An Empath’s Guide
Christiane Northrup, M.D., draws on the latest research in this field, along with stories from her global community and her life, to explore the phenomenon of energy vampires, showing us how we can spot them, dodge their tactics, and take back our own energy.
A while ago I read and enjoyed Christiane Northrup’s book Making Life Easy, A Simple Guide to a Divinely Inspired Life. I’ve had this title on my kindle for a few months and I have been dipping in and out of it in-between other books. For the past few weeks, as I mentioned in my Sunday Morning Haiku post, I’ve been reading a chapter a day of Alberto Villoldo’s Courageous Dreaming, which I have now finished and will be sharing soon, so I went back to this book and finished it too. It’s a time of completion.
I listen to her on Hay House Radio sometimes, she is an advocate for women (and men) taking control of their own health, well-known for her books on women’s health including Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing; The Wisdom of Menopause; Goddesses Never Age and more.
Now she turns her focus and offers more great wisdom for highly sensitive empaths, detailing what that means, giving examples of their tendencies, how they respond and adapt to the world right from childhood, which then explains why they act the way do as adults.
Empaths often take extreme measures to contort their true identities into something less painful. They become very good at blending in and figuring out how to be loved and accepted not for who they really are but instead for how they can serve others.
She describes it as a survival mechanism.
Because they are so attuned to other people’s energy, they suffer when other’s suffer, so they work harder not to make anyone suffer.
You can stop trying to explain why you don’t want to see that award-winning war film.
They also avoid scary or violent movies or television shows because they are too painful to watch.
Due to that ability to sense energy around them, they are often drawn to animals and nature because of their calming, pure and innocent energy. Fortunately, highly sensitive people also tend to experience the simple joys of the world more fully.
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Evading Relationships That Drain You
She cuts through what others give terms like narcissism and sociopathic behaviours and refers to people exhibiting these behaviours as ‘energy vampires’, a way of relating to the effect they have, rather than spending too much time on describing the way are. She’s here for the empaths after all.
There are tips and examples of how to recognise these behaviours and why empaths in particular are susceptible to attracting them.
Restoring Your Health and Power
She gives practical advice on how to first recognise and then deal with people and situations that drain your energy. Tips, techniques, practices and tactics that increase your awareness and better equip you to navigate your life and your relationships in an empowering way. The kinds of things you may already know but that we benefit in being reminded of regularly. Recognising the important qualities in a relationship and starting with the one you have with yourself.
Dr. Mario Martinez notes that for each of the archetypal wounds – abandonment, betrayal, shame – there is a corresponding healing field that will ameliorate suffering. These healing fields are energies that oppose the energy of the wound.
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Much of the book is then given over generally to how to stay in the light, protect yourself from the dark elements in the world but also in ourselves.
Her suggestions promote well-being, actions that don’t require waiting for something to get worse before being proactive, because problems present themselves in the energetic body long before they are detected by traditional medicine. They can be addressed before manifesting in the physical body, allowing us to maintain equilibrium, well-being. Listening to and acting on our intuitive sense, taking care of ourselves.
Generally speaking, highly sensitive people do far better with healing approaches based on quantum energy, not chemical and surgical intervention. Homeopathy, flower essences, acupuncture, massage, herbs, prayer, yoga, Pilates, chiropractic, medical intuition, and Divine love healings – I consider all of these to be actual health care because of these things interact with the energy field of the body.
Reading this is like listening to her speak, a lifetime of experiences and now she shares the wisdom of it all, holding nothing back, refreshingly courageous in stepping outside the conventional norm.
Ideal slow-reading during a global pandemic. (I’ve been reading this over the past three or four months.)
With it’s 111 vibes or spiritual practices, it’s designed not to be read in one sitting, but daily or randomly. I found often that the vibe for the day was often something that really resonated with my day, it’s also like an energising, elevating pick me up or start to the day, it sets the tone for the rest of the day.
This was my first read of Christiane Northrup, despite the fact she’s written lots of books, with titles like: Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being, The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing (39 editions published).
The health and sexuality sections held less interest to me, probably because I was attracted to the book after listening to her speak in a ‘raw and real’ conversation with my favourite ‘intuitive’ Colette Baron-Reid, in that conversation it was the more spiritual aspects that were under discussion, particularly as Colette’s book Uncharted: The Journey through Uncertainty to Infinite Possibility had been published in October 2016. Northrup is a fan of Colette Baron-Reid and mentions that she uses her Wisdom of the Oracle card deck as one of her spiritual tools for guidance.
She also discusses thoughts and inputs, the effect of what we are constantly exposed to and how it should be managed in order to avoid overdosing on negativity and the toxic, fear-enhancing effect of the media for example. She discusses the positive power of affirmations, meditation, gratitude, the power of giving and receiving, connecting with nature, tapping and much more.
Word by Word 