Starseed Evolution with Shannon Sullivan
Join me on this star-filled adventure as we raise our vibration to uplift our human selves through spiritual direction, Reiki, ceremony, mantras, guided meditation and stories for the soul. Thank you for joining me on this cosmic adventure!
Starseed Evolution with Shannon Sullivan
Starseed Evolution: Embracing Empathic Awareness and the "Is this Mine?" Technique
Ever wonder if the emotions you feel truly belong to you? As a highly sensitive person myself, I have often found myself overwhelmed by emotions that seemingly come out of nowhere. In this episode of Starseed Evolution, I share a transformative technique called "Is this Mine?" that has been a revelation on my empathic journey. This self-care tool empowers us to discern which feelings are genuinely ours and which we might be absorbing from those around us. By sharing my personal experience with grief, I demonstrate how acknowledging and documenting these emotions can help maintain our well-being while extending empathy to others.
To further support your journey, I invite you to embark on a 10-day meditation course available on the Insight Timer app. This course is specially designed for starseeds evolving in their awareness and understanding of deep emotions. Together, we'll connect with the energy of Buddha to enhance our ability to sit with and process our feelings. I'm excited about the upcoming episode, where we'll continue this path with a guided meditation. Join me, Shannon, as we embrace our sensitivities and harness them to create a more compassionate world.
Thank you for music by: Chris Collins of Indie Music Box and Blue Dot Sessions
Artful Touch Therapies – my professional website
https://www.artfultouchbyshannon.com/
Shannon Sullivan, International Meditation Teacher on Insight Timer
(Download Insight Timer app. Then click link to my teacher page)
Link Tree Information:
https://www.linktr.ee/silverlunastarseed
10 Day Course for Empaths and Highly Sensitive People
Blue Heron Creates
This is my music artist name where I share mantras and original songs from many different faith traditions.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4I0l8GxlFZ0dD5acKgsabs?si=hVSjJSt7Quudh0-yGBQEBg
Silver Luna Starseed Instagram Feed:
https://instagram.com/silverlunastarseed
Indie Music Box – Chris Collins
Hi, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Shannon and this is Starseed Evolution, bringing the wisdom and insight of the cosmos to you. I'm grateful that you're listening. In our last episode, we started the conversation around what it means to be empathic or highly sensitive. Today, we're going to be continuing that conversation by exploring our first tool or technique. So why do we need tools or techniques as empathic or highly sensitive people? Because we need to develop our own owner's manual to take care of our sensitive systems. In episode six, when I was talking about what it means to be sensitive, I compared our nervous system with that of having a high-powered vehicle like a Ferrari. If we have that sensitivity, we need to understand the owner-operator manual for our own nervous system, which isn't typical. Tools or techniques that we learn empower us to care for ourselves and our sensitivity, our energy, our nervous system, our brain, our psychic field, our emotional body.
Speaker 1:Dr Judith Orloff, who specializes in working with empathic people, says this I love when the environmentalist David Orr says the planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. It needs people to live well. It needs people with moral courage, willing to join the struggle to make the world habitable and humane. This comes from Dr Orloff's book, the Empath Survival Guide. So, jumping off this quote, the sensitivity of empaths and highly sensitive people is necessary for our world to maintain the humanity and heart of our world of caring and compassion. It's important for us to learn how to care for our own sensitive self in order that we are able then to keep showing up for life, for ourselves and for those people around us who might need our help as well.
Speaker 1:The tool that we'll be exploring today is called. Is this Mine? As with any tool, the only way to know if it works for you is to actually try it in your everyday life. So I'd like to share this tool with you now and how to put it into practice, and I hope you enjoy learning about this. One of the traits of being empathic is that we can often, without knowing it or realizing it, take on the energy or feelings of either those people around us, or energy can travel, so if we're deeply connected to friends or family or animals, we can also pick up those feelings through that connection. Even if we're not in the same household or room with them, that energy or information can still travel through those connections, those bonds that we formed in our body.
Speaker 1:This second tool that I'm teaching you today may seem simple. However, when used at the right time, can be highly effective. Time can be highly effective. So how does it work? When we suddenly feel a feeling or an emotion that wasn't there before and it seems to come out of nowhere, that's the time to put this tool to use. I'll give you an example from my own life so you understand how this might come into play and how you might use it in the future.
