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Boundaries - an exerpt from the second edition of Women of Silence.
My work has become more wellbeing focussed and therefore women
are recognising the need for information to help them stay well, vibrant
and passionate about life. Women of Silence is a suitable read for well women
interested in their self-care, health promotion/illness prevention and may
well hold some important keys to women’s overall health and wellbeing.
Professor Karol Sikora recommendedon the cover of Women of Silence -
that ”Women of Silence is a book for ALL women - not only women
experiencing breast cancer.”
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BOUNDARIES
Healthy boundaries are a very important part of our emotional health and our general wellbeing. A boundary is a limit set by you either by conditioning or by your intention when you are in an empowered state. This limit, when established, determines what is identified as you and what is identified as not you. When in a dis-empowered state and your boundaries are vulnerable or non-existent you are fatigued and suffering from what I term “energetic haemorrhage”. Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, used to tell people to “beware of the vibe suckers!” These are the people who can invade your space and after they leave, you feel spent and drained. In that situation an energy exchange has just taken place between you. If you feel drained they have walked away with your energy. Although subtle, a boundary is tangible and has several key elements that enable us to recognise its existence or lack of it.
So how do you identify your boundaries or lack of them and the boundaries of those around you? If you have healthy boundaries you will be an empowered person who knows and speaks your mind, has self-mastery, charisma and can very politely say “no” and mean it without feeling guilty. As well you will not merge or get over-involved in the affairs of others so that you take on their problems in a personal way. Your relationships will be healthy and ones that build respect.
If you have a boundary issue you will notice:
• Fatigue and the associated energy drain. This is a major signal that boundaries are fragile and vulnerable. This is often experienced where there are power struggles and control issues in relationships. This is also associated with low self- esteem for women.
• An indecision, inability to focus, forgetfulness and excessive daydreaming.
• Meditation or relaxation attempts are often thwarted as you tend towards drifting, falling asleep or feeling scattered. There is often a feeling of being drained after meditation rather than feeling energised.
• You may feel jumpy and hypersensitive to external stimuli when you finish a meditation session.
• There are often feelings of “being beside yourself”, disconnected, numbed and feeling as if one is functioning on automatic pilot.
• You can become overwhelmed when under pressure or for some people so walled off that they become unreachable.
It is my experience that people who have life threatening illness or enduring illness of some kind inevitably have boundary issues. These are often associated with PTSD because when we become dispirited or separated out from life this will reflect in our boundaries.
When you cannot contain your own energy within your own limits other people can impose their will and needs upon you and you have no resilience to keep them out of your “space”. This invasion of “your space” is a part of the sense of lack of control and self-mastery evident in so many people who are unwell. The boundary has an energetic field that can be influenced by our intention. For instance becoming re-empowered and learning to say NO has a huge influence on setting this limit. For those dealing with illness you have no doubt already appreciated the importance of creating healthy boundaries. By being bombarded by a myriad of treatment options from diagnosis to conventional and complementary/alternative options, no wonder patients are often overwhelmed, bewildered and confused. They can easily become stressed by trying to hard and too quickly to de-stress.
The new science of bio-energetic medicine can now offer some credibility to the recognition of boundaries in terms of energies. In my workshops I have devised a series of exercises that explore this area with participants working in pairs. Women are always amazed at how and what they can sense and feel in terms of these exercises. The session is structured by sitting two people facing towards each other, eyes closed, hands outstretched but not touching. These exercises provide an experience of sensing energies around yourself and others. When I ask women to sense
boundaries, I ask them to alternate between focussed intent to create a boundary and no intent at all. They are always amazed at the difference in what they are able to sense and that they actually can sense the shift. What they are sensing is the body’s electromagnetic field. This is nothing highly esoteric in this really, just a natural phenomenon that most people have temporarily lost touch with in the bustle of modern day life. When we are still, focussed and present we can access this dormant ability.
SCIENCE LEADS US TO NEW UNDERSTANDINGS:
Now, we will briefly look at the science of the phenomena. Currently there exists equipment that can measure the electromagnetic field that surrounds the body. They have found that this energy can be detected up to fifteen feet away from a healthy body. I believe that this is the same energy that we can influence by intention so that we can affect our boundary and contain, rather than disperse, energies that should bring about healing. A leader in the field of bio-electromagnetics research, Beverly Rubik has reviewed literature that names this energy as biophoton emission. Of particular interest is the information on biophoton measurements taken by researcher Eugene Wallace using highly scientific measuring devices. He found that “more photons were measured” when people “intended to emit more energy”. This gives credibility to the power of intention in the process of boundary creation and healing. We also know that Qigong masters have been found to emit some vital force with a very low fluctuating carrier wave. Yoga practitioners with many years of experience have also been found to emit low levels of light.
During my five months spent with Filipino healers in the late seventies, I learned that this also aligns with their theory of disease and health. These healers believe that disease can be detected in the energy field long before it is detected in the body. Hence they believe that by restoring and balancing the energy field that healing can occur. Practices of yoga,
meditation, Qigong, tai chi and similar disciplines are disciplines involving conscious intent. This has also been borne out by Kirlian photography, a method that records images of this energy using very specialised equipment. I have some very impressive pictures of the hands of healers while they are healing and of hands not healing, taken on a Kirlian plate. The emissions when healing (with intent) are very different from those of the non-healing hand. Kirlian plates with the images of meditators’ hands exhibit even patterns in the auras around the hand and fingers. The images of non-meditators exhibit quite the opposite affect.
