How to Lose Weight if You Are an Empath, Intuitive 
or Are Sensitive to Other People Energy Workshop

Do you feel other people’s feelings? Do you find yourself taking on your family’s energy? 

Often times our extra weight is due to the need to numb out and not feel and as an empath or someone who feels a lot, you might need an escape. 

This workshop explores different strategies and tools so that you can learn to escape without the need to numb out or use food. 

Session #1:

First Steps If You Are Empathetic

10 Tendencies of Those Who Are Empathetic, Intuitive, or Take In Other People’s Energy

 

Here are 10 tendencies of those who are empathetic, intuitive, or take in other people’s energy.

Notice which apply to you.

1. You can often feel what other people are feeling. Either their emotions, physical sensations or both 

2. You are often introverted. Big crowds of people make you uncomfortable. One-on-one interactions are better for you and after you have been around people for a while, you need alone time to recover and 

3. You may prefer the company of small children, animals or the natural world over lots of relationships

4. You are emotional. You often feel quite overwhelmed by your own emotions and the feelings of other people’s emotions 

5. You may experience more depression/anxiety than others.

6. You might find that you get overwhelmed by sensory stimulation like bright lights, sounds, fragrances, crowds.

7. You are drawn to helping, healing and caregiving. 

8. You have a very kind heart and have lots of compassion.

9. You care deeply about others’ feelings and find yourself sometimes crying at heartwarming commercials and movies. 

10. You might be highly intuitive and even a little psychic – where you know what other people are thinking or feeling without them having to say a word.

If you relate to this on any level, you might find that you’re like a sponge – taking in everyone’s emotions. 

 

 

 

Empaths Are Amazing Gifts to the World Because They Are – 

· Compassionate old souls

· They put themselves in other people’s shoes

· Nonviolent and hate watching others suffer

· Drawn toward caretaking animals, humans, and the planet

 

When Empaths are Overloaded – 

If you think of yourself as a magnet where everyone’s emotions and feelings are drawn to you, AND it can happen at any time – so you can have a mellow day and then go to the movies and feel the collective energy of others sitting at the theater next to you, take in the emotions of the actors in the movie and then, for some of you, you might be emotionally overloaded after the movie when you get home and wonder why you are craving a release.

 

Symptoms of Emotional/Empathic Overload

· Physical exhaustion – tired, wanting a nap, 

· Mental confusion and/or brain fog – you enter a store and forget what the heck you are there for because your other senses are getting overwhelmed by lights, sounds, all the visual stimuli.

· Feeling emotionally drained or swamped. You feel “done”

· Feeling the need to numb out, dissociated, low attention span

· Headaches and migraines

· Anxious, irritable, raw, and even exposed.

· Everyone wanting something and you have nothing to give

· Going into do energy – so you don’t have to feel

· Forgetting about your own emotions and experiences so you can only focus on your own

· Repressing feelings and then getting ill

· Turn to substances to numb out and turn on the off switch of your brain and life 

· Starting trouble with others to distract yourself from feeling and addressing your feelings and emotions

Take a moment and recognize how being an empath, high feeler, energy magnet has been impacting your life and your body? 

Today you’re going to learn how to claim your power as an empath, intuitive, psychic and/or highly sensitive person – 

 

The Four Truths to Energy Management –

1. It’s your responsibility to manage your energy. No one else can do this for you and expecting other people to take over this area of your life is disempowering and unrealistic. 

2. It’s up to you to set your boundaries and say no. Most people will let you over-give and won’t stop you from doing it. 

3. We train people how we want to be treated. I say this a lot. If they are used to you over-giving, that is what they expect. You have the power to change and decide what works for you and retrain those around you m so that your needs are better met. 

4. Go from passive living to active living – to having a voice, a position, a stance.

 

 

There are four truths to feeling your feelings.

