Shamanic Journey (Part 4) — A Study of Grief

In my previous three articles of this Shamanic Journey that I underwent as I crossed the portal of the turn of 2020 into 2021, I described the physical manifestation and energetic connotations of a crystallization of energy that started over 20 years ago and that was finally ready to be resolved and integrated.

In this 4th article of these series, I would like to talk about the emotional side that I believe might have started the whole cycle.

As I said before, my 2nd molar or tooth number 15 is linked to the stomach, spleen and pancreas meridians. It also is connected to the Throat Chakra.

In her website www.suebovenizer.com, Suzanne Bovenizer, a natural health therapist, says:

The Throat Chakra “is associated with […] the jaw, ears, mouth, teeth, gums […] It is paired with the thyroid gland which dictates our ability to physically grow and parallels that by being about spiritual growth […] is our Will centre — both personal Will and divine Will […] we are able to hear our own inner voice — the voice of wisdom, of compassion, of knowledge […] connected to the soul’s desire to fulfil its purpose and to express itself authentically, truthfully and creatively”

When I had my root canal at the age of around 30 or 32, I was completely identified with the person that I had become until then: unaware of the deeper truths of life. I had not yet discovered spirituality and I was far from being the person I was going to become.

By society standards, I had a decent job and was married but inside, I had a huge vacuum — like a hole in my soul which I had no idea that I actually had. I just felt displaced, disoriented, confused and disempowered.

I was trying to do everything by the book, in the outside it might have superficially looked as if I had everything together but any closer look could certainly show that I was not expressing my soul’s purpose, let alone creatively.

And so I had a huge block in my Throat Chakra since my youth shown in a chronic laryngitis: I had the need to write but I didn’t know how to. I wanted to sing but my voice kept breaking or just disappearing. I wanted to communicate but I always felt angry.

Luckily, I released this block when I did my Reiki II course in around 1998, which is when I started to write. Spirit said one afternoon in the office: “Go home and sit at your computer. You will write your first book”.

That book was “The Hidden Gift — Developing Your Full Potential” (available in Amazon EBook — Link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007D58MNW and Book — Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/172676754X).

I also explained in the 3 previous articles how the teeth are connected to the Root Chakra, how it resonates with its earth element and how it represents our survival instincts.

When we have teeth problems, I believe that it is the tip of the iceberg just like my chronic laryngitis was, showing that there is an emotional imbalance which cascades down to the spiritual, mental and physical and it is linked to the Throat Chakra, which by the way is also the point of communication and integrity.

So even when we don’t realise it, problems in this area of the body show that we hold back our words and / or our beliefs, that we shut down inside at some level. And the result is not being able to express ourselves fully, denying our purpose and our destiny and definitely, not living our lives creatively.

But more often than, we don’t fully realise that we have a block in this Chakra because we tend to explain away everything that makes us contest or denounce our limiting Status Quos.

It is more of a survival technique as we learn to say what is expected and keep quiet those words or thoughts that could put us in harm’s way, be it physical or emotional.

We hold on to what we believe it to be our emotional stability because this is the only way we can actually keep our energies contained and function in society.

These threats might not be real but only perceived. However to our minds, they are real just the same: any perceived threat to our mind, physical body, emotional body or spiritual reality is still a threat.

So we shut a part of ourselves down, which becomes part of our shadow, unacknowledged and unloved. The subconscious energy that is trapped in it, sooner or later, will demand to be heard and seen. It is Law.

Fay Simpson, author and founder of Lucid Body, explains that when we are children, white cells travel from the bone marrow to the thymus and through a chemical reaction they become T-cells, which become part of the immune system by migrating to the lymph nodes during puberty.

On the other hand, she explains as well that as the Root Chakra is linked to the adrenal glands, which produce the “fight or flight” hormones when we are stressed.

But the key here is that apparently, the brain registers emotional pain in the 4th or Heart Chakra the same as physical stress in the 1st or Root Chakra and she defines it as “a survival threat”.

Fay Simpson says: “The 4th Chakra, or heart chakra, is considered the centre of the emotions love and grief. Rage is often associated with the 1st Chakra”.

“Grief is not related to actual bodily survival. However, the emotion of grief can trigger a 1st Chakra response… and the body is caught in a state of tension”.

The Wikipedia explains the emotion of grief as “the response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement refers to the state of loss, and grief is the reaction to that loss”.

So imagine day in, day out, your brain perceives to be under attack and we are not even conscious of it. In the process of surviving in society, we leave parts of ourselves behind and don’t realise that we are grieving: lost or stolen dreams, unfulfilled or forgotten potentials, adventures and experiences not lived…

It is a lot of loss… and it is a lot of grieving.

So as we chip away at our wings piece by piece, we forget to fly.

But the body, like a recording machine, keeps track of everything we think and feel, suspended in the vibrational energy of our cells.

As the main consciousness that is us, we force our cells to back off and ignore their early signs of imbalance. The cells do as told but we pay a heavy price: it all bottles up waiting for the time when it will come to charge us the interest accrued.

And this interest is always on the negative column of our lives’ balance. We can also call it Karma.

As it goes, the body registers perfectly and accurately all these breaches of integrity by releasing stress hormones that are not being acted upon because we are actually neither fighting nor flying.

These stress hormones build up in our bodies, directed inwards as an attack, embedded within the vibration of our painful memories and emotions… become multi-dimensional and very difficult to track.

And so when we want to release the sickness, we need to tap into the emotions, which are the key that locks the whole process in place.

This process obviously looks backwards: we feel under attack and we withdraw because we don’t have the power to maintain healthy boundaries.

We force our bodies into denial and that we lie to ourselves and the world. Is it any wonder that the whole situation becomes a psychosomatic reality?

Fay Simpson holds acting workshops and she says that when her students tap into grief, they seem to get into rage and thus release the pent up adrenaline and with it, express those suppressed feelings.

We live in such an aggressive society. Many people are openly competitive, critical and judgmental. Others are passive-aggressive and I would even dare to say that all of us are somewhere in between that scale.

But furthermore, I have had issues with my stomach all my life. I am far better now than I was 20 years ago because of the long and steady healing process that I have undertaken as I have followed the Spiritual path. This was certainly part of my motivation to investigate this issue.

What finally caught my attention is that Fay Simpson makes yet another enlightening connection: the pent up energy affects us in our nervous system capacity to “rest and digest”.

She says that if we slow down our breath, maybe we can connect with the trapped emotions and when our tears flow, we know that we have finally released the blocked “grief — rage” pattern.