Qi Gong Archives | Apana Bodywork

My dad has always said that I need a peaceful environment. I guess he noticed how frazzled I got when things got too chaotic around me growing up. It could be subtle or obvious but I would felt all the tension or negativity more than the average bear and it would affect me especially since everyone was feeling different things.

When you’re a sponge for all the emotions around you, it can get overwhelming and affect your mood, productivity or even your sanity at times.

Being spongy is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing when you can use it to help someone or when you’re in a pleasant environment but it’s a curse when you’re surrounded by people that are stressed or upset and you absorb it all like a sponge.

Another word for spongy is being an “empath”.

Empaths pick up on emotions around them. It becomes an issue is when:

We have trouble not absorbing it, we have no choice.
We have trouble letting it go

Empaths can’t squeeze out the sponge so easily. We carry it around with us. It’s not good for our health or our state of mind and it continues to build up inside.

So what do you do if you’re a spongy empath? Well lucky for you there are many ways to squeeze out that sponge and release all those absorbed feelings.

The most effective ones I’ve experienced are one and two on the list below. Hands down the fastest way to dump all that accumulated stuff that you don’t want to carry around anymore while empowering different aspects of the self.

Effective Ways to Squeeze Out the Sponge:

Trame Vibrational Healing
Qi Gong (the clearing one by Master Yap)
Healing
Therapy
Meditation
Walking in nature
Yoga

Being spongy steals you away from your own present moment and transports you to another’s reality. There isn’t anything wrong with that in moderation but I find the more you feel other’s stuff, the more drawn into their drama you become. It has the tendency to replace your own mental space and temporarily takes your focus away from your own life.

One of my clients’ told me that she was so aware of their boss lurking around the corner that she was on edge the whole day and couldn’t get into her groove at work. She was so worried that at any second the big boss will pop his head in and criticize her.

She being a sponge felt everyone around her and it was affecting her ability to focus on her work. After two Trame Vibrational Therapy sessions she said: “You know what? It doesn’t matter what is going on around me, I just don’t take it on”. She continued to explain how even in the presence of auditors, she didn’t break a sweat. It was like water off a ducks back!

One big advantage of Trame Vibrational Therapy is that it squeezes out that sponge so that you don’t continue to accumulate everyone’s stuff. Secondly, it makes you less sensitive to the drama around you leaving you better able to deal with everyday stress or even bigger life stresses. You can tune in if you choose but it becomes a choice not a given.

Don’t get me wrong being empathetic is a gift but there is a balance to be found between being empathetic and being present to your own thoughts and feelings and living YOUR life.

When this is off balance we can feel we are at the mercy of what is going on around us. We feel defenseless to swim in the soup of emotions that surround us. If you have the choice to leave that is great but oftentimes we’re at work and can’t change our environment.

If you can’t change your environment, change your perception of your environment.

Trame is like a “big data dump” as one of my clients described. She felt empty and quiet inside afterwards.

If you’re a spongy person, make sure you get regular if not, daily data dumps by doing any of the strategies I’ve mentioned in this article or one of your own that gives you peace and quiet inside. This “data” accumulates inside of us and needs to be cleared out regularly otherwise it will start affecting our health, mental clarity, sleep, relationships and ability to experience joy.

In this life, it is all about you and your growth. It’s okay to focus inward and pay attention to you. There is nothing wrong with that.

To your growth & awareness!

With gratitude,

Madeleine Dasilva

I may not have gone to war but I felt like a warrior. I had dreams that woke me sweating and gasping for breath. I was living but I wasn’t really living. I knew I wasn’t in a good state but I didn’t know that I could be experiencing a form of PTSD. Does this feeling sound familiar? I hope not but if it does…this is what changed everything for me.

I’ve tried writing about the way my daughter was born about a million times now. Every time I stop. I just get stuck. I can’t finish it. In this context it is to help others that have not lost someone but are going through all the same grief as if they had. It’s called anticipatory grief and I specialize in helping people past the toughest times in their life.

I believe we can heal on all levels and that will ultimately help us be and relate to others with more and more love. I also believe that even though life can throw us some serious challenges, we can come through it better than we were before, More connected, more empathetic, more open, more loving and healthier on all levels.

Are you caring for a mother with Alzeimers disease? Are you married to a partner with a terminal illness? In my case a mother who is caring for a child who is expected to slowly die. None of these situations are easy. You have to go on doing all the things you normally do because they need you but there is this massive sense that nothing is okay. It is soul rattling. My heart goes out to anyone going through something similar and it is my hope that those people will ask for help because the sick person gets all the help and the support person is left to deal with it on their own.

I was lost.

I felt as a new mom that all of my friends were so far away, living a totally different life. Even when a friend did reach out, I didn’t know how to be close with them. When anyone would ask how my daughter was doing I would just say: “she’s great!” It wasn’t the truth, it was the only thing I could get out of my mouth in order to stay positive. For friends of someone going through something difficult you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be there. People naturally want to help but are often too scared that they will say or do the wrong thing

It’s not about saying all the right things and getting approval, it’s about being there. Imperfectly. There is a line of empathy cards for awkward moments that say things like: “I’m so sorry you’re sick. I promise I won’t try to sell you on some random treatment I found on the internet”(emilymcdowell.com/collections/empathy-cards) .

So often we make it about us, but it has nothing to do with us. It isn’t personal.

Often those that are going through a trauma like this are depressed or anxious but it’s hard to know what is the situation versus what is you. After all who can be happy while going through this? You may not expect to feel like yourself and over time you slowly lose who you are as a result. It’s kind of like aging. When you have aches and pains in your body it’s so easy to say: Oh well, I’m just getting older but a lot of those aches and pains could be alleviated or prevented. Same goes for someone’s mental state during a trauma, they don’t expect to feel happy or grateful, so they let it go and over time, they may stop expecting to be happy.

My mission is to help people that are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder so that they can reclaim who they are and feel empowered to take care of themselves again.

If you feel like you’ll never feel like yourself again there is so much help out there.

On my end I’ve tried and felt amazing results from daily Qi Gong practice, La Trame Vibrational Therapy, Reiki Healing, Life Activation and most recently Reconnection Healing. That’s my route. The healing route. Maybe you’re more comfortable with talk therapy. In that case I would suggest a therapy that deals with the subconscious mind because, in my experience, the only way to get beyond the surface of the issues and make real change is to go deeper than the conscious mind.

Whatever you choose, it doesn’t much matter to me as long as you seek help and get the support you need to feel like yourself again.

With the deepest love in my heart I wish healing for all those going through a trauma like I have.