I had a full morning mapped out, the kind of agenda that makes you feel productive just looking at it. And then I got the notification that my mentor, Carolina’s embodiment class was starting, and the topic was rigidity, specifically, what happens when we take life too seriously, and something within me did this quiet little thing, like a hand reaching out and tugging at my sleeve.
So I ditched my calendar for the hour and joined the call.
What I didn’t know in that moment was that I was about to get an answer to a question I had been asking for an entire year. The kind of answer that is like a key turning a lock you forgot you were carrying.
The Year I Lost My Voice
Last May, I lost my voice.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Out of nowhere, or so I thought, my voice started giving out. Strained, forced, painful. Every sound that came out of my mouth felt like a sacrifice of my pride and strength.
I went to my ENT and was diagnosed with Muscle Tension Dysphonia. The prescription was speech therapy. Six sessions. By the fourth one, I already knew, the way you know things in your body before your brain creates reason, that this wasn’t it. This wasn’t the fix.
So I went looking, seeking, and searching everywhere, just as I do. I’ve always prided myself on being a master problem solver, until I saw what that cost me.
I did energy clearings with my psychic mentor and truly felt its warmth. I started myofascial release. I did past life regressions. I did subconscious rewiring work around visibility and safety. I tapped. I journaled. I forgave myself for all the times I stayed small when I should have spoken up. I hummed, or tried to. Even that was painful.
Every single attempt came wrapped in the same quiet hope: maybe this is the one. Maybe this is finally the fix.
And every single time, nothing changed.
What people don’t tell you about losing something as precious and needed as your voice is what it does to your mind. You don’t understand it until you’re inside it. It’s a constant, inescapable reminder that something is wrong and you don’t know how to make it right. I started avoiding conversations. Pulling back from family, from friends, from the version of my life that required me to show up and speak. I told myself I was protecting my energy. Which wasn’t true, I was hiding in it.
There was shame. So much damn shame. The type that will quietly rearrange your life so you’re never in a situation where the broken thing has to be visible. I was that broken thing.
The Answer I Wasn’t Ready to See
And then this morning, on the embodiment session, I almost skipped, my teacher said something that felt entirely true in my whole body.
She said that living in a state of seriousness creates rigidity. Not just in your thinking but in your actual body. I felt the truth resonate deep, not just in my mind, but within my whole being.
Here’s what I’ve learned about myself, the thing I was not ready to see until I was, I have been braced for a very long time. My body’s default setting is tight, controlled, focused, and determined.
As children, we learn that seriousness is the thing that keeps us safe and out of trouble. As an adult, you get things done. You don’t take up too much space. You don’t give yourself permission to be irresponsible, silly, or loose. You hold it together. That was the program we’ve been conditioned on, even if nobody said it out loud.
And I followed that instruction so faithfully that somewhere along the way, the bracing just became me. It became my default way of being without even recognizing it.
What was shared in that session broke something open. A realization that came at just the right time. A braced body cannot receive. It cannot receive rest, or creativity, or abundance, or inspiration. It cannot receive softness. It is essentially a closed sign hung on the door of your soul. And the body, which is so much smarter than we give it credit for, will find a way to tell you. It will tell you in the language of symptoms, pain, and loss, until you finally stop looking outside yourself for the answer and turn around to face what’s right in front of you.
My voice didn’t disappear because of a speech pattern problem. It disappeared because my whole life was a speech pattern problem. Every swallowed word, every moment I contracted instead of expanded when I had something to say, every time I chose control over ease, it all went somewhere. The body keeps the score. It kept mine, faithfully, until I was ready to look at the scoreboard and realize, well, damn, I am losing.
The Belief Hidden Underneath It All
Here’s what’s really twisted about the belief underneath all of this: if I relax, if I let myself be playful or joyful or loose, then I am being irresponsible.
That one sentence contains a lifetime of programming. Most of us absorbed it so early that we don’t even know we’re running it. Seriousness means valid. Seriousness means worthy. Seriousness means you will not be left behind or looked down on or dismissed. And the flip side? The person who is genuinely light, joyful for no particular reason, a little silly, we look at her with admiration and a quiet suspicion and judgement in equal measure. We think, must be nice, and also, but is she serious enough?
