Healing Case Study: The Throat Chakra

Most people think of healing as the removal of symptoms. In reality, healing begins when we understand what illness is trying to communicate.

The body is not random or faulty. It is intelligent, symbolic, and deeply responsive to our emotional and energetic world. Illness often appears when something essential has gone unexpressed or unresolved for too long.

A client came to see me shortly after losing her job. She felt disoriented and low, but what she really wanted help with was chronic jaw pain. She had received a medical diagnosis, (I can’t pronounce it so I won’t even try) yet her doctors could offer little beyond painkillers.

When I tuned into her energy, several trapped emotions appeared—shock, panic, and low self-esteem which we cleared. Beneath these, a clear internal message emerged:

“I don’t want to live like this.”

When I asked what that referred to, she began speaking about her relationship with her mother.

Over time, she had become her mother’s primary caregiver in the family.  Although there were other siblings the role came down to her.  Whenever her mother was unwell, the responsibility fell to her. This wasn’t an occasional act of care. It had become a defining role in her life.  She had left jobs to take care of her mother, moved states to be near her mother despite having a great job elsewhere, she had driven 12 hours to help her mother with medical emergencies.

And this was where the body had chosen to speak through the jaw

 Interestingly, when I explained this dynamic to the client, she said something that confirmed everything:

“Every time I saw my mother, the pain got worse. I never understood why.”

The body always knows. It is always communicating.

The Symbolism of the Jaw and Throat

Nothing in the body happens without meaning. Physical symptoms are symbolic, and the jaw and throat are particularly revealing.

The throat chakra governs three key functions:

• Expression and communication

• The power to create and declare

• Free will

When someone feels unable to express themselves, unable to say no, or trapped by obligation, this often shows up energetically in the throat and jaw. Unexpressed anger, resentment, and suppressed truth accumulate there.

In this client’s case, her free will had become compromised as well as this not being communicated.

When Obligation Overrides Free Will

Free will is not simply the ability to choose—it is the felt sense of freedom, vitality, and alignment with what you genuinely want. When free will is intact, energy flows easily. There is a sense of delight and possibility.  Free will is our spiritual sovereignty.  We come into to this life to live the life in the way we have chosen to live it.

When we are over obligated with things that are not in alignment with our free will, when life becomes filled with “shoulds,” duties, and unchosen responsibilities our free will erodes. Anger and resentment begin to build, often unconsciously.

For this client, it had reached a point where she felt that even when she was happy or doing something for herself, her mother would somehow pull her back. Her happiness felt unsafe.

This pattern was not unique.

A Repeating Pattern I’ve seen before

I had worked with another client some time before, whose father had died, leaving her mother all alone. She stepped in to care of her mother, but over time the relationship dynamic became distorted. Energetically, she had taken on the role of her mother’s husband a role that was not healthy or appropriate. She lived in the same town as her mother when she actually wanted to live in a completely different country.

I came to her when things were in a desperate state.  She was severely unwell, largely bedridden, with widespread inflammation and debilitating physical symptoms.  The relationship with her mother had been draining her life force. At this stage she was too weak for her to really get out of it and it wasn’t a healing that I could do remotely as it required too much of a physical intervention and I would have had to fly out to do intensive healing with this client.

Her core issue was she had surrendered her free will without conscious choice.

When we give our life force to another—especially in caregiving roles we did not choose—energy begins to drain at a fundamental level. Over time, the body bears the cost.

Family loyalty can be a strong obligation so when it goes too far the body steps in with illness to force you to see the truth. Subconsciously the client saw death as the only way out of this. When it gets to this stage when you are faced between critical illness and self-preservation then hopefully you’ll see that this can’t continue and choose a healthy way of living for yourself

Back to the first client. As we moved into the healing, the core issue revealed itself in the emotional body, rooted in perception. The dominant perception was :

“There is no choice.”

Perception shapes reality. When someone truly believes there is no choice, alternatives become invisible. From the inside, it feels like truth; from the outside, it is a perception that can be healed.

When we cleared this perception, something deeper became visible: the obligation was not just emotional—it was energetic and embodied.

The client could sense when her mother was about to become ill. She would have premonitions. Whenever she did something for herself, her mother would soon fall sick.

This was not just psychological, it was karmic in nature. The healing work we did involving clearing this karma which originated beyond this lifetime.

So now she should have more free will and be able to deal with her mother as separate from herself allowing her mother to empower herself in her life.