Raising Your Vibration - Part 2

The Empaths Guide to Managing Energy
 
If you are an Empath, you might find that you need some extra pointers for managing your energy at any time.  I hope these ideas will help you out a little.
 
Being alone: Empaths need time by themselves where they are less likely to be tuning into the emotions of others around them. It doesn’t mean you’re anti-social or that you don’t like people! It just means you need to refuel before going back out into the world. Make sure you have plenty of alone time during which you’re doing something that is not emotional, such as knitting, gardening, cooking, etc. I like to play video games which requires strategy but has no emotional triggers for me. Be creative!
 
Stay away from people and place that drain your energy
Do not feel guilty about avoiding these people and places until you are stronger.
 
Grounding: Here are some very effective grounding techniques that I use every day!
1) Eating: This is a delicious way to stay grounded as long as you pay attention to the food your eating! So pick something you really like and bring it along. The process of eating is ground, and so is digesting. You’re less likely to be reading other people in restaurants
 
2) Wear a crystal: I have at least 10 different crystal pendants (rose quartz, lapis, danburite, moldovite, etc). When I go out, I pick a pendant to wear (even before I pick my clothes!).
 
3) Wash your hands: I get the urge to wash my hands when I go to people that are tricky to deal with. It’s a great way to make sure their energy is not sticking to you and keep your own energy flowing.
 
4) Use visualizations: Imagine that you are growing roots from the bottom of your feet. The roots keep reaching deeper in the earth. They’re flexible too, so that you can lift your feet and the root follow you. Try it at home first then you’ll be able to do it while you carry on a conversation too!
 
Managing your own energy
Raising your vibration, grounding and Shielding (for emergencies only) :Shielding and protection is a technique I teach my clients as an emergency safe guard whilst they build up their own energies and raise their vibration.
 Lets start with an exercise to build up your own energies, a practice which needs to be done two or three times daily in the beginning until it becomes automatic.  We start by becoming quiet and visualising or feeling a bright white gold light above the head.  Know that this is your connection to the universal life force.  see or feel that light entering in a stream down through the crown of your head and filling your whole body from head to toe, every cell, every fibre becoming alive with light. 
Then feel or visualise roots, like tree roots, growing from the soles of your feet into the earth, feel them running deeper and deeper.  Pull red light up from the earth through the soles of your feet, filling your whole body, toes to finger tips.  You are now connected to the universe and the earth together. 
From the centre of your heart space notice a ball of light.  Imagine it as a pink light.  This is unconditional love.  Allow this light to grow and expand to fill your whole body.  Let it expand further and further until it extends past your body and you see yourself encased in a cocoon or egg of light.  Know and intend that this light will heal and protect you raising your vibration to its highest level.
For emergency protection you can create an extra shield of light around you to help you in sticky situations.  You can experiment to find out what works best for you.  I use a spiral of light that spins around the outside of my  body.  I program it to knock away anything that will bring my own energy down.
 
It is Not Necessary to Take Responsibility for Other People’s Hurt
If you are an empath you are finely tuned to the pain of other people, tending to internalize it as your own. Remember that there is only so much you can genuinely do to help other people. Of course, you can try to help them or guide them as much as you see fit, but at the end of the day the person experiencing the original pain must be willing to help themselves for any true healing to occur. Often our caring natures blind us to the fact that many people don’t want, or aren’t prepared to be fixed because they are content in the safety of their misery.
 
Go into Your Pain Rather Than Trying to Escape from It
It sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it, “going into your pain”! But it's a very important step to releasing the pent up energy inside of you. When we are preoccupied by escaping, repressing and avoiding our pain, we perpetuate the cycle of our suffering. Rather than giving in to the temptation to run – stop – be still. Sit down and let yourself feel the fatigue, the confusion, the anger, the hurt. Only once you face the truth of the pain you feel can you then progress to the next stage of letting the suffering go.
 
De-cluttering.
The first step is to get rid of all obvious "trash"!  Throw it out or put it out for recycling.
As we mentioned earlier, empaths pick up on energy in objects as well as people.  Take a look around you at all the "things" you have gathered over the years.   We will start by gathering everything together that you don't use or haven't seen in the past year.  This can include, shoes, clothes, books, ornaments.  Put them in bags or boxes ready to donate or sell.  That was the easy part. 
Now You will notice things around you that you don't actually like, but perhaps were given to you by a friend or family member. Remember, if you don't like it, it isn't you, then it will be affecting your energy.  You can use the cord cutting technique we learnt earlier to release any attachment you have to the object and the person who gave it to you, then take note of how you feel!  Do you still dislike the object?  if so put it into the sell or donate pile.
What about things that you really love, but you find it difficult to be around?  These need to be dealt with in  a similar way and honestly I find it best to cut the cords and get rid of them.
Complete this exercise for every room in your home and workspace, garden and shed.  It is also necessary to do your handbag and your car. 
You will already find that you begin to feel lighter.
 
