Listen here:

In this episode, we will cover:

• Managing energies
• Ethical responsibility
• Medical intuition
• Identifying the source of messages
• Turning the skillset on and off (yes, it’s possible!)
• The responsibility to always be learning and growing as an intuitive! 

Additional Resources:

COURSE: The Art of Receiving

In this 5-day course, you will learn the sacred art of receiving, including what might be holding you back from receiving in your life, how to reprogram the stories that keep you in a place of lack, how to release fear, and how to step into your abundant AF self.

FREE QUIZ: Empath Quiz

Discover what type of empath you are! Take the empath quiz.

COURSE: Launch Your Wellness Biz

A 30-day course for lightworkers to who desire to turn their pain into their purpose and create profit. I’ve heard so many people say they don’t know where start when it comes to build an online wellness business, this solves that problem and helps you go from overwhelmed to bringing in regular paychecks.

Episode transcript:

Sarah: Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a holistic business coach and intuitive healer, who supports empaths in creating a thriving body, business, and life!  Healing my own chronic illness as an empath led me to become fascinated with energy, and more specifically, all the emotional, spiritual and holistic healing modalities that my doctor never told me about.  I began to share my insights and journey online, and over time built a powerful community and business supporting women who are also on their path to healing. Think of this podcast as your uncensored and no-BS guide to navigating life, health, and entrepreneurship as a highly sensitive person. You’ll get no-nonsense and totally holistic tips from me in real-time as I navigate this healing journey right beside you. Now, let’s get started.

Have you ever had somebody in person, online – maybe Facebook, maybe Instagram – reach out to you, unsolicited, and said something along the lines of “Marissa, I was just tapping into your energy and you can feel that your root chakra is imbalanced! You need to eat more nourishing and nutritious food.” Has anyone ever experienced this? Whether it was in a DM or a comment on a post, and all of a sudden you’re receiving this unsolicited energetic guidance, channeled messages from somebody that you may not even know!?  If so, this conversation today is going to be a good one! We’re going to be talking all about ethics in energy medicine. This is something that I personally think is skipped over. It’s not discussed nearly enough and because of that, many of us have had this experience that I mentioned; having the experience of feeling violated – like someone has tapped into your energy, into a private place that we want to feel is protected, that is ours, and is not for other people to be coming into.

I’ve brought Heidi Light who is a counselor, consultant, Reiki master teacher, certified hypnotherapist with a degree in psychology, onto the show today. She incorporates intuition and energy medicine practices into her work and has spent many, many years designing individual personal development sessions, and group programs for things like intuition, energy medicine, stress management, mental health, and emotional literacy. Her new book is called Ethics in Energy Medicine, and we’ll be discussing this as a whole conversation today. This is something I’ve been really eager to talk about on the podcast and haven’t had the right guest to talk to yet. So, Heidi was a perfect fit!  We’re going to be diving into the boundaries, into the guidelines for intuitive and energetic practices. Whether you are somebody who has experienced this as a client, or you are a practitioner within the energy realm, I think you’re going to find aspects of this conversation helpful, insightful, and may even cause you to reconsider the way we tap into the energy. Without further ado, let’s start talking with Heidi!

Introductions

Sarah: Welcome to the show. Heidi, I’m so excited to have you on today!

Heidi: Thank you so much. I am too!

Sarah: So I’d just love to start by asking you what led you personally into energy medicine and intuitive practices in your life?

Heidi: Well, it was kind of less of a leading…and rather something that I was really born into. I was a medical intuitive by the age of two. That’s at least as far back as I can remember.

Sarah: Wow! Two years old. How did you comprehend that at two years old?

Heidi: You know, it’s really weird because it’s not like at that age, that you know that everybody else isn’t the same way.

Sarah: True.

Heidi: You automatically assume that everybody sees other people and the world the way that you do until you start comparing notes when you’re in school and stuff like that and realizing, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this. Everybody is not seeing things the way I do.’

Sarah: You’re not feeling the way I’m feeling? What?

Heidi: It’s like, what do you mean you can’t see someone’s liver? Do you know what I mean? It’s very strange being able to see inside people’s bodies and understand what’s wrong intuitively and know things about people that they haven’t shared, and to then realize that not everybody can do that.  But I also had an interesting environment that I grew up in because what happens to most of us is we’re all born intuitive. At least that’s my opinion, and then we are exposed to parents, or other people in our lives, who shut it down. Oh no, you’re crazy or it scares me when you talk that way, or don’t say things like that…and then we start to shut it down.  In my case, I never had it shut down! So…I grew up in a metaphysical household where it was commonplace around the dinner table when we weren’t screaming and arguing, we would be talking about past lives and karma and spirits and energy and tarot and all that stuff. So I had the opposite experience of most people. I never actually had any boundaries put around it and so I was blown wide, wide open.