1. You are responsible for your feelings. No one can make you feel anything.

2. You are fully responsible for how you express your feelings.

3. There are no bad feelings. They are just feelings that give you information about yourself. 

4. The goal is to move the emotional energy out of your body without negatively impacting yourself or others.

There are two sides of the spectrum that many of you might experience – 

1. Repress – Holding everything in. 

2. Flood – you push your feelings down so far that you burst into a flood of emotions. It may feel out of control and overwhelming. It’s hard on yourself and the people around you. It can feel horrible and out of control. 

Somewhere in the middle of repressing and flooding is Allowing Emotions to be felt without hurting yourself or others. 

We are going to do this through breathwork. Using our breath can be one of the best strategies for empaths, intuitives, and feelers to allow the emotion, learn from the feeling, and move the energy out without ignoring or suppressing it. 

 

The Empaths Breathing Tool To Manage Your Desire To Turn to Food –

Any time you want to eat when you’re not hungry or you want to suppress what you’re feeling, I want you to practice this Breathwork Tool – 

1. Push your feet into the ground

2. Begin to take deep belly breaths

3. Scan your body and see if any emotions are coming from your body like your heart or belly.

4. Allow the emotions to come up with each breath. You are not going to say or do anything. Just breathe and observe. Lean into it and see how much of the emotion you can allow yourself to feel. 

5. Stay curious and see if you can track the emotion back to whatever triggered this feeling and/or emotional experience. Curiosity will keep you out of self-judgment.

6. If you feel the emotion getting intense, lovingly can allow your breath to get deeper.

7. Place your hand on your heart or over the place you feel the feeling inside of your body and just flow some compassion to yourself. 

8. When you feel the emotions fully moving through your body, relax and go back to your normal breathing. 

Doing this will help you practice how to lean into the emotion without harming yourself, others, and will let you fully feel your feelings without the painful feeling of repressing/flooding. 

Homework Focus Work for Session 1:

 

NOVICE LEVEL – Listen to the class, take the assessment she goes through in the class to see if you take on other people’s feelings and do the breathing process with Marna. The next time you want to eat when you aren’t hungry do the breathing process by yourself or listen to the Zoom class again, starting at 30 minutes for ten minutes. Whether or not you have a binge/overeating episode, engage with this process at least 3 times this week looking for a minimum 10% decrease in the intensity of your feelings/overwhelm.

 

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL- Do the novice level assignment from above, and spend time afterward to journal: 

  • What was I feeling?
  • What did I discover?
  • What have I learned?

ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above and listen to at least one extra ThinWithin podcast or class this week. Maybe you’d like to re-listen to today’s class?

Session #2:

Protecting Your Energy

Empaths Need to Protect Their Energy –

Empaths, Initiatives, and Highly Sensitive People can feel overwhelmed by tasks, to-do lists, plans, and people. 

We all have an energetic bubble around ourselves. Different cultures’ bubbles are bigger while other cultures are smaller. You can feel this when you travel or someone visits from another country. Often they stand too close than is expected where you live. 

 

We all have these bubbles. Another way to describe them would be space, distance, or energy that feels comfortable to us. 

 

Those of you who are not empathic or sensitive or high feeling – have a very strong boundary ring around your bodies. 

 

Those of you that are empathetic, intuitive, sensitive, or high feeling have a ring that might be a little more open in parts. Like little holes here and there that seep out. Any type of trauma, abuse, or deep wounding can rip holes in your protective boundary.

 

This week we are going to talk about repairing and protecting our energy, boundaries, auras, space, or whatever words feel like the right words.

 

Here’s the amazing part – if you’re an empath – you might go to a party and find your energy or aura or boundary energy expanding to include and bring in others which is why, when you come home you might feel a little more exhausted and turn to food. You just lovingly included everyone into your space for a bit and now your worn out holding that energy and/or responsibility.

 

You know I’ve spoken about creating a protective bubble and I want to remind you of the power and importance of strengthening that bubble. 