Catharsis and Body-Mindfulness = Useful Techniques
As an empath it is so important that you incorporate some consistent form of catharsis into your everyday routine to rid yourself of the stuffy energy you might be harboring. Favored forms of catharsis among empaths include journaling/writing, meditation, walking and jogging. Other forms of catharsis include singing, dancing, screaming (privately), laughing and crying. It is also extremely beneficial as an empath to teach yourself how to get in touch with your body – I call this “body-mindfulness” or “somatic mindfulness.” Basically, learning to be in touch with your body is an excellent way of anchoring and grounding yourself in the present moment rather than getting lost in the flood of emotions and sensations that come your way. Body-mindfulness is also a good way of learning to listen to your needs, as well as nurturing and taking care of yourself. I wrote more about how to practice this form of mindfulness here.
 
Realize That as an Empath, You Are Not Immune to Projecting Your Feelings onto Others
Let’s be honest here. Part of the appeal of identifying as an empath is that it sometimes provides a doorway of escape to us; an opportunity to pin the blame on others. Yes, you might soak up the emotions of others like a sponge, but that doesn’t mean that you are exempt from creating, and deeply experiencing, your own emotions. It is all too easy to portray ourselves as victims in life, and much harder to take responsibility for our own happiness. A key realization on the path of healing as an empath is to learn to distinguish what WE are feeling from what OTHERS are feeling. And there isn’t always a clean cut distinction. Often you will find that you are feeling about 45% of the emotions, and others are feeling about 55% of the emotions, or you might be feeling 20% and others 80%, and vice versa.
 
Shielding
Which means, creating a shield between yourself and all those feelings out there. You can do this a variety of ways, but the most common is visualisation.  By visualizing a force field around yourself. This field is pure energy. The more vivid the image you imagine for that field, the stronger it will be. You can set this field to selective, so that you will note others feelings, IF and only if, you want to notice other energies. 
This is not just your imagination at work. As we ask the mind, so it will do for us, and if you ask yours to build a stronger aura of energy around you, it will. You don't need to know the exact details of how it works, as your mind is perfectly able to build it for you, all you have to do ... is tell it to as strongly and vividly as possible.
As a temporary technique, shielding can be helpful, but it is not a long-term solution. It is actually counterproductive to becoming an Empowered Empath.  Shielding is essentially about resisting ether people's energy and resistance only serves to continue the cycles of fear and pain within. Rather than fighting, open yourself up through the heart chakra. Allow yourself to experience the emotions, but also let them pass by not adopting them as yours. To do this send them down into the earth asking the earth to heal.  This takes time and practice. But non-attachment is a much better long-term solution.
 
Know your own mind:
Meaning, to know yourself, very deeply and to have that information about yourself and your emotional state, on tap, all the time. So that you can easily realize that those feelings your feeling, are, or are NOT, your own. This is critical, as if you are not aware of your own mental and emotional state, you can have a very hard time telling what is, or is not, your own feelings, so keeping a monitor on your own state, at any time, is paramount.
 
 
Do not allow become a dumping ground
Mow this is something that happens on a very regular basis to every Empath, unless they become aware of it and take steps to prevent its happening.  Most " ordinary" people, are able to be aware  that a such and such a person is "someone they can talk to" by this I mean, they know that after they have spent time or spoken with you, they feel better and that somehow you help them with their pain.
This makes you a magnet for people with a major emotional load to drop. People will come to you and start to tell you their life story, as if a part of them believes that you could make it all better.
And you can, for the most part, however, permitting this to happen, without controls, is asking for trouble. You will find yourself getting to the point where you will not even want to go places where there are strangers. And that is not a good thing.
Shielding helps, but sometimes,  you just have to look people right in the face and say no, unless you want to deal with helping them handle with their anxiety. There are two kinds of people, those you can help and those you can't, and there are a lot more of those you can't help, than you might believe.
Therefore we need to......
 
Set limits:
Just because we can perhaps do something about another's pain, doesn't necessarily mean, that we should. Often times, they are in pain for a reason, maybe they failed to handle something well, and that's a lesson they need to learn. If you take away all that suffering for a mistake, the lesson might go unlearned. So you need to learn to analyse the situation carefully. Know when it's time to say ... No.
 
Cleanse your etheric body often:
You have learnt that as an empath, you are an emotional magnet, feelings can cling to you . So it becomes very important to metaphysically clean out all the feelings and emotions that are not your own, from time to time. I cannot stress this enough, as if you fail to do so, the stress on you just builds and builds, and there is a limit to what any one person can endure, and stay sane !
Fail to do so and you may begin to suffer from  stress, anxiety and depression yourself.
 
You do this by meditation, relaxation, grounding, the light body exercise, and use the power of the mind to cleanse out anything negative or left over. In a deep state, you can see this light body and will learn to see the problem areas. For most empaths you will find them around the heart and head Chakras, as those are the areas most affected.
 
 
Trust yourself
One of the other big problems that an Empath faces, is wondering if what they ARE feeling is real or accurate.
This is why knowing your own mind and emotional state is so important, as without this knowledge, it's harder to figure this one out. Trust yourself, trust your feelings, and know you can get a handle on this, it just takes time and practice.
 

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