Positive Energy Guide

Transparency, in the context of energy, means letting energy pass right through you without sticking. Transparency is essential because it provides a way to interface with someone’s energy without cutting yourself off from the other person or taking on their energy. This skill is especially valuable in work or play that involves touch, such as healing or dance. Without this skill you either take on energy from others or wall them out and block your own flows.

I once won the respect and gratefulness of a chiropractor who had been suffering for years from almost-debilitating hand and foot pain. I noticed energy blockage when I saw him work and asked him what was going on. He told me he had been using specific visualizations to block clients’ energy from coming into his hands or entering through his feet. He learned this technique from someone who was teaching it to practitioners. Somehow I managed to correct this condition about five minutes. His pain went away completely and did not come back. He called and emailed his gratitude several times over the next six months.

In order to pick up energy from someone you have to be in some sort of relationship with that specific energy, just as an argument takes two parties. Your role may be minimal, but must exist for energy to transfer.
I go into details about why this occurs in my book. [link]

Blocking yourself off doesn’t work well. If it does keep energy from coming in, it also blocks your most direct source of feedback about yourself. The way your energy interacts with external energy provides powerful and precious feedback—guidance. Personal cultivation is greatly aided by staying open to the mirroring that occurs between our personal experience and the rest of life. Awareness and intelligent response are the high road. Protection may be necessary under specific conditions, but personal cultivation and mastery are more much more meaningful in the long run.

Dealing with personal issues is the one most effective way to enhance energy safety. This is why I write about addressing inner wounds. Inner cultivation with respect to these wounds is critically important and frequently overlooked in self-development programs.

Profound self-knowledge is an essential precondition when it comes to accurately discerning energy influences. We cannot be clear about what is going on externally when we are adding our own issues into the mix. Lucid discernment of energy depends on having a clear baseline. Self-knowledge and personal clarity provide this baseline.

When we get confused about which energies and emotions belong inside versus which do not, we lose clarity. Energies that do not belong with us compromise our transparency like a log in a river gathers debris.

Learning to become transparent to influences that might undermine wellbeing keeps us safe from taking on energies that do not serve us. Transparency also enhances our ability to discern between different types of influences. The self-development work necessary to learn to do this improves every aspect of daily and work life.

We’ll go into more detail about clarity and discernment in the next post.

What have YOU noticed about blocking energy as a means of protection?
How do you feel in relation to other people when you wall them off?

Beginners in the art of managing subtle energy are often taught to protect and shield themselves from outside influences. One of my own mentors, an advanced healer with staggering talent, caught me before I learned this type of skill—and put the nix on it.

A Viet Nam veteran, my mentor could discourse for hours on everything from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to contributions to our understanding of consciousness from different Buddhist sects throughout history. He told me shielding is like a Band-Aid; not a real solution. He maintained that becoming transparent to energies and letting them pass through without sticking was a much higher art than attempting to keep influences out.

Before I we go on, I will admit that I felt extremely vulnerable and chagrinned at the time. I had no idea how to manage my sensitivity. We were in a whole house full of people at a healing workshop in which novices were messing with each other’s energy. My mentor had me sit still, carefully sensing my body and feeling my safety issues instead of running around or jabbering. Apparently I survived.

Protection may provide a quick way to feel safe. I have endured situations that did require measures of protection, which I learned later from a powerful clairvoyant healer who had participated in military Remote Viewing programs. While perhaps essential over the short term in unusual circumstances, I agree that protection is not the best way to deal with sensitivity to external energies. This is why:

• Trying to protect from the outside does not address the energy issues on the inside that cause us to be unsafe.
• Most methods of protection do not lead to or enhance spiritual and emotional development.
• Fearful motivations cultivate defensiveness.
• Putting layers between yourself and the world may reduce contact with energies that benefit you.
• When you do pick up external energy this is a form of guidance. It shows you where you need to work on yourself to be clear.
• You may mask information that it is useful or important to be aware of.
• It’s easy to confuse your own mental, emotional or energetic material with something from the outside and try to remove or repel it.
• Working on the energies in yourself that allow influences to impact you makes excellent use of your experiences and will help you to develop depth, strength, discernment, and clarity.

Advanced healers and energy masters do strengthen their energy fields. They may even build in structures that are protective. But the intention is not defensive. They are working with positive intention, not from fear. There is a major difference between bringing in energies that unsavory energy will not stick to, and trying to wall it off.

