Boundaries

BE(ing), Femme NRG, Keys, Self Care, Teach/Heal

April 30th, 2020

The most monumental discovery I have made in my healing energy work has been the active requirement for boundaries. Boundaries with clients, students, lovers, family, friends, employers, you name it! As a reformed people pleaser who was taught from an early age that my self-worth was inherently linked to acquiescing to the demands of others, it felt revolutionary. It was so much easier to follow the teachings of my disapproving school teachers, judging cousins, or even moreso, those abusers and narcissists that hid in family, friends or lovers clothing for years. Gosh darnit it was so much easier to play the victim, or the wounded empath, to hide in a self-imposed prison of not-good-enough where the walls then became fortified from toxic relationships I let in. It has taken time for me to be able to write about boundaries, for I had none. The old patriarchal capitalist colonial structures in society all around me did not allow for me to build my own.

In teaching energy work to others, I had to learn the hard way. When without boundaries, I would be ‘snooped on’ or at worse ‘attacked’ energetically. Things would get icky quickly. Then as I started to channel and connect to my spiritual guides, some that never before were in humxn form, I found that my old way of allowing everything in simply did not work. There would be headaches, nausea and immense pain from simply allowing in too much… the spiritual equivalent to oversharing.

As I worked on healing my relationship to myself, I began to put certain boundaries in place. This is when I realized why they are not taught. For when sharing a NO, or, this is my LIMIT/healthy condition, etc. etc… in order for that NO to come out of your mouth, you must be first comfortable with the fact that by you enacting your Free Will, you are allowing the other person to do so as well. Which means, in other words, if you can say NO, then so can they! Which means, to allow that boundary to be shared, you first have to process and be okay with that person/situation/employment to LEAVE YOU. You gotta be okay with all possible responses. This, of course is the exact opposite to what these old patriarchal structures teach us – to manipulate those into adhering to your wants and needs, to coerce, to make it seem like your way is the better way. To feel so dependent on them that if they left you, you would be destitute, broken, and penniless. So, lots to unpack in speaking that seemingly simple 2-letter-word.

Oh, and of course, there is more work on how those boundaries are voiced, for we come from a past decade of knowing and growth on triggers. As I was growing into my voice, it felt like I had to tip-toe around others in the spiritual communities I found myself in, for there was a helluva lot of projection and performative healing all around. You know, when how your words or tone may trigger someone else, and their trigger then becomes your problem? If you are new to triggers, let me digress a little to share the samskara cycle from tantra yoga philosophy. A samskara translates to be a “subtle impression of the past”. These subtle impressions within your psyche, your body, all of you, are what we are moving through a lot of the time in healing energy work. Someone says something, which creates a pleasure/pain response, which then connects to a samskara, which then moves towards a trigger, which then moves to either an attachment or aversion to that person/action, which then moves into how you then choose to react/respond. The hardest part of this cycle is in taking responsibility for your healing the subtle impressions, as well as of course moving through your triggers yourself. If you are unable to do this work on your own, that is why there are energy workers, healers, and psychotherapists. You can ask for help. We are all healing, and all healers have healers.

Instead of asking for help though, what sometimes happens is you blame/shame the other person, the scenario or the situation for triggering you. You place the ownership of you receiving that trigger onto the other instead of the self. This then becomes a slippery slope, for then boundaries can instead become defense mechanisms, moving others away from you, fortifying your walls, instead of what boundaries can actually do.

Boundaries are the conditional aspect to greater sovereignty of self and deeper intimacy with others. Of course this wasn’t taught in old systems, for it would have affirmed that you do have choice and power. That there is no need for better than/less than bullshit. That each and every one of us has the ability to self-heal, to connect to their power and reclaim their sovereignty of self. Boundaries, yes, can feel scary. For yes, you must then be okay with the infinite possibilities of responses/reactions in you sharing yours. And yes, at times we may fuck up in how we share them, may trigger someone else, and may then apologize. They can feel messy, for they will bring up immense floods of release and emotions that were all pent up from not being able to speak your mind. Boundaries shared with Love, in a way that does not have to needlessly harm another, are immensely powerful. They allow you to truly FEEL your POWER capacity. They reboot your energy field, and allow your inner equilibrium to connect and heal and transmute all around it. And my gosh, when done in loving relationships, they deepen the level of intimacy a thousand-fold. You are enacting ways to feel safe and secure in BEING YOU.

So my deep bows to those that have honoured my boundaries, as well as to those that didn’t, for I then got to work on forgiving myself first in allowing you access to my presence and being. Here is to radical self-responsibility. To the courage to say No when needed. To mutually beneficial agreements that honour each other’s boundaries and conditions from business to loving relationships. To the ability to shift them as you move through them. To more and more of ALL OF US having the right to choose. To watching the old structures that do not support this to fall away. To those of us that feel capable to build new ones that support the GOOD OF ALL & ONE.

Look at your structures, look at your agreements, look at your boundaries. Allow yourself some time and space if you so choose to redefine them as you wish. In truth, in honour and integrity. SO MUCH LOVE.