In September 2020 I went on a seven-day wilderness hike in the French Alps. We were nine hikers and Gerard and Peter, the ‘trusted guides’. I remember when I arrived in Val’d Isere after a nine-hour car drive on my own that I was really tired, grumpy and had a headache. As soon as I got out of the car, I noticed that my mind and body already began to unwind. When we started hiking the next day, it didn’t take long, and I was totally relaxed and in the now and here. I felt my head emptying, my chest opening and my energy starting to flow again. I often stopped to take a few deep breaths and just enjoy my joy.
After a week in this incredibly beautiful nature, I felt so at ease within myself that I had the feeling that nothing and nobody could bring me out of my center again. I felt blissful, grateful and vibrating with energy.
After these seven days I came home and watched news for the first time for eleven days and it was full of Covid, which made me feel kind of angry and really pulled me energetically down. I turned off the TV and called a friend. It was a wonderful chat, we hadn’t spoken for ages, he made me smile and I felt totally happy and energized again afterwards.
My working week then started with the facilitation of a workshop for a client leadership team. When the head of the team walked into the room, I instantly felt ‘wow, this person has really good vibes’. I felt totally attracted by this person and truly enjoyed the discussions we had throughout the day. I guess you know what I am talking about. Some people draw me closer, others make me want to keep the distance. I often even cannot state why, except that I feel energetically attracted or repulsed to something or someone.
So, what do these three little stories have in common? They all have something to do with energy. More precisely, they describe different situations that impacted me energetically. Why is it that I sometimes feel more, sometimes less energy? What happens when with my energy? And how can I actually influence my energy level, apart from the things that seem natural to me, such as exercise, nutrition. What else is there to consider?
I am fascinated by the theories of quantum physics: No matter who or what, there is pure energy behind everything. Actually, we live in a continuous ocean of energy. Energy is movement, energy is vibration.
Everything we see around us has its own vibrational field with its own vibrational frequency, from the chair in your room, to your car, your body, nature, simply everything.
But not only what we see around us, also our thoughts and emotions are energy. I find that particularly interesting, because emotions also play a major role in my work as a coach, apart from the fact that there is also still a lot to discover for myself.
Under the energetic aspect, negative thoughts and emotions consist of lower frequencies, positive thoughts and emotions consist of higher frequencies. Emotion is the experience of energy moving through the body.
This is generally felt as sensations of contraction such as tension when the frequency is low, or expansion such as calm when the frequency is high. Looking at emotional frequencies, the lowest one is fear and the highest is unconditional love. Anger, hate, jealousy, judgment, are all low, while gratitude, compassion, joy, and trust are high.
Take my story that I shared at the beginning. Watching the Covid news caused a sense of anger in me that definitely lowered my vibrational frequency. My chest contracted totally. On the other hand, having a pleasant conversation with my friend created this feeling of joy in me, I was definitely vibrating on a higher frequency at that moment. It felt like my heart was opening and I had a huge smile on my face.
So, what I feed my thoughts and emotions with directly affects what I think and feel and thus the frequency in which I find myself. This also applies to the people I surround myself with: they have a direct influence on the level of my frequency. When I interact with someone, both of us have our own energy field, influenced by our feelings and thoughts, but there is also a constant exchange of energy between us, by which we are influenced. Remember the head of the team from my story, he created real good vibes in me.
And then there is the aspect of our physical environment which can also inform our frequency. Nature’s frequency induces relaxation in us. This explains my experience in the French Alps, where I instantly went in resonance with nature’s frequency and got calm, peaceful and my mood lightened up considerably. But this also explains, why I had the desire to move out to the countryside four years ago and why I love taking my coaching clients on a walk or hike into nature. The frequency of nature actually reflects the frequency of the earth, which has a calming and healing effect on us human beings. However, measuring Earth’s vibration in the city is almost impossible, where manmade signals such as radios, TVs, cars, buildings, phones, and the like tend to override natural signals. This in turn explains why stressed city dwellers like to escape to nature on the weekends.
