This is the ninth of our new series of arti­cles on The Zen of Let­ting Go, with side ref­er­ences to body­work, breath­work, and energy (espe­cially sex­ual energy) work.

We’re con­tin­u­ing along on our jour­ney through the Chakras, and talk­ing about the way we develop the skills nec­es­sary to be fully human. Last week, we arrived at the Heart, which I equated with com­pas­sion and voca­tion. This week, we look at dis­cov­er­ing and drop­ping blocks to express­ing your pas­sion­ate vocation.

The Throat Chakra is the door­way to expression

Now, you need to think in broader terms than just speak­ing. The Throat area acts as a sort of gate / bar­rier to “let­ting the cat out of the bag.” Remem­ber, every­thing about us is set into motion by our par­ents and tribes, so what we “nat­u­rally” let out has a lot to do with what we were encour­aged to express. What we don’t let out is all of the stuff our tribes helped us to repress—our pas­sion, poten­tial­ity, and “true being.”

Last week, I men­tioned the woman who wanted to be an artist.

As you may recall, her par­ents, both physi­cians, were aghast at the idea of their pre­cious daugh­ter attempt­ing to paint for a liv­ing. She men­tioned one line they used: “We sup­port the arts! We don’t make art!” The pas­sion for mak­ing art never left her, however.

What did hap­pen was that she didn’t (almost) paint—she had a lot of sex. By the time she was 30, she’d had 40 sex­ual part­ners, or so.

Why?

Well, artis­tic pas­sion (one flavour of “pas­sion for life”) resides in the 2^nd Chakra. The pas­sion is ener­get­i­cally cre­ated and stored at the 2^nd Chakra, which matches the Lower Dan Tian, and is located inside the lower belly. This Qi, this energy, pow­ers every­thing we do.

So, the yearn­ing to “relate” by paint­ing (or cre­at­ing any­thing you are pas­sion­ate about) is found at belly level, but on the back of the body. Call it the sacrum.

Unex­pressed, the energy has nowhere to go, and there is an ache of long­ing that radi­ates from the lower back.

Now, the front of the body is the home to sex­ual pas­sion, so it doesn’t take a leap to fig­ure out what my artist friend was doing with all of that energy. Since she wasn’t allow­ing her­self to paint, her only options were to find another release, or to sup­press the energy. She mostly chose to burn off the charge of pas­sion by being sexual.

Other peo­ple will take the energy and throw it onto some­thing more main­stream and approved of.

They’ll put it into career, or inter­fer­ing in their kid’s lives, or try­ing to micro-manage their par­ents or part­ners. In other words, the pas­sion of relat­ing gets turned into attempt­ing to con­trol others.

I don’t want to retreat back to the 2^nd Chakra, but let me say this:

the 5^th Chakra is the expres­sion gate for the pas­sion cre­ated by the 2^nd. Devel­op­men­tally, it’s all about find­ing ele­gant ways to get your pas­sion out. This can also apply, for exam­ple, to communication.

Ele­gant Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a 5^th Chakra skill, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion makes the pas­sion to relate (C2) real

Here’s a para­dox for you. I know a few quite suc­cess­ful peo­ple that have yet to mas­ter the skills nec­es­sary to have mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships. We’re talk­ing exactly the same energy. In this case, while they might be build­ing build­ings, mak­ing art, writ­ing books, what­ever, their rela­tion­ships suck. They know what they want, but are unwill­ing or unable to cre­ate (C5) an ele­gant relationship.

You might say that the 5^th Chakra is all about open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble communication.

That’s no mat­ter whether the com­mu­ni­ca­tion is ver­bal or through the pro­duc­tion of something.

~ If you are not pro­duc­ing some­thing, any­thing, that is a clear expres­sion of the deep­est part of you, you are stuck.
 ~ If you are wait­ing for per­mis­sion to get on with it, you are stuck.
 ~ If you refuse to let peo­ple in, you are stuck.
 ~ If you refuse to let your gifts out, you are stuck.

