Energetic Boundaries by Psychic Avery

We all have a physical body, right? And with our physical bodies, we have boundaries in place. For example, with the pandemic, we want to be six feet away from others when we are in stores and restaurants etc. But think about before the pandemic, how close would you have wanted a stranger to be standing next to you? You had a sort of pre-determined idea of what was ‘too close,' and you knew when someone had breached that. And that is a healthy response.  

We also have an energy body. And we have healthy comfort levels associated with our energetic bodies as well. Some people call this body our ‘aura’. It describes the space around us that many visualize as a circle or an egg shape of energy around our physical body. And we know when that body is comfortable or uncomfortable. There are distinct ways it will show this to us.

An example of comfort is when you have spent time in nature, you may have felt expansive, like your energy could get really spread out if it wanted to. An uncomfortable one is if you have ever been in a store and had to watch someone angrily confronting an employee? Or if you have a coworker or a family member that tends to be negative and unburden themselves onto you? If you almost always notice that later, you still feel the energy of that situation in varying degrees.  You may even feel like they have energetically ‘thrown up’ on you. The first example from the woods is a healthy boundary response, your boundary lets in that wonderful expansive feeling from being in nature. The second is a result of porous boundaries; you have absorbed energy from that negative situation into your own energy.

For empaths, porous boundaries can make it difficult to distinguish between other people’s emotional traumas and your own emotional experience. Carrying around that kind of energy is quite a burden. This can cause symptoms that are mild, all the way up to autoimmune disorders. I myself was diagnosed many times as having Fibromyalgia. I eventually had to stop working and go on disability at age 35. When I took my shamanic teacher Christina Pratt’s class on how to build healthy boundaries, my symptoms disappeared, and I was able to return to work. It completely changed my life. I believed in that work so much, that I trained with her to be able to teach it myself. 

And If you are thinking to yourself, Oh no! Why don’t I have good boundaries? Don’t blame yourself. I didn’t know either and I work with energy professionally, all of the time! Our culture today has many positives, but we are largely ignorant of the need to have healthy energetic boundaries. Small children will try to build energetic boundaries out of their own energy. They are usually all in the front because that is where children perceive that everything is coming at them. But they are taught to ignore those boundaries, so they forget about them. The funny thing is most adults are walking around with this weak version of boundaries they made when they were children. Mine looked like Swiss cheese in fact.  Other adults have much stronger boundaries they have made with their own energy as a form of psychic self-defense, that they use without even being aware of it. And some of us learned to create boundaries with our own energy that are far stronger, it is sometimes called shielding yourself, but this is where I would like to dispel popular misconceptions about that.

Creating a boundary out of your own energy is like wearing armor, like a knight in a suit of armor. But did you know that they had to breed specific horses that could carry a man in that armor because they were SO heavy? And so are those boundaries we create with our own energy. They are energetically expensive, because they have to be maintained, you are sending your own precious energy to them all of the time, so they drain you. That is a resource that needs to come back to you. And do you really need that armor all of the time? Like when you are with your children or your pets? Or having a romantic night in or a date with your loved one? Do you want to shield yourself from them? From love? It is just not practical to wear that heavy shield all of the time. You need an intelligent boundary that adapts to the situation you are in, one that is flexible and responds appropriately to your physical environment. One that will allow in those things that nourish you and keep out those things that don’t help you or may be toxic to you. 

Having really weak boundaries or wearing that armor can both make you feel tired, sick, and have a loss of vitality. We have been taught to ignore these symptoms, to disregard the red flags your body sends. Your inner wisdom may be telling you that you need to have better boundaries.

Healthy boundaries can support you in clarifying your focus, and conserving energy in your interactions. And when healthy boundaries exist, you will no longer feel easily invaded by others.

 

Boundaries are a real thing, created in your energy body, and are reinforced by your actions. So, what do you do? Well, I learned in Christina’s class that not being grounded is an enormous block to being able to have a healthy boundary. Being grounded means that you have an energetic connection to the earth.  So I learned how to ground deeply, and I practice grounding just about every day. You can find lots of free grounding videos on YouTube.  I then, one at a time, direct energy from the earth, the sun or the divine, which they so graciously give to me, into my outermost layer of my energy, and see them knit together using my imagination. And this is not hard. The image you hold in your mind becomes the shape the energy will flow into.

The more the energy flows into it, because you are regularly practicing it, the easier it is to ‘see’ or sense. The easier it is to see or sense, the more easily the energy will flow. The class I took was for complete beginners, so you all can do this.  This helps you to claim a safe space of your own, where what is yours is here with you, and what is everyone else’s is out there where it belongs. I think of it as having good hygiene. It is a simple practice that is easy to keep up. 

So pay attention to the signs your energy body is giving you, and think about what it is trying to say. Couldn’t you use more energy and vitality?