The root of seriousness, I realized today, is the need to control outcomes. If I am focused and driven and never let my guard down, I can make sure things go right. But what nobody tells you, what I had to learn from a year of silence and avoidance, is that all that controlling is exhausting. And it is costing you more than it is protecting you.
I am not throwing structure out the window. I am a 6/2 Human Design Generator who has Sagittarius in her bones, I know how to move with intention. But intention and rigidity are not the same thing. Purpose and tension are not the same thing. And I had been confusing them for years.
What Coming Home Looks Like
What my Higher Self has been asking of me, all this time, is to soften. To make room for play. To believe, actually believe, not just write about it, that I can be joyful and responsible at the same time. That ease is not the enemy of excellence. That a relaxed body is not a lazy one. It is an open and receptive one.
I am still learning what that looks like in practice. Some days I get it exactly right, and other days I catch myself gripping the steering wheel of my own life so hard my knuckles go white. But I am watching. I am listening. I am starting to trust that the body was never broken; it was just very patiently pointing me toward the truth.
And the truth is that I am being called toward softness, joy, and pleasure. Toward a version of myself who doesn’t have to hold everything quite so tightly to feel like she matters.
How This Shows Up For You
You probably don’t have Muscle Tension Dysphonia. But I’d be willing to bet you have your own version of a body that’s been trying to tell you something you haven’t been ready to hear yet.
Maybe it shows up as the tension in your shoulders that no amount of massage seems to touch. The exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. The low hum of anxiety that follows you into rooms where nothing is actually wrong. The irritability that surfaces when your life looks fine on paper but feels hollow underneath it.
Or maybe it’s quieter than that. Maybe it’s the way you haven’t laughed, like a real belly laugh, the kind that makes you pee yourself a little bit, in longer than you can remember. The creative idea you keep putting off for when things slow down. The version of yourself that used to be lighter, easy-going, more you, and you’re not quite sure when she left or how to call her back.
That is the body talking. That is your soul sending a signal that it’s time to let go and let play be your compass.
The truth is, the symptoms are rarely the story. They are the punctuation at the end of a very long sentence your body has been writing for years, trying to get your attention. And the healing doesn’t begin until you stop trying to fix the symptom and start getting curious about the story.
Seriousness told you that you don’t have time for that. That curiosity and contemplation are a luxury. That the responsible thing is to keep moving, keep managing, keep holding it all together.
But what if the most responsible thing you could do right now is to stop, soften, and actually listen?
What if the thing your body has been asking for isn’t another strategy or another healing modality or another thing to fix? What if it’s just permission? Permission to be softer. Permission to not have it all figured out. Permission to come back to yourself, slowly, and trust that what you find there is not broken — it’s just been waiting.
Your soul has a signal too. And it has been trying to reach you.
I created the Soul Signal Assessment for moments exactly like this one. The moment where something in you goes quiet and still, where a sentence lands a little too close to home, where you feel that unmistakable tug at your sleeve asking you to look a little deeper.
The assessment will show you how your soul has been speaking to you, the language it uses, the patterns it moves through, and the places it’s been trying to reach you. And because I firmly believe that more joy is not optional but a requirement in life, it also comes with a spirit animal and the medicine it carries for you. A dash of magic and a pinch of playfulness. Exactly what the doctor, or should I say, the embodiment teacher, ordered.
👉 Take The Soul Signal Assessment
Take it. Be curious. Let yourself be surprised by what you find.
And if it opens something you want to explore further, I would love to sit with you in a Discovery Call and look at it together.
👉 Book A Discovery Call With Nikki
You’ve been serious for long enough. Now is your time to relax and receive.
All my love, Nikki K ❤️♾️
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If you saw a glimmer of yourself inside this article, I’d love to hear what came up for you. Your voice matters. Let it be heard.
Struck by how unglamorous the actual answer was after a full year of energy clearings and past life regression, just learning you'd been bracing your whole life. That's not the ending anyone expects.
So incredibly important. Dance, joy, play, silly...it's all medicine. Beautiful work. ❤️