The Practice of Sensing Our Energy

As we learn to tend to our own energy, we get clearer about what our own energy feels like. Practices like yoga, chi gong, and tai chi help us feel how the chi or life force energy moves within us, and how it affects our energy levels. Practices like meditation, mindfulness and contemplation help us get used to our own energetic signature, which is like our unique background frequency. It is that sense of ourselves that is always there that we hardly pay attention to while we are busy living our lives.

Once we know our own energy pretty well, we have a clearer read on how other energies we come into contact and interact with affect us. If we pay attention with our felt sense, we can get a lot of information that helps us avoid trouble, deepen relationships and add depth and richness to our lives.

We might start by noticing how our energy feels in different places and with different people. We have all had the experiences of walking into a building, shop or forest and feeling very uncomfortable like we want to get out as soon as we can. It can feel  like a heaviness, a skin crawly type of feeling, or maybe just a feeling that we are not welcome. We usually leave as soon as we can.  We may also experience the same thing with certain people, like a heaviness or uncomfortable feeling while we are around them, sometimes lingering after our interaction is over.

On the flip side of that, we have all probably been places that feel good. We like to spend time there. These might be places like grandma's porch, or a room where spiritual circles meet, or our own backyard, and of course our favorite places in nature.  And we also may notice that it feels good to be around certain people. We not only enjoy their company, but we feel uplifted and light after we part.

As we pay attention to the energy we are sensing, it informs us, helping us make decisions about where we want to live, who we want to spend our time with, and what we bring into our own energies.

If we walk into an antique store where the energy is heavy and unpleasant, do we really want to buy something there that could bring some of that heaviness into our homes and energy? And if we don’t buy anything and leave pretty quickly, can we notice if we unintentionally brought some of that energy home with us anyway?

Situations like that are when it is so beneficial to know your energy because then you know when you are carrying something that is not yours, or as the mystic seer and teacher Orion Foxwood describes it, “ Honey, you stepped in something.”  Then we can smudge with a cleansing herb like sage, use our pendulum, our intention and free will to clear it from ourselves. 

But we have to know our own energy to know when we need to tend to it. And we need practices to screen out and release energies that are not beneficial to us. If we feel off in any way, that is a signal to check in with our intuitive self and our spirit helpers to see what needs to be tended to bring us back into balance. 

As a practice, start the day with your breathing, sitting,  felt sensing yourself. Note your energy. Before going to bed, sit and check in. Do you notice a difference after all your interactions and travels of the day? 

All my teachers I’ve had over the past 20 years have had a method for releasing what is not ours at the end of the day. Most of them are fairly universal, easy, and usually involve breath and visualization, and like most energetic practices, intention is key. Knowing our own energy well is invaluable to navigating relationships with beings we meet in non-ordinary reality and in the spirit realms. And knowing it and tending it well is crucial to keeping ourselves healthy and moving forward along our path of spiritual evolution.