A Visualization to Strengthen and Patch-Up Your Depleted Energy

   

1. Stand or sit with your feet on the floor and uncross your legs and arms so that energy and healing can flow right in and out of you.

2.     Take deep breaths into the center of your stomach and exhale any energy that is craving a release. Release this energy that you’ve been carrying around with you and just let it go.

3.     Now imagine this beautiful and powerful energy field around you. You may see it, feel it or just sense where it is.

4.     Notice if it’s close to your body or expansive and out several feet from your body. If it’s way out beyond an arm’s length, use your breath to imagine pulling it in toward your body so it’s about an arm’s length out. 

5.     Now, imagine strengthening it with a less porous substance like bouncy rubber, plastic, beautiful sea glass, shells, or whatever beautiful or fun material you would like to construct your new energy field with. 

6.     Lovingly make the decision that this boundary layer is going to let in energy that is supportive for you and keeps out unsupportive energy. Nothing crosses this boundary without your permission.

7.     Close your eyes and allow yourself to sink into your energy bubble that is safe and sacred and that protects you and is a boundary that you are in charge of creating.

The entire point of this work is to strengthen your energy field so it’s not subject to those that are happy to push into your energy.

These can be loving people – such as spouses, children, friends.

They can still drain you. 

Last session you started to do body scans to understand where this desire for food might come out of nowhere as a way to protect and release your energy when you feel drained from others. 

Now, you can begin using a preventative practice to help strengthen your energy so that you don’t feel as drained. 

This could be a beautiful morning ritual of simply visualizing your fun rubber ball that you can see out of, play with others in, and yet is protective. When other people’s energy comes into your energy field, they just bounce right off because you’ve strengthened it. 

Use this today when you need to be somewhere that would typically send you into an empathetic or energy overload or when you feel like any boundary has been crossed, you can come back to this place again, patch it up, and continue to practice strengthening your protective bubble.

Homework

Focus Work for Session 2:

NOVICE LEVEL – Spend a few minutes every day, either in the morning or in the evening, in your bubble. Get used to going into it whether you are walking or sitting still so you’ll be able to connect with it when you need it.

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL– Do the novice level assignment from above in the morning and the evening. Spend time making your space your own. In your mind, decorate your bubble if you are visual. If you’re auditory, put positive words or music in it. Make it feel like a hug if you’re kinesthetic. 

ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above. Be sure to practice right before going into a stressful situation. Then, listen to at least one extra ThinWithin podcast or class this week. You could re-listen to the body scan from last week or take this week’s bubble journey again.

Session #3:

Filling Yourself Up

How  to Fill Yourself Up When You Feel Drained

In this class, you will find  ways to fill yourself up when you feel drained. 

Here is a breathing practice to clear stuck and old energy from your body so that you can fill up your body with new energy. 

  1. Sit with your feet on the floor, arms and legs uncrossed. Press your feet into the ground to ground your energy. 
  1. Imagine a beam of bright white light coming in through the top of your head. Bright white energy coming from the beautiful sky above coming right into the top of your head. 
  1. Breathe this light into your heart and your belly. 
  1. As you breathe out, release anything you are holding onto that is not yours. 
  1. Release any of your own energy that doesn’t serve you. 
  1. Just keep breathing this white light in and exhaling anything that doesn’t serve you. Allow yourself to fully absorb this pure white energy al-lowing your body to fill up with this amazing energy. 
  1. Do this until you feel clear and calm and grounded. Now, place your bub-ble around you. You are grounded, protected, and ready to fill your heart and body up. 

  

OTHER WAYS TO REFILL YOUR ENERGY TANK: 

Yes, there are many ways to refill our energy tank. It’s a very individual process but there are some powerful foundational tools that all of you need. 

  • Eating whole high nutrient food as much as possible will help your body receive the vitamins and nutrients to help your body function as possible.
  • Get plenty of sleep and rest. Try to get 8 hours a night of sleep. 
  • Movement is a beautiful way to eliminate and refuel. 
  • Belief release – Releasing the belief that you’re broken, wrong, bad, fat, incapable, etc. 
  • Living from your Love list – All of you probably have a love list made in a previous class. Make it a goal to do one thing from your love list every single day. If you don’t have a list of things that bring you joy to do, make a list this week. 

