The Challenges of Awakening
Your Interests Affect Your Body
You must be interested in self-development, energy and consciousness if you’re reading this article. Most likely you read about or listen to programs on healing, meditation, astrology, kundalini or chakras. Your thoughts and dreams may often focus on these topics. You probably exercise and/or practice yoga and meditation, and have a desire to eat good quality food. Perhaps you get treatments such as acupuncture, shiatsu, craniosacral or massage to help balance and strengthen your body. Although you realize that all these things affect you, and do many of them for their positive benefits, it could be you don’t realize the full impact these activities are having on your body, especially your energy system.
Information has a frequency to it. And when high frequency information streams through your system, it activates the flow of energy. Heart rate and breathing are affected. Meridians, chakras, and kundalini channels are stimulated. The vibrational field around you expands. These effects reverberate through your organs, tissues, bones and blood. In other words, when you immerse yourself in consciousness expanding information it has a potent impact on your body. Although many of the effects are positive, there are also challenges that arise.
High Frequency Information Can Strain Your System
Increased flow of energy can vitalize muscles and glands, improve your emotional state and clear out stagnant beliefs. But higher frequency information can also create disturbances if your system is overwhelmed or unprepared to handle the expanded currents of energy. Restricted tissues, thoughts and psychological patterns become amplified as pressure builds against them.
Sometimes rigid areas, physical or mental, release in a way that can’t be integrated easily. Too much change can occur too quickly. Things like joints, ligaments, organs…. jobs, relationships…. emotions and belief systems - these can be torn apart in a way that is painful and damaging. The hormonal system, which helps maintain homeostasis amidst fluctuation, is especially strained.
It’s like this: Imagine a river that has a regular flow of water. Then huge storms introduce lots of rain into the watershed. This all goes into the river, creating a faster flow. There may be flooding: sweeping away cars and houses, eroding the riverbank and depositing all kinds of debris into the deluge. The water rushing downstream creates more damage as it picks up more water and more debris. If there’s no infrastructure in the area of the river to adjust to increase of volume, the very contours of the land are changed in drastic ways.
That’s the kind of thing that can happen in your body when you get involved in lots of consciousness expanding activities. Disturbances of the energy system can show up as fatigue, immune problems, emotional and psychological instability, and extreme sensitivities. Many awakening people experience problems with one or more of these things.
Not only are these issues challenging in and of themselves, it’s often difficult to find effective ways to diagnose and address them within the traditional medical system. Many of us spend lots of time and energy trying to repair the damage from various deluges and ‘storms’’ and there are many old and new therapies to do this. But there are also ways we can prepare for and prevent this kind of disruption, ways we can learn to regulate our evolving body to handle influxes of ever expanding information with more awareness and ease.
Your Outerbody is a Semi-Permeable Membrane
There are many components to your energy system, which we often refer to as your developing light body. Let’s focus on one aspect and explore how it is affected by the awakening process: the vibrational field around your physical body, also called the outerbody. This is likely expanding and becoming more permeable. This means that not only are you more receptive to beneficial energies, you’re more vulnerable to vibrations which may deplete your life force and/or create emotional and physical stress. It’s important that you learn how to recognize when this is occurring so that you can adjust your system to create an energetic boundary. Preserving your sovereignty in this way is a wonderful way to care and respect for yourself.
Your outerbody functions as a selective, semi-permeable membrane, much like a cell wall. In other words, it can choose what comes in and goes out, and what doesn’t. This dynamic part of your vibrational physiology is composed of 3 layers: the etheric, emotional and mental bodies. On the edge of this outerbody, also called the bioplasmic body, there’s another membrane. This delineates your vibrational field from the space ‘outside’ of you.
Increased permeability of the outerbody can have both positive and negative effects, so it’s important to learn how to regulate it. With some practice you can discern how open/closed your membrane is and how to change it at will so that you can regulate what’s coming in and going out. You can learn how to use this membrane as a protective boundary and learn how to clear your system if you’ve been negatively affected by outside influences. After all, it’s just as important to keep toxic psychic, emotional and even physical (pollutants) debris out as it is to allow in love and light.