Bringing in positive energies successfully relies on the personal clarity that comes from acknowledging and handling our own energies and issues. Protective actions, taken by someone who does not confront their issues, are like locking the front door when a punk in the basement is going in and out without shutting the door.

Defensive energy without looking inside yourself at your own issues works about the same as refusing to talk about things when we’re feeling uncomfortable in a relationship. The energy hangs around without being dealt with. And that beaver-dam of blocked energy causes disturbances.

Becoming aware of our own interior contents allows us to deal with the energy that belongs to us. Situations become less charged, simpler, and more manageable when we’re not aggravating them by reacting from a stockpile of unresolved issues.

We’ll go into more detail in the next post. My book discusses energy protection in even greater detail, including specifics about when and why we pick up energy from others, and what to do about it.

Please share these posts with those who may benefit.

What does your energy feel like when you are defensive compared to when you are using good sense to stay safe?
Have you noticed that the things you want to do when you are uncomfortable stop you from doing the things that can get you past it once and for all?

How do you sort your energy out from those around you and simultaneously develop more-universal awareness? This is the task before energy-sensitive people. As we become more aware, we must learn to integrate between personal and global.

We interpenetrate and are interpenetrated by the energy of other people. Whether or not we notice, everything that impacts our environment influences us to some extent. Everything that impacts the planet influences us. We influence the greater whole too. It’s a two-way street.

Our outer, most subtle energy fields not only overlap with those of others– they are blended as One. Visualize yourself as the smallest doll—the innermost, solid one–in a set of Russian nesting dolls. Let that doll represent your personal energies close to your body. The largest doll can represent the Collective Unconscious or group mind on planet Earth. I am not talking about abstractions. People who develop specific types of awareness experience these actualities directly.

Developing the ability to move your awareness intentionally into different states assists greatly with discomfort related to sensitivity to energy. Practices with energy and Presence can be used to exercise our capacity to sit with difficult states without being trapped in them. Sensitivity becomes a tremendous asset as one learns to manage it. Directed sensitivity forms the backbone of accurate spiritual and daily-life guidance.

In Sufism (a 2000+ year old mystical order) initiates use sound and intention to invoke and experience specific states of consciousness. Subtle, expanded states are often paired with embodied, contracted states. Alternating between attention Other to and attention to Self is one example. Spiritual practices that use this alternation help develop boundaries and Presence. Rapid alternation between states develops an ability to shift instantly between personal and Universal awareness.

ALL of the numerous advanced spiritual teachers I have encountered have been able to integrate expanded states of consciousness with body-awareness. They are extraordinarily Present and move with grace. Those who practiced types of meditation that moved awareness out beyond the body also used their clarity of focus to be fully Present IN their body and personal environment from moment-to-moment.

Powerful spiritual people require clear and lucid boundaries. The more developed our subtle awareness, the more essential are excellent boundaries. Without good boundaries, we may get tangled up in the issues and energies of others, and perhaps invade their privacy.

As with nutritional supplements, practices that benefit most people may be inappropriate for a specific individual. Also, substances or practices that benefit initially may be detrimental if used longer than necessary to correct an imbalance. What makes you feel good initially can gradually make you feel bad down the line. Then it’s hard to tell because you associate that product or practice with feeling better. Misapplication of energy practices ranges from having little effect to being unsettling and causing imbalances that are difficult to correct.

All practices that advance health, personal, and spiritual development are enhanced through very specific and personalized application. Ironically: One-size-fits-all programs are not for everyone.

When it comes to powerful energy-changing practices, we have specific and individual needs. Energy work is most effective and safe when tailored to each individual. This being said, some exercises do serve almost everyone. If you are sensitive to energy, pay close attention to how any type of practice impacts you and be certain to speak up or stop if an energy exercise throws you out of balance.

Here is an example: Sometimes profound spiritual retreats include exercises designed to assist in shattering self-identification (ego-based awareness and personality habits). When the personality or ego stands in the way of connection with Other, these practices open up your sense of self and break down our habitual sense of separation.

At a five-day silent retreat a competent and alert Guide altered my practices from those of the group during shattering/opening phase of the retreat. Just thinking about the practices he was recommending to the group made me feel shaky and agitated. He noticed and stepped in, directed me to practice in a way that builds up a body-centered and personal experience of the Divine instead of breaking down walls. I was already too open.

