Ep 40 | Divine Human Beings: Permission to Rest, Discern, and Breathe Love
Welcome to Rise and Realign. Conversations for the sensitive soul. I'm Melissa, and this space is for those of us who feel deeply, love fiercely, and sense the world in ways that are hard to explain, but impossible to ignore. Here, we honor your sensitivity as a strength, not something to fix. Through reflections, realignment, and soul-led stories, we remember how to move through life in a way that feels true to who we really are. This is your space to rise, to realign, and to come home again and again to your own wise, sensitive, authentic self.
So last week, Episode 39, There Is Nothing to Fix: Feeling to Heal and the Breath as Your Bridge. I reflected on what it means to really face our fears and feel what needs to be felt, so that allows us to really release it and to heal. So I often say, we need to feel it to heal it. I talked about how the breath serves as the bridge between the guarded, waterlogged, stress states that we fall into, and the coherence and clarity that is always available to us. We just don't always remember.
You know, I have shared previously that I view us as beings of love and light having a human experience, right? But another way to describe it is, we are divine human beings, right? But we're not always living in a way that honors both the human aspects of our journey, right? What we see here, feel, touch, taste, all of that, smell, right? Like the metrics, what we can measure, right? And the more divine, right? Where you know that we're so much more than our human forms, right? We're not limited to what our genetics are, or what our body composition is, or even what our lived experiences have been, right? Like, I just see it as such a beautiful gift when we do start to remember.
And, of course, this podcast is called Rise and Realign: Conversations for the Sensitive Soul, because this is about my interpretation, right? This is my soul perspective, that as highly sensitive individuals, like we're given the opportunity to realign with our true essence, our wholeness of who we are. And because we feel things so much more deeply, and depending on how and where we're raised, like that human experience, it can really cloud our perspective. It can create very skewed, a lot of interference in how we view ourselves, view others, understand ourselves, right? Understand the world around us.
And I really want to honor everybody's very unique paths and journeys, because I know my mind is so curious and it's always wanting to figure out, like, why is that person having that challenge? How might I assist? How might I support that person? What I really, really love about supporting highly sensitive women in whether it's an individual session, a group format, whatever it is, is because we can see so much more than meets the eye. We can feel what others are feeling. We can sense the subtleties, the energy, the frequency, the vibe, whatever language you use, right? And that really is a true gift. But we don't always understand the difference between what we're feeling as our own, and what is potentially coming from someone else, or even the cosmos, right? The shifts.
And when we are living a really hectic, busy, kind of, you're on that hamster wheel or treadmill, right? Like, it's not so easy to notice the patterns or notice the things that might be showing up. And that's where that interference and that being waterlogged is really important to pay attention to.
And I just recognize that through the really most challenging period of my life, you know, being married, having kids, and having health challenges, and just trying to manage it all, we're really just trying to stay afloat, right? We're just trying to keep our head above water so that we can see the beauty and enjoy and love life, ourselves, our family, our friends, right? But, and this is just my journey, like my journey of really tough stuff, was of course when I was 19 and my brother passed. But then it just kept compounding, and really peaked before my spiritual awakening.
And I just want to say that we all, it's part of both the divine and the human nature. Like, we come here to this earth school to live a variety of experiences, and some of us say yes, I'm ready, sign me up, let me be birthed into this 3D reality, right? And sometimes from the start, life is really difficult and challenging. I've talked about for myself, I had health challenges by the time I was one, I was already being diagnosed with health challenges. And I know that for some of my own children, their whole entry into this world was really challenging for health. And of course, there's countless other individuals on this planet who are either during conception, or right from birth, or in those early years, really having serious challenges. And then there's others who the challenges come later, in that bigger, density kind of way.
So I just want to, again, honor whatever your path is, whatever your journey is. There's nothing wrong with you, and there's nothing wrong with what you're going through. Because we all do come with this unique soul curriculum, this unique biochemistry, makeup, and there's no one right way to live life.
You've maybe heard me say before, I've had this motto for a while: Just live and let live. You know? And I'm not saying that that's always easy for highly sensitive individuals, especially because of how deeply the heart feels and cares and wants to be helpful and supportive to others. But it's also important to recognize in those moments, oh, let me pause. Let me take a break and breathe love right here. I'm feeling something powerful. Is it my own? Am I feeling my own feelings? Or am I feeling what my friend, family member, client is feeling? Whoever it is, am I feeling their intensity? Because again, you have this emotional responsivity, this heightened empathy, right? And activation? Like, that's really a key part of noticing. And we need more space to be able to feel what we're feeling, to even discern. Is this mine to feel? Am I feeling what's natural and moving through me? Or am I tapping into and feeling what's going on for someone else, or what's going on in the collective or the cosmos, right?
