Sandra Ehlers is a Self-Integration & Kundalini Awakening Guide, Trauma Informed Yoga Meditation Teacher, Event Facilitator, Reiki Master, and Writer. Her work is dedicated to inner union – not only through expanded awareness, but as a lived, embodied experience of wholeness in the world.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed when walking into a room and feeling people’s energy? Or do you struggle to stay centered when people seem to go out of their way to trigger you? These are great opportunities to learn more about your own energetic integrity.
Energy sensitivity and energetic integrity
I meet people daily who are developing their sensitivity to energy. Whether it’s through feeling the energetic patterns within the body, energy dynamics in relationships, or feeling the energy of places in nature, tapping into our ability to perceive energy can be a very enriching experience.
However, refining our attunement to energy can also come with challenges. It becomes increasingly clear when energy feels misaligned, and before we work with the reasons why, it may come to feel intolerable.
A common unhelpful assumption is that we are powerless to the energetic exchanges of daily life. Unable to choose what energies come our way, and to choose how they get to affect us. It can be especially challenging when we must get along with people who unconsciously project their energy onto us.
Learning about the ways that we are empowered when it comes to energy can greatly transform how we perceive ourselves as energetic beings in the world. We begin by committing to our own energetic integrity, and the first key is to learn about energetic boundaries.
The truth is, no one can make you receive any energy, unless you allow it. Our energy is strongly correlated with our feeling-state and mind-state. Meaning, if you experience certain draining energies daily, it mirrors something that needs to be addressed within your own body-mind.
We may unconsciously choose to participate in energetic exchanges for various reasons: to learn about certain energies, to learn about what we want and don't want in life, to understand ourselves and our energy in general, and to learn to set boundaries.
Boundaries for energetic integrity
So, how can you feel empowered in your daily energy exchanges?
1. Practice to recognize the energy dynamics you feel with people as they happen
Train yourself to be present with sensations in your body to learn how different energies feel and affect you, compared to when you are alone or with someone else.
Take note: Do you feel attraction or aversion to the different energies you experience?
Are you able to find acceptance for what you experience and how you are affected?
Bringing awareness back into your body can help train you to hold your own desired energy, and be less dependent on external circumstances for your own energetic state – the first step to energetic integrity.
2. Recognize and claim the energy exchanges you prefer
Do you have a clear picture of what you would actually like to feel as you interact with other people?
And can you give yourself permission to focus on how you want to feel in interaction with others, rather than focus only on how you make them feel?
This may bring up further questions for introspection: If you have patterns of abandoning your own preferred state of being, why might that be?
Do you feel confident to claim the types of energetic exchange that you prefer?
Or, if you have patterns of attracting certain energies that drain you, is there a reason that you keep attracting these energies into your experience?
Knowing why you have certain patterns, and releasing any deep feelings around it, can help you both release the pattern and give you expanded freedom to experience what you do desire.
3. Set and maintain your energetic boundaries
While you are working on releasing a pattern, you may need to set strong internal and external boundaries to no longer support that pattern in your daily life.
For example, if you have felt energetically smaller than others when it comes to speaking your truth, and you decide that you’ll no longer tolerate having your opinion minimized, you commit to enforce that boundary internally and externally if it happens again.
Do you feel confident to claim such new boundaries for yourself?
What could help you stay in the energy you prefer, even while exposed to the energies of the external world?
It is up to you to stay in the energy you wish to be in, and wish to exchange with others. Commit to stay in the energy you choose, even if people seem unwilling to match your energy.
4. Follow up with inner work
Setting new boundaries can bring up deeper reasons to why you've been allowing energetic exchanges that drain you: deep down you know that some people may not be able to meet your new boundary.
If you choose to value and prioritize the energetic quality of your own life experience, and stay in the energy you prefer, people who cannot support this energy may no longer be compatible with you, and you may need to make adjustments in your life to match this.
Note: Choosing resonant energy is not the same as avoiding the difficult emotions and experiences that naturally come up in relationship with others. It’s not about giving up on a relationship when emotions are heated or life gets hard; rather, it is to recognize that tending to our hardships should feel natural, or at least possible; not like we are ceaselessly working against a current that never stops flowing in the "wrong" direction.
If people are not willing to work with you to release stagnant energy dynamics, don’t fall for hoping that they will change. If you choose to move forward, you must take responsibility for that choice – and allow people who no longer align with it to go on their own journey.
5. Be patient, self-compassionate and curious while learning to share new energy dynamics
When you have spent a long time in less fulfilling energy dynamics, and are only just beginning to step into a new energy, it can feel scary to share it with another – even if you desire it.
That’s ok. Allow yourself the time to step into and explore the new experiences opening up for you.
Allow it to be a learning journey – ideally together! The more you can involve another person in a mutual, playful exploration of energetic exchange, the more you’ll learn about connecting more intimately and joyfully, while staying true to your own energetic integrity.
You are always allowed to define what energy dynamics you are willing to entertain within yourself and with another. Creating energetic integrity internally will help you stay centered, even when other people or situations aren’t playing along.
And not only can this help create safe containment for your experience, but also relationally. As you model taking charge of the energetic experience with another, you may just be an inspiration and invitation for them to do the same!
Learn more: Dive deeper into energy, healing, joy, spiritual awakening, and more via YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Also check out how you can work with me to align your energy and life to experience more passion, purpose and service. I’m excited to hear from you!
Sandra Ehlers, Self-integration and Awakening Guide
Sandra Ehlers is a Self-Integration & Kundalini Awakening Guide, Trauma Informed Yoga Meditation Teacher, Event Facilitator, Reiki Master, and Writer. Her work is dedicated to inner union – not only through expanded awareness, but as a lived, embodied experience of wholeness in the world. The focus is on transforming and integrating all levels of consciousness; physical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual – creating a foundation for deepened present-moment awareness, equanimity, aliveness, and ultimately, bliss. Alongside workshops, classes and retreats, Sandra offers 1:1 support to self-alignment through the Completion Process and other modalities.
