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Maureen Wycherley's avatar

It’s so interesting reading your journey with this work, as I had a similar journey of totally denying my body’s role in my existence until it reacted in a way that could not be ignored.

Move on many years and the journey with energy work has bought me to the same place of oneness with myself and the world around me that you seem to have found.

The difference I perceive from your writing (and please correct me here if necessary), is our ability to discern what thoughts, feelings, emotions are actually ours as opposed to being ‘aware’ of everyone else’s. Then from that awareness, being at the affect and reaction of them.

When I gained those tools of awareness and how to use it to my benefit my life came into that space of creation - what do I create my life as, rather than being at the affect of everything and trying to survive it.

Thanks Dan

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Dan McTiernan's avatar

Hi Maureen. Thanks very much for your reflections and sharing some of your journey through this process. In reply to what you perceived from my writing, it's very much part of my practice and job as a coach to discern between what's my energy/emotion/sensation and what is a client's/another's. This process of bringing online grounded senstitivity is not an opening of the floodgates to absorb of more and more emotional energy but it is an opening of the system of sensing so that we feel where energy is flowing and where it is stuck both in ourselves and in other people. The reason I emphasise grounding so prominently at the start of this re-sensitising to the body and through the body to the world, is for exactly that reason; to avoid being flooded/overwhelmed. But the flip side of that is that a lot of what we react to in our body when we sense the emotional energy of another person has some root in our own bio-psychology. So as a therapist or coach when we notice we are triggered/charged/energised while with a client my experience is that it's often my own material resonating in some way with the client's. Hence it's so important that we do our own work, process our own stored survival stress and ground ourselves deeply in embodied presence so that we are resourced enough to hold the space for both the client and ourselves. The other point here is that the more open our system becomes as we do that work, the less sticky emotional energy becomes whether it be our own or other people's. There is a real sense of being porous so that energy is able to flow and dissipate much more easily when we do notice a high charge in the body. At least that's my experience so far in this process!

Does any of that resonate with you? How does this work for you in your therapeutic work? I'd love to hear your feelings on this. Thanks!

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