In terms of boundaries it has been really helpful to understand the concept of intention and how it affects energy as it is a fundamental part of boundary restoration and recovery. Our emotional state is very much reflected in the field of our boundary.
RE-BUILDING YOUR BOUNDARIES:
Projected intention such as visualisation, contemplation and thought projection either individually or combined, all play a part in creating health. There is much that you can do in reclaiming your personal power to re-build, re-create or create healthy boundaries.
There are many ways you can perceive your boundaries such as in the sensing exercise we described earlier. You can also build an image for yourself of what you would like your boundary to be.
SARAH’S EXPERIENCE
Sarah was thirty six years of age. Although her face had an appearance of a much younger woman, her posture indicated a curved spine and rounded shoulders that made her look as if she had been broken through the middle of her body. In profile her backbone actually gave the appearance of an umbrella turned on its side in order to shelter a vulnerable solar plexus hidden beneath. She had grown up in a family where her father had been very overpowering. The discipline was strong including physical punishments that were dished out for even the simplest of misdemeanors. She feared her father enormously, developed mild asthma and became the frail child. At university she studied a career course that her father had wanted her to do. She resented it, completed it, passed with honours and then married without pursuing a career.
When I met her, Sarah had two failed marriages in her wake and unresolved issues around failed pregnancies. She had developed massive allergies, verging on what we call twenty-first century allergy syndrome. Sarah was such a nice person, so helpful, polite, dutiful; the sort of person who would do anything for you if you asked even if it put her out! She was involved in lots of charitable groups and was overly emotional about many issues over which she personally had no control. Sarah had no boundaries at all. In the past there had been an ever-present outpouring of energy but now this had been replaced by ever-present fatigue. The time had come when it was like trying to draw water from an empty well. Sarah found that she had no personal resources left to give out.
Sarah began the journey on the long road to recovering her self and creating the boundaries that perhaps, given her background, had not even existed in the past. But Sarah did recover. By using simple small, steps in reclaiming her power and by discovering how to create a protective boundary for herself, she learned how. She did this by imagining a personal invisible outer skin or buffer zone when she felt under challenge. The boundary she chose was the following and in her words:
“ First I would notice in my body the signs. When I was under stress I would feel my energy running out of me like water out of a tap. So at first I would notice that this was
happening to me. Then I would imagine stepping into a suit made of large bubble wrap, the type that you buy at the post office. I would imagine this like a spaceman’s suit that I could put on very quickly. I would use my breath, breathing deeply and really centring myself and adjusting my posture so that I felt like a tall tree, well rooted in the ground and protected in the bubble wrap. This technique really worked for me and formed the basis of my journey back to health, allergy free. It took two years but the major shift happened when I developed my boundaries. All the remedies that I had been taking seemed to work so much better too. The work with boundaries for me was the missing link - the key to my recovery.”
In my view Sarah’s allergies were more based on being allergic to people and situations based on the personal trauma in her early life. Her self esteem also improved dramatically.
WHEN BOUNDARIES ARE RESTORED AND HEALTH IMPROVES:
There are consequences of all actions and decisions we make and healing is no exception. Women, who look good, feel better and who have restored their sense of self may appear to others that they no longer need help or support. It is rather a pity to state that such a problem exists; however it can be wise to prepare for it. This surprises many women and can make the practical issues of life difficult. It can especially be an issue in families where husbands, partners or children see a woman looking so well. Presuming that the crisis has passed with possibility of normality returned, there is a premise that the family could now resume its old life. But in reality no one ever resumes his or her old life again after the experience of cancer. So when we are looking frail and needy we may get attention and support; but be careful not to let this get in the way of what you know you need to do in terms of your recovery. This is when your newly constructed healthy boundaries can come into play. You can say NO, or can you? This becomes the test!
USING BREATH AND POSTURE:
Posture very much dictates how other people read our boundaries. Thieves and muggers know this instinctively. The upright power walker is not an easy target compared to someone who is bent and frail. Body language is an unspoken dialogue that we use all the time, dictating subtle and not so subtle messages to others who we work and play with. Developing awareness of your body helps to identify your habitual body language. For instance when you notice that your shoulder is bending forwards, you can stop, take some deep breaths and be conscious of standing up straight. Even doing this at home in the mirror by alternating between the old pattern and the desired new pattern helps in developing new habits and discarding the old. The slower that you move from one form to the other apparently makes a difference to the new programming that happens in the brain.
BREATH
As you are sitting here reading just stop for one minute and try the following. Take in a deep breath and just gently exhale sighing out the breath. This time take in a deep breath and exhale deeply with the sound of Ahhhhhhh! Go back and do the first small breath again and so on. Notice the difference between the two breaths. The deeper breath almost washes down through your body rippling through the muscles. You will notice the release that goes with it. This is a good stress management method, called a circuit breaker. It is a simple tool used for helping to break the stress cycle and can be used anywhere at anytime. The spin off is that it also helps to bring you more present to your body, more aware and into your own space. It sounds simplistic, but breath enlivens the body.
There are many kinds of boundary issues. In fact the subject is so enormous that it could fill this entire book.
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Women Of Silence
