Tools to improve your empathy skills. To Everyone , specially Keesha)

[Guest guest]

Tools to improve

your empathy skills.

The

greatest enemy of intuition is fear and trying too hard. Trying to be intuitive

is like finding yourself deep in dark unlit water and not knowing which way to

swim to find the surface. Fear may cause you to frantically swim this way and

that, but the harder you try the more pointless your efforts become - until you

stop, be still and feel for which direction your body naturally floats towards.

Only then can you combine your energy and effort in that direction.

Intuition is the same - it requires that you stop, that you focus on your

experience in that moment. Not allowing fear to distract you or command your

actions, but simply to observe your feelings and the subtle impressions that

come to you. When you find something entering your awareness, focus on it and

follow it to the conscious surface of your intuitive knowledge.

Tools to Develop Your Empath Skills

Awareness

Awareness

is what you have your conscious attention on at any given moment. While reading

these words notice that you can become aware (conscious) of anything you place

your attention on. Continue to read, but also place your attention on your left

foot, imagining that you can feel your left foot completely and totally - not

needing to see your foot, but just knowing and sensing that it is there. Got

it? Simple - just being aware! The more time you give to placing your awareness

on something the more information you would get about it - for example, you

would know whether your foot felt comfortable or not, warm or cool?

Directing Awareness

With very

little practice you can manipulate your awareness to move it from place to

place, from small areas like a fingernail to large areas, like your entire

body. Experiment with this with a playful, mindful and relaxed attitude.

Awareness is not based on sight or hearing. Your awareness is not dependent on

whether you can see or hear. If someone where standing behind you now, and you

could not see or hear them, how could you know that they were there? Many

people have had the experience of sensing someone looking at them. This is not

a co-incidence to be dismissed as unimportant, it is just a commonplace example

of the fact that your awareness is not dependent on the primary senses of sight

and hearing, it goes beyond them.

Don't be Confined to Your Body

What is not commonly known is that your awareness does not have to be confined

to your body, which means that you can direct your awareness beyond your

physical body's boundaries. You are not confined to the borders of your skin,

you can place your awareness on an object in the room, on the room itself, on

another person, in fact on anything, anywhere.

Go Within

When

connecting intuitively to another, don't expect to receive impressions,

feelings, thoughts or insights in a way that is external to your own body. It

is not like reading a book, or watching a movie and seeing the information

outside of you. When practicing Empath skills, know that you will always read

the information inside of your own body! This means that you will get feelings,

thoughts and impressions inside you that may seem to be just like your own

thoughts and feelings.

What makes this fact so tricky is that Empaths are picking up information from

others all the time (though mostly subtle), but have never questioned whether

the feelings are theirs or not! You may be feeling the feelings of others and

never have realized it until now. The same mechanism that allows you to hear

your own thoughts, feel your own feelings and have an inner awareness of your

own internal world, character and life experience, is capable of being used to

tune in to the feelings, thoughts, inner awareness, character and life

experience of another.

Because you are like the radio receiver, you will feel the feelings and pick up

on the impressions inside you. You presume the feelings are your own because

you are feeling them, when all the while they may not be.

Boundaries and Discernment

It might be a little frightening to think that you are picking up the emotions

and inner realities of others. In fact, many particularly sensitive Empaths

become so overwhelmed by the impact of other's emotions in their childhoods

that they shut down their feelings to try to defend themselves from having to

feel so much. Some choose to live above their shoulders and in their heads for

fear of the murky waters of a heart without boundaries. Others become tough and

thick skinned.

Those that fail to contain their emotional vulnerability, withdraw from real

connections to people. They become introverts or loners. If your greatest

weakness has been your sensitivity, big heart or emotions, it can now become

your greatest strength. What is required is to open you heart and feel

feelings, but to learn to discern whose emotions belong to whom and consciously

pull your attention away from and release it from what is not yours!

Translating Information

In the

early stages you may discover that the real depth of Empath work comes from

being able to translate subtle feelings and impressions into words and

concepts. Your body is literally in a sea of intuitive data all the time. It's

up to you to tune in, receive, and then translate the raw data into words from

your vocabulary and concepts from the library of your life knowledge.

To practice this, start pushing yourself to describe, in more detail, each of

the following levels of awareness. First, explore these levels of yourself and

then focus your attention on a willing target-subject. Explore impressions you

get in your own body and mind while imagining that you can feel what it is to

be the other person on each of these levels: • Physical Awareness (Discern the

difference between various body sensations, energy fluctuations, fullness or

emptiness associated with various emotions, the feeling of fear and peace,

lightness and heaviness, etc.)• Emotional Awareness (Discern the

difference between various emotions and their effect on your body. Compare

feelings of grief, shame, guilt, joy, freedom, peace, bliss, etc.)• Mental Awareness (after building awareness

of your physical and emotional experiences, push your mind to add more words

and descriptions as you ask yourself, "Why am I feeling this?" and

explore, in thoughts and ideas, a deeper understanding of your feelings to get

answers to questions.

