spine. The throat chakra is also known as the fifth chakra because it's the fifth from the base of the spine. The energy in and around the throat area is of a particular frequency that resonates as the colour blue.

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If you ever forget which colour is associated with the throat area, remember that the chakras relate to the seven colours of the rainbow. This is the range of light frequencies that we can visibly see. Starting at the base chakra, we have the colour red, then as we go up we have orange below the navel, yellow at the solar plexus above the navel, green at the heart, blue at the throat, purple/indigo at the brow or third eye and finally violet/white at the top of our head (our crown). If you can remember where the chakras are located, and you remember the old ROY G. BIV as an acronym for the colours of the rainbow, you'll be fine!

A healthy throat chakra

Our goal in achieving full wellness and happiness is to have all chakras functioning well, which means the energy is spinning smoothly without blockages. For those with the gift of seeing the chakra colours, a healthy throat chakra will be nice and vibrant blue with no murkiness. You can however determine how well your throat chakra is functioning even if you don't have the gift of clear sight (clairvoyance), as you'll discover below.

The throat relates to the sky?

The throat area relates to the element of air. It's the blue sky that always reminds me of this. Think about it. When we breathe, air travels in and out through our throat. Take a moment to feel the air flowing through your throat right now....in and out. Feel the coolness. Also, when we speak, this is actually the vibration of air that produces the sounds that resonate from the throat. If it's an appropriate time (e.g. you aren't reading this at work!), make a humming sound through your throat and feel the vibration. Your confidence in doing this can be an indicator of how well your throat chakra is functioning, but more about that later. So now you should have a sense of the energy quality of the throat chakra.

Healthy communication

As you've just discovered, the throat is an important tool you use for communicating, via your speech. It's actually very common for people to have issues in the throat area due to fears we have about speaking what is on our mind or more importantly, what is in our heart - this is called "speaking your truth". It seems that we've pulled within ourselves, perhaps not wanting to say anything that is "out of order" or that might make us feel judged. Perhaps this is our desire to fit in or our insecurities about our own value and the value of our opinions and beliefs.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Do I speak what's on my mind or do I hold back my thoughts?
Do I fear saying the wrong thing?
Do I often get a lump in my throat when around others?
Do I value my opinions and ideas?
Do I feel I have something to contribute to discussions?
Do I speak up when something troubles me?
Do I get a lot of sore throats or other throat-related issues?
Do I suffer from asthma?

Think about your responses and take notice of how you act when you are speaking with others. Sometimes we speak freely with some people but hold back saying certain things with certain people. I know we can't always say everything but when it comes to things that are close to your heart and you feel an urge to say something and hold that back, expect to have symptoms in or around your throat area. I have noticed with my own children that their asthma most often came on almost immediately when they were not allowed to talk back to mum or dad to argue a point - the typical parenting situation. It's been an interesting observation. They outgrew their asthma as their own confidence improved.

To not allow those words to flow....to hold them back, acts as a wall going up in the throat area. This type of wall is often referred to as a blockage and really does close down the flow of energy in and around your throat area. The main reason is because in one way or another you are not being true to yourself and you are halting the natural desire to express yourself. When you do this you halt the energy because you are fed by energy and resonate energy. It is in constant flow. Where you constrict the flow you will end up with physical symptoms. It's actually quite a simple principle and once you learn about how your energy works in this way, you will recognise the areas you need to work on to return your energy to a balanced state of well-being.

Blue-Green combo (Turquoise)

I really feel it's important to mention the colour turquoise which I believe is a combination of the green of the heart chakra and the blue of the throat. Turquoise has come to my attention a lot lately and I believe that it's because we are moving to more conscious living and a bit part of this is about working from the heart and expressing that. So see the point between the throat and the heart as a turquoise energy that reflects how well you are expressing yourself from the heart. You can feel for people (compassion from the heart) and you can speak what you are thinking (throat), but speaking the truth of what is in your heart is what it's all about. If you're someone who is on a journey of self-discovery and increased awareness of your divine essence (your spirit self), you will find that bringing these two chakras together will be quite important to you. You might like to call it the 8th chakra. There are some people who factor in this thyroid-area chakra as a standard chakra. Numbers don't matter to me, but the essence of the energy is the main thing. Notice that I mentioned the thyroid. Many people have thyroid issues that I do believe relates strongly to this turquoise energy area between the throat and heart rather than the throat alone. If this is a symptom you have, consider focusing on the unity of these two chakras.

Now what do I do?

Okay, now that you understand how holding back part of who you are, the part you share through what you say (or sing for that matter!) affects you, it's time to learn how to remove those blockages you have due to the fears, lack of self-confidence and plain old not speaking up.

Step one...you'll know just how blocked your throat chakra is because of the frequency of which you suffer physical symptoms such as sore throats, dry throats, laryngitis, croup, tonsillitis, asthma and so on. You can thank your body for giving you these signs because now you know that they are there to show you there is a deeper issue that you need to work on.

When you start observing your actions as more of a spectator than participant, you'll notice that the morning after you've held back from saying something of importance to you, you'll wake with a sore throat or laryngitis. Of course the timing and symptoms vary but this is an example I've experienced myself several times. You can also find that a cough comes on after you've given in to someone's requests when you'd really rather say no. You create a constriction that has a real physical effect. Isn't it empowering to know how linked everything is?

So be observant and take note of what your body is telling you. Once you know that you need to work on your throat area and its related issues you can utilise some simple techniques that will help you open your throat chakra and get that sky blue energy spinning nice and smoothly. The deeper your issues in this area, the more time and energy you will need to spend on it. So let's get into the techniques...

Techniques to open the throat chakra

What we do when we work with the throat chakra is focus on the blue colour. Colour is energy of a particular frequency or vibration as I mentioned at the start of this article. So when you visualise or work with the colour blue in any number of ways, your body is going to take this in to the throat area because this is the area of your body and energy system that resonates to the colour blue.

This energy can filter into your system in a subtle way or you can work closely and specifically with the throat area. Working directly in the area will have stronger and quicker results of course, but sometimes a more subtle approach is more practical. Generally you'll combine a number of techniques to achieve the best outcome.

Clothing
Using colour therapy via the clothes you wear is one of the most common ways to bring the colour energy into your energy. As light reflects off the blue items it is absorbed into your energy. Wrap a blue scarf around your neck area to really focus the colour on that throat area.

Crystals
Not only do you benefit from the colour therapy aspect with crystals but you also benefit from the energy of the crystals themselves. Crystals and semi-precious stones of a light or mid-blue colour are wonderful for the throat chakra. Some suggestions are blue lace agate, blue quartz or blue calcite. Deep blue crystals are also good, such as sodalite or lapis lazuli. The thing with crystals is to go for the one that most appeals to you.

There are many ways you can use blue crystals to benefit the throat chakra. One is to simply hold the crystal in your hand or more directly hold the crystal in front of your throat. If you can lie down and place the crystal on your throat while you sleep or meditate, it will have a longer opportunity to do its work.

A pendant with a blue stone that you can hang on a short chain around your neck is great because you don't have to hold the stone there and you can go about your daily activities. The pendant is going to be a great tool for actually working through your fear of speaking up because it can be there working for you while interacting with other people. If you've got a lot of issues relating to the throat chakra this method could be one of the most effective for you because it can assist you 24 hours a day until you feel you are making progress.

Remember about working with the turquoise energy too. You can use a turquoise crystal and place it between your throat and heart, either as a pendant, placed in your body while resting or just holding the crystal. Other stones of a green-blue will also work well so follow your own intuition in choosing stones.

Crystal/Solarised Water
This technique involves creating special water that you can drink and this is a wonderful internal way of helping the throat area. One way is to make crystal water by adding a blue crystal to a glass of water and use this as your drinking water. My husband automatically does this now when he gets a sore throat. Solarised water is created by using a blue glass bottle or a glass surrounded by blue cellophane. Fill it with water and place in the sun for around an hour because the sun infuses the blue colour energy through the water. You can then store it in the refrigerator and sip it or add some to your normal drinking water.

Visualisation
Here's where you can really interact with the energy within your chakra. The above methods bring the blue colour energy into your energy system to assist the throat chakra, but it's so much more effective when you can add some actual visualisation of the chakra too. Lie down and close your eyes. Relax all parts of your body. Now focus on the throat area. Visualise the chakra spinning and try to see in your mind, the colour and energy of the chakra. Take note of how the chakra appears to you because this might give you clues to the state of your chakra. What size is it? What does the colour look like? Is it spinning smoothly, fast, slow? etc. Be creative and visualise this chakra filling with blue light. You could see your throat taking in the colour from the sky or you could see it as a blue flower that is opening up into a beautiful, vibrant flower. If you would just like to focus on the chakra itself, see it as a fast spinning blue whirling vortex. Feel the intensity of the colour and spin grow. You may actually have a physical sensation as this chakra opens up.

As a treat for you, CLICK HERE to open a full size version of the lovely blue abstract image at the top of this article that you can use as a focus on visualisation for your throat chakra.

By all means combine your visualisation with the use of crystals. You could visualise the crystal sending its energy into your throat chakra and lighting it up like a light bulb. Whatever you visualise will be beneficial so don't be afraid to try your own unique symbolism and imagery.

There's one more thing I'd like to mention about visualisation which is more closely linked with actual meditation. By getting into a meditative state and focusing on your throat area/chakra, you can actually deal with some of the issues that cause your blockages. Pay attention to memories or situations that come to mind and ask for guidance in how to move through that and into open expression of who you are. Learn about yourself and your barriers. This can take some time but keep up with it and you'll gradually break away the barriers and feel wonderful!

Affirmations
Add power to the colour therapy techniques and visualisations by giving yourself an affirmation to repeat to yourself. This should be worded to address the particular issues you feel are at the heart of your blockages. Here are a couple of examples:
"I speak with truth and confidence."
"I speak what is in my heart."
"I am empowered by communication through the blue ray."

Come up with something that resonates with you. You will know because it will have that little bit of power or 'oomph' behind it.

Bring it all together

You should now feel empowered to take charge of your own self-healing and development, especially where expression and communication is concerned. A combination of all of the above methods will bring the greatest success so give them a go and see what works for you. You will find that you will need to address the throat again in the future because we're always working on our deeper issues as they come to our attention - it's an ongoing process.

This is just the first article in the series covering the chakras in more depth. Now that you have this understanding of the throat chakra, you can quite readily transfer this knowledge to the other chakras by looking back to the Introduction to Chakras article mentioned at the beginning of this article. It provides the overview and keywords that will help you begin to work on any chakra in more depth.

Next in this series will be the sacral chakra so keep an eye out for that one and enjoy working on your throat chakra! I also encourage you to share your experiences and ask further questions on the Peaceful Willow Forum.