Written by Rahim Paul Nanos, The Modern Spiritualist
Rahim Nanos is a multi-disciplinary spiritual teacher and practitioner with over ten years of experience in modalities such as martial arts, Sufism, divination, and contemporary shamanism. He teaches classes on manifestation, healing the inner child, and healthy energy body cultivation.
We all want good relationships built on respect, trust, and mutual care. But so many of us struggle with our deepest relationships. Family dynamics are complicated, romantic relationships put us in deep vulnerability, and friendships meant to help us find belonging can end up fracturing or creating toxicity in group structures that constrict the feelings of safety we all seek in community.
Why do we all crave the same quality of relationship, yet so many of us struggle to get there?
Well, creating healthy boundaries in relationships is not something our culture teaches us. For many of us, predominantly white hetero-normative forms of codependency dominate the narrative of what a relationship is supposed to look like.
This leaves most of us feeling trapped and confused, unable to connect with the dominating story, yet unable to access a model that would teach us how to do it differently.
What are healthy boundaries?
So, what are healthy boundaries in a relationship? What does that look like?
Healthy boundaries are a quality of self-protection and cultivation of discernment wherein we can assess where we end and where others begin.
It helps us determine which emotions are truly ours and which ones we have internalized from others. Boundaries help us use our magic words like, “yes, no, please, maybe, thank you, and I’ve changed my mind.”
Boundaries allow us to create a space where we can co-exist peacefully with our bodies, minds, and hearts, regardless of environmental expectations.
Boundaries show us where our threshold is. By threshold, I mean the moment when we step over the line into overwhelm.
Good personal boundaries allow us to know when we’ve pushed past our limitations and to back off before we get hurt or burnt out. Our boundaries help us communicate the state of our threshold with others so that our personal limits can be honored.
Boundaries exist on multiple levels of our being. If we don’t pay attention to both the energetic nature of our boundaries and the physical nature, our boundaries and boundary signals are often inconsistent, incoherent, or flimsy.
Understanding physical versus energetic boundaries
Many good therapy circles place a strong emphasis on boundary language. They teach us how to better understand our own boundaries and limits and communicate them with others.
I’ve discovered through experience working with people that it’s difficult to maintain the good boundary tools taught in therapy if our boundaries are still a mess on the energetic level.
My class, Energy Body Mastery, gives people the energetic skills necessary to cultivate, maintain, strengthen, and troubleshoot issues with their boundaries on the energetic level.
I’ve also seen people who diligently do the energetic boundary practice taught in Energy Body Mastery. However, if they aren’t aligning their interactions with others in a way that is coherent with the energetic boundaries they are trying to cultivate, the energetic integrity of the boundaries they’re creating cannot be maintained.
Good boundaries require both: the internal energetic action of cultivating qi (energy) in a specific way that creates natural protection and choosing to align that energetic cultivation through action in the world.
Taking action in alignment with our boundaries means choosing to use our boundary language with others even when it's uncomfortable, and choosing to honor our threshold to avoid causing harm to ourselves.
Keeping good boundaries is just as much about showing up and being present with others in a good way as it is about protecting yourself and honoring your limits.
When your boundaries are robust and clear, you signal to others that you’re safe to be around.
Imagine how much safer you feel asking somebody for things when you trust that they’ll say no without stress or anger if they cannot do it.
When you trust that someone’s words and actions align with their truth and integrity, you can trust what they say. There’s far less safety in relationships when boundary communication is being avoided, manipulated, or circumnavigated in some way. Helping yourself and communicating honestly about your own needs ultimately helps others.
Boundaries as a foundation for interdependence
Researcher and storyteller, Brene Brown, talks extensively about boundaries and their impact on relationships. I highly recommend her TED Talks on vulnerability and shame.
In her book, Atlas of the Heart, she states, “Boundaries are a prerequisite for compassion and empathy. We can’t connect with someone unless we’re clear about where we end and they begin. If there’s no autonomy between people, then there’s no compassion or empathy, just enmeshment.”
She’s speaking to the profound quality of connection that we naturally cultivate when we’re clear enough about ourselves to truly be present in our relationships without sacrificing our health and well-being.
In technical terms, she’s speaking about the quality of interdependence in contrast to codependency. Interdependence is a quality of relationship in which the individuals take full responsibility and accountability for themselves and their own needs.
While this may sound selfish, it enables people to accurately assess their needs and communicate them to others without expecting another adult to come in and meet those needs (especially without voicing them first).
When you have a community of adults taking full responsibility and accountability for their own needs as they communicate them, you have a community of people who can show up for others in whatever capacity they can without crossing their thresholds.
A community of adults overextending themselves, predicting others’ needs, and neglecting their own is a breeding ground for unwellness, resentment, and anger. Massive amounts of energy are expended by the community to maintain the status quo of that unwellness. This is why healthy boundaries and interdependency are so essential for healthy relationships.
Yes, no, maybe, please, thank you, I’m sorry, and I changed my mind
Here’s a good rule of thumb for boundary words. When you’re not sure how to set a boundary, consider the phrases: “yes, no, please, maybe, thank you, I’m sorry, and I changed my mind.”
All of these phrases are good ways to interpret and explain what your boundaries might be communicating in each moment. Because boundaries decide, on conscious and unconscious levels, what to allow into our lives, it is an immensely empowering step to realize that we can say no.
In my own life and relationships, I commonly dealt with what we all deal with – random streams of drama and repeated stories playing out in communities and friend groups. This looked like gossip, talking shit, airing the issue you have with someone other than the person you’re having the issue with, etc.
These are all normalized ways that we attempt to connect without healthy boundaries. This quickly turns into lies and biases that poison the friendship group over time.