Note that the way to balance being open was not closing or obliterating sensitivity, but finding a way to balance openness with a sense of solidity. Closing down does not ultimately serve us when seeking functional energy boundaries. Finding ways to be balanced and Present is the highest option.

Presence and boundaries are foundational skills. These skills naturally help to develop the ability to become transparent to energy that does not belong with you, allowing it to pass through without sticking. We will pursue this topic more in the next few posts.

Have you ever done energy exercises that made you feel out of balance? What did you do to get back in balance?

How do you tell the difference between energy that originates with you and energy from other sources?

A housecleaner was leaving my home after his second visit. At the door, we were conversing about whether or not to reschedule. I said, “To be perfectly frank, I like your work and feel you are reliable, but I need to adjust to you being in the house. You have really big energy, and I find myself having trouble concentrating. Perhaps I can do errands when you’re here. Of course I couldn’t do that the first time, but now that you know the house, something like that could work.” 

“Can you tell what I am thinking?” he asked, suddenly and baldly. I smiled and he went on: “I mean, I suppose I do notice energy to some extent—but I’m used to being around people who don’t notice that type of thing.”

“I get the impression,” I said gently, “that you have had some experience of being invaded by other people.”

“Oh yes! When haven’t I been invaded?!”

“Lots of us have that experience. It’s more normal than you would think. Take, for example, being a teenager and coming home two hours after curfew. You put your hand on the door and most people know at that point who is awake and whether or not they are in trouble. That’s feeling energy.”

“Sure. I did that.”

“It sounds like you are fairly sensitive to energy.”

“I think I may be, but I haven’t really thought about it that much, and I’m not sure I always know what I’m noticing.”

“My friend who was visiting today scanned you when you came in. I think that may have made you uncomfortable.” He shifted around on his feet. “She’s young yet, and doesn’t realize that it’s invasive to scan someone. Here’s how it works: Some things are in the public space and some are in private space. It’s okay to ‘read’ anything someone puts into the public mind-space. It’s not okay to go into their private mind-space without permission.”

He was looking at me, engaged, taking it in.

“Say you are sitting at a table reading a newspaper. If I walk by and I see the major headlines on the outside, that’s normal and acceptable. I may notice but not really try to read the fairly large headings. I do not sit down or bend over and read the articles. It is a violation for me to come around to the side of the paper you are on and read things without your permission. That is how it works. So: I don’t really pay any attention to what you are thinking. It’s not my business—and it takes work to read it.”

The housecleaner looked relieved and we went on to handle scheduling.

I found the encounter interesting because he was forthright about what he needed to know, and asked directly. For every one like him there are likely to be thirty who will not know how to ask, and a few hundred to whom the concept doesn’t even occur, or who shut down their thoughts and feelings about it before they become aware of them.

How do YOU feel when someone scans you?

If you scan other people, do you use any ethical or practical guidelines?

Do you believe that there is or should be an ethic about scanning other people?

If so, what feels right to you and why?

Here’s an old joke: Two psychics were walking down the street. They stopped, smiled, looked one another up and down, and one said, “You’re fine! How am I?”

I was doing Inner Work walking in nature, and noticed that I had a few Inner Child inclusions. I made this term up, and find it apt. I am referring to a phenomena that shows up in some types of energy clearing—although most of the fine healers I have seen are unaware of or do not scan for them.

Fragments of another person’s Inner Child become drawn to us when the person has unresolved issues at a particular age and views us as a source for those needs. If they disown that need, and are unaware of the need at the moment, and if one is sympathetic or identifies with their need, the related energy can enter our body or energy fields. We include it as if it is part of us, hence, an inclusion.

Conversely, we can call it an Inner Child exclusion if we have given over a chunk of our energy to someone else. Giving to someone else the energy of a part of self that we are not owning excludes it from our awareness, hence an exclusion. One healer I know refers to disowned or disparaged parts as “exiles.” He is talking about the psychological aspect. I am talking about the energy.

When energy that belongs within becomes attached to or projected onto someone who is seen as a source of need gratification, these chunks become exclusions for the person who disowns them, and inclusions to the person who carries them.

The problem with pushing these chunks away is that doing so maintains an arrested state of development. It is difficult to work effectively on issues when the related energy is not present in the body—along with the sensations and emotions that are connected with it. The problem with taking them on from someone else is that when we think they are part of us we can work and work on related issues and sensations without making much progress. We cannot change something that does not belong to us, so we can find the issues highly resistant to change.