Sarah: Gosh that had to be … I mean, I’m just thinking about my own upbringing in comparison and just like what would have been different if that was so openly discussed. I was raised in a household with two, I believe highly sensitive, empathetic parents, but they didn’t realize that and had put up so much armor and boundaries to protect their fragile hearts. And so it wasn’t ill-intentioned or anything, but it just was not talked about. And now, it’s something that we can talk about as a family. We’ve all kind of reopened and awakened to it. But what do you think the opportunity to talk about that, and to tap into your skills, starting at two years old allowed you then to create up until now? What do you think that changed for you?

Heidi: Well I don’t know what it changed, per se. I just know what I ended up becoming…because of that, and a lot of mine intuits too, are driven by survival. Using it was a survival mechanism. You might have read it in my book. I just touched briefly on what it was like in my household and my father was very unstable, mentally unbalanced and was messing around with some pretty dark stuff. And a lot of times me tapping into what the source of it was or what the thing was, was my way to survive. So it didn’t exactly create this awesome feeling about it, within me. I actually…. the empathy was really hard on me. 

I mean, I had it to such a degree that when I would see what a person’s issue was in their body, I would feel it in my body as if it was my own. So I spent the first 28 years of my life feeling everyone else’s issues in my body, not knowing what I actually felt or thought, and it made me really, really sick for a long time.  So the impact of it for me, I think it was different for most people. Most people go through their lives trying to open it up again to access it again, and I had the opposite experience. I had to learn how to switch it off. That’s what made me have a healthy, balanced perspective with it. I can’t really say the path my life would have taken if it hadn’t been that severe. I have no idea.

Sarah: No, I’m glad you brought that up. Sometimes we think of intuition as this glamorous, sexy process that’s just fun and light and airy. And the reality of it is, is when you feel like this kind of exposed wire, open book, or just like you are a sponge to so much around you constantly. It can if we don’t have the protection methods and awareness or just the skills or tools to be able to close that down, shut that off every once in a while… It can affect us in so many ways!  And so I’m curious first, how did the medical intuition … I’m so curious … you’re like, I can see people’s liver, I want to know what that felt in your body, but I also want to understand how you feel the hyper-awareness of people’s energy affected you on a medical or physical level as well.

Heidi’s Medical Intuition

Heidi: Oh, absolutely. You know, it’s all of that. So I felt it to the degree of if a person was around me, it didn’t have to be somebody I knew. It could be a complete stranger. You know, I tell the story of being on a city bus and I would see the people on the sidewalk and I would know exactly what was wrong with them and why. And it would hit me so deeply, that obstacle level that if someone had lung cancer, well, I know what it feels like to have lung cancer. I would feel that to the same degree within my own body. I was kind of like a mirror for that other person, but it was an internal mirror. So my own physical body would resonate with whatever was happening with them, and it pretty much almost killed me a couple of times in my early life. I was so depleted and so overrun with everyone else’s issues, and what I learned was that if you unconsciously take on other people’s issues, if you don’t consciously remove them from your body properly, they can actually become your own issues. It’s like you become the adoptive parent of those issues and they become yours.

And so yeah, that part for me had a very direct physical impact on me, a very direct emotional, mental impact. It very much contributed to my own mental health issues that I struggled with – depression, anxiety – and that extreme sensitivity, constant extreme sensitivity limits your life, doesn’t it? I mean, I know so many empaths who for so long had to not go to the grocery store and not be around certain social environments and all that…and I’m very happy to say that I’m no longer that way. It took me over a decade to figure out how to get to a balanced place with it so I could be okay.

Sarah: I relate to that a lot with my journey with autoimmune disease and chronic illness and my story journey with empathy and intuition, what was the opposite where it was closed down and then reawakened in my mid-20s, and all of a sudden all these things started feeling so big and like you just said, it was like, ‘okay, I don’t want to go to the grocery store. I don’t want to go do this’, and then really closing myself off to the world because I felt so overwhelmed. Whereas I used to be this super social person with tons of friends, and then all of a sudden, this sensitivity felt so raw and I felt so exposed. I wanted to hide. I wanted to protect myself. As we opened that intuition up and as we do, because it’s not that I didn’t want to open it, I’m grateful for having opened that door and reawakened to it. But how do we do that in a way that number one, allows us to maintain our health and two, is responsible because I really want to talk about responsible intuition with you today?