But the most important thing is that we do need to be present and feel what we're feeling. And just allow the clarity to arise from being present.
And as I was saying, the density that we go through at times, whether it's a condensed stage or phase because of a loss, because of just compounding stress and different variables, that is a time when we sometimes lose that connection to our divinity, and even that divine orchestration and timing of all things, right? And again, some of us are aware that there is this divine orchestration and timing, but the density and how heavy things feel can make us feel separate and lost from it. And I just want to share with you that you're always connected, even in the times when you feel disconnected. Maybe you even feel like you're not really feeling anything, because you're just trying to keep your head above water and you're just trying to survive, trying to get through.
So I just want you to know that you're not alone in your challenges. We do all experience them in a variety of ways, a variety of timelines, a variety of even reasons. Some people, it might be health challenges. Some people, it's relationship focused. Some people, it's financial, career, existential purpose. Like again, it's all part of the journey. We're all here to just keep experiencing the vastness of what life has to offer.
And you taking a break to breathe love as often as you can throughout the day, and every day, is what helps you to realign with what's true for you in each moment. So even in these periods that feel dark or heavy, or that you're alone, you can still take a break and breathe love. Connect with your breath, with your heart, with your body, connect with the ground beneath you that supports you. And I invite you to do that now.
Let's take a break and breathe love together. I invite you to rub your hands together. You can make your eyes open, and just look at your hands, or you can close them, and just feel the sensation between your palms as you're rubbing your hands together. And you can move them fast, you can move them slow. Again, there's no one right way to any of this. So just focus on those hands.
And I invite you to just slow them down. Just gradually start creating just a little space between the palms of your hands. And just tune in and see if you can sense. Do you feel any light waves, any electrical pulses, energy in your fingers and hands, between the palms? Just tune in to that subtleness.
I'm gonna invite you to put one hand on your heart, and the other hand wherever your body is calling for that contact, that love, that light. And then deep inhale through your nose. Second inhale, nice, tall spine. And then exhale long and slow out your mouth, just releasing, relaxing, and letting go. You don't need to carry it anymore. Just continue at your own pace, taking that nice deep inhale through your nose, second inhale, belly lengthening your spine. And then nice, long and slow exhale. Just really relax. Let go of whatever you've been carrying.
One more, nice deep inhale. Second inhale. And then long and slow, out your mouth. And just again, you're tuning in, you're connecting with your heart, connecting with this moment, being fully present.
I invite you to say to yourself out loud or silently: I am here. I am safe. And I am loved.
This is so important. I'm aware of my own journey as a highly sensitive woman, and how strongly I felt criticism and judgment from others. And that is what's true for those of us who are highly sensitive. We experience criticism on a deeper level, again, because we have the step of processing. So we're thinking about things more, and we're feeling things more deeply. So I remember those days, and I just remember how frustrating it could be to feel like, geez, nothing I do is ever good enough, right? That's just what I experienced from other people's opinions, not to say that I didn't have people in my life who loved me and supported me, or that I had careers and colleagues and supervisors who would certainly speak to my strengths. But sometimes we do inherit this. It's like compounded. Like you have one experience where somebody is judgmental, or maybe they're not. Maybe they're just talking about something that has happened before, and it's interpreted by you as judgment, maybe they didn't mean it that way at all.
But this is why it's so important to understand and tune in to what is the inner dialogue that you're experiencing. And we feel it first, right? And I often say like when you are feeling those like on the map of consciousness the lower level feelings like fear and guilt and shame, like those feel so horrible because we're believing something that's not true, right? But we can have that skewed perspective that interprets something that we may have done, something that we may have experienced as a true judgment about our character, about our true nature. And that's really important to understand because again as humans we all are living and learning, and so it's not like anybody walks this path and is making the perfect right decision in every single situation.