Energy and issues show up in layers. We can clear everything we can find at a given point in time, then after significant growth, discover energy that was not previously accessible. It becomes possible to clear this energy when we get down to the strata of experience wherein that energy has been lodged.

Energy anomalies are always related to our issues. As with psychological issues, they do not show up until we are ready to grow through and beyond the related issues or control previously obscure elements of our personalties.

When I first learned about Inner Child inclusions, I removed all the inclusions I could find. Following periods of intensive Inner Work I occasionally find chunks that were buried and simply could not show up before.

Noticing energy related to complex issues requires dedicated focus. I do my best extended Inner Work walking in nature, when very few people are around. Then I can till the soil of a particular issue by turning it over and over, looking at all the ways that an issue appears in my inner and outer worlds, sensing into and working with the related energies. Movement helps air things out and keeps me grounded and in rhythm. Natural beauty keeps me from getting restless or uncomfortable, like I might be sitting for an extended period. New places and beautiful views give me perspective, elevate my mood, soften my heart, and remind me of that the world contains pleasant options.

As I walked I through out some chunks that had been drawn to me. This should be done lovingly, returning them kindly since the person who disowned them needs to accept them back and process something difficult.

A beginner’s error is to dis-identify with parts that belong inside, imagining that they originate from someone else. Throwing out parts that belong inside creates other problems. Be circumspect and willing to own your “stuff” if you try clearing yourself.

Do you ever feel unreasonable and awkwardly responsible for someone’s needs, in an odd, preverbal and stuck way? You may have inclusions.

Do you find that yourself unable to penetrate with your awareness into an aspect of your Inner Child, even through you can usually access those parts? You may have exclusions.

Discerning inclusions and exclusions  is subtle and complex work, not easy unless you regularly practice energy clearing and Inner Work.

“How few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart. It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service.  But these things in themselves are not love.  Love springs from awareness.  It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and how and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that you love but the idea that you have formed of this person, or this person as the object of your desire not as he or she is in themselves.

“The first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking . . . a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person’s need or your own?” ~ Father Anthony de Mello

Contrast this understanding of genuine love with your conditioning about what it means to be loving.

What do you discover about yourself?

“To offend a low person is like throwing a stone in the mud and getting splashed.” ~ Inayat Khan

We have all been exposed to the models in which those who are healthier or more developed take responsibility for those who are less healthy or developed. It is natural for parents to take responsibility for their children. Whether or not the same should apply with adults who act like children, the onus of responsibility in many situations tends to fall on the person with the most capacity and perspective.

Do we step forward, or step back?

Becoming a bodhisattva is the goal of Mahayana Buddhism. The bodhisattva refers to a human being committed to the attainment of Enlightenment for the sake of others, who postpones Enlightenment in order to help all others to attain it.

Feel free to correct me or to extrapolate: The I-Ching and “The Tao of Leadership” encourage those who are highly capable to learn to carry on as if we had no skills, and to function invisibly, so we are not used up by those who carry on foolishly or still need to learn basics.

Both approaches offer wisdom.

Different teachings support different natures. Spiritual advice designed for self absorbed people becomes toxic when taken to heart by over-givers.

Empaths already tend feel we are not being compassionate if we see someone in distress that we can address but step back instead of stepping forward. Spiritual or religious rhetoric about taking care of others can aggravate these issues.

It is healthy for those who put other’s needs first to talk about and work through this type of distress.

As a person with a great array of competencies, I find myself unsupported by Western cultural assumptions. People with talent are pressured to advertise, extend, seek notoriety, and to ‘make something of’ ourselves until our lives become burdened with a numbing plethora of superficial contacts.

Being around people who do not or will not take responsibility for themselves or aspects of their behavior is its own kind of painful. A classic example of this is watching someone you love drink themselves to death. Watching people eating allergens, making bad decisions, refusing to exercise, and acting in ways that block intimacy can evoke pain too—especially if we are confused about whether or not to help.

Whether it’s a parent with Alzheimers or ‘child’ living at home long well into adulthood, most of us face these issues at some point. Our responses vary as do our natures. There is also a karmic thread. Situations that look similar may have totally different exigencies.

It is a cultural necessity to carry those who are truly incapable. But what about the negligent, and the entitled—those who are capable yet choose to demand from others instead of doing what they can? Supporting them is not a service—yet they fight if we refuse.

