The Mouth Above , The Mouth Below
In female bodies there is a link between the wombspace, the heart and the throat.
Our mouth, jaw and heart develop from the same tissue when we are a foetus. The spinal cord develops in between, connecting the jaw and the pelvis.
Our larynx (in the throat) is connected to our cervix via the vagus nerve (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9931352/)
Their anatomy is strikingly similar, as is their function.
The cervical spine is the neck, the cervix is the neck of the womb. The throat and cervix are both gateways from inside our body to a tunnel and mouth leading out of our body.
When we relax or massage our jaw, when we open and move our mouth, when we express with words and when we sing, we can also be supporting opening, expression, relaxation and release in our pelvic hammock muscles (e.g. https://www.mulabandhapt.com/blog/yourvoice or https://yogalime.com/2019/04/24/words-and-the-wonder-cervix/).
Our hearts and our wombs work with cycles of blood. They are both givers of life. They both offer a rhythm to animate our lives.
On an emotional-energetic level, the heart, the womb and the throat are often where we feel distress, or where the impacts of distress who up.
We now know, through epigenetics, that ancestral trauma can affect our own DNA expression. The eggs that make us are present in our mother's body when she is a foetus, meaning we exist in our grandmother's body. Our motherline (or birthing parent line) has an impact on us through our DNA, through the wombs of those that came before us, through what was said and not said, and through the armour our ancestor's hearts had to wear and the subsequent impact on their behaviour. Throat, heart and womb connecting us to our ancestors.
Patriarchy has silenced us at these three important power centres:
WOMB: The menstrual cycle and power to birth has been shamed, hidden behind closed doors, medicalised and controlled. Our creativity has been blocked.
HEART: The realm of emotionality, sensitivity, compassion, reciprocity, deep caring, empathy and love has been ridiculed, infantalised, painted as naive and idealistic. Our feeling has been numbed.
THROAT: The truths, the rage, the grief of the feminine has been suppressed as we are told 'we have equality now' and reminded to be thankful it's not how it was, whilst we ignore the huge inequalities that still exist in our lived experiences. Our messy sounds swapped out for 'good' singing at the 'right' time. Our songs get stuck in our throats. Our truth has been silenced.
The womb is literally the incubator of life - our creative cauldron, the cervix the threshold from the possible to the actual, the vagina the journey from oneness to indviduation. Our bodies are cosmic!
Join us to explore this further at Elemental Woman 2024, with guest teacher Briony Greenhill who is known for her work on the mouth above and the mouth below. www.sphinxyoga.co.uk/elemental-woman-retreat-2024