How we open up our intuition while maintaining our health and being responsible with our intuition

Heidi: Awesome, and I love talking about it. That’s kind of the number one topic that I find is so important and especially because there are so many people in the world having that experience that you had of being opened and being overwhelmed by it and so sensitive to it and actually having that happen on masse. If you’re into spiritual stuff or metaphysical stuff, you know that there’s a lot of talk about how we are moving into a new age of consciousness. And with that, the veil between the dimensions has gotten thinner and that means we have more access than ever to our intuitive abilities, the ability to channel and connect with other energies. And so it’s kind of like all those walls that we all have built up are falling away, and I’m finding the world as a whole, there are so many people now experiencing empathy and intuition to a degree that is really kind of upsetting in how they’re experiencing it, and that’s in part because we, in this Western world, have really never had a true understanding of it. You know, we focus on science, we focus on STEM, math, sciences and we really don’t talk about the softer, esoteric side of what it means to be human. And so we are entering into this new awakened age of intuition with absolutely no information about how to do it in a healthy way.

And part of why I wrote the book is,  I see so many people struggling because so many people are opening!  I have the benefit of having been through all of this for 40 years, and it’s like I really want to help people walk through this right now because it’s so hard, and a lot of the information we can find online…can be conflicting or misleading or not necessarily true. I do see a lot of myths and things like that and intuitive information that’s out there.  So I think it’s important to really get some tools to understand how it works and to manage it.

Sarah: Okay. So how do we, or what are some of your favorite ways to protect your energy? I get asked that question a lot on interviews that I’m on. I am like, Oh my God, there’s so many ways, and each person, a different kind of way is going to work for each person depending on their unique energy. But I’d love to hear your take on ways to protect your energy, either if somebody has felt sensitive their entire life or maybe it’s just reconnecting to this part of them that was always there but maybe shut down. How do we protect ourselves?

Protecting & managing  our energy

Heidi: Well, so I have a little bit of a different take on it.  So instead of thinking in terms of protection, I think in terms of managing our energy and that includes managing our intuitive abilities, neuropathic abilities…that’s all our energy self. I think more in terms of managing it well, versus protection. If you think about what protection is, the basis of it is that you’re presuming that things out there are bad and you need to guard against them, when in reality the things that are out there aren’t actually bad.  It’s just that we have a response mechanism to it if we’re blown open as an empath or an intuitive. We have, first of all, a response mechanism to it that isn’t necessarily healthy for us, which means it’s a mismanagement. So for me it’s actually really pretty simple concept, but I know there’s a lot more to it that we can talk about, but if you just kind of reduce it to that line of thought, then I think all of this becomes a lot easier.

Sarah: Yes. We’re not in a constant state of survival of all of the seemingly negative energies that are flying at us. And instead, you’re just, I think, stepping into your power and going, ‘I’m just going to manage my energy and all the things I feel. They’re not all negative or out to get me so I don’t have to be constantly protecting myself.’  That’s no way to live either. So what is one way that we can manage our energy?

Heidi: Sure. I love to talk about some ways and one of the biggest ways I talk about, which is not really out there in the literature. I love to talk about it and just an extra note about protection. Protecting yourself actually takes a whole lot of energy. It requires a lot of energy from us. It can actually be totally exhausting. Whereas if we manage our energy in healthy ways for us, it’s actually the opposite. We actually gain energy from it because we are actually pulling our own energy back into where it needs to be. So that’s one of them actually, one of the ways to manage it is to envision the energy field of your aura, even your awareness that you’re putting out around you. If you imagine recalling it, calling it back into space just around you, that doesn’t take up maybe more than four or five inches around your physical body. It’s like calling your aura, calling your energy field back in. That’s one of the ways that’s really if we’re in social environments, that’s a really good way to kind of not be interacting so heavily with other people’s energy fields. So if you think about it, we’re actually all walking around with an energy field that’s about 55 feet in diameter really. And so when we pass another person in the mall or on the street, we’re not just passing each other. We are exchanging energy fields. So if you think about it as just calling in your energy field to a more compact state around you, you are not taking any of it away. You’re just reeling it in. That’s actually one good way.