It's not Hollywood

Don't expect intuitive knowledge to come to you with bells and whistles, or

flashing lights and booming voices in the sky. The most incredible and deeply

insightful, intuitive knowledge can be as subtle as an inner whisper - ready to

dismiss if you are not paying attention!

From Vague to Specific

Start with the broad strokes and then let detail come to you without forcing

it. By feeling for, and opening to, general, vague impressions first and then

allowing the generalities to take you deeper to more detail, you set yourself

up for the best shot at accuracy. Trying to immediately jump in with impressive

and specific personal detail, places too much fear in your body and this could

be driven by a need to prove yourself and does not really help you. Get into

the flow first.

For example, start with general questions to direct your awareness like,

"When I am connecting to this person by imagining that I can feel what it

is like to be them, does my body feel more expanded and lighter, or more

contracted and dense?" Or, "Do I feel any emotions and if so, what

emotions?" When you start to get subtle senses of these things grab onto

one impression and ask for more information about the subtle impression, Like,

"What is the cause of the heaviness and sad feeling?" Don't jump to

logical conclusions, let ideas come to you, but not be created by you! Check

that it is not your emotion by disconnecting and reconnecting to double check

the responses.

Soul and Wisdom

The same Empath skills that allow people to connect emotionally, physically and

mentally, can allow a connection to you as a soul, where your soul's wisdom

lies in wait. A true Empath connection to Soul reveals that soul brings peace,

wisdom, unconditional love and support to the body. Wherever your awareness is

placed, is what you are "in intuitive dialogs" with - so after

exploring the physical, emotional and mental, place your attention on the inner

compass of your soul, your peace.

In Conclusion

Though it

is a delight to be able to validate Empath skills with a display of

impressively accurate, intuitively sought detail, because it reveals to the

world that at the heart of every human, lies an Empath. Yet the ultimate reward

for the Empath is not to impress with psychic party tricks, but rather it is to

be able to walk this physical world awake, with a heart open enough that it can

tune in to the inner duet that plays through us all, the song of body and soul.

http://www.namaste-mag.co.za/BackIssues/Issue22Art2.htm

[Guest guest]

thanks you for this.. I find it to be helpful and I will begin to practice some new things to make for more comfortable experiences. Peace, Keeshalianeqrz_legey <butterflygris@...> wrote: Tools to improve your empathy skills. The greatest enemy of intuition is fear and trying too hard. Trying to be intuitive is like finding yourself deep in dark unlit water and not knowing which way to swim to find the surface. Fear may cause you to frantically swim this way and that, but the harder you try the more pointless your efforts become - until you stop, be still and feel for which direction your body naturally floats towards. Only then can you combine your energy and effort in that direction. Intuition is the same - it requires that you stop, that you focus on your experience in that moment. Not allowing fear to distract you or command your actions, but simply to observe your

feelings and the subtle impressions that come to you. When you find something entering your awareness, focus on it and follow it to the conscious surface of your intuitive knowledge. Tools to Develop Your Empath Skills Awareness Awareness is what you have your conscious attention on at any given moment. While reading these words notice that you can become aware (conscious) of anything you place your attention on. Continue to read, but also place your attention on your left foot, imagining that you can feel your left foot completely and totally - not needing to see your foot, but just knowing and sensing that it is there. Got it? Simple -

just being aware! The more time you give to placing your awareness on something the more information you would get about it - for example, you would know whether your foot felt comfortable or not, warm or cool? Directing Awareness With very little practice you can manipulate your awareness to move it from place to place, from small areas like a fingernail to large areas, like your entire body. Experiment with this with a playful, mindful and relaxed attitude. Awareness is not based on sight or hearing. Your awareness is not dependent on whether you can see or hear. If someone where standing behind you now, and you could not see or hear them, how could you know that they were there? Many people have had the experience of sensing someone looking at them. This is

not a co-incidence to be dismissed as unimportant, it is just a commonplace example of the fact that your awareness is not dependent on the primary senses of sight and hearing, it goes beyond them. Don't be Confined to Your Body What is not commonly known is that your awareness does not have to be confined to your body, which means that you can direct your awareness beyond your physical body's boundaries. You are not confined to the borders of your skin, you can place your awareness on an object in the room, on the room itself, on another person, in fact on anything, anywhere. Go Within When