You Can Regulate the Permeability of Your Outerbody
Your system probably tends to be on the more permeable side, which is why you’re even open to exploring these ideas. Some things which can indicate a high degree of permeability are sensitivity to sound, light and/or touch, as well as sensitivity to other people’s feelings and thoughts. Someone with an open outerbody literally has ‘thinner skin’ and so can receive information in vibrationally form, before it’s shared through body language or speech. Many children who are diagnosed with ADD or autism have very permeable outerbodies; this contributes to their issues with sensory overload and struggle to be clear and focused.
There’s probably someone you know who you would describe as ‘thick skinned.’ Things tend to roll off them: verbal insults, loud crowded places, a chaotic household…. nothing seems to phase them too much. There’s a good chance that this person’s bioplasmic body is not in a very permeable state. They literally do have thicker skin, or at least a less permeable membrane. By the way, a subtle hint is not a good method of getting this person’s attention, because it simply will not register.
As your consciousness expands, various components of your energy system (like your chakras) activate and align. This creates further expansion of the outerbody membranes, leaving you even more sensitive to coarse vibrations as well as those ones to which you want to be open. The good news is that it’s a simple thing to learn how to decrease permeability. The key is your attention.
If you become overwhelmed by sensory, emotional or psychological input, you can bring your attention to the membranes and imagine that they’re more impermeable, more dense. This immediately and naturally brings them into a less porous state. Another key factor is to bring your attention to sensations in your physical body, like muscles and your bones.* It’s great to play with opening and closing your outerbody membranes when you’re in a safe quiet space, in order to learn about the varying sensations and effects. With practice, you’ll develop a keen awareness of this very dynamic part of yourself.
* It’s interesting that many schools are introducing simple breathing and body awareness practices to students to help them be more grounded and focused.
Connect, Align, Create
After hearing about the vulnerabilities that an expanded, permeable outerbody presents, you may be wondering why you would encourage this at all. Permeability of the bioplasmic body can open us to integrating with soul vibrations as well as other expressions of life. Often people feel very moved when the membrane softens if it has been in a rigid state. As you reunite with more expanded frequencies of yourself it’s such a relief. It can feel like coming home or into a mother's arms, especially when the soul frequencies are integrating. The benefits of this are enormous: not only does it feel great while it’s happening, it brings you into closer alignment with your true nature. You become more aligned with your life path and clear about where you want to put your attention.
Permeability also makes it easier to connect deeply with those you love as well as the world around you. Instead of feeling depleted and depressed by disconnection, mutually enhancing interactions can occur on a regular basis. It’s a natural part of our evolution to expand into deep relationship and alignment with each other, as well as the greater cosmic fabric of which we are a part.
We encourage you to continue your journey of awakening, while bringing some awareness to the needs of your evolving body. As your energy system accelerates, so does the need to be able to regulate it. There’s no need to go about this in a defensive or paranoid manner, but there is a need to take into account that moving into new dimensions of experience requires new tools to navigate safely. If you went hiking in a new environment that had a different plants, animals, and climate than you were used to, you would certainly consider it a good idea to find out what you might need for a fulfilling and safe expedition.
The good news is that just by considering these ideas and reflecting on them, your body is naturally becoming more adept at managing all the changes. Your body is learning in real time. Our intention is that this information introduces a safe, effective and powerful framework to help you have a vibrant experience as you evolve.
Dive Deeper: Learn How to Work with Your Outerbody
If you want to learn some practical skills to feel and work with your outerbody, here are 2 options:
Listen to the guided journey in our podcast episode The Evolution of Boundaries
Enroll in our online course ‘Proprioceptive Exercise & the Outerbody’ to learn a unique system of meditative exercise that guides you into contact with your outerbody. Being able to calibrate this part of your growing self promotes health, ease and peace in your daily life. Click the link below for more information: