How Work Closes Your Throat Chakra

I've always been interested in psychology, neuroscience, and human behavior.

What makes people behave the way they do? Why do I struggle to do certain things while other things come easily?

This has been especially interesting to me lately as I've reached the stage of building my business that is all about creating visibility.

Podcasts, workshops, speaking events, pitching, writing publications, social media posts...they all require visibility. But one thing I've learned is that visibility isn't about being seen, it's about being heard.

Which means you have to have something to say. You have to know what you believe. And you have to say it with conviction, haters be damned.

That is actually much scarier than I expected. Most people think I don't have a hard time saying the hard thing, and I always thought that about myself too…until I started making TikToks.

TikTok is scary AF. You make a post that goes out to the entire internet and open yourself up to comments from faceless, nameless people. Some aren't even people. They're bots built to tear you down.

So the natural reaction is to say things so carefully that you try not to offend anyone. Use ChatGPT to perfect the words. Stay safe.

But people don't want safe. They want REAL.

Which meant I had to figure out how to find my authentic voice regardless of who doesn't agree with it. And although that sounds lovely and logical in my head, my body was having a hard time with it.

So I started to wonder why.

And I discovered something that resonated: I had a blocked throat chakra.

Chakras are an ancient framework, originating in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, for understanding the connection between our mind, body, emotions, and spirit.

The word chakra comes from the Sanskrit word for "wheel," and each chakra represents a different aspect of the human experience, such as safety, relationships, confidence, love, communication, intuition, and purpose. Some people believe chakras are literal energy centers within the body, while others view them as a symbolic or psychological framework for understanding how our life experiences can influence the way we think, feel, and move through the world.

The throat chakra, known as Vishuddha, is associated with communication, authenticity, and self-expression. It represents our ability to speak our truth, express our thoughts honestly, and allow our outward voice to reflect what we know to be true on the inside.

When the throat chakra is balanced, people often feel confident communicating their needs, ideas, and boundaries. When it becomes blocked, or when someone no longer feels safe expressing themselves, they may begin to hold back, avoid difficult conversations, minimize their opinions, or say what feels safest rather than what they genuinely believe. Whether you understand that through the lens of chakras or nervous system science, the underlying idea is remarkably similar: when it doesn't feel safe to use your voice, your body learns to protect you by staying quiet.

So I started doing the work. What had I experienced in my life that had taught my body to stay silent?

What I discovered is that so many of those experiences happened at work.

And as I dug even deeper, I realized I was not alone in this experience. This is a very common experience for high performers in the world of work.

Many high performers start their careers with a voice. They speak up in meetings, identify problems, challenge outdated views, and genuinely want to make things better. Early in their careers, those behaviors were rewarded. They were seen as engaged, proactive, and invested.

And then, over time, something changed.

The feedback that had once been appreciated became "negative." The questions became "challenging authority." The ideas became "you're overthinking it." Instead of being rewarded for speaking honestly, they were subtly, or sometimes very directly, taught that keeping quiet was safer.

So they stopped talking openly and started policing themselves.

Whether you call that a blocked throat chakra or an adaptive stress response doesn't really matter. I think they're describing similar experiences through different languages. One uses energy. The other uses neuroscience. Both point to the same reality: when it doesn't feel safe to express yourself, your body learns to hold things in.

And I think millions of professionals are doing exactly that every single day.

They're swallowing frustration. Holding back feedback. Pretending they're okay. Laughing at jokes they don't think are funny. Nodding in meetings when they disagree.

Over time, that disconnect between what you think and what you say starts to cost you something.

So I'm working on it. I'm saying things. I'm telling my story. I'm unblocking my throat chakra, consequences be damned.

Here are three things that I've changed along the way:

1. I started speaking to the former version of myself.

The woman who cried every day after work. The one who sat in her car for ten minutes before walking into the building because she needed to mentally prepare herself. The one who wondered what she could have done differently.

When I create content now, I imagine I'm talking directly to her. I tell her everything I wish someone had told me back then. I don't sugarcoat it.

She deserves that.

2. I've stopped trying to make everyone happy.

I've realized that if you try to make everyone happy, you end up making no one happy.

I'm not trying to create content that everyone agrees with. I'm trying to reach the people who are struggling with their work experience, who feel lost, dismissed, unsupported, or like they're slowly losing themselves. The people who need someone to put words to what they are experiencing.

They deserve that.

3. I speak from the heart.

I don't script my TikToks before I record them. I think of an idea, press record, and start talking.

I'm not chasing perfection anymore. I'm chasing alignment.

I deserve that.

The interesting thing is that my body responds very differently when I'm speaking from a place of alignment than when I'm trying to perform. When I'm carefully editing myself, trying to sound professional or less offensive, I feel it. My shoulders tense. My thoughts race. I second-guess every sentence. But when I say what I genuinely believe, my body settles. I breathe differently. I feel more grounded. More like myself.

I can't help but wonder how many professionals are walking around every day experiencing the opposite. How many people spend eight or ten hours swallowing feedback, filtering their opinions, rehearsing conversations they'll never have, or pretending they're okay because it feels safer than telling the truth. We call it professionalism. We call it politics. We call it knowing how to play the game. But our bodies don't know those words. They only know whether it's safe to express what is true.

Whether you call that a blocked throat chakra, nervous system protection, or something else entirely doesn't really matter. What matters is that every time we silence ourselves to survive, there is a cost. And every time we find the courage to speak from a place of alignment, there is an opportunity to heal.