But what does it mean now?
That I just avoid everything that causes low vibes? Basically, not a bad idea when it comes to our environment (place of residence, people, etc.) and the consideration of what I feed myself with every day (thoughts, emotions and yes, also food). I know, it’s easier said than done. But when we become aware of our energy robbers, we at least give ourselves the opportunity to consciously choose what we want to do with them.
The decision to avoid something, however, is completely counterproductive in terms of emotions. Emotions are there anyway, and if I push them away or numb them, they only get bigger and take more and more energy away from me over time.
So, the question that arises here is not how I avoid, condemn, suppress, stop, block things, but how I deal constructively with what shows up.
My credo: keep the energy moving!
Remember, energy is movement. Resisting a negative emotion keeps me stuck as does the wish to elect a certain state and remain in it. That’s also a kind of stagnation, it kills the flow. Wherever I find stagnation, frozen awareness or any kind of holding pattern, I want to get back into flow.
So, how to keep the energy flow going?
The biggest and most impactful piece for me is to get to know myself, my patterns and my worldviews. It’s about getting conscious about how I tick so as not to stumble unconsciously into behavior patterns over and over again that drag me down in frequency.
For example, I tend to react very strongly when I have the feeling that my needs do not matter to others. I can catapult myself into a massive negative spiral of anger, resentment and fear, from which it takes a lot of strength to get out. In moments when I am not present and conscious, I can get completely kidnapped by my negative emotions and held hostage. By getting conscious about it I give myself the opportunity to learn to deal with it on a higher level of frequency. How?
Like I just said, by keeping the energy moving.
I am not aiming to suppress my negative emotions and simply superimpose them with positive ones, rather I tune into their flow.
I tune into the sensations I am experiencing in my body in that moment without trying to label them and without judging myself for feeling them. I just feel them. I go in the inner experience of the exact sensations, for example fear and anger, and let go of resisting them. I welcome this inner sensational experience by drawing a softer attention to it, by meeting it with compassion and love. By treating myself with these highly vibrating emotions of compassion and love, I increase my frequency and the fear and anger will calm and eventually dissolve.
You don’t believe me that if you accept them lovingly, negative emotions will eventually dissolve? Try it yourself.
This phenomenon follows the principle of resonance, that is, when two frequencies are brought together, the lower one rises to meet the higher one.
Let me give you an example. In a recent argument with my neighbor, I fell back into my ‘my needs don’t matter to others’ pattern. When I got triggered, I felt full of anger and resentment, and I sensed this immense impulse to hiss at my neighbor and to make him small, to explain to him that I am right. In fact, I gave in to that impulse, but I really felt awful doing it. After a rather unconstructive exchange of arguments, we politely said goodbye, but anger and rejection still rumbled heavily in me. Back in my apartment, I sat down, connected to my breath and felt inside my body. I just had to imagine the incident and I was emotionally in it again. I felt the heat in my head, my chest was tense, my throat tightened, and my heart raced. I also felt this incredible pressure in my forehead, as if my head was about to explode. I took a couple of deep breaths and started softening into my sensations, into the heat, the tightness, the constriction and the racing. I just embraced what was there, it was ok. I literally felt how the energy in me started to flow again more vibrantly. After a while my heart and head calmed, my chest and throat relaxed and opened up. The anger and resentment had disappeared, I felt calm and at peace and full of compassion toward myself, but also toward my neighbor. My energy was vibrating on a higher frequency again.
Of course, ideally, I am so present with my sensations at all times that when I feel the trouble coming, I can regulate myself at a higher frequency at the very moment. Sometimes I manage to do that very well, but sometimes not and the conscious realization only comes afterwards. And that’s ok.
As long as it is an ongoing dance, my energy remains flowing. And that’s what it’s about: Keep the energy moving!
So, how do you keep your energy moving? I’d love to hear about your experiences.