Sarah: I love that. I’m a very visual person, so I love the visual of calling it back in. And again, I think that also in my representation of that, it’s like calling my power back and like saying, ‘hey, I am the authority of this energy’, and it feels protected without having to exert the energy, extra energy to protect in a guarded way.

Heidi: Absolutely right. So it’s actually setting a boundary for yourself, but like you said, in a healthy way, instead of in an ‘I have to protect myself from bad stuff’ kind of way, which is exhausting and not effective. It doesn’t generally work anyway, and it kind of sends the energetic message out that says, hey, I’m vulnerable here. I have to put up a wall. Whereas if you’re taking charge of your own energy and calling it back, or toning it down if you need to, or just going internal instead of external, shifting that focus inside instead of around it, then you’re taking charge of it.

Sarah: Yes. It feels like I can’t be messed with. You can’t mess with me. This is my energy. I’m the authority over it.

Heidi: It’s got nothing to do with you and yours has nothing to do with me and I’m just going to stay in mine. You stay in yours and even if you don’t stay in yours, that’s okay. I know how to stay in mine. So you go do your thing. It doesn’t matter what you do. I am just going to stay in mine.

Sarah: I love that you gave the visual too of walking through the mall and this energy field that extends 55 feet out and just this constant exchange of energy, and I know I’ve been on the other end of somebody who wants to tell me how they feel about what’s happening in my energy body, or give me a free reading on my energy without asking if I wanted a reading on my energy, and it has always felt so yucky and icky for me. So I think that yes, we’re feeling this a lot as empaths, and when we have our energy kind of pushed out further than close to four or five inches to us. But how do we ethically, responsibly respond to those things that we are picking up when it comes to exchanges like I just explained, where that doesn’t make me feel good for someone to just impose what they’re feeling and my energy upon me? What’s your opinion on that?

Ethically and responsibly responding to things that we pick up

Heidi: I have a lot of opinions on that. It’s my pet peeve topic actually. I feel so strongly about it and I feel strongly about it because of this little word called consent. And anything that we do intuitively, in my opinion, anything that we do intuitively or energetically that involves another person without that person’s permission is a violation, and to me, it’s as equal a violation as a physical violation and I would love to encourage anyone who has the tendency to just be randomly, intuitively open to what’s happening with another person – which I used to be, by the way. That’s why I like to comment on it – I’d like you to kind of question your reasons for wanting to be open to somebody else’s stuff.  What are your reasons for knowing it if that person hasn’t asked you to know it? I think it’s a really valuable thing for us all to reflect on. Why am I up in somebody else’s stuff if they’ve not asked me to be up in their stuff? Really self reflect on what your reasons are there.

We have a bunch of reasons and it’s really, really important to know that we have to analyze some of those reasons cause some of them are ego-based and not necessarily good. Some of the reasons we’re just open to other people’s stuff are like me when I was a kid, I was just blown open and I didn’t know how to not be blown open. I didn’t know I had a choice about it. I know now we all have a choice about how intuitively and empathically open we are to other people. It is the choice we make. A lot of us stay open for different reasons. We might feel that that’s our way to show love or are caring towards someone. It’s our way to be needed. It’s our way to gather information about life and the universe that we’re curious about. Curiosity can keep us intuitively and empathically open. We want to know stuff, but wanting to know stuff can never happen at the expense of violating another person, another person’s space. Again, all in my opinion.

Sarah: Yes, and I’m sure there are so many opinions on this, but I align with a lot of what you’re saying. I’ve been on the end of someone violating I think my privacy and feel like you know, I didn’t ask for you to tap into my energy and this is actually a really personal field I have around me that I don’t want you in. I’m part of that because I feel like I opened myself up to it in some sense, but I think it takes two to tango there, right? They also read into it and then chose to also act on it. And that’s where I think there’s probably a lot of questions around empaths and intuitives who are listening and going, ‘well I just feel this and I just feel this and I get this message or spirit comes to me and tells me to tell so-and-so this message and I can see their passed loved one’,, or however their intuition comes through.  It’s so strong and they might feel like giving the messages to the person that they’re picking up on is going to help them, or serve them in some way, but where is the line there and how do we navigate that? Is there a time for sharing any of that or do we just keep it to ourselves or do we work on managing our energy so that we’re just not picking all that up?