connecting intuitively to another, don't expect to receive impressions, feelings, thoughts or insights in a way that is external to your own body. It is not like reading a book, or watching a movie and seeing the information outside of you. When practicing Empath skills, know that you will always read the information inside of your own body! This means that you will get feelings, thoughts and impressions inside you that may seem to be just like your own thoughts and feelings. What makes this fact so tricky is that Empaths are picking up information from others all the time (though mostly subtle), but have never questioned whether the feelings are theirs or not! You may be feeling the feelings of others and never have realized it until now. The same mechanism that allows you to hear your own thoughts, feel your own feelings and have an inner awareness of your own internal world, character and life experience, is capable of being used to tune in to the

feelings, thoughts, inner awareness, character and life experience of another. Because you are like the radio receiver, you will feel the feelings and pick up on the impressions inside you. You presume the feelings are your own because you are feeling them, when all the while they may not be. Boundaries and Discernment It might be a little frightening to think that you are picking up the emotions and inner realities of others. In fact, many particularly sensitive Empaths become so overwhelmed by the impact of other's emotions in their childhoods that they shut down their feelings to try to defend themselves from having to feel so much. Some choose to live

above their shoulders and in their heads for fear of the murky waters of a heart without boundaries. Others become tough and thick skinned. Those that fail to contain their emotional vulnerability, withdraw from real connections to people. They become introverts or loners. If your greatest weakness has been your sensitivity, big heart or emotions, it can now become your greatest strength. What is required is to open you heart and feel feelings, but to learn to discern whose emotions belong to whom and consciously pull your attention away from and release it from what is not yours! Translating Information In the early stages you may discover that the real depth of Empath work comes from being able to translate subtle feelings and impressions into words and concepts.

Your body is literally in a sea of intuitive data all the time. It's up to you to tune in, receive, and then translate the raw data into words from your vocabulary and concepts from the library of your life knowledge. To practice this, start pushing yourself to describe, in more detail, each of the following levels of awareness. First, explore these levels of yourself and then focus your attention on a willing target-subject. Explore impressions you get in your own body and mind while imagining that you can feel what it is to be the other person on each of these levels: • Physical Awareness (Discern the difference between various body sensations, energy fluctuations, fullness or emptiness associated with various emotions, the feeling of fear and peace,

lightness and heaviness, etc.)• Emotional Awareness (Discern the difference between various emotions and their effect on your body. Compare feelings of grief, shame, guilt, joy, freedom, peace, bliss, etc.)• Mental Awareness (after building awareness of your physical and emotional experiences, push your mind to add more words and descriptions as you ask yourself, "Why am I feeling this?" and explore, in thoughts and ideas, a deeper

understanding of your feelings to get answers to questions. It's not Hollywood Don't expect intuitive knowledge to come to you with bells and whistles, or flashing lights and booming voices in the sky. The most incredible and deeply insightful, intuitive knowledge can be as subtle as an inner whisper - ready to dismiss if you are not paying attention! From Vague to Specific Start with the broad strokes and then let detail come to you without forcing it. By feeling for, and opening to, general, vague impressions first and then allowing the generalities to take you deeper to more detail, you set yourself up for the best shot at accuracy. Trying

to immediately jump in with impressive and specific personal detail, places too much fear in your body and this could be driven by a need to prove yourself and does not really help you. Get into the flow first. For example, start with general questions to direct your awareness like, "When I am connecting to this person by imagining that I can feel what it is like to be them, does my body feel more expanded and lighter, or more contracted and dense?" Or, "Do I feel any emotions and if so, what emotions?" When you start to get subtle senses of these things grab onto one impression and ask for more information about the subtle impression, Like, "What is the cause of the heaviness and sad feeling?" Don't jump to logical conclusions, let ideas come to you, but not be created by you! Check that it is not your emotion by disconnecting and reconnecting to double check the responses. Soul and Wisdom The same Empath skills that allow people to connect emotionally, physically and mentally, can allow a connection to you as a soul, where your soul's wisdom lies in wait. A true Empath connection to Soul reveals that soul brings peace, wisdom, unconditional love and support to the body. Wherever your awareness is placed, is what you are "in intuitive dialogs" with - so after exploring the physical, emotional and mental, place your attention on the inner compass of your soul, your peace. In Conclusion Though it is a delight to be able to validate Empath skills with a display of impressively accurate, intuitively sought detail, because it reveals to the world that

at the heart of every human, lies an Empath. Yet the ultimate reward for the Empath is not to impress with psychic party tricks, but rather it is to be able to walk this physical world awake, with a heart open enough that it can tune in to the inner duet that plays through us all, the song of body and soul. http://www.namaste-mag.co.za/BackIssues/Issue22Art2.htm

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