Do we endure those who act like children, demanding of ourselves that we remain loving and compassionate when someone causes unnecessary suffering? If we do NOT step away, certainly we must find an accommodation by which we can be loving without being drained.

Unless the Love we engage is Universal–and therefore includes care for self–we are apt to consume healthy lives in care for the damaged or unwilling.

Questions for your consideration:

When is stepping away from responsibility to others a way of being responsible to one’s self?

If we take service to those who are less developed as a spiritual value, how do we remain balanced?

How far is it healthy to go to be of assistance to others?

What do you need to do to balance between your own needs and those of the people you love?

What if these people are unable to recognize or address YOUR needs?

What signs let you know when you are sacrificing too much?

Being comfortable and clear relies on knowing where we start and stop, what is part of us and what is not, which feelings and sensations originate with us and which come from other people or events. The more intuitive we are the harder it is to make this call.

Mystics experience all life as one. The psychologist Jung coined the term “collective unconscious,” where personal experience merges into what is essentially the group mind of all of us together

The more expanded your awareness the harder it can be to tell your own cup of water from the ocean. In actuality, water that runs through us has been in many different people, places, plants, periods of time, and life forms. We now call the water and minerals of our bodies “I.” Atoms jump in and out and energy interpenetrates us in the sea of greater-than-self awareness.

The task of knowing who we are involves being able to sort out different levels of awareness. Telling our bodies apart is easy. Sorting my feelings out from your feelings can be easy or hard, depending on early experiences, how similar we are, and other factors. The mind world is a stickier wicket. If you’ve ever had the same dream a friend had on the same night you have an idea how hard it can be to sort out mind from mind.

The most distinctly personal levels of our minds have a distinct and separate energy frequency or signature that identifies us to ourselves and to those who can identify persons through the energy of their thoughts. Advanced Intuitives and those who are trained in Remote Viewing, for example, have this skill.

Transpersonal levels of mind are more diffuse. The thoughts of everyone are out there in the mind-cloud of general human awareness and can jump from mind to mind. In Family Constellation/ Reconstruction sessions, where group members agree to represent one person’s relatives, it is not unusual for participants to temporarily express very specific emotions and physical symptoms of persons they know next to nothing about. This is exemplifies transpersonal experience. The group mind allows for transfer of information without words.

Boundary confusion STARTS WITH energy. Energy is not a woo-woo abstraction. Energy is a real part of the non-verbal communication that actually occurs during events when boundary issues begin. When a parent or family member invades a child through inappropriate acts, for example, the energy part of the communication actually enters the fields or body of that child. This type of energy is stick and hard to throw back out because the child cannot tell who it belongs to, owning it. This is one major cause of issues with boundaries.

Boundaries are primarily about sensing/knowing what is yours and what is not. This especially includes knowing what you are and are not responsible for causing or creating. Taking inappropriate responsibility for the feelings of someone who is attempting to manipulate you emotionally is an example of boundary confusion. You do not cause their emotions and you are not responsible for stopping them. They are. You ARE responsible for finding an effective and preferably respectful way to get away, and for taking care of your own emotional needs. Your need to be liked, for example, must not overpower your need for safety.

Making sure to be consistently authentic is an act of healing if you have any issues with boundaries. This minimizes giving yourself away to try and please others, second-guessing them, or otherwise getting them in your space and you in theirs. State straight out what you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with, respectfully, and work out positive solutions that work for everyone whenever you can. Challenges can often be used to hone new skills.

“Boundaries” is another word for self-possession. Self-possession is a fascinating term if you think about like this: If you are in possession of yourself, nothing else can possess you. When you are fully in your body and in touch with your feelings, energy that does not belong to you passes through but does not take up residence.

Do you ever get confused about what is YOU and what is someone else?
What types of energy do you get confused with?
What kinds of actions help you sort yourself out?

A world of difference exists between living in your head and sensing. Sensing–attending to the flow of guidance received through your body–supports constructive responses to emotions and energies from moment to moment.

Disconnecting from the body makes us ever so much more susceptible to external influences and energies. It lays us open to them like an empty house with the doors open. When we are not fully Present our energies become less organized, focused, and clearly-patterned. This alters the function of our meridians, organs, chakras, and energy fields. Such disorganization makes us both more sensitive to external energies and simultaneously less able to take actions that increase our comfort.

