Are you an Empath who feels other people’s emotions in your own body?

Lately, I have been coming across insights about being an empath and a highly sensitive person that are telling me a little more about myself, and wiping down the mirror so I can see more of my true self. Something I read recently might resonate with you as well. It’s about what some people call clairsentience, or the ability to know something through our sense of touch. 

In her book Aura Reading, Rose Rosetree talks about clairsentience using this example: 

“With clairsentience, information comes along with touch. Rosa, for instance, is a massage therapist. When starting a session, Rosa holds the client by the ankles. Information comes to her about what needs work. It’s as though the whole body reveals its secrets to her hands.” 

Rosetree goes on to say that while some people who are clairsentient are very tuned in to their physicality but might not realize how much subtle information comes in through physical touching, there are other clairsentients who are subtle touchers and unconcerned with their own physicality. To them, “subtle perception is so much more interesting than staying in touch with reality.” 

And then, Rosetree goes on to say something that really struck me and might put clairsentience in perspective for you too: “Here’s another paradox. Clairsentient people work especially well with their hands, for example, in writing, cooking, or gardening. But ask them if they would like to work with their hands and they may well say “No.” How come? 

It’s one of those mind-stopping Zen trains of thought, like explaining the sound of one hand clapping.

Why don’t some empaths who are clairsentients not notice their hands?

The process of creating through the hands is so charming it totally absorbs their attention. Therefore, what part of the mind is left to notice the hands?” 

I have always thought of myself as someone who does not like to work with their hands. I hate doing repetitive things, and I love the world of ideas and possibilities as compared to what I sometimes think of as purely sensory and physical things. And yet, physical touch is important to me. I, too, can often sense where pain in someone’s body is going to be when I touch them. 

Recently, I have started writing more by hand instead of working on the laptop. The visceral connection to the paper feels stronger, and things seem to come out in a different way. Like Rose Rosetree says, at these moments, I am in the flow and the thought that I am making something with my hands does not even cross my mind. And yet, my hands feel alive and I sense things in a way that seems organic. It’s as if my hands are pulling out something that some part of me has always known.  

Just like writing, when I cook, I am so absorbed in the process that my attention never goes to my hands. Till I read what Rosetree says, I hadn’t considered how much I sense things through touch. What a thing to learn after so many years of knowing (not knowing?) myself. 

Maybe, what Rosetree says connected with you as well, regardless of whether you believe in auras or not. Our bodies are the means through which we make our way through the world, so it feels logical that they are equipped with ways of knowing that go beyond thinking and the intellect. 

Here’s something that Rosetree says that might resonate with you as well: 

“As a clairsentient, whether you come across as grounded or more of an absent-minded professor, you know the value of hugging and touching. That’s how you feel you have made genuine contact with people. And if your clairsentience goes along with a gift for physical healing, your hands may radiate a special spiritual beauty.”  

Does what Rosetree say about clairsentience resonate with you? Does it make you think differently about the different ways in which you know and sense things? Is there some way in which you can apply this in your life? For me, it feels like this is another way in which intuition and knowing works in and through me. While sometimes, intuition is the little voice that I hear in my center, at other times, what I know comes to me as a result of physical contact and touch. My body can sense and know things in a way that I am not often aware of, and starting to become aware of this feels enlarging.  

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