holistic wellness

Understanding Energy Absorption: Tips for Empaths

/ Eric Dickson / Leave a comment

Have you ever woken up feeling heavy, anxious, or unsettled — without knowing why? Sometimes it feels like the emotions in your body don’t even belong to you. For empaths and sensitive people, this is more common than you might think. We’re wired to pick up on the energy of others, and if we don’t learn how to recognize it, we can end up carrying weight that isn’t ours to bear.

The good news? You can learn to tell the difference between your own emotions and the energy you’ve absorbed from others. And with awareness comes the power to release what isn’t yours and reconnect to your true self.

Why We Absorb Energy

Humans are social beings. Our brains have what scientists call “mirror neurons,” which help us empathize by reflecting the emotions we see in others. This is beautiful — it’s what makes compassion possible. But for empaths and spiritually sensitive people, this ability is turned up extra high.

It means you can walk into a room and immediately sense the mood. It means when a friend is upset, you might leave the conversation feeling just as heavy as they do. Over time, this can blur the line between your energy and everyone else’s.

The Cost of Carrying What Isn’t Yours

When you unknowingly carry other people’s energy, you might experience:

  • Sudden anxiety or sadness without a clear reason.
  • Feeling drained after social situations.
  • A sense of being “off” or disconnected from yourself.
  • Physical tension, especially in the chest, stomach, or shoulders.

The danger isn’t just the discomfort — it’s that you can start making decisions based on emotions that don’t even belong to you. Instead of living from your authentic center, you’re living from borrowed energy.

Practices to Discern Your Own Energy

So how do you tell what’s yours and what’s not? Here are some powerful starting points:

  1. The Daily Check-In
     Pause throughout the day and ask yourself: “What am I feeling right now? When did this feeling start?”
     If you can trace the emotion back to a conversation, a crowded room, or even scrolling social media — chances are it’s not fully yours.
  2. Ground Through Breath and Body
     A few slow belly breaths with your hand on your heart or stomach can reset your nervous system. Imagine roots growing from your feet into the earth, releasing any energy that isn’t yours.
  3. Journal for Clarity
     Writing down how you feel, and what might have triggered it, helps you see patterns. Over time, you’ll notice what feelings belong to you and what you’re picking up externally.

How to Release Energy That Isn’t Yours

Once you’ve noticed what doesn’t belong to you, the next step is letting it go. Try one of these simple practices:

  • Visualization: Imagine gathering the foreign energy like smoke in your hands, then releasing it into the earth or into a cleansing light.
  • Water Ritual: A shower, bath, or even washing your hands can be symbolic of rinsing away what’s not yours.
  • Affirmations: Speak words like:
    “I return to myself. I honor my own energy. I release what does not belong to me.”

These practices don’t just protect you — they bring you back home to yourself.

Final Thoughts

Being sensitive to energy is not a curse — it’s a gift. It allows you to empathize, connect, and support others in ways not everyone can. But that gift only works if you also protect your own well-being.

The next time you feel heavy, anxious, or unsettled, pause and ask:

  • “Is this mine?”
  • “Where did this come from?”
  • “Do I want to carry this?”

Remember: awareness is power. When you learn to discern your own energy from what you’ve absorbed, you step into clarity, peace, and freedom.

You deserve to feel the difference between what belongs to you and what doesn’t. And when you release what isn’t yours, you make more space for your truth.

How to Decode the Hidden Messages Your Body Sends Every Day

/ Eric Dickson / Leave a comment

Eric Dickson | Mindful Mountain Wellness

Discover how to reconnect with your body’s wisdom. Learn practical steps to interpret physical sensations as emotional signals and create lasting mind-body harmony.

Your body has been speaking to you your whole life.
It whispers in subtle tightness, sighs in deep exhalations, and sometimes shouts in headaches, fatigue, or a racing heartbeat.
But in our fast-paced world, we’ve been trained to ignore it — to push through discomfort and numb the signals. What if those sensations aren’t inconveniences, but messages? What if they are your body’s way of guiding you back to balance?

The Mind-Body Bridge Explained

The “mind-body bridge” is the living connection between your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
Neuroscience confirms that emotions aren’t just in your head — they’re stored and expressed throughout the body via the nervous system, hormones, and muscle memory.  Sometimes, anxiety might show up as a tight chest.  Unresolved grief can feel like a heavy weight on your shoulders.  Excitement might make your stomach flutter.

When you learn to recognize and interpret these sensations, you create a bridge — a two-way channel of understanding between your mind and body.

Why We’ve Lost Touch

Many of us learned early on to “toughen up,” “walk it off,” or “get over it.”
Modern life reinforces this disconnection — endless screen time, constant notifications, and the pressure to stay busy leave little space for stillness.
We’ve been conditioned to treat symptoms instead of exploring their root cause, silencing the body’s voice in the process.  So often these days we are steered towards medications, instead of being guided to reconnect to ourselves and our bodies.

How to Reconnect with Your Body’s Messages

1. Start with Stillness

Even a few minutes of mindful breathing can quiet the mental noise and let the body’s signals emerge. Try placing a hand over your heart and breathing slowly until you feel your body soften.