So some choices we make, they do feel crummy. We don't feel good about it, right? But that's also there to show us like, is that how you want to show up in the world? Is that how you want to treat yourself? Is that how you want to treat somebody else? So it's feedback, and again as highly sensitive individuals we feel these things so much more deeply, which is why I absolutely want you to see the power and feel the power in taking a break and breathing love throughout your day. Because even if something came up, even if you said something and then you later were like, oh, why did I say that? Or I didn't mean it that way. Sometimes that can just compound your own self-judgment, your own self-blame. But when you can take a break and breathe love into that, and to realize that it's about your ability to see it, to feel it, which allows you to heal it and not carry it forward. We're not our mistakes, right? We're not the things that we view or others may point out as being wrong or not optimal, right? We are all here for a variety of different experiences and perspectives, and our timelines and our time frames for learning information is different for all of us.
But I know that especially here in America where I am born and raised, when we are put in a schooled environment for over a decade of our early development, we're just looking around and there's so much comparison and there's so much that constricts us to like a box. Like, oh, this is the way I'm supposed to live. This is what I'm supposed to do, right? And not that that affects everybody strongly. Some people find that being in that box in a schooled situation sets them free where they're like, I want to travel the world, I don't want a 9 to 5 job, I don't want to go to college, right? And there's plenty of people out there who are doing exactly what they want to do.
So my invitation is for you to just tune in to you more often, so you know like, how aligned and true is each day for you? So the work I do, I call The Re-Aligned Journey, is all about just acknowledging that it is a journey, right? I've said before, I had a profound shift in consciousness, a spiritual awakening, a soul remembrance, right? Whatever you wanna call it. And it has not been easy despite waking up and remembering these things, you know? So I call it the realigned journey because it's something that we continue to do, right? We keep coming home to ourselves. We keep realigning what's true for who we are, each of us, as divine human beings, right?
But oftentimes especially for highly sensitive women we see the needs of others. We want to be helpful, we want to give and give and give. And we also experience that depletion, that exhaustion, and we don't understand why our health all of a sudden is showing up all these different issues. Sometimes we do notice it's a more gradual, but sometimes for people it just comes on all at once like, what? I thought I was so healthy, and all of a sudden these medical emergencies happen, right?
So again, I speak so that you can slow yourself down, recognize the power and the importance of rest, of tuning into you, to really caring for yourself. And to consider, has life been compounding more stressful than restful for you? Have you needed to look outside yourself to help calm yourself? And I don't mean, there's a lot of wonderful modalities and tools that we of course can access ourselves or work with a professional, but sometimes individuals will use a substance and they feel like, well, this helps me relax, I know it works so let me do it, it can't be that bad, right? But again in my line of work as an integrative mental health professional and a quantum biology for health informed approach, I just love to shine a light on how there's so much more that can support each of us as we realign with our divine human nature. And the less we rely on substances, and just work on developing a deeper connection and relationship and understanding with how the mind operates and what the body's communicating and what each of our unique bodies need.
Like what my body needs. As somebody who developed an autoimmune condition, Hashimoto's hypothyroidism over 20 years ago, I know I am in optimal health, and there's things that I do every single day to support my body, to support my mind, so that I can enjoy my life to the fullest, and I can appreciate all the beauty and abundance that is all around me, and to celebrate the relationships and just all the wonderful aspects. So I just want to encourage you to again remember that tuning into you is number one. And that when you have tended to your needs first, then and only then do you have something that you can share with another. And if you're a highly sensitive mom, I know that can be really challenging to wake up to after you've already been doing something for a long time because I didn't understand this stuff until after I already was a mom and already was depleted. But I assure you, you can do it. It may be a journey to get there, but it's just one breath at a time, one moment, one step, one decision, right? Like you don't have to go from A to Z in one day.
So if something in today's conversation resonated with you and you'd like to explore working together, you can find all the current ways to do that on my website, realignwithmelissa.com. And there is a page, Ways to Work With Me, that outlines holistic psychotherapy, embodied somatic therapy intensive, and then also my other offerings with the Re-Align Circle and Rise & Realign immersive and different things because again I know that not everybody is looking for the same thing. Not everybody is interested in deep dive therapy, right? And that's okay, I honor each person wherever they are and respect your decisions.
So before we close, I invite you to return to your breath. To your body. To what feels true for you right now. There's nothing you need to fix, just notice what's here.
Where the heart leads, the body remembers, and the soul awakens. As a reminder, we are here together to rise, reclaim, remember. And as always, I'm so grateful that you're here. You are so important. Your journey, your voice, your presence, all matters. And if you'd like to walk this sensitive and strong, realigned path with me, you can explore everything at realignwithmelissa.com.
Take good care of you. Much love and light.
