Pelvic Bone Connected to the…Voice Bone?

I know there are myriad ways we women to some degree all experience silencing; fear or reluctance to speak out; editing ourselves into acceptability. These social and emotional patterns have deeeep roots (lookin’ at you white cis-hetero capitalist settler-colonial patriarchy), we all know that. But do we realize how deeply these patterns affect and are affected by our physical bodies? 

When we block our voices and our expression, we not only do it with our intention, we do it with our muscles - we squeeze, swallow, constrict, tighten. These actions become so familiar that we often don’t even realize how pressed into these patterns we are. We may not even know what it feels like to release and soften. Consequently we live with underlying tension which then, like the chicken and the egg, creates more restrictive tension when we want to speak up.

I feel this deeply in my own body. When I am about to say something important, scary, forceful, meaningful I often feel my throat swell and thicken, my breath moves up into the top of my chest and becomes thin and shallow, my heart beats faster and my voice feels anemic. 

I’ve learned some tools to manage these sensations in the moment (expansive 3D ribcage breathing is one of them), but the background practice is vital. What I mean by that is the moments I spend consciously relaxing, lengthening and strengthening my breathing and speaking muscles to create fresh patterns of expansion and release in these spaces - patterns that then give my body new, softer pathways to traverse when I want to release my voice and expression.

Now here’s the super cool bit - there is a direct physical and energetic connection between the structures of the throat and those of the pelvis. Take a good look at the picture above. Notice how similar the structures of our throat are to the structures within our pelvis!

During the early stages of embryonic development the vocal cords and ovaries make up one organ that eventually splits into two separate organs. But they are still connected energetically and physically (through our connective tissue): When we relax the muscles of our throat, the muscles of the pelvic floor also relax. When we speak and especially sing or hum we engage and tone our throats and our vaginas!

Consequently how we speak and express ourselves is intimately connected to the health and function of our pelvic bowl, and vice versa.

All right then! So if this December Full Moon in Gemini is about what we say and how we say it, let’s spend a few moments moving our speaking parts. And maybe take a moment to notice if your pelvic floor experiences a difference too.