Coughing is a common occurrence that can be caused by various factors, such as allergies, colds, or respiratory infections. However, did you know that coughing can also have spiritual meanings? In many cultures and belief systems, coughing is believed to be more than just a physical reflex. It is often associated with spiritual or metaphysical significance. In this article, we will explore nine spiritual meanings of coughing and whether coughing is considered bad luck in different spiritual traditions.
1. Coughing as a Sign of Cleansing and Releasing Negative Energy
Coughing is not always a telltale sign of an incoming flu. For instance, in spiritual traditions, coughing is considered a way to release stuck energy from the body. When you cough, you are clearing away blockages from your body, and getting rid of stagnant energy or negative emotions.
Experts on metaphysical science and practices say the throat chakra is directly connected to coughing. This chakra is associated with communication and expressing your truth openly. When it is blocked, you may find yourself constantly coughing.
This is because a blocked throat chakra can prevent you from openly communicating your emotions. On a spiritual level, you are unable to express your internal feelings and experiences, which can cause a piling up of emotions inside your physical body.
As time goes by, these pent-up emotions will manifest as coughing, as your body finds a way to release this energetic buildup. This is why, in some religions, coughing is considered an important part of a purification ritual before commencing prayers.
In other words, coughing is used as a way to remove negative energy from the body so that it does not interfere with prayer and meditation. In Christianity, for instance, the purpose of coughing three times before reciting certain prayers or during Mass is to block evil powers from entering the body through inhalation. By coughing, sinners could cleanse themselves from these negative energies and start afresh.
Similarly, yoga experts teach how to perform deep breathing exercises such as pranayama so that individuals can release stuck energy and promote mindfulness.
The next time you start coughing randomly, take some time to think about any repressed feelings or emotions that you have been avoiding processing. It could be that you need to address and accept those feelings so that you can move on from them.
2. Coughing as a Sign of Communication from Spirits or Deceased Loved Ones
We often find meaning in the unexpected. For example, a certain song has played on your playlist every time you felt nostalgic for your late father. If that song plays in a restaurant on the walls of the Grand Canyon, you know it’s not just a coincidence. The same goes for unexpected throat tickles or coughing.
Spirits and deceased loved ones can communicate messages to us in various ways. This includes sleep and dream visits, coincidences, electronically (e.g. lights flickering), or stickers (e.g. dimes). Although coughing may not be as common, there are still spiritual meanings of cough that are important to acknowledge.
7 Spiritual Meanings of Cough: Voices from Spirits and Deceased Loved Ones
The following are spiritual meanings of cough as a form of communication from spirits and deceased loved ones:
1. Angel or spirit presence
We believe that someone is speaking about us when our left ear is burning and that we will meet someone new if our left palm itches. We learn to apply meaning to certain occurrences even though there’s no scientific basis for them. The same goes for coughs.
If you cough suddenly without an illness or food stuck in your throat, a spirit or angel may be in your presence. Coughing under these circumstances can also mean that a visitor is arriving at your home soon.
2. Acknowledging the deceased
If you notice your friend or family member suddenly coughing at a family dinner, do you stop and ask them if they’re okay or if they need water? Or do you carry on and hope to see them after dinner? The answer depends on your relationship with them.
In some cases, trying to identify who’s visiting brings peace to most people. This is especially true if the deceased were not able to say goodbye before they passed away. Deceased loved ones can use signs like coughs to let us know they’re at peace or still watching over us.
3. Signaling annoyance
Coughing can also be a sign of annoyance or discomfort with what people are saying or doing. If an individual constantly coughs after someone tells a story or shares news about another person, they may not entirely be truthful about it.
4. Signaling agreement
When was the last time you responded with silence when someone asked if you agreed with what they said? Or nodded your head? How about a simple cough?
Loud, sudden coughs can be a way of agreeing with someone else’s argument or statement without speaking out loud.
5. Warning of impending disaster
Countries like Japan believe that sneezing means someone is thinking fondly of you whereas two sneezes means that someone is actually talking about you.