Heidi: I think it starts with what you just said at the end there. It all starts with managing our energy first, to make a conscious decision about what we’re open to at any given point in time. I think if we manage our energy in the way of deciding I’m not going to be intuitively or empathically open to someone else’s stuff unless 1) they’ve asked me to be, 2) I have their full consent about it, 3) it’s in a safe and therapeutic setting that we’ve both agreed upon at a time frame we’ve agreed upon.   So I only do it in a paid environment. So when I go to the mall, I’m not open to anybody’s stuff. When I hang out with a friend, I’m not open to their stuff. I’ve made a conscious decision to switch that ability off, unless there’s an emergency situation and I have a little caveat or a clause in that intention that I make that says, okay, if there’s ever an emergency in which it would be really good for either party to know something that’s happening and can share that information, then I will know it and be open to it. But if there is no emergency, everyone around me has the right to privacy. So do I. 

I’ve been on the receiving end of that as well, and it is a violation. It feels terrible for someone to be invading your personal, emotional, physical space, knowing things that you have not given them permission to know. And so with all that, I really do think it all begins and ends there, as to what we’re open to and what we’re allowing ourselves to be open to. And we can, I know a lot of empaths think they can’t switch it off and I used to think that too, but we actually can. We just don’t know that we can.

Sarah: I remember a relative asking me cause she follows everything I’m doing and so was very just really curious about being an intuitive and I’m like, we all have it. It’s not just me, but that’s another conversation. And she’s like, so can you read my energy right now? What are you picking up? And I’m like, well I don’t just walk around reading everyone and looking into everyone’s body. It is something that I feel like I have to turn on and off or else I’d be having panic attacks all the time. And so I was like, if you want to go sit in the other room, I can start to tap into that, but no, as I’m standing in front of you right now, I’m not just reading into your energy and like you said, I think some people have a hard time understanding that it can be turned on and off or that there are different levels of intensity of that that you can open yourself or close yourself to. So where do we start to navigate that, learn the skill set, I think of being able to manage our energy in a way where we are on or off?

Navigating our energies and turn the skillset on or off

Heidi: Okay. It actually comes down to a really basic concept and I think it’s so simple that we kind of actually misses it, and it really just boils down to a simple intention that we make, as to whether or not we are switched on intuitively or remaining to be switched off intuitively.  I make a very important distinction between switching it off and shutting it down. So shutting it down is actually an unhealthy mechanism. Shutting down is a version of denial. So we’re denying or rejecting our ability, versus fully accepting and honoring our ability and understanding it to the best we can…and consciously choosing the moments in which we are fully in that ability, and it is open and available for whatever information it needs in that moment. And again, I’m a big fan of it should never happen without consent from another party and should only be in the right environment.

You were mentioning too, is there ever a time where we get something we should share it? Yes. Absolutely, but I think the way that it’s shared needs to be honored as well. So if stuff still comes through, even though we’re deciding to switch off and it’s about another person, it’s always a good practice to go to that person separately. Take that person aside. Say, “you know, I wasn’t trying to, but I got this information and you know, this is the nature of what I do…” etc.. Explain it a little bit and then say, “would you like to hear it?” Asking permission, asking for consent and if the answer is no, you keep it to yourself…honor that person’s wishes. If the answer’s yes, there are ways to share as well, that are really important in keeping with using it responsibly and ethically. 

There are tons of things that are really important to talk about on that, and I don’t want to get us off-topic, but it includes the fact that information comes to us in a certain way,  with certain words, for a very specific reason, and if we are going to share it with somebody, then we have to repeat it verbatim. Exactly as it was received, without changing it, without interpreting it, without translating, without altering it. Within that process, it happens for very specific reasons, in very specific ways, and we can actually get in the way of healing. We can get in the way of the whole process, by altering anything that’s in that informational exchange.

Sarah: That makes a lot of sense, because just the way that I interpret a word may be different than the way you interpret the words. So if you heard the word joy that you’re intuitively feeling, but then you chose to say the word kindness out loud to me, I may interpret that in a completely different way. So, I see the use of words as very important, so that the person can get what they need out of it or let it resonate with them in their own unique way.

Heidi: I tell this story sometimes of a student who I was teaching how to do an intuitive reading. She was checking in and telling me what she saw and she said, what she saw was a train on a track. Right away…if you say that to anyone…” train on a track”…you get a mental image of what that is for you. Whatever relevance that is for you can mean all kinds of things. And when I asked more questions of her, what she actually saw was a little boy in his pajamas sitting in his bedroom playing with a toy train on a toy track. Which conjures up this totally different connotation! Totally different, right? If you are going to that person looking for information, for healing for yourself, and she doesn’t tell you the part about the little boy in pajamas, hasn’t she just take you to a totally different – and what could be – a potentially unethical place?