When I started cultivating good energetic boundaries and matching them with coherent and consistent boundary language, my relationships started changing dramatically.
These changes in my relationships came with fear, discomfort, and grief. When I was actively changing and setting new boundaries, it confused people. They were used to whatever codependent dynamic I was doing with them.
I was worried that my friends wouldn’t like me anymore, or that I would never find new people who could honor the new boundaries that I was stepping up and claiming.
Truthfully, none of my fears came to pass. Some friendships were rocky until we adjusted to the changes.
Eventually, my relationships settled into a new way with new boundaries honored on both sides. We strengthened our bonds and emerged on the other side with deeper, healthier relationship dynamics.
When you choose wellness, you can’t take everyone with you. Not everyone will ultimately accept new boundary demands, and that’s because they simply aren’t willing to navigate a healthy change with you. That comes with grief, but extracting yourself from toxicity opens new doors to friendships with others that were closed before.
I kept my friends, yet there was grief in needing to extract myself from dynamics that I had made an effort to shift when they weren’t met reciprocally. Because you can’t control others, sometimes creating distance is the best policy. These aren’t easy choices even though they might be healthy choices.
When I started saying no to unnecessary drama, drama stopped being created.
My friendships moving forward were able to be cultivated on the grounds of honesty, vulnerability, and trust.
I transformed old friendships into a new way of being present with better integrity. And magically, I started attracting new friends at that level. They showed up from the beginning with boundaries and integrity. That was able to happen because of my willingness to let go of relationships that weren’t working.
The magical leap
When we are clear about our “no’s,” something magical happens with our “yes.”
When we firmly say no to anything that isn’t a resounding yes, our fates and fortunes can change.
Once we’re clear about our “no’s”, it allows room to breathe, flow, and move. It gives us open air to notice new possibilities and make new choices when we’re no longer giving our energy away and depleting ourselves.
This is when true creativity is born.
When we feel we’ve lost our creativity, it’s often because all of our energy is going into maintaining some sort of status quo that is causing stagnation.
When we step out of that status quo, we see opportunities we couldn’t see before because we no longer need it to be the specific way it was.
Having new options is always exciting once we let go of our fear and step up to possibility.
Holding space for change
There can be grief and brokenheartedness involved in the process of doing what is needed to change your relationships, shift out of codependency, and take up your space.
You can’t always take everyone with you. You may end up having higher standards for people and environments. But with that comes a much longer road of more sustaining and nourishing relationships.
I compare tending personal boundaries to tending a garden.
When tending a garden, you’re constantly digging out weeds and invasive species that harm or take resources from what you’re trying to grow.
You want to create a sustainable ecosystem for the garden that you have. It needs to be well-fertilized. Well-maintained gardens attract bugs and animals. This is a good thing, but one that requires boundaries if you want your garden to survive and thrive.
If you’re cultivating tomatoes, you can’t give them all to the groundhogs. You have to set boundaries. You have to pick the cherries that you want to eat off the trees before the birds get them.
You need to create things that protect your crops somehow, and you can’t control everything.
You just respond and work with what you have, learning as you go. You get dirty. You make mistakes. You can’t save everything. Every yield is different year by year. Sometimes the frost gets it before it starts. But you’re learning, growing, losing, gaining, and dancing with life.
Setting good boundaries in your life is like that. It nourishes sustainability, which ultimately nourishes change, and even a kind of wildness in your life as new doors open that create more creativity, flow, and opportunity.
Instead of repeating the same relationship patterns, you deepen into a sense of liberation.
With liberation and freedom, there’s adventure. With adventure, there are unknowns and risks.
This is what it means to live fully – claiming responsibility for yourself, your right to your health, your right to fully take up your space, and being open to receiving all of the adventure that comes after.
Boundaries don’t make us more rigid. They make us more flexible, open-minded and open to possibility.
Imagine being more open to how relationships can shift and grow to create mutual benefit!
Boundaries make us happier and healthier people, creating a positive feedback loop for yourself and for those who have the value of your company.
While it can be hard work, it’s well worth the return on investment. If we want to create a healthier society of people, it has to start with us, and the friends we make along the way who are working towards the same goal.
If you’re ready to join me in cultivating healthier personal boundaries and relationships, I offer several services in which you can learn the tools needed to cultivate and strengthen your energetic and physical boundaries.
Energy Body Mastery is my 8-week class that helps people re-establish a healthy connection between their mind and body. This teaches us the energetic cultivation of healthy boundaries alongside strategies to take action in your life that is coherent with the boundaries you’re cultivating.
In the following 8-week class, Energy Body Clearing, we meet and reconcile our relationship with our Inner Child. This allows us to assess who in us is keeping us trapped in cycles of setting poor boundaries and helping them move out of fear and into the present moment.
In my 8-week manifestation program, we clarify, deepen, and enhance the energy body methods necessary to succeed in making our life’s dream a reality.
I also offer tarot readings, astrology readings, and one-on-one per session spiritual coaching.
If you are interested in scheduling something with me, please email me at modernspiritualisttarot@gmail.com.
If you are interested in pursuing the source of these teachings, visit the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing.
Rahim Paul Nanos, The Modern Spiritualist
Rahim Nanos is a spiritual visionary with roots deeply embedded in ancient spiritual lineages. Originally a student of psychology, Rahim's experience of chronic childhood abuse caught up with him in forms of anxiety and depression that prevented the further pursuit of his studies. He began seeking other modalities of healing through authentic spiritual lineages and quickly healed through them. During his healing journey, he noticed disparities within both the psychological and the new age framework of healing that felt counterintuitive to the true core of healing work. From there, he dedicated his life's work to bringing holistic modalities of healing into people's lives as an alternative to reliance on broken or incomplete systems.
