Strength in Sensitivity: The Mind-Body Awakening That Changed My Life

My experience with energy medicine as a healing modality began unexpectedly after I launched my personal training business and started working one-on-one with individuals, during which I discovered my ability to intuit my clients' physical and emotional struggles. I have always been a very empathic person, but never understood it as a positive attribute until I got into recovery in 2017 after nearly two decades of severe alcohol and drug abuse. When I began taking my mental and emotional health seriously, I came to understand the benefits of being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) (Aron, 1993), turning what I had always considered a weakness into a strength, as understood through the science of vantage sensitivity (Pluess, 2020). 

Sensitivity as a Strength, Not a Weakness

My ability to empathize with others is an energetic process facilitated by the nervous system, involving a keen awareness of my own mental and emotional states. This awareness enables me to distinguish my emotions from those of my clients. I first recognized this when I could physically feel their struggles with certain exercises or their resistance to specific movements. This physical resonance with their exertion and fatigue allowed me to tailor their form and technique more effectively.

Over time, this evolved into an emotional resonance, where I could feel and know underlying fears or past traumas that hindered their performance, often without them being aware of how these past experiences influenced their present lives. Always in a mindful and gentle way, recognizing and validating their experiences facilitated healing, especially when clients could not articulate or understand these feelings on their own. 

Empathy as Energy in Motion

It is my experience that empathy is an energetic exchange and that emotions behave like energy, transforming and or transferring from one state to another, increasing entropy (disorder) in a system when suppressed, and seeking equilibrium while in imbalanced states or in contact with other energetic systems (Feinstein & Eden, 2008; Rubik et al., 2015; McDonald, 2024). 

Despite the clarity this brought to my personal and professional life, I initially kept these experiences private, fearing judgment about my mental well-being due to my history of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Moreover, my skepticism towards energy medicine made me cautious about fully embracing these abilities.

References:

Aron, E. (1998). The highly sensitive person: How to thrive when the world overwhelms you. New York, Three Rivers Press.

Feinstein, D. & Eden, D. (2008). Six pillars of energy medicine: Clinical strengths of a complementary paradigm. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 14(1), 44–54. 

McDonald, W. (2024). Integrating mind-body medicine in the life of a sensitive sensation-seeker. [Unpublished manuscript]. Department of Mind-Body Medicine, Saybrook University.

Pluess, M., & Boniwell, I. (2015). Sensory-processing sensitivity predicts treatment response to a school-based depression prevention program: Evidence of vantage sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 82(0), 40-45.

Rubik, B., Muehsam, D., Hammerschlag, R., & Jain, S. (2015). Biofield science and healing: History, terminology, and concepts. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 4(suppl), 8–14.  https://doi.org/10.7453/gahmj.2015.038.suppl

Watts, F. (2011). Spiritual healing: Scientific and religious perspectives. (Chs. 2–3).  Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511973406

— First published for Saybrook University, MBM 5645: The Human Energy Field and Energy Medicine, May 12, 2024.