Coughs can hold a warning message just like other body functions can. For example, one sudden cough may signal an upcoming disaster at work or home while two or more coughs could mean that you need to get somewhere safe quickly.
6. Revealing a hidden grudge
People around us often pretend to forgive others when really, they hold grudges against them for years. Unresolved conflicts and bad feelings towards others can lead to bitter thoughts and actions that affect our body functions.
Some individuals may feel physical discomfort and get sudden throat itches when others speak poorly about them behind their backs.
7. Offering comfort to grieving family members
Coughing is also believed to be a form of comfort from the deceased to their grieving family members as they try to move on from their loss.
3. Coughing as an Indicator of Imbalance in the Chakras or Energy Centers
Energy centers are found all over the human body, particularly along the spine. The seven most important chakras reside from the bottom of our spine to the crown of our head. Each of these energy centers holds unique properties that benefit our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
The Root or Base Chakra, or Muladhara, governs our sense of security and stability. It’s blocked by fear but can be rebalanced by a feeling of safety and connection.
When your Root Chakra is imbalanced, you may experience chronic lower back pain or a constant cold. In contrast, a headache or sneezing could mean that there’s an imbalance in the Brow or Third Eye Chakra, known as Ajna. Located between the eyebrows just above your nose, Ajna represents the ability to see the big picture and connect with your intuition.
This energy center is also governed by light and eliminates any confusion that could harm you on your spiritual journey. When blocked or imbalanced, you may have difficulty making decisions, experience frequent nightmares, or even feel disconnected from yourself and others.
Each chakra is unique and has powers that contribute to our physical and spiritual well-being. It’s important to address any imbalances in your chakras as it can lead to chronic pain and disease.
Clearing blockages in your chakras can help you find emotional balance and achieve spiritual growth and healing. Different types of healing such as sound therapy, crystal healing, and Reiki can restore balance to your energy centers. Tuning into meditation music associated with each chakra can help you open up your energy centers as well.
Coughing frequently acts as an indicator that one of your chakras is struggling with blockages or imbalance. For example:
- Imbalances in the Throat Chakra (Vishuddha) can manifest physically as coughing fits.
- The heart chakra (Anahata) connects your mind and body. But if there are any blockages in this area, it can affect blood circulation as well as lead to respiratory ailments such as coughing.
- Imbalances in the Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura) can interfere with the digestive systems (and cause coughs).
4. Coughing as a Sign of Psychic Abilities or Sensitivity
Speaking of finding spirits, you might even cough to signal that someone else is around in a room. Remember how you might cough if a person’s talking too loud or when you feel like there’s already too much noise and someone else adds to it. A ghost might be trying to communicate with you, but it might end up being too late if you and your ghost talk so loud that both of you are going to end up struggling to hear each other.
Now, if you’re all comfortable with the idea of spirits, then there’s really nothing wrong about having a grandparent or guardian angel watching over you. However, remember that even if these spirits are your family, friends or deceased loved ones, they might have a bond with someone else in your household instead of just focusing their attentions on you. It’s like how some people say that they’re a dog person or a cat person. The family cat might be attached to one member of the family and constantly follow them around or sit on their lap. So unless the spirit has an important message for you or they want to make contact with you specifically, the only time they’ll pay attention is when you’re coughing quite too much.
Rainbow Fluorite is your guide at finding clarity, harmony and unity between the physical and spiritual worlds. Also a healing crystal for maintaining newfound knowledge, Rainbow Fluorite guides the way to spiritual growth and harmony in spiritual practice through meditation.
The spirit wants to find peace in the physical world as much as they want closure for what happened to them before they passed on. If you’re constantly coughing, Rainbow Fluorite might just be able to help you forge a stronger connection with your spirit guide by helping cleanse your aura and clearing away any mental fogginess that could keep you from seeing them. Physically is heals respiratory issues that cause coughing by dissolving mucus buildup in the lungs.