Noticing feelings, emotions and needs begins with sensing feeling in the body. Getting Present allows our body to give us information about what we need, our minds to interpret this information and conceive self-soothing ideas, and our emotions to calm down and smooth out. Then our energy becomes more robust and solid around us and we are less vulnerable to external influences.

Spacing out or numbing out makes our energy fields porous and wispy, and can cause holes in them. Disowned emotions stick in the fields and attract discordant energies from the environment, like lint to Velcro.

Being IN and WITH the body and getting really healthy makes it easier and less painful to manage intense energies and emotions. Drugs, alcohol, non-present sexual encounters, media addiction, eating disorders, unexpressed emotion etc. monopolize space, time, energy and attention that can otherwise be used to actually address discomfort. When we numb ourselves we cut off the signals that provide effective guidance and direction.

Mastering reactions instead of running from them builds up power and energy for constructive change.

Impact, traction, power, influence, and clarity draw from Being Here fully; Presence. We begin to find words for our experiences and it becomes much easier to ask for what we want and need, like asking someone to listen or asking for some space.

Presence is the first step. When boundary issues (confusion about what is who’s) arise, there ARE more steps to take to get to personal power and clarity. Checking to make sure we are sticking around is good to do between each step. Presence is an end in itself.

Post #3 is an esoteric view of why boundaries can be confusing to intuitive people, and how boundary confusion can lead to picking up external energies.

Please share this post with those who will find these reflections useful.

What would You be empowered to do if you could manage your discomfort with compassion?
Have you ever noticed that when you go straight into your pain that it begins to dissolve?

My ebook—see cover on the right sidebar—goes into detail about managing sensitivity to energy.

This post series speaks to learning to manage sensitivity to energy. Presence and Boundaries are cornerstones of this skill. You have to BE HERE to make a boundary.

The more able we are to be Present and the better we know ourselves, the easier it is to deal with energy we find uncomfortable to experience. If we are honest with ourselves and pay attention we will find that when we absent ourselves in some way through distraction, dissociation, or diversion, we do so because we feel uncomfortable. Often some feeling we don’t like is trying to surface into awareness. We stop it by checking out.

Being comfortable feeling our discomfort is a big key to being able to stick around in the here-now moment no matter what we feel. Although counterintuitive, this skill forms a foundation for learning to manage our own energy. Once we can stay present with our own, we begin to be able to sort it out from external influences.

Bell Rock Vortex

Allowing and observing discomfort instead of trying to escape from it is a very Zen kind of practice. It is the foundation of quite a few types of foundational spiritual work. Basic self-observation—sticking around and noticing what is going on—is also key to numerous therapeutic and healing techniques.

Let’s discuss what it takes to become more comfortable with discomfort.

In response to my Post Series about feeling the energy of the world, one brave man wrote: “I do feel the energy of the world, and it bothers me sometimes. All the unrest in the Middle East caused all sorts of funny energies, restless energies to hit me. I can also feel the energy of some people around me. I just don’t quite know what to do with it, how to process these energies. It is things like that which makes me need to numb myself unfortunately.” (Quoted and responded to with permission.)

I would like especially to address those of you seek ways to “numb out” when energy gets intense and those of you who get confused about what is and is not your responsibility. The common link here is that you need to be more Present in your body. This previous 3-post blog defines and also discusses “being in your body.” (Scroll part way down that page.)

Being in your body is fundamental to being Present, and to having effective boundaries. In order to keep from getting confused about what energy, emotions and thoughts are yours and which ones come from other people or events, you need to learn to clearly and distinctly feel and identify your own sensations and emotions.

Body sensations are the easiest place to start. These sensations change with each emotion, and when we get connected with different types of energy. It’s important to have a solid baseline of sensory experience so you can begin to tell what is yours. Again, this begins by sticking around.

Dissociation or disconnection from parts of ourselves—physical, emotional, thought, or energy—is a defense against pain. But when we abandon or fragment ourselves we cannot effectively nurture ourselves and minister effectively to this pain. The survival tool of pulling away is not so useful for sticking around and doing repair. Being Present helps us to learn when to physically withdraw, and to make new, more-effective responses to our needs.

Setting boundaries means recognizing your discomfort and being able to make decisions that are healthy for you; staying whole when things happen.

Post #2 will begin to explore constructive responses to emotions, sensations, and energies.

What do YOU notice about how you respond to discomfort?
Can you stay Present and feel it, or do you find a way to avoid your feelings and sensations?