If you are an empath, there are times when you might feel caught up in an emotional maelstrom. People's energy seems to come rushing towards you, and you lose your footing and are swept off by the current.
For me, I have started noticing how and when this happens because this doesn't happen all the time. There are times when I am centred in myself and when I don't absorb the rush of energy as much. There are also those times when I am overstimulated and one additional thing pushes me over the edge.
I have also been finding new ideas and perspectives that point out all the little things I had been doing for years and that were making me more susceptible to other people's energies. One of them was a habit I had developed where I almost never crossed my arms in front of me.
I remember reading as a teenager that crossing your arms was body language that indicated that you were on the defensive. I didn't want to be defensive at all. I wanted to be open, and I got into the habit of always keeping an open posture.
Recently, I read something in Sonia Choquette's book Trust Your Vibes that really stood out to me because what she said is almost the opposite of what I had practiced many years back.
Sonia talks about how, when we are sensitive and tuned in, we can absorb energy that we don't really want. We have to learn to observe, and not absorb as much. This is what she says about protecting ourselves in an emotionally charged situation when we can feel the onslaught of someone else's energy coming at us:
"One of the best ways to remain grounded in your own energy whenever exposed to an intense emotional outburst is to cover your solar plexus (the area around your belly button) with your arms folded, which is something we tend to do anyway. Notice how natural it is to cross your arms over your stomach whenever you feel defensive. I was reminded of this instinctive protective maneuver in an airport recently while I waited for my flight. I saw a child of about two being reprimanded by his overwrought mother, and as she scolded him, he looked directly at her with his arms folded defiantly across his chest, unfazed by her outburst. He was so effective in blocking her tirade that I had to laugh.
As that child demonstrated, folding your arms across your chest or belly button blocks negative energy from entering your body and protects you from its debilitating effects. Breathing as you do this also keeps foreign energy from invading your aura, and the more slowly you breathe, the more grounded and protected you are."
Sometimes, simple things like these, which are also significant things because they help us own our space, can help us feel protected and centred. Always being open to anything, like I used to be when I was younger, doesn't help because we want to be open to the right thing and closed off to what is intrusive or overwhelming. In fact, being indiscriminately open does us harm, especially for people like us who absorb energy so readily.
Does this make you think about where and how you are open?
If this resonated with you and you know someone who would relate, do share this with them. Thank you!
I came across this quote by the British novelist A.S.Byatt recently. It is so honest and true, and it says what is so often unspoken. I haven't read anything by Byatt, but this quote makes me feel like I want to know her better:
"I think of writing simply in terms of pleasure. It's the most important thing in my life, making things. Much as I love my husband and my children, I can love them only because I am the person who makes these things. I, who I am, is the person who has the project of making a thing. And because that person does that, all the time, that person is able to love all these people."
For me, this quote gets to the heart of things, the heart of all conversations about the conflict women feel when they spend time nurturing their creativity when they are also wives and mothers. I am a wife, and I am not a mother, and I feel that this is the truth.
Who is the person doing the loving if they are not also nurturing and affirming their own being?
Lately, I have been coming across ideas that are telling me a little more about myself, and wiping down the mirror so I can see more of my true self. Something I read recently might resonate with you as well. It's about what some people call clairsentience, or the ability to know something through our sense of touch.
In her book Aura Reading, Rose Rosetree talks about clairsentience using this example:
"With clairsentience, information comes along with touch. Rosa, for instance, is a massage therapist. When starting a session, Rosa holds the client by the ankles. Information comes to her about what needs work. It's as though the whole body reveals its secrets to her hands."
Rosetree goes on to say that while some people who are clairsentient are very tuned in to their physicality but might not realize how much subtle information comes in through physical touching, there are other clairsentients who are subtle touchers and unconcerned with their own physicality. To them, "subtle perception is so much more interesting than staying in touch with reality."
And then, Rosetree goes on to say something that really struck me and might put clairsentience in perspective for you too:
"Here's another paradox. Clairsentient people work especially well with their hands, for example, in writing, cooking, or gardening. But ask them if they would like to work with their hands and they may well say "No." How come?
It's one of those mind-stopping Zen trains of thought, like explaining the sound of one hand clapping. Why don't some clairsentients notice their hands? The process of creating through the hands is so charming it totally absorbs their attention. Therefore, what part of the mind is left to notice the hands?"
I have always thought of myself as someone who does not like to work with their hands. I hate doing repetitive things, and I love the world of ideas and possibilities as compared to what I sometimes think of as purely sensory and physical things. And yet, physical touch is important to me. I, too, can often sense where pain in someone's body is going to be when I touch them.
Recently, I have started writing more by hand instead of working on the laptop. The visceral connection to the paper feels stronger, and things seem to come out in a different way. Like Rose Rosetree says, at these moments, I am in the flow and the thought that I am making something with my hands does not even cross my mind. And yet, my hands feel alive and I sense things in a way that seems organic. It's as if my hands are pulling out something that some part of me has always known.
Just like writing, when I cook, I am so absorbed in the process that my attention never goes to my hands. Till I read what Rosetree says, I hadn't considered how much I sense things through touch. What a thing to learn after so many years of knowing (not knowing?) myself.
Maybe, what Rosetree says connected with you as well, regardless of whether you believe in auras or not. Our bodies are the means through which we make our way through the world, so it feels logical that they are equipped with ways of knowing that go beyond thinking and the intellect.
Here's something that Rosetree says that might resonate with you as well:
"As a clairsentient, whether you come across as grounded or more of an absent-minded professor, you know the value of hugging and touching. That's how you feel you have made genuine contact with people. And if your clairsentience goes along with a gift for physical healing, your hands may radiate a special spiritual beauty."
Does what Rosetree say about clairsentience resonate with you? Does it make you think differently about the different ways in which you know and sense things? Is there some way in which you can apply this in your life?
For me, it feels like this is another way in which intuition and knowing works in and through me. While sometimes, intuition is the little voice that I hear in my center, at other times, what I know comes to me as a result of physical contact and touch.
My body can sense and know things in a way that I am not often aware of, and starting to become aware of this feels enlarging.
