Energy Balance Check-In

Where are you leaking energy, and why should you care?

Having healthful energy available to you -for the people, things and activities you most want to be doing- is not a given. It is a gift. Your energy needs your caretaking, and your respect. You are not a machine or computer. You are a sensitive human. Your physical, emotional, spiritual, relational energy body is constantly being affected by everything going on around you.

Perhaps you weren’t taught this. Protecting my health, through prevention, only became a choice when I experienced the consequences of not doing so.

Prevention of disease is no longer just about diet and exercise; the energetics of people, places, seasons, and conditioning from childhood and culture affect us, deeply. All must be acknowledged and managed for good health. If you: consistently override your boundaries, overlook poor behavior in others, don’t listen to yourself- including honoring what you most value, need, enjoy and want- you cannot expect your body (and life) to run smoothly.

My encounter with the Energy Vampire motivated an energy check-in; I do this ongoing, but never formalized it. I’m doing so now because a) I’ve been editing my book, yet again, which flows exactly like this -a personal essay with integration practices, and b) I’m turned on by handing out homework!

I invite you to do this with me: You’ll want to set aside at least thirty minutes, with pen and paper or journal. Take notes on what ideas resonate for you. You will also want to journal your responses to the questions asked.

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Seasonal Energy Balance Check-In

It’s hot outside, unusually so for August in Hawaii.

Summer is associated with the fire element (in Traditional Chinese Medicine), which physically correlates to the heart and small intestines. In the summer months, we tend to be more: social, celebratory, expressive, active and hot. When high-heat fire is over-emphasized or exaggerated, it gives rise to complaints like: overheating, being heart-fiery/dramatic with others, increased digestive issues, headaches, and overthinking. Hot air rises; heat “goes to your head” which doesn’t feel good and can lead to poor judgment.

I find this useful for rebalancing physical energy. Here’s how I apply it:

• Prioritize sensation and feeling in all things. This is my no.1 tool for “getting out of my head” (which leads into hot, fiery, unhappy thoughts). This intention also keeps me connected to embodied presence, which is how I am able to be responsive, not reactive in life. In qi gong, energy practices, breathwork, I aim to enjoy every single minute of it…

• Ask: “Is this (x) bringing me joy or pleasure?” (If not, why am I doing it?) This simple question often brings me to the realization that I need to adjust the AC, jump in the cold plunge, or shift gears in another way.

• Ask: “Can I adjust this thing/activity so that I can get back into my pleasure zone?” For instance, the bathroom kitty litter box is really heating up on these hot nights (ugh!), which cuts into my enjoyment of my evening self-care routine. It may sound minor but it’s a real drain. As one solution, I’m getting a second kitty litter box, for the outside lanai.

• Recenter more frequently during summer months. When: heat is high, we’re more social, expressive, active, we also easily jump from thing to thing without a pause to recenter, between. I’ve noticed accumulated lack of presence has an inverse effect to what you accomplish (you don’t), creates fatigue, and overall ineffective energy management.

Reflecting on the above, are you overheating, over-extended, feeling drained? What steps can you take to “cool down”? Like: prioritize your pleasure, or set the intention to recenter throughout the day.

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Relationship Energy Balance Check-in

There is a natural “giving and receiving” invisible energy constantly at play between “us.” Because life is dynamically changing, all of our important relationships must be periodically re-evaluated for their energy balance. Why? When outflow is not matched with inflow, we will eventually feel it by feeling less enthusiasm for a person, becoming less responsive to them, or, depending on the frequency at which we interact with them, and our own level of self-awareness, we may simply feel energetically drained overall.

Imagine each relationship as an infinity symbol: This symbolizes healthy energy flow. You are outflowing energy when you: give to your relationship in the forms of help, gifts, problem-solving, active listening and presence, responding to requests, etc. You receive, or inflow, energy by: feeling appreciated, thanked, valued, actively listened to, responded to, prioritized.

Reflecting on the above, can you identify an out of balance relationship? How do you “know” (ie, you feel this in your heart, or a person’s face pops up)?

What will you do about it? Here are some approaches to explore:

• Do: less with that person. Don’t: give so much of yourself. Draw boundaries around your time. This is basic self-care.

• Ask them: For what you need, want. The beauty of directly asking them for what you want is you give them a chance to show you what they are capable of giving you. If they’ve got nothing? That’s information for you; you get to decide how to next proceed.

• Ask yourself: Do they have a blind spot? And can I live with that? Perhaps you don’t feel appreciated in an area that really matters to you but in others, you do. You can decide to choose to overlook this thing, but you may want to adjust your outflow towards them in that realm.

• Ask yourself: Do I want this to be a) transactional relationship, or b) a personal connection? I love this question, which I’m (hopefully rightly) paraphrasing via Alice Inoue. It’s so useful for those crossover relationships, ie, you are exchanging a service, and it’s a friendship!

  Essentially, you are asking yourself: What’s most important to me, here? I just asked myself this question, and decided that instead of pursuing a linear line of thinking around a transaction, I clarified that I wanted to treat this person as a friend. It changed everything for me.

Finally, something you can do for your loved ones that will energetically remunerate you, too: Take a neutral perspective. Put yourself in the shoes of your most important people- those you deeply cherish, value. Imagine each person standing before you. One at a time, ask yourself: Might *I* be receiving more from (them) than I am giving? What feelings, thoughts, surface when you ask yourself this? And, what will you do about it?

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Quickstart: An Overall Energy Management Check-In Cheat Sheet

• Where am I leaking energy? A relationship? Boundaries? A commitment I no longer want? My daily routine? Time management? Lack of presence (mentally being in several places at once is energetically draining)?

• What things are negatively affecting my joy, satisfaction, in life? No matter how petty or small seeming these little things do add up. Like: a smelly cat litter box, or your AC or car needs servicing.

• What one step can I take, right now, to shift this for myself? (ie, get cat box, make appointment with a service person, draw boundary).

• Is there something I know that I should be doing -something I know from experience that when I consistently do it, I always feel better?*

*You may need to ask: “Am I resisting doing this?” Why ask this question? You haven’t been doing it!!! Break your resistance down into bite-sized pieces by finishing this sentence in your journal: “One part of me wants to (your words here) but another part of me wants… (your words here).”

• Finally, if shoring up your energy leak involves a never-before-taken-action for you, you will likely want to address everything that could get in the way of doing this. Otherwise, you may never take that first step.

For instance, per my Energy Vampire post, I want to hard-stop any conversation that crosses a boundary. But I haven’t done this well in the past because I don’t like feeling energetically disruptive. Scratch that. Because: I don’t like feeling other people’s discomfort (Hello, I’m a peace-loving Empath; I really don’t want to make you uncomfortable -I feel it!).

By reflecting on this about myself, and then dress-rehearsing it, I realized it is possible for me to devil-may-care-shift-gears-quickly, without jumping into another’s energetic response towards me. I “rehearse” by imagining myself adapting to different scenarios that could arise in a similar situation (for me, repetitive imaginative rehearsal really works. If I imagine doing it, or do it, familiarity and practice creates elegance, ease, in the future). I also came up with several phrases to have in my back pocket.

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I know this is a lengthy self-reflective process, and I do get that not everyone is invested in wellness at the same level as I. I have learned that ongoing energy management pays dividends, in how you feel, live - and even look!

Please feel free to share your thoughts, and experiences in the comments.

All images shown: from my Intuitive Energy Divination Deck which you can only buy here or here. (not on Amazon) Read my GoodReads reviews here.