Scream once a day, for 3 days straight
When I had my remote cleansing with celebrity exorcist R.H. Stavis (if you have not already read about that, I recommend reading that post first) she sent an email after the session with her findings and homework for me to do.
Most of the homework was pretty straightforward and all things that I was readily able to do. However, I struggled with one assignment: “scream once a day, for 3 days straight.” There was a time in my life when I could have easily screamed every day for 365 days straight, but I am not particularly angry anymore. It’s been a long time since I was. It felt silly, how do I make myself scream when I don’t feel angry or upset? So I didn’t do it.
As I did other things from the homework, I would think about the scream and my feelings were always the same: I don’t need to scream. I don’t know how to scream when I don’t feel angry. I discussed it with my husband and my best friend but I ended up in the same place, wondering how to scream when I didn’t feel the need to.
“The Scream” by artist Edvard Munch is a famous painting that is often copied in a humorous way.
Unblocking the throat chakra
I continued doing other things related to spiritual growth during this time, including reading the book “Chakras and Self-care” by Ambi Kavanagh.
The exercise related to the throat chakra was interesting. When I visualized the chakra, as she instructed, it wasn’t spinning with energy as it should have been. It was spinning kind of wonky, like there was a weight on one side of it. It also wasn’t blue all over, there was a scaly substance on part of it. Now, you should know that I have ADHD and it is not at all unusual for my brain to “go rogue” when doing a visualization. So I wasn’t necessarily surprised or concerned when instead of just visualizing a nice, blue triangle spinning around, there was something weird instead. If I was looking at it from a different angle, I might say my intuition was just showing me what was actually happening for that chakra. Either way, my mind is kind of like Wonderland, and I am Alice being all at once freaked the eff out and charmed by its antics.
I just wrote about it in my journal, tucked that information away, and moved on.
The Message Persisted
A few weeks after my session with R.H. Stavis, I had a session with a local intuitive, Marcia aka HolisticMysticMS. I had been thinking a lot about what to do about Kaya Holistic Wellness and whether or not I wanted the mission to be what I had originally planned – body neutral wellness coaching – or if I wanted to move in a less conventional direction. I felt very stuck. There was what I felt I should be doing and what felt right. I saw that Marcia offered life path readings, so I thought “why not?” Impulsively taking a reiki training had gone well, so maybe it’s better not to overthink these things? When I had my session with Marcia, my throat blockage came up again. I knew that this was not going to be going away on its own. I told her that the throat and throat chakra continued coming up for me. I told her about what Rachel had said to do and how I felt like I couldn’t scream because I didn’t need to. She suggested that I wait until I was having a bad or frustrating day and then let that feeling lead me into a scream. That seemed like the only way it was going to work, so I decided that I’d do that.
Still, more weeks passed without a desire to scream or a frustrating day. When I finally had a bad day and still had no desire to try to scream, I realized there was more of a block than I had realized. I had a lot of excuses: I didn’t want to bother my dogs. I could use my detached office, but what if a neighbor heard me? I definitely had some hesitation based on what other people might hear and what they might think about what they were hearing. Sounds like it goes hand in hand with a blocked throat chakra, right? Ideally, what would matter most would be expressing myself. I realized that, of course, Rachel, Marcia, and my chakra meditation were correct – something was in there and I needed to get it out.
Trying to let go
About a month after my session with Rachel, I decided that I would go to my shed office and just scream. I googled “primal scream” and apparently that is the name of a band from the 1980s. So I tried googling “primal scream spiritual” and I found this blog post on Annapurna Living called The Power of Primordial Screaming by Marie Mamonia. It is about a performance art piece that she did but I still found it to be helpful. I decided that I would start by doing some journaling, to try and figure out what the block was.
After writing a bit, I decided that I would try to talk to the part of me that was concerned that someone might hear. In my work as a therapist, I use a type of therapy called Internal Family Systems. I am not going to explain much about it here, but the idea is that we have different parts inside of us, similar to the characters in the Inside Out movies. These parts want different, sometimes conflicting things, and often that is why we want to do something and yet never do it. In this case, a part of me wanted to scream, a part of me didn’t want to really let go in that way, and a third part of me was afraid that someone might overhear and of what they might think if they did.
I “talked” to the part that was afraid someone may overhear by journaling. I asked why it was afraid of me being overheard and it told me that its job is to make sure that I seem normal to those around me. It was not willing to take a step back and let me scream. I continued to ask the part questions and get to know it, and after a while it said that it was ok taking a step back to let me scream into a pillow.
I wasn’t angry or frustrated, and truthfully it still didn’t feel like I needed to scream. I grabbed one of my throw pillows and I turned on some music by a metalcore band I often listen to when I am angry or frustrated, August Burns Red.
I put my face in the pillow; I decided I would just scream as best I could and see what happened.
The Scream
As I started to scream, it was as though I had taken a sledgehammer to a wall that was holding in all of my emotions.
I screamed the way someone being chased by a killer in a horror movie screams.
Tears began to stream down my face.
