As a Transpersonal Coach, I offer resources and tools for Highly Sensitive People to experience greater fulfillment and wellbeing. We all know just how important it is to embody and integrate these practices into our daily lives and an intellectual awareness of these tools only scratches the surface of what’s possible when it comes to reaching our full potential.
I’m passionate about embodied transformation and helping those of us who are highly sensitive go beyond our conditioning and reconnect with our core Self. Our core Self is already healed, whole and full of our innate potential.
It’s only when we remember the truth of who we really are that we can embrace our authentic gifts and as a result feel more empowered.
Most of the struggles we face as Highly Sensitive People is a result of pre-programmed beliefs that have been fed to us since we were children. We must unpack our earlier life conditioning and understand we are not what society has told us we are - vulnerable, weak, or broken. We are, in fact, empowered with traits and gifts which are crucial to our individual and collective wellbeing.
Having the right resources and tools to navigate our sensitivity is important. Tools like non-violent communication, self-compassion practices and setting healthy boundaries offer us awareness, insight, and a greater understanding of what our struggles and strengths are.
However, the mistake that many people make is believing that an understanding of these tools are enough on their own to make significant changes to how we feel as Highly Sensitive People. This is simply not the case. For significant transformation to occur - to really step into our gifts of sensitivity - we have to embody and integrate this knowledge on all levels of our being – including mind, body, spirit, and soul.
How do we go from knowing something intellectually to embodying it in the cells of our being? How do we live in alignment with the qualities of our soul essence – the truth of who we know ourselves to be?
Trying to change our thoughts with the conscious mind alone is not enough, and the traditional cognitive behavioral idea of replacing an old thought with a new one is outdated,
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
When we decide to change our past programming, we are only using 5% of our conscious mind – so we can try to think differently or positively, but 95% of our programming is still going on in the subconscious! This means our conscious thoughts are saying one thing, but the body can be saying something else!
What’s crucial here is that we not only think about new beliefs but feel the energy and emotion associated with those beliefs so we can embody and become the change.
Joe Dispenza talks about feeling the emotions of the future person you want to become. I believe it’s helpful to remember that the future person we want to become is the truth of who we already are. We are born with the qualities we dream of, and the potential we see in others is often our own.
Our core Self has been layered by our wounds or has been fractured and broken leading us to become disconnected from our innate traits, qualities, and gifts.
We mistake our wounds for our truth. As a result of the stress hormone and our past conditioning, we can even become addicted to our wounding. So, even if we know that our conditioned identity is limiting, letting go of what is familiar is often more terrifying than stepping into the unknown. Even if these behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs are destructive, they are familiar, comfortable, and known. This is the reason we can remain stuck in addictions for so long.
Letting go of what is Familiar
There is so much potential in letting go of what is familiar. When we do, cracks start to emerge, and we enter spaces that exist in-between and behind the wounded parts. We can enter into an all compassionate, accepting, loving energy that exists at our core and is connected to a unified field. It’s from this place that we can become the witness to our wounded parts, and deeper healing takes place.
Our Wounds hold Potential for Growth
As Tony Robbins says, ‘energy flows where attention goes’ - the more we focus on gratitude, love, and abundance the more we align with this energy and, as a result, manifest things in our life which are congruent with the frequency of those emotions. I know from experience this to be the case, and at the same time, I’m a strong advocate for staying in relationship with our pain and trauma. We must allow space for all our emotions and all spectrums of human reality because if we try to suppress these more challenging emotions, they will only show up stronger with more intention and energy behind them.
Our wounds and pain are a portal - a gateway in which we enter what is beyond the ego. So our ability to reframe who we are is not about moving away from our wounds - it’s about moving through them. When we go from the old self to the new self, there is a void – a place of uncertainty. That is the perfect place to create something new.
The Quantum Field
In this space, we can enter the quantum field which exists before the material realm manifests. When we enter the quantum field, and that means we are in resonance with it, we’re in a state of flow and that which is beyond space and time. We have the potential to create our reality and we go beyond the concept of linear time and our fixed identity.
Mind, Body & Heart Coherence
Being in this space means our mind, body, and heart are in coherence. There is alignment within ourselves and with the quantum field. This coherence is experienced as elevated emotions of joy, unconditional love, gratitude – so when you’re feeling those emotions you’re in this coherent state.
One of the simplest and most effective ways of accessing this expansive and coherent state is through meditation and guided visualization. In the meditative state, our brain waves shift into the slower brainwave patterns of alpha - which is also the imaginary state. We move beyond our analytical system into our subconscious programming. As well as this, our brain starts to unify, the right and left hemispheres synchronize and the brain is in a holistic state. We also experience brain and heart coherence which means that we start to function better and there is more communication between the heart and brain. In this space, we can think beyond the limitations of the conditions of our environment.
Our Brain Waves
Our brain is constantly fluctuating between high and low brain wave frequencies. These waves are measured in speed cycles per second, described as Hertz (Hz).
When we are alert and awake during the day, we are usually operating in a high-frequency beta state, and this state is conducive for being focused, problem-solving, and using our cognitive ‘thinking’ capacities. As mentioned, we can slip into a lower frequency, alpha state when we are meditating, which means we are generally more relaxed and receptive— an even deeper state of relaxation and receptivity can occur in theta state – which often occurs when we are in the liminal state just before we fall asleep.
From Incoherence to Coherence
When you are present to these altered and expansive states, you can actually change the neurological hardware in your brain. For example, when you visualize or rehearse that you’ve already done something in your mind, your brain doesn’t know any difference from reality and the thought of it – so you don’t need to wait for it to happen – you can instead feel the emotion of that experience in the present moment.
To embody significant change and transformation, take time each day to engage in meditation. You can begin with guided visualizations to support your process.
About the Author
Jules De Vitto, MAEd, MSc Certified Transpersonal Coach and Educator
Jules De Vitto has a BSc in Psychology, MA in Education and MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness and Spirituality. She is an accredited and certified Transpersonal Coach, Authentic-Self-Empowerment Facilitator, as well as an experienced teacher and educator.
She is the founder of Highly Sensitive Humans — an online community that offers courses, coaching, articles and a podcast for Highly Sensitive People. She helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to navigate emotional overwhelm, step into their authentic power and align with their true purpose in life.
She is a published author who wrote ‘Resilience: Navigating Loss in a Time of Crisis’ which provides practical resources to cultivate greater resilience and find greater meaning and purpose through times of crisis. She has published her research in the peer-reviewed journal Consciousness, Spirituality & Transpersonal Psychology.