If we open ourselves up to be connected, can we still protect our own energy?

This post was inspired by a post about connectedness by @onetree. When we have a sense of connectedness, it opens us up to feel other people’s emotions. And sometimes that can get too much. But there are ways of using our sense of our own energy field to decide whether we want to be open or protected at any moment.

I’m not talking here about people who are empaths. While some of these techniques might help, I suspect their life path is something special. I’m thinking more of your average person who is discovering these feelings as part of their own personal voyage of discovery about themselves.

My background

As well as being primarily a nutrition consultant, I also work with energy.

• I have been attuned to Reiki, which means channelling healing energy
• With EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), we are working with the energy pathways in the body (meridians)
• As a kinesiologist, I use muscle monitoring to get information about what is happening to a person’s energy (usually also in the meridians).

I’m not claiming to be any kind of expert in this area though. There are lots of ways to protect yourself, and Mr Google will point you to them. This is just a small handful of simple ones I know about, that don’t require any equipment, special words or special knowledge of any kind.

Is the bubble of white light good?

When people talk about protection, this is the one that usually gets brought up first. Imagine a bubble of white, protective light completing surrounding you, including above, below and behind. This seems to work well for many people, though personally I’ve needed something a bit more heavy duty. So I can’t give you any more tips on this one.

But this seems like a comprehensive list, talking about all the different colours of light shield. Or this article actually suggests not using white light, but using gold instead.

So what have I used?

The physical barrier

OK, not actually a physical barrier, but an image of a physical barrier created in the mind’s eye.

Let’s back track to the 90s, when I was doing a series of personal development courses called The Turning Point. They’re something a bit like Landmark Forum. After doing a few, I trained to be on the service team. This was the group of helpers that were there to support everybody in their process. One of the important things about being on the service team was that, no matter how harrowing or heart wrenching a story someone was telling, we were not at liberty to indulge our feelings. We were there to support the course participants.

So we were taught to build an imaginary barrier in front of our solar plexus. Everybody else seemed to be able to just imagine it and it was there. But I’m not very good at visualising, and my system took a bit longer. I had to build a brick wall, brick by brick, in my mind, until it was big enough. It took a while to build, but once it was up, it did work.

Another variant of this is to imagine a protective garment. Maybe something like a suit of armour, or maybe a motorcycle jacket. Something that you can relate to and imagine easily is best. It might even be a business suit. How many businessmen do you think become removed from other people’s feelings, when they’re in their uniform?

Once you become familiar with your garment, put it on when you want to protect yourself, and take it off when you want to be open.

Working with your energy body

I’m not going to get into technical information about the different layers of our energy bodies, or auras. Let’s keep it simple.

Sit or lie comfortably. Close your eyes and get as relaxed as you can. See if you can get a sense of the layer of energy that surrounds your physical body. If you can’t, imagine what it would look like if you had one. If you still can’t, all good, go with the motorcycle jacket.

If you can, have a look at the energy. Is it intact, or does it have holes? If it has gaps or holes, you might need to do some research and find some info on how to mend it. That’s not what I’m covering today.

If it’s intact, the next thing to observe is – how far from your body does it extend, and how diffuse is it? As a general rule, if it’s close to your body, it will be denser. If it extends further from your body, it will be lighter.

Part of the aura is your emotional body, so do you think that if it was pulled in close to your body and dense, you would be far less likely to feel other people’s emotions than if it extends several feet and is very light and diffuse? Does how your energy body feels line up with how you experience other people?

The energy body is within your control. Imagine drawing it in close to your body, and see if it happens. How do you feel? Now imagine it expanding outwards, as if it’s reaching out to engage with others. How does that feel? Once you get used to it, you should be able to adjust it to what’s appropriate for the situation. In a situation where you don’t feel safe, or are overwhelmed by another’s emotions, you can pull it in towards you almost instantly. When you want to be more expansive, let it float further out.

We’re not talking here about someone who consciously or unconsciously is malevolent towards you. You might need to take extra measures. This is for just generally when you’re out and about.

Containing your own emotions

This is a slightly different technique that I teach my EFT clients. When we work together, they are opening up to some of the painful things that have happened in the past. Generally, EFT is very effective for releasing those emotions. But sometimes, it opens the floodgates for other stuff to come up.

I get them to visualise a container inside themselves where all the painful memories and feelings are stored. I explain that we’ve taken the lid off for our work. Then I get them to check whether the lid is still off. If it’s securely back on, great. If it isn’t, I get them to imagine putting the lid securely back on. If they can’t do that, sometimes they need to ask permission from their energy system, and might need to promise to come back and deal with more of the emotions at a later time.

Thanks for reading

Images from Pixabay, unless otherwise stated.

Follow me for more health, nutrition, food, lifestyle and recipe posts.

See my last post of 2017 for a full archive of 2016 & 2017 posts, by category

If you’re from New Zealand (Aotearoa) and are looking for other kiwis, see the list on this post. Let me know if you want to be added, or want to add your location. Remember to use “kiwi” as one of your tag words on posts.

Contact me in SteemitChat to ask about one on one nutritional coaching or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) sessions by Skype. (But don’t just say Hello. Tell me straight away why you’re messaging, without waiting for me to say Hello back.) Steem, other altcoins or Paypal accepted.