5. Coughing as a Symbol of Emotional Suppression or Unexpressed Grief
Coughing When Stressed
Are you feeling like you’re about to face something big but have no idea how to deal with it? Do you sense that something is not right in your life, but you don’t have the courage to change it?
Perhaps, you’ve been feeling bad about something, but you feel that no one will understand how you understand it.
Maybe, a lot of your internal problems are self-created and self-inflicted.
If so, you may be experiencing stress that is eating you up from the inside. You may be so stressed out that it’s creating emotional turbulence inside of you.
Emotional Turbulence and Coughing
This emotional turbulence can manifest as coughing. When your emotions are going haywire within you, it creates a lot of energy. This energy has to go somewhere, and when it’s suppressed, the body’s natural response to it is a cough.
Coughing is one way for the body to expel some of the energy lodged within it. Notice how coughing usually leaves us breathless afterwards? That’s because a coughing fit expends a lot of our internal energy.
This isn’t just limited to stress. People who find it difficult to come to terms with their emotions or grief may also experience coughing.
Coughing as a Symbolism of Unexpressed Grief
Losing someone close to us is always a deeply emotional experience.
The harder we try to suppress our emotions about this, the more our body ends up paying for it. Pretty soon, we might even start coughing due to all the grief and loss that we’re trying to suppress.
Sometimes this might also ring true when we aren’t able to truly grieve for lost lifelines or dreams. We try our hardest to suppress our emotions around this and one way this suppression shows up is through coughing.
6. Coughing as a Sign of Spiritual Awakening or Transformation
Coughing is a common symptom for many conditions but there are also spiritual and symbolic meanings behind it. For example, if you are coughing in your dream, it could represent transformation or awakening. This is because the spiritual meaning of coughing indicates that you have interesting energy within you that needs to be released.
The energy could be pent up anger, sadness, fear or even excitement and love. Depending on how you are feeling in your waking life, the interpretation of your coughing dream will also change. If you feel like you have some energy within you that needs to be released immediately, it could result in coughing.
Change is constant. You can’t expect things to remain the same even when you are going through a difficult time in your life. President John F Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
When people go through tough times and feel like they are stuck, they tend to focus on all the negative things in their lives. These negative energies can also manifest as coughing. And this can be a sign of spiritual transformation.
It’s important to remember that not everything will go well when you are going through a change but this doesn’t mean that everything will go wrong. You need to change the way you view things and start having a positive outlook on life.
A positive mind helps to build more positive emotions and energy within yourself which is why it’s important to let go of all the negative things that are holding you back.
The spiritual meaning of coughing can also signify that whenever there is a closed door, another one opens. When one person leaves your life, someone else will come in and fill their spot. The key to finding these new opportunities is to let go of old things so new ones can come.
And when these new opportunities arrive, don’t be afraid to embrace them with open arms. Life is filled with new experiences so take them as they come and make every moment count.
7. Coughing as a Manifestation of Spiritual Warfare or Negative Entities
Just as coughing can be a sign that you’re resonating on a low frequency, it can also serve as a message from negative entities and evil spirits.
Spiritual attacks are real.
And though we like to think of ourselves as the biggest and baddest beings in the spiritual world, there are entities that exist on an even lower frequency that can wreak havoc on your life.
They feed off of the negative energy of others and are drawn towards people who are struggling to maintain a high vibration.
If you are under attack, you may begin to constantly get sick, fall victim to accidents, or notice that things have taken a turn for the worst in all areas of your life.
A sign that you’re under spiritual attack is chronic illness or persistent illness and coughing.
This is because negative energies affect your health by leaving your body in a state where every system is functioning less than optimally.
For example, negative energy can cause you to carry tension throughout your body and impair your ability to breathe deeply. This can leave you susceptible to chronic respiratory issues, like coughing.
If your coughing is the result of spiritual warfare, it will usually be accompanied by feelings of being overwhelmed or weighed down, constant fatigue, depression or extreme anxiety and chills or cold sensations.
