The guided body scan is probably my favorite mindfulness tools. You see, one of my strongest intuitive abilities is clairsentience. What does that mean, you might ask? Clairsentience is the ability to feel clearly. Clairsentients can sense information intuitively through our own physical sensations. This means we may physically feel what others are feeling in my own body or we might receive guidance from my intuition through body sensations.
Before I learned how to define my energetic boundaries, my clairsentience felt like a curse. I took on other people’s energy left and right. My body was constantly picking up emotions and physical pain from friends, family, and even strangers around me and trying to process it. But I didn’t know how to process it. It was so overwhelming, I had to shut down my intuitive abilities and find a way to close off to the world. Some of the ways I did this was by changing my posture, avoiding eye contact, and avoiding deep conversations, especially ones where people were sharing their emotions. I shut down so much I could barely feel my own emotions within my body.
Fast forward to my mid twenties when I began daily meditation and working with a somatic therapist. Some of my intuitive abilities began to reopen. I could feel more again. I learned how to identify some of the emotions I had been carrying around in my body for so long. Anger felt like a ball in my abdomen. Fear of rejection felt like a tearing in my chest. Joy felt like a lightness all around my body. It was freeing! However, opening up my own ability to feel also meant opening myself up to feeling others’ again.
A few years later, I thankfully I found a wonderful energy worker and teacher named Jeffrey Allen. Through a course of Jeffrey´s I learned that I could have seniority over my space and my energy. I could use my mind and intent to physically change the energy around my body. I could clear out energy that wasn’t mine, and I could create a barrier that kept others’ energy from coming into my space. It took me quite a while to master this skill, as I had spent so much of my life trying to heal other subconsciously by taking on their energy.
I am thankful to have reached a level where I now when I take on others’ energy, it is mostly during healing sessions, and I know how to clear it and release that connection when we finish a session. However, I still occasionally find myself yawning incessantly until I realize my body is trying to heal a singer on the the radio. I know that this is a skill I was blessed with, and it’s also a habit that I am slowly bringing into my consciousness to be aware of it 100% of the time. Because I’ll be honest, listening to the radio isn’t nearly as fun if my body is trying to heal all the singers I hear. 🙃
Full circle back to the body scan. Because I feel sensations so strongly in my body, meditation that uses body sensations to help anchor me in the present is extra effective for me. This guided meditation is great for relaxation, re-centering yourself, and relief from stress and anxiety.