A client had 'lost her voice' somewhere along the line. Metaphorically. It is a familiar wound. I recognized it immediately as she spoke through clenched teeth, her throat a mass of energetic congestion. Likely a thyroid issue, too, I thought. As we talked closer and closer to the core of the wound, the issue of her father inevitably arose. Often, the masculine does play a role in the loss of voice. Because the masculine that many of us live into now is an epic distortion of an ancient, empowered archetype.
I noticed then when she spoke around her father, she shrunk. Her voice got tiny and far away. Her shoulders pulled in. She was hiding. Becoming invisible.
The way to heal this wound, which is common, is to unravel it step by step. Her right food was ‘collapsed’, meaning the arch had fallen away. The bones had pulled together. As I spoke to her, and listened to her tiny voice, trembling, speak about her father, I noticed that little food curl up. It was the foot of a toddler, I’d estimate. The right foot is the foundation with the masculine. We often lose one foot or the other based on relations to a parent.
So I uncurled her foot physically. I reminded her how to put weight on it; how to stand strong on her own two feet. All empowering metaphors for one who has lost the voice. Sometimes, they become dependent upon others in various ways, I’ve noticed. We spread those toes out upon the earth, remembering the ground. We’re reclaiming the whole body, by degree, beginning where there has been the most absence.
I have her make sound. Any sound. At first it is just a hiss, as I put pressure on the tender foot. She coughs. I suggest that she take up more space with her body. Let her cells resonate with the possibility of this ‘vastness’ that she is, always was. She’d never considered this.
Eventually, we work toward more sound. She wants to scream. So scream, I say. At first, the scream is just a squeak. She trembles all over at the thought of increasing the volume. As she does, I uncurl the food a little more. We pendulate in and out of these patterns, reclaiming power, voice, space each time.
Eventually, she is making sound, not a scream but a loud moan, and the tears roll. It’s good to hear her own voice again. She hasn’t heard it in so long. Though it’s aged some since she heard it, the essence is still there. It’s a beautiful reunion.
When she sits up, her posture is different. Her spine is open, and she is stronger and appears more vital.
That weekend, her and her husband go to the beach to let out a scream. A scream for all she has endured; a scream to lay down the burdens she’s been carrying all of these years.
Her husband says that when she turns around, she looks like a different person. Her eyes are glowing. The innocence that she always was has surfaced, and is now free to love and be loved.
Love and flow,
Steven