Sarah: Totally different place

Heidi: Because by changing or altering or censoring or omitting things, she took you to a totally different place. All of it is so important, and there’s a lot to understand about it.

Sarah: I’m just thinking of the people listening who are now going, Oh crap, I’ve been violating peoples’ privacy and they’re feeling bad about it, or they’re just trying to figure out how do they reconcile some of this, and start to manage their energy in a way that they’re not just word-vomiting and projecting onto people. Of course, you can mean well by all of this, It’s not ill-intentioned all of the time.

Heidi: Not at all. In fact, most of the reasons why we’re open are because we care and we want to help, or we’re motivated by love or all those good things. Those are actually the reasons, most of the reasons, why we’re intuitively and empathically open when we don’t have to be or maybe shouldn’t be. Some of them are ego-based. Some of them are a desire to be respected or seen as special. What I’ve seen over the years, is people just purely being totally excited by being able to tap into it, and not realizing that their excitement is not shared by everyone else. It’s not for bad reasons. It’s for good reasons, but within that, we still have to honor that there are other people involved, and with those other people involved, we have to respect their boundaries, their rights, and also to know that it’s not our fault. As I said, it’s not like we’re taught about intuition. We really don’t know anything about it, and so if you’re feeling bad about crossing lines, that’s okay. Just stop doing it today.

Sarah: Yes, here’s your sign.

Heidi: Yes, this is your sign! We can’t do anything about what’s come up, anything before this moment, but going forward, we can do it differently.

Sarah: Yeah. So this brings up a separate point that’s circulating in my mind right now, which is my past, my story, my history, and my view of the world. When I sit down to call in as an intuitive, or if anyone sits down to call in the energy in a consensual setting that is safe and supportive, and there’s an exchange of energy, and I’m here to serve and to channel for that person, for example. How do we keep our story and our stuff out of it? Or do you feel like there is an appropriate place for our stuff to be in there with it? Does that make sense?

How do we keep our personal experiences, past, and world views out of work as intuitives?

Heidi: Yeah, absolutely makes sense. I feel like in the intuitive zone, which is also the channeling zone, the only difference is what we tune into. Basically it’s the same skill set, right? When we are in that zone, I truly believe that there is no place for our own story or our own ego, our own opinion, etcetera. What I have always taught my students over the years is to, when you’re in that zone, train your conscious brain to be at the back of the scenario and your intuitive mind is what’s forward and what you were focusing on and paying attention to. It can look over the wall of the interaction, but it can’t step over the wall. Give it a job. Say, ‘your job is to monitor me in this space and if I stray, if you come forward, and you let me know and I’ll put you back again. That’s your job.’ Our conscious minds like to have a job, so that appeases them. I think it’s really, really important to set aside everything of ourselves within that space. Everything from identifying an emotion differently, or relating anything as simple as a color, to what we believe or think that that color represents…all of that can interfere with the process. I’ve seen it so many times in the last 40 years, and 20 years of working with clients professionally, and with students. I’ve seen it mostly in the teaching frame or helping people develop their own intuitive abilities. 

And it is as simple as stuff like, I saw the color purple and instead of saying to your client, I saw the color purple, what they say is, ‘Oh, purple is the color of the crown chakra and maybe that means you’re opening blah, blah, blah…’ and I’m like, Whoa! No! Back the truck up. What purple meant to you, is not what purple means to the person on the receiving end. Let it rest with whatever the person on the receiving end feels it relates to. Your own opinion about it, in this intuitive zone, means absolutely nothing. We are zero. But especially if we care, we have such a tendency to want to try to help people understand what it means, or explain it to them, or translate it for them, and that’s absolutely the worst thing we could ever do. Relaying it verbatim, exactly as you received it, is how we relay it and we leave it up to that person to decide what it means to them.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s really, really helpful and I hope eye-opening to a lot of people, as well and something I think that many of us can do better at. I love the visual you gave of just asking your conscious mind to be ‘over there’ or ‘back there’ for a little while, so that you’re not allowing as much of your own personal dialogue and story to come in. You’re just allowing the information that needs to come through, for that person, to come through. It’s like okay, I just opened myself up to all this information. How do I not carry that as my own? When you’re consciously separating your stuff and what’s coming through your intuition, it seems a lot easier. You don’t even have to worry so much about carrying it later, because you separated it from the get-go. That also goes to your point at the beginning of, I’m just managing my energy from the get-go, versus having to go back and protect or cleanse my energy afterward.