NATURAL ELEMENTS: Empaths can be very sensitive to Natural Elements – Because we naturally take in other people’s energy and are often natural healers, we get invigorated by the natural elements of the universe like – 

  • The sun. Taking a walk and allowing our body to enjoy bathing in the sun’s rays can be extremely healing 
  • Fire – lighting your fireplace, having even just one candle lit in a room, enjoying an outdoor bonfire or fire pit. These are all ways to help you clear your energy and rebuild yourself. 
  • Water – Anything from taking a bath, to listening to the ocean, or just being in water can help empaths and highly sensitive people rebuild their energy.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES TO REFUEL YOUR ENERGY: 

  • Spiritual practices like yoga, meditation, Pilates, prayer. 
  • Play – what does play look like for you? – dancing to a song, singing with a choir, jumping on a trampoline with your kids and grandkids, going for a walk in a new part of town, what is fun and how are you establishing fun. Spending time with friends. 
  • Creative pursuits – drawing, painting, doing a puzzle, etc. 
  • Unstructured time doing nothing – doing whatever you want. 

Homework 

NOVICE LEVEL – Find one thing you can do when you are not hungry in order to avoid eating to numb out. Possibly do a body scan, bubble work, light visualization from today’s class, or choose to get outside or play. Commit to doing the activity you choose at least once a day if you find yourself turning to food without hunger. 

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL– Do the novice level assignment from above. Further, notice when you are drained during the day. Schedule 5-10 minutes a day to do something new to refuel you. You can use your Love List of activities (or make one if you don’t have one). 

ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above and listen to at least one extra ThinWithin podcast or class this week. You could re-listen to any of this month’s Monday 

Session #4:

Saying No and Setting Boundaries

Setting Up Effective Boundaries

 

Setting boundaries can feel really scary for empaths, intuitive and high feeling individuals. 

However, you can set up boundaries that help you create reasonable, safe, and appropriate ways for other people to connect to you socially, physically and emotionally.

 

Most of the times, our boundaries are formed from our family of origin. 

 

Effective boundary characteristics – 

1. Created from a powerful place of self

2. Created from a place of worthiness

3. Our SELF and our NEEDS are just as important as…or even more important than…those of others

4. Enables you to say YES to what you want and NO to what you don’t want, WITHOUT giving up ourselves for someone else’s needs.

 

Boundary Types – 

Boundaries can be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and even digital. 

 

Physical boundaries – allow you to decide who can touch you.

Emotional boundaries – we are responsible for our own emotions and not for others. If someone said, “You really hurt my feelings” it’s really about them and not you and you can talk through how your actions hurt their feelings without holding their pain.

 

Mental boundaries – means that you can think freely and decide for yourself and express your opinions freely.

 

Digital boundaries – what others are able to see online of you, what you allow other family members to have access to, etc.

 

Download the Boundary Setting Worksheet for assistance.

NOTE: As you practice setting boundaries, be sure to use “I” statements when discussing the issue to take responsibility for your feelings. 

I feel… 

What I need is…  

What I would love is…

Homework

NOVICE LEVEL – Figure out one boundary you would like to work on. Look for resentments in you life or places where your feelings get hurt. You’re just practicing, so make it something small and preferably with a safe person. Spend some time in your SAFE SPACE, your bubble, and repair it if necessary. When discussing a boundary , use with “I” statements to take responsibility for your emotions instead of blaming a person who doesn’t yet know you are upset. Be authentic with your word. Clarify and repeat the boundary if necessary. Then take some time to congratulate yourself. This ability to make boundaries is a superpower!

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL– Do the novice level assignment from above with two situations in your life.

ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above, set a boundary or two and share with the group how it went for you! 

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