Speaker 1:One morning, when I woke up, I was getting ready for the day. I remember waking up that morning feeling okay, feeling normal. About an hour into the morning, I had begun making the bed when, all of a sudden, this overwhelming urge to cry moved through my body. This deep grief, urge to cry moved through my body. This deep grief. As the grief moved through me and I allowed myself to cry, I used this tool that I'm going to teach you now, because I realized that this grief might not necessarily be my own. When you can begin to distinguish between what's your own and what might be somebody else's, who may not even be present in that moment I stopped, closed my eyes and asked my body is this mine? The feeling of the overwhelm and sadness just temporarily lifted, giving me space from the feeling. Because of that lifting up for the moment, I realized that the feeling I was having, or the experience of the emotion, was not my own, was not my own. I didn't know who it belonged to, so I allowed myself to carry the grief but understood it wasn't my own process.
Speaker 1:Next, what I did was write down the feeling. I put the date, the time that it happened and what I was experiencing. By doing this I honored those feelings. The next thing I did was send energy to whoever was having that experience. About an hour after the experience, I received a text from my friend. She let me know that her dog passed about an hour before Now. Her doggie and I had been close friends for about 11 years. It was a very special dog to me, so I knew the loss of the dog, both for my friend and for myself, was a very deep loss. I also realized that my body was receiving that information before my mind received it. So when I went back to the journal to document that this is what happened, it helped me honor that I was having the experience. It wasn't my own, and I also discovered where that grief had been coming from. The last thing that I like to do in this process is because I might not necessarily know where that energy is coming from, I want that person, that place, that animal to have the energetic support they need, even if I'm not sure who it belongs to.
Speaker 1:Imagine placing care or love or upliftment into your hands and handing over this care or love to your spiritual helpers, whoever that might be for you, whether it's an angel or an ancestor, and ask them to be with the person who's experiencing these emotions. Who's experiencing these emotions? By doing these steps and I'll walk you through them it allows you to begin to process first, what is your own experience of a feeling you're having, if it belongs to you or if it belongs to somebody else. So you're beginning to discern the difference between what you're feeling in your body. The next thing you're doing is learning to honor the messages that your body receives, even before your mind might consciously know the information. So you're learning to trust that intuitive part of yourself by using this tool.
Speaker 1:So now let's go through the steps for tool number two. Is this Mine? You've just experienced an overwhelming feeling that is out of the blue. You're not sure whether this feeling is your own or someone else's. Let's check in First. Stop, close your eyes Now place your hands on your stomach gently, begin by taking a deep breath, in bringing that breath into your hands and exhaling. Now that we're connected to our body, we ask our body and the feeling that we're experiencing this question is this mine? And see what you notice as you ask this question that runs through your body. Does the energy change slightly? Does it become lighter? Does it lift from you temporarily? If it does, then you have your answer that the feeling you're experiencing is not your own.
Speaker 1:After you've asked this question and discerned whether this feeling is yours or not, if the feeling comes back, just know that the whole point of this exercise is to discover whether the feelings you're experiencing are your own or not. It might take a little while for them to completely lift from your body. Once you have your answer, then I'll have you open your eyes and then just jot down or journal the time, the date, what you were experiencing the time, the date, what you were experiencing. By identifying this, you identify that you're listening to your body. And then the last part of this is to then imagine gathering all those feelings that may not be your own into your hands, lifting them up, and then imagine placing them into the hands of your spiritual team to hold for that person, that place or that animal that might be needing extra support at this time, at this time Now, taking a deep breath in and exhaling.
Speaker 1:You can do this exercise as many times as you need throughout the day. Doing so allows you to continue to listen to the experiences that your own body is having. So let's put those steps out together one more time. First, recognizing when an emotion comes in that doesn't necessarily belong to you because it's out of left field. When you have the chance, stop, close your eyes, place your hands on your stomach and ask your body this question is this mine Taking a deep breath in and then listening to your body. If the feeling that you're experiencing temporarily lightens, then this means that the emotion that you're experiencing is most likely not your own. Then, making note, either in a journal or your calendar or your phone, of that which you experienced. So you're honoring, noticing what's happening in your body. Then, when you're ready, calling in your spiritual team and asking them to hold the energy of what that other person, place or animal might be experiencing.
Speaker 1:You can approach using this tool in a relaxed manner. There's no getting it right or getting it wrong Over time. The more you make use of the tool, the better you'll understand how your body likes to communicate to you. You're building a bridge of communication between yourself and your empathic skills. I'd like to thank you so much for joining me today for exploring our first tool of many more to come. As with any new skill, the more often you use it, the better discerning you will become over time about learning to distinguish between your own thoughts and feelings from others around you.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to explore more tools in depth, like the one I taught you today, I have a 10-day course on the app Insight Timer, which is a meditation app, and you can check it out there. The link will be in the show notes. In our next episode, we'll be taking a guided journey with the energy of Buddha that teaches us how to sit with our feelings and emotions as starseeds who are willing to evolve and awaken. Learning how to navigate our emotions is important. I look forward to sharing this meditation with you next time. I'm Shannon and you're listening to Starseed Evolution. Have a beautiful day.