Heidi: I love that you brought that point up. Love, love, love that because when you just allow the pure flow, the pure intuitive flow of information and you’re not personally involved in the process, you’re relegated to the back. Keep in mind, I think people think when you’re relegated to the back, that your mind doesn’t have any running commentary…and that’s totally not true. It still has a running commentary, but you’re just not listening to it. You are just focusing on the pure flow, and when you focus on the pure flow, the information is not coming from you. It’s coming through you. So you’re not a container, you’re not a vessel, you’re just a phone line, and once you deliver the message, it doesn’t stay with you. 

And in fact, I would always have to tell my clients, “listen, just so you know, anything that I’ve said to you in this session, I am not going to remember after 24 hours. It’s gone from me because it isn’t from me. It’s speaking through me and so it doesn’t stay.” So like you said, it’s like this is actually the perfect system really because you don’t hold on to anything. You’re clear at the end of it all because all you did, was allow that to channel through you and to the other person with integrity. If you step into that picture and try to translate it or alter it, that’s when it sticks with you because you’re using your own experiences, biases, assumptions! If you don’t do that, and just relay it verbatim as you received, then you’re not personally involving your energy. It’s actually the perfect way to manage it.

Sarah: Yeah. That just feels so much better. I’ve talked to clients who are so worried about having to cleanse after every time they tap into someone’s energy, and I think this takes that away and dissolves some of the fear around this. I relate a lot to what you said. I’ve had a client, a few hours after our call, be like “what did you say?”, and I have no idea. I do not know.

Heidi: It’s why I would record all my sessions. Listen to it as many times as you want, and maybe refresh me later when we go for our next session, because I don’t have any idea.

Sarah: So we’ve kind of painted this picture of being this channel for intuition, but the source of it is not us, or either of us individually, but collective consciousness, or higher beings, or spirit, or angels, or guides, or universe. There are many names I think, but I do want to just get your thoughts on receiving messages from higher beings as a whole. I believe there’s a section in your book about receiving messages from higher beings as well, and just even how to… kind of identify where the source is coming from, if that’s important.

Identifying the source of the messages we receive

Heidi: I think it’s hugely important, and there are different schools of thought out there. I’ve talked to other medical intuitive trainers who don’t talk about discernment at all. They just talk about trust, trust, trust. Everything’s good, everything’s from a higher source, and I am not of that belief. My experiences in the last 40 years, especially growing up – being surrounded by energies that were not benevolent- really opened my eyes to everything that’s possible. Everything that’s out there. Of course, I see them as well, so I know not everything’s good. I do know a lot of people have a mistaken assumption, a lot of people who just open up and allow anything to talk to them, or just assume that what talks to them has your best interest at heart, or the best interests of the person you’re working with at heart.

Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true.  I think it is really important to make very, very clear intention about what we’re connecting into…if we do that. I always want to help people by making the distinction between opening up to the intuitive mind, versus picking a being, or an entity to channel.  To me, those are two very different things. They use exactly our same intuitive skill set, but it’s two different things. You can open up to the intuitive mind or the higher intuitive field of potentiality. I think a lot of people, like Deepak, call it the field of potentiality, and things like that. It’s like all the information, in the whole cosmos, is also contained in a level of our mind. If we go to step above our conscious mind, we enter into our intuitive mind – where we have access to all of that.  All we need to do to access that is to just shift our focus from our daily waking mind to our intuitive space…and all of that will come through us if we want it to.

The difference between that, using our intuition versus channeling, is picking a being from somewhere within that higher conscious realm to come and talk with us or through us. I do think it’s super important to make sure that the ones you’re connecting into, have your highest good, and the highest good of all concerned, as their primary goal and motivation and focus. That always ensures the best information, the best experience, and the outcome.

Sarah: What’s going to actually be helpful or of the highest good for you to know, see, understand today?

Heidi: Absolutely, yes.

Sarah: That’s really helpful! I never thought about it in that specific sense, but more unconsciously I’ve always been declaring that before I call energy. I always say ‘for the highest good and only that for the highest good.’ Kind of this assertive declaration within myself. Like the assertive declaration of calling back in your energy field too. It’s just so simple, yet we pass it by. We don’t think about it – even though it is so simple.