Negative entities are often attracted to people who possess certain qualities like kindness and spirituality. Therefore, it’s important to stay grounded in positivity and steer clear from people who project negativity.
If you suspect that you’re under attack, you can also clear negative energy from your home and aura, start regular meditation practices to raise your vibration or even seek the help of a priest or spiritual healer.
8. Coughing as a Reminder to Pay Attention to Your Intuition or Inner Voice
This is an interesting spiritual interpretation. Like how an irritating cough tells you to listen to it and drink some water, when a cough occurs during certain situations in your life, it might be a trigger to pay attention to your intuition.
When we have the potential to make decisions that may impact our lives in either small or big ways, there is often a voice inside us that is calm, cool and collected. However, our anxiety could make us act otherwise as it makes it harder for us to concentrate. That intuition voice is often calm and collected even when the rest of our emotions are telling us otherwise.
If you find yourself suffering from a cough when you are feeling anxious or upset about a certain situation, this could be the universe telling you to stop, calm down and pay attention to that inner voice.
Perhaps you have been meaning to make a decision but you keep ignoring what your intuition has been saying. Just like how ignoring a cough can make it get worse and worse, ignoring that inner calm voice can make your life worse than it needs to be.
Are you looking for your dream job but are too scared to leap? Do you want to pursue a creative passion but are worried what people will say? In these situations, something as simple as a cough can remind us to pay attention to our inner selves and the wisdom that comes from within.
Your intuition is there for a reason. It can help us understand things about ourselves and other people that we had never known. And once we listen to them, their wisdom can take us on the path of least resistance.
Hence if a cough pops up during some anxious moments in life, perhaps it’s time to take inventory of how you have been treating your intuition. How long has it been speaking to you? How long have you been ignoring it?
9. Coughing as a Reflection of Environmental or Energetic Factors
Sometimes, a cough can signal that something in your natural environment is off—like exposure to secondhand smoke, allergies or inhaling dust in the air. Sometimes, it’s not a physical cause at all—it’s an energetic cause instead.
So the next time you get a cough, consider whether this intense urge to cough or throat tickle came after you encountered something that didn’t vibe with you or if there’s an energetic need you need to address.
The following scenarios might explain why you’re suddenly coughing your head off:
Coughing in a room full of negative energy
Imagine walking into a place that just feels off—like a spooky old house. You may notice you’re more likely to cough in a room full of negative energy. An Australian study found that there’s actually a link between exposure to mold and negative emotions. And it happens to be the mold spores triggering these emotions.
So if you’re in the same room as several people who have a case of bad vibes (or are even part of the problem), this could be one explanation for why your chronic cough decided to make an appearance. This is also likely why people experience nervous laughter during an awkward situation—our emotions can manifest themselves in different ways.
Coughing after feeling emotionally triggered
Studies have also shown that stress from strong emotions can cause throat irritation and dry coughs. Feelings of anger, sadness and fear can make you feel like something’s stuck in your throat, causing the urge to cough. Dealing with these situations head-on and addressing the emotional issue can help relieve your impulse to cough.
Coughing because your home has bad feng shui
Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophy based around arranging your home to balance out the energy flow, meaning we should avoid clutter at all costs. If you’re feng shui challenged (or have been neglecting your chores), dust might be lingering in the air.
This can potentially make it more difficult for you to breathe comfortably and could also contribute to your sudden urge to cough. So if you’re feeling like there’s no end in sight to your hacking or constantly feel like there’s something stuck in your throat when you’re home, it might be time for a deep clean.
In conclusion, coughing can have different spiritual meanings and interpretations across various cultures and belief systems. While some may view coughing as a sign of bad luck or negative energy, others see it as a means of communication from the spiritual realm. It is important to remember that spiritual beliefs are subjective and personal, so the interpretation of coughing may vary from individual to individual. Whether you believe in the spiritual meanings of coughing or not, it is always a good idea to take care of your physical health and seek medical attention if your cough persists or worsens.