2. Scan Without Judgment

Close your eyes and mentally scan from head to toe. Notice sensations — warmth, coolness, tension, tingling — without labeling them “good” or “bad.”

3. Name the Sensation and Emotion

Once you’ve identified where you feel something, ask yourself: What emotion might be linked to this? Sometimes the answer comes immediately; other times, it emerges slowly.

4. Respond with Compassion

Instead of ignoring discomfort, ask: What is my body asking for right now? It might be rest, movement, hydration, or an emotional release like journaling or talking to a friend.

The Benefits of Listening to Your Body

By reconnecting with your body, and really listening, you can reduce stress through faster recognition of tension and triggers.  It can also help to improve emotional regulation by finding and addressing the root cause of these emotions.  Taking the time to sit, scan, and listen to your body will help you gain a greater level of self-trust, and help you learn your body’s unique language.  The more you work on reconnecting with your body, you will gain better physical wellness through proactive care, instead of always dealing with crisis management.

A Simple Daily Practice

Each evening, take 2–3 minutes to reflect:

  • Where did I feel the most tension today?
  • What might have caused it?
  • How can I care for that part of my body tomorrow?

Over time, this small habit rebuilds the mind-body bridge — turning physical sensations into allies rather than obstacles.

Closing Inspiration

Your body is not your enemy.
It’s not a machine to be pushed until it breaks — it’s a wise companion with a language of its own. The more you listen, the more it speaks in clarity instead of crisis.
So pause. Breathe. Feel. The bridge is already there, waiting for you to cross.

Spirituality Without Labels: Find Your Peace

/ Eric Dickson / Leave a comment

By Eric Dickson | Mindful Mountain Wellness

What if I told you that your spiritual path doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s?

No white robes. No crystals. No yoga mat required.
Just you—and whatever helps you feel more connected, more grounded, more you.

Spirituality isn’t a checklist. It’s a relationship.
And the more we try to force it into a mold, the further we drift from its truth.

Let’s break the illusion that there’s a “right” way to be spiritual—and explore what it might look like to reclaim that word on your own terms.

Spirituality Doesn’t Require a Label

You don’t need to call yourself “spiritual” to live a deeply spiritual life.  The most important thing is to find the activities in your life when you feel most connected, at peace, and in a flow state.

Some people feel most connected when they are hiking through the woods or watching a sunset.  For others, it’s when they are creating, whether that looks like drawing, journaling, making music, or woodworking.  Sometimes it may just look like sitting silently in the morning with you coffee after doing some breath work.

You don’t need a guru, a doctrine, or a certain set of beliefs.
You just need to listen—to your own inner world, and the way life moves through you.

You Don’t Have to “Look” Spiritual

Spirituality doesn’t come with a dress code.

You don’t have to wear flowing clothes, chant in Sanskrit, or meditate for 2 hours a day.
You can be tattooed, messy, skeptical, and still be deeply connected to something greater than yourself.

You don’t need to change how you look to validate what you feel.

You don’t need anyone else’s approval, or for them to even know you are spiritual.
You don’t have to perform peace to earn belonging.

Real spirituality is lived, not displayed.

Your Practice Can Be Private (or Loud)

Some people pray out loud. Some journal. Some dance, cry, or walk barefoot in the rain.
Some never speak a word about their inner life—and that’s okay too.

Your practice doesn’t have to be public, perfect, or structured.
It just has to be authentic.

If your version of spirituality is lighting a candle and sitting in stillness for 5 minutes before bed… that counts.
If it’s blasting music and losing yourself in movement… that counts.
If it’s tending your garden or holding someone’s hand with presence… that counts.

It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of your spiritual practice, all that matters is that it feels good to you.

You Don’t Have to Be Calm All the Time

There’s this idea that being spiritual means being serene and blissed-out all the time.
But healing is messy. Awakening is uncomfortable.

You’re allowed to have bad days, anxiety, anger, grief.
You’re allowed to feel confused, lost, or doubtful.

None of that disqualifies you from being on a spiritual path.
In fact, those moments are the path.

The spiritual path of healing is not linear, it’s a spiral.  It can bring you back to tough situations and emotions, and will most likely keep bringing you back until you learn the lessons you need from those situations.

Your emotions don’t make you less spiritual. They make you human.

Your Path Will Evolve (Let It)

Who you are spiritually at 25 may look nothing like who you’ll be at 45.
And that’s a good thing.

You’re meant to grow. To outgrow. To question. To return.

Spirituality is a relationship with yourself and the world—it’s supposed to shift as you do.
You don’t have to cling to old beliefs out of obligation.
You’re allowed to let go of what no longer resonates and make space for what does.  In fact it is important to take inventory of your beliefs, and really analyze whether those are really your beliefs, or if they were taught to you before you were old enough to question them.

Trust the ebb and flow. Trust yourself.

Final Thoughts: Your Way Is the Way

There’s no handbook. No single truth. No checklist of rituals or rules.
There’s only this question:

What helps you feel connected, alive, and at peace?
Do that. Follow that. Trust that.

Your spiritual path is valid, even if no one else understands it.
Even if it doesn’t fit in a box.
Even if it’s still unfolding.

You’re not behind. You’re not missing anything. You’re already on the path—your path.

And that is enough.