What Is Your “Energy Body?”
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve heard me talk about your energy body. Maybe this is an intuitive concept for you. If not, I want to walk you through what it is and why it’s important.
First, what is an energy body?
Your energy body is the part of your body that experiences and responds to the energy in and around you.
If you want to get scientific, I’d argue that your energy body is your nervous system. Your nervous system is designed to respond to all sorts of stimuli, internal and external—and it does so by FEEL. Your nervous system does not rationalize its experience, it reacts. It’s on you to help your nervous system recalibrate when it gets activated.
This is essentially what I mean when I say, “protect your energy body.” I don’t say “protect your nervous system” for two reasons:
One, I am a visual person and I think visualizing your energy body, which includes the aura around you, makes it easier to accept that sometimes the things that activate it are invisible. Intangible. Non-material.
Two, there is a key difference between an energy body and a nervous system. While the nervous system is the ‘central hub,’ the actual energy body is the field of energy that the nervous system engages. It’s the FEELING space. And that feeling space moves both within you AND outside of you. (The nervous system, obviously, only exists inside of you).
Here are some fun facts about your energy body:
It is entirely normal for your energy body to react to things that you might find “silly” or “insignificant.” You cannot tell your energy body to “toughen up” or “be smarter.” It doesn’t have a brain. You have to allow your energy body to do what it does: respond to energy. De-personalize the experience.
Your energy body responds to stimuli within and outside of you. It responds to your thoughts, the food you consume (think: caffeine, etc), the shows you watch, the words you hear, the energy of the people you surround yourself with—even the energy of places you go and the people who hang out in those places (think of how your energy shifts when you walk into a hospital).
You (and other people) can leave energy behind. YEP, that’s right. You can hang out in a space, leave, and someone else can walk into that space and feel the energy you left behind. Think of it like a trail of energetic dust that you sprinkle wherever you go (or think of it like glitter, if that’s your thing—we all know how glitter winds up everywhere). Interestingly, when you bring awareness to your energy body, you are better able to manage how much you shed throughout the day.
You do have control over your energy body. You may not always be able to control how it responds to the world, but you do have the ability to repair it if it becomes frazzled. You ALSO have the ability to ‘call it back’ if you feel drained.
You are also capable of ‘protecting’ your energy body, which means both creating an environment that supports it and using tools to ground it or call it back when necessary.
When you are aware of and supportive of your energy body, the world around you feels less chaotic and scary. You are armed with the tools to navigate all kinds of energies, be they dark or unpredictable, and so you are confident in your ability to move through the world.
So how do you support your energy body?
I’ve got too many tools to squeeze into this blog post, but the main ingredients are below:
Don’t judge it. Give your energy body permission to respond to the world around it.
When you notice a shift in your energy, say it out loud. Sometimes just putting a voice to the feeling is enough to ground that feeling and bring you back to balance.
Deep breaths. Cliche, sure, but there’s a reason for that—it often works! When you notice a shift, imagine that when you breathe in, you are calling in your energy and re-assembling it as an organized structure that flows in and around you. As you breathe out, imagine sending all of the disruptive energy down into the earth, which is a neutralizing energy.
Visualization. Honestly, this is the one that I think works BEST, but I might be biased because I’m a visual person! That’s also why I gave you visual cues for taking breaths. Meditation with visual cues can really help you hone that ‘force field’ around you, which can be stronger or weaker depending on your actions.
Maintenance. Energy is constant. And it is constantly in-flux. As you move through your day, you will interact with all sorts of energies that have the capacity to shift your own. The response is not to stay home and never interact with anyone. It’s to care for your energy body the way you would a house plant. Ground it daily and after any unsettling events using breath, visualization, or meditation. The practice of grounding can take as little as 30 seconds.
How do you feel about your energy body? Does it need a tune-up? Does it feel strong? A little burnt out?
Actually, I’m going to be spending some time talking about burnout and managing your energy body is a major component in navigating burnout. Because, after all, burnout is what happens when your energy is tapped out, right? So imagine: with a little maintenance, you can keep your flow of energy moving strong. Stay tuned for more on that front.