Still, I continued to scream into the pillow.
I took a breath and continued to scream. I screamed through the 4 minute, 46 second song that was playing and continued to scream into the next song.
The scream didn’t feel as though it had anything to do with my throat chakra. The scream felt like it came from somewhere deep within me, maybe starting all the way down at the root chakra. It felt like it came up through my pelvis, through my stomach, all the way up and out of my mouth, like vomiting out a sound. It felt like my entire body was crying out. Like I was exorcising myself of something through this primordial scream.
I had brief moments where I knew what or who I was screaming for or about, but most of the 6-7 minutes I screamed it was just animal and emotional. No thoughts. No words.
“…as a girl you were brought up to be “the nice girl,” to not take up too much space, to hold back and let others go first… We have to be flexible and take some space when needed, but then for christ [sic] sake take a back seat, don’t be too loud or obnoxious, nobody wants to be around that! But what do you do then, when you have been holding back all your life?”
– Marie Mamonia, The Power of Primordial Screaming
After the scream
When the scream felt over, I sat in the chair for several minutes. I was shocked by what had transpired. Of course, I knew before the scream that Rachel was right. I knew that there was no reason for this to continue coming up over and over again other than because there was something I was holding inside of me that needed to come out.
My voice was hoarse for four days after the scream.
There were blood vessels under my eyes that had burst.
I had either an allergic reaction to the throw pillow cover, or I had some sort of physical reaction to the scream itself or perhaps whatever it was a scream-vomited out. My face, especially around my eyes, was red, swollen, and sore. I only cried for a minute or two, not for the full scream, so I definitely didn’t cry enough to cause that.
I had trouble even talking the next day. To everyone other than my husband, I lied and said that it was due to allergies. I did not scream for 3 days in a row because I was scared that I might do permanent damage to my vocal chords if I did that again so soon.
In truth, I think I screamed enough that day for all 3 days. Although, I do plan to do another scream in a month or 2, once I am sure that my vocal chords are completely healed from the first scream.
What I learned from primordial screaming
I realized that whether or not it feels like it, there can be something we are holding inside of us. Because I create space for other people in one way or another as my vocation, I have learned to be disconnected from my emotions – perhaps too disconnected. As empaths, we have difficulty figuring out which feelings are ours and which are other people’s, but the answer to that is never cutting all feelings off as much as possible. I learned that I need to be more intentional about checking in with myself and what I’m feeling. Perhaps then I can have a better understanding of what I am carrying and which pieces are mine and not mine.
I know that I have some past life trauma that needs healing, perhaps even more that I am currently unaware of. My plan is to see if the person that did my Quantum Healing Hypnotherapy (past life regression) works with clients to heal past life trauma. There are certainly energetic pieces of it, but I know that for healing the pain of the life that I saw during my QHHT as well as the ways that it has impacted my current life, there needs to be more to it than simply healing energetically. I may write about my QHHT experience here at some point. What I saw was so unexpected and it impacted me deeply. That experience, along with pulling The Tower in one of my daily tarot readings shortly after, made me take a complete step back from all of my spiritual exploration in 2022. It wasn’t until 2024 that I have been able to truly dive back into my spiritual practice, in a way that did not feel possible for the 2 years in between. Because of how deeply the QHHT impacted me, I’m not sure that I will ever feel ready to talk about it publicly. Either way, I am glad to be back on the path that feels right.
Moving Forward
I am glad that I did not give up on screaming, even when it felt that I had no need for it. It was very clear that Spirit did not want me to give up on it, given how many messages I received related to the throat chakra. I do believe there is a piece that, as Marie Mamonia said in her post, is linked to the way that women and girls are taught to be small, silent, and pleasant. It feels like a lifelong undertaking to slowly feel more comfortable taking up space and being ok with not being liked. Worrying that I might be judged or that it might harm my other businesses in some way was the main reason that I felt that I couldn’t move in the direction that felt most right with Kaya, or be more public with my journey. I know that was a part of what was blocking my throat chakra – feeling that I had to hide parts of myself in order to be accepted.
Around the time that I was accepting that it was important to be open with my truth, the podcast Awakening Souls had an episode about the throat chakra and “finding your true voice.” It felt very timely for me. There are so few areas where I am not open. Carrying the fear of “coming out” as a spiritual person was truly unnecessary. If I can be an openly queer, feminist, progressive person in a very regressive, religious, conservative state, this piece of me should not be any more distasteful to people than any of the others. I have found time and time again that “our vibe attracts our tribe” in that, the people who we will connect with will find us and those who take issue with us aren’t people we really want to be connecting with anyway. I’ve never been a person who does well living quietly.
I know that this scream is only part of the journey for me. I have a lot of messages of shame that I’ve carried throughout my life that I am still unlearning. Perhaps that will never stop. I haven’t meditated on my throat chakra again but I have a feeling that after this blog post, it’s going to be blue and spinning, exactly the way that the book said it should be. The scream was only partially about unblocking my throat chakra. The other piece was speaking out and being unafraid.