Heidi: Yes. It’s kind of like fine-tuning, like a radio frequency, which we actually are. We all have a certain vibratory signature or frequency, and it’s like fine-tuning our frequency. If you think of channeling our intuition, it’s like the radio receiver that we are, so we fine-tune it, and we line up with what we want to receive! We can receive from anywhere in the intuitive field or mind, and we can receive from an angel, or an ascended master or a spirit animal or spirit guide. It’s super uber important to, as you said, call our energy and define it as narrowly as you can when you’re talking to another being that is there only for your highest good and the highest good of all concerned.

Sarah: Beautiful. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today and I would love to open the floor back up to you once again, in case there’s anything that you feel we didn’t get to, that’s important for the listeners to know about.

Heidi: Thanks! Yeah, this has been great I always come back to respecting other people’s boundaries and respecting other people’s needs. Being clear on the process. There are tons of things we can learn about the process, that we may not already know, even if we think we know it. There’s always more to know, and I am always amazed at how many professional psychics and intuitives still don’t even understand the intuitive process! They just do what they do. I’m a big fan of actually understanding the process so that you can properly define it and narrow it the way that is respectful to yourself and to other people. Of course, I always come to that place, because I had so many experiences of lines being crossed and violated, and I did that too because I didn’t know any better. 

40 years ago, nobody was talking about this stuff. The word ’empathy’ did not exist in our vocabulary, so I really would love, I guess, for people to know we are experiencing a mass awakening! If you’re opening to your intuitive abilities, you’re not alone. So many people are opening to them, and it’s super, super important to learn about them and how to manage them. I think part of why we’re seeing such a rise in mental health issues, is because when these abilities aren’t managed, it really can spin us out of a harmonious, balanced place in the Universe. They can exacerbate existing stresses and conditions, and they really can contribute to poor emotional, mental and physical health. I think it’s super, super important if we’re going to use it, to learn as much as we can about it.

Sarah: Absolutely. That last part just really touched me, on a heart level, about mental health. I’ve lost two brothers now, and both struggled with depression and mental health issues. One with addiction and I truly believe that part of that…was feeling so sensitive to the world and not knowing or understanding how to manage the energy. That’s part of what fuels me to be able to manage my energy and to be able to teach that, or have people like you on the podcast, to be able to help all of us manage our energy so that it doesn’t turn into an extra-stressor in our life. Instead of something that’s so empowering, and truly does feel like a gift versus a curse.

Heidi: Absolutely, and I’m so sorry about your loss. If there’s anything we can do about it, that’s what I want to do too, and I so relate. I mean, when I was a kid, I actually became an alcoholic by the time I was 18 because I needed a way to try to shut it off. To shut it down. To dim it. Obviously, it doesn’t work long-term and only works very, very short term.  But, I totally get it. I mean, we already have more than enough stress in our lives, and now with this awakening, we’re also experiencing these additional things that we have no framework of understanding for in our society. That was part of me writing the book because I want to help provide that framework so that we don’t have to go through that. We don’t have to go there.

Sarah: Well, thank you. These resources are amazing. I’m planning to use them in my own practice, and with my clients as well. Also, within the business coaching side of things, because it’s such a wonderful tool and you’re a gift. Thank you so much, and again, thank you for your time today. How can listeners find your book or learn more about you, Heidi?

Heidi: My book is available on a Penguin-Random House. You can pick a retailer or through Amazon. I always suggest your local bookstore too. They can always order it for you. I have three websites too. My main site is heidilight.com, and if you liked the conversations and the books and more, I’m also a counselor by trade. I have been for 20 years. So, I also talk a lot about psychology and personal growth and transformation.  I have all those kinds of conversations on my blog. It’s a blog and resource center and community, and it’s wisdomhouselearning.com.  I also have a cool little social movement, that revolves around authenticity as a path to positive social change, and that website is getrealforrealchange.com 

Sarah: I love that. I encourage everyone to check all three of those out, or the one that’s intuitively calling you to gain more resources. I think that one of the main points I’m taking away from today is that there’s more to learn and there’s more to understand. It’s up to us to reach out and to find those resources and to be able to equip ourselves with ethical ethics, and principles to be able to manage our energy. If we are in a serving healer/coach role, how to be able to do that in a really beautiful, safe, and supportive way. Thank you again.

Heidi: Thank you so much for letting me talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart.

Sarah: I appreciate you so much. Thank you.

Heidi: You too, Sarah.

Connect with Sarah:

Instagram | Facebook Community | Pinterest | YouTube

Work with Sarah:

Online courses | 1:1 coaching | Send show requests to sarah@theuncensoredempath.com!

This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you for your support!