With the pace of my life picking up lately I've been around a lot more people in the last week than I had been for a while and it became a kind of accidental empath experiment. Most of my interactions with people are one on one -at the salon, driving the gypsy cab (not really, but yeah, kind of), etc. though occasionally I'll find myself with a small group. Either way, having recently had so much time on my own and with the changed attitude of accepting and embracing that "down" time, I realized more deeply than ever just how it feels to be me. So following this lovely down time and thrown in again with all these people I suddenly realize so much more clearly just how chaotic it sometimes feels for me to be around others. Their energy whirling around me and sinking into my own until it's all soaked together and I feel indistinct and sometimes straight crazy.
At the same time, I seem to be finding more and more magical community and am realizing both my potential and also my needs. Although I'm not sure I'll ever be well enough attuned to be able to clearly interpret what I feel (as empath/intuitives do for the purpose of healing others) I'd like to at least be able to maintain feeling like me when I'm around a large group or even just one person with really strong energy, some of those people are really great and I would enjoy them so much more if I didn't feel like a tornado was whipping through me. So I recently looked around and found some energy training exercises for empaths. As meditation seems to be the be all end all to everything I shouldn't be surprised that this is again a big part of the exercises -which is good since I already do this and which is perhaps why it has become so much easier for me to discern when someone's energy is whipping through me like a tornado- but some were a little different and surprisingly simple.
The first of the two I remember best is to focus on how much noise or energy inside me is "others", measure it like it's a volume knob from 1 to 10. Then focus on how much is my own in the same way. Once I know where I am and where "others" is I focus on turning "others" down to 0 and me up to 10. It's so simple, yet so brilliant.
The other is to get into a meditative state and imagine that with each breath my energy expands creating a larger and larger field around me until it fills the room. This one is also brilliant and I identified with it right away as when I'm feeling my worst I do feel like my personal energetic space is totally deflated and I can't seem to gather the strength to fill it back up.
It's been kind of an exciting experience for me to get closer to understanding this part of myself and I'm really excited to work with it and see how I develop and what I decide to do with it. I have to say, nightmare though it's been, I'm glad to be who I am and have this experience of life.