Well I hope you all had a great Memorial Day Weekend.  I heard a question posed on the radio shortly after, "What is the one thing that ruined the holiday for people?"  One might guess - The Rainy Weather, but you would be wrong.  It was smart phones.  It's true if you think about it.  You are supposed to be on a holiday but can still receive numerous work emails that add to the to-dos or elevate your mood to anxiety.  I tend to have the opposite problem though.  I never have my phone around, and it drives my husband crazy when he tries to get a hold of me.  Then when I find my phone eventually I have tons of work to catch up with.  Well, I guess with everything comes balance.

All Choked Up

Dear Tina,

I’ve always been extremely outgoing. Some might even say loud and too wild. While this is definitely a side of me, I also go through these periods of introversion and social anxiety. My throat closes up, my neck gets stiff and I stumble around my words. For fear of embarrassment, I tend to hibernate when I feel this coming on now. I stay home and wallow in my sadness, which only extends the issue I’m sure. What is going on? Why do I go from one extreme to another?

—All Choked Up

Dear All Choked Up,

Well, your 5th chakra (the area that regulates your throat, neck, expression, communication, truth and voice in the world) is definitely being affected. First off, the electromagnetic expression and release of this chakra is likely uneven, causing the shape of the energy to be wobbly. This wobbly center then spins and creates ups and downs for you. Picture a smooth ball rolling down a hill. Now picture an oval, square or uneven shape rolling down a hill. Notice the difference. At some moments it may roll too fast. At other moments it may stop completely. This is what your 5th chakra is likely doing.

There are many reasons this happens sometimes. I would invite you to think about when you first started noticing these swings. Likely something occurred just before then that shifted the energy of this chakra. This is the key to healing this area, as you are still being affected by whatever happened.

Now have you felt this your whole life? Do you remember if you also experienced this as a child, or has it just been since adulthood? If you feel like you have always dealt with this, then this imbalance could be an ancestral or a past-life issue. Both of those would involve some deeper work ideally with an intuitive or regressionist to discover and release the initial energy pattern.

In the meantime, on your own you can imagine the area of your 5th chakra (neck and throat) as evening out. If you’re visual, you can picture a record spinning or a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel being smoothed out. If you’re more kinesthetic, you can feel the lump of clay getting smoothed out. Play with this and see what you discover!

—Tina Bensman