The mechan­ics of being stuck

OK, so in body­work, what I notice is a direct link between Chakra 5—the jaw points, the top of the shoul­ders, and the 2^nd Chakra, at the pelvis. Now, this isn’t 100%, but often, as I work on the jaw points, for exam­ple, my client will begin to rock or move “her” pelvis. It’s like the body is say­ing, “See! This is the issue!” To move the pelvis is seen by many as provoca­tive. To be pas­sion­ate is seen as unseemly. To take the con­tent of your “true being” and put it out there, for all to see, is scary. Bet­ter to clamp down.

Oddly, it’s not all that dif­fi­cult to get the body to let go. You push, the mus­cles release, the chi flows, and all is well. Except…

Most peo­ple go right back to block­ing themselves!

One of my most favourite TV shows is “In Treat­ment,” and the 3^rd sea­son started last week. The pro­tag­o­nist is Paul Weston, a psy­cho­an­a­lyst. The method­ol­ogy has shifted a bit this year, but the “nor­mal” pat­tern is for the show to run 5 nights a week, 30 min­utes an episode. Nights 1–4, we see Paul with one of his patients. Night 5, he’s with his ana­lyst. I’ve only seen 4 episodes, and they’ve shifted a bit — 3 clients, and Paul with a new therapist.

Any­way, I love this show. It is so true to what actu­ally hap­pens in ther­apy that it’s scary.

Last night, Paul was with the new ther­a­pist, want­ing his sleep­ing pills renewed. She was not quick to write a pre­scrip­tion. Paul deflected and blocked her every ques­tion. This is so real — clients resist coop­er­at­ing! It takes great courage to sit there, be vul­ner­a­ble and open, and really let the ther­a­pist know what’s going on. Most peo­ple come and hope to hear how well they are doing. Some only show up when things are OK—it’s too dif­fi­cult for them to show up in the midst of the messy stuff.

The cool part last night was Paul, sit­ting there, talk­ing about Gina, his for­mer therapist—how great she was, how famous, etc. As I said, he also blocked his new therapist’s attempt to get to the bot­tom of his sleep issues. (I’m para­phras­ing the dialogue…)

“I’ve worked with my ther­a­pist for decades, she’s famous, you’re a baby ther­a­pist, I’ve already got myself all fig­ured out! Stop ask­ing me uncom­fort­able questions! ”

He does admit, how­ever, that he’s hav­ing a bad dream—it’s wak­ing him up.

Then,

“But I’ve ana­lyzed myself and I know what the dream is about. Now, give me my pills!”

The new ther­a­pist writes a pre­scrip­tion, walks Paul to the door, and says, (still paraphrasing)

“Well, you’ve ana­lyzed your dream, and have been with the most famous ther­a­pist on the East Coast. So, I’m won­der­ing one thing. If you have it all fig­ured out, how come you’re still hav­ing the dream?”

In other words, “You’re stuck! Are you will­ing to actu­ally do some­thing about it?”

That’s the key to the show. Paul is a great ther­a­pist, yet when “In Treat­ment,” he deflects every attempt to get him to open up and really be open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble. And this, in turn, is only pos­si­ble with an open 5^th Chakra.

Here is the job of a blocked 5^th Chakra—to hide

To deflect, to be obscure, to keep things hid­den, and to repress the actual expres­sion of one’s pas­sion. The body may rebel, caus­ing aches, and pains, ill­nesses, a shadow of a life, but resis­tance is the norm.

Oddly, the only way out of this mess is to actu­ally, with pas­sion and engage­ment, DO SOMETHING

• The only way to make art is to make art.
• The only way to write is to write.
• The only way to com­mu­ni­cate with ele­gance and hon­esty is to com­mu­ni­cate with ele­gance and honesty.
• The only way to move through a block is to tackle it head-on.
• The only way to free your pas­sion is to find where it’s blocked and open things up.
• The only way to have a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship is for YOU to stop blam­ing, and to start relat­ing with ele­gance and clarity.

This week, have a look at how you hide, run away, resist your pas­sion, refuse to com­mu­ni­cate who you are, really. Notice how you block your­self from shar­ing your pain, shar­ing your joy. Notice how you dis­tract your­self from get­ting down to actu­ally doing something.

Then, find some­thing, any­thing, to focus on, and do it!

Next week, “insight!”