Embodied Boundaries For Highly-Sensing Souls

While most boundary advice focuses on words, scripts, or “better assertiveness,” in this talk, I explore boundaries through a somatic and spiritual lens, as a highly-sensing human.

Through personal stories, we’ll look at how boundaries begin inside the body: noticing sensations, honoring nudges, and practicing alignment moment by moment. These tiny, everyday attunements are potent, strengthening intuition and growing trust in the Great Mother/Source/God's Divine orchestration.

I share two simple practices that I continue using to this day, which help my body learn it's safe to ask for what I need. This offering is an invitation to listen gently, practice slowly, and let the body lead.

Transcript

Hello.

Welcome.

Today I want to explore something I've been navigating for years as a deep-sensing human.

Living in alignment with what's true for my body,

Even when that truth feels uncomfortable,

Or goes against expectations,

Or brings up sensations I'd rather not feel.

This isn't a talk about better boundaries,

Having the right words,

Gaining courage,

Or overcoming quote-unquote people-pleasing tendencies.

It's an exploration of listening,

Of learning the quiet language of the body,

The subtle signals,

Sensations,

And nudges that guide us moment by moment in the great web.

Because what I've come to trust is this.

Boundaries don't begin with words or courage.

They begin with the body's capacity to notice and stay with sensation.

And this capacity grows slowly through practice,

Through patience,

Through intentional listening,

Through devotion.

I'll share a few stories from my life and two of the specific ways I practice.

This is a skill I'm continuing to learn and one I imagine I'll be practicing for the rest of my life.

So I'll begin with a story.

I was planning to meet with a client on a Thursday.

She texted me early in the week and asked,

Would it be possible to push back our meeting to next week?

Then she said a family member had passed away and the funeral would be Thursday.

She wanted to attend.

Plus,

An appointment of hers was moved to Thursday also,

So she might not be feeling well enough for our meeting.

She closed by asking me,

Would it be okay to push our meeting to next week?

I could viscerally feel this person gimping her power to me in that wording.

She was letting me decide if she can attend this funeral or not.

She was letting me decide if she can rest after the medical appointment or not.

And it felt wrong for me to make that decision.

Now,

There's a lot of conversation these days about knowing your boundaries,

Having better boundaries,

Or speaking up for yourself.

Most advice would say that this person should have clearly stated,

I need to cancel on Thursday.

No explanation necessary.

And while yes,

That language adjustment is firmer and clearer,

And while there are books full of useful scripts,

Boundaries aren't just words.

They begin inside the body with what we can safely feel,

Tolerate,

And express.

What's missing from most boundary advice is this somatic and energetic lens.

For some highly sensitive or deep-sensing bodies,

Saying or typing those words in that moment might be beyond capacity.

The body may not be able to tolerate the intensity of sensations that would arise from doing so.

In some bodies,

It can feel incredibly uncomfortable to be with other people's pushback,

Their discomfort,

Anger,

Or disapproval.

It honestly can feel like death.

And I'm not talking metaphorically.

Physiologically,

When stored survival stress is activated,

It can feel like life or death in the body.

It has nothing to do with logic.

I think back to some of my more sensitive years,

And how any given moment on any given day,

My capacity was different.

For example,

It once felt incredibly uncomfortable to ask for something from a waiter in a restaurant,

Or tell a hairdresser when I wasn't pleased with the cut.

True story,

Over a decade ago,

I got my hair cut in Quebec,

And she intentionally cut one side visibly shorter than the other.

And I paid,

Went back to my friend's house who I was visiting,

Found a pair of scissors,

And went to the bathroom mirror.

It also once felt incredibly uncomfortable to tell my boss I'd already watered the plants when she asked me to do so.

I simply said,

Okay,

Even though I'd already done it.

Or in my next story example,

Asking for the music to be turned down.

A few years ago,

I worked a job where we were often driving with other people.

It was a few months after I first learned the words nervous system,

And while I resonated at the time with being sensitive,

Little did I know just how dysregulated my nervous system was at the time.

There was a coworker,

We'll call her Kate,

Who would often play upbeat music in the studio.

Her energy and language also took up lots of space,

Draining my energy.

My body experienced fear and pain around her.

Then I'd experience layers of shame that I felt such fear and dislike of this wonderful human,

Who my tender,

Sensitive body only experienced as a threat.

And my body couldn't make the words to ask for the music to be turned down.

What I didn't know at the time,

But in the years to follow learned to understand,

Was that likely some part of me felt that if I asked her to turn it down,

I would be unliked and cast out of the work crew.

Labeled the sensitive one,

The unfun one,

And I'd lose belonging.

Our number one threat to survival.

A big propeller of living out of alignment with our soul's full expression.

This was not a conscious thought.

It was not something that my knowing could change.

And I don't know at what point or generation this was woven into my energetic and physiological makeup.

A younger me might have layered on blame or shame.

Why can't you speak up?

Have a little courage.

But thankfully,

By this point,

I had enough nervous system basics to know we don't need to know the why or the story.

We're with raw sensations as neutral information.

And what's true is that my body actually couldn't speak the words.

And that music was too loud for me.

And my body does not feel safe around her.

Okay,

That's what's here.

And it was through my body,

Specifically somatic experiencing and nervous system education,

Big gratitude to Irene Lyon's work and my teacher Molly Cairo-May,

That I slowly expanded capacity.

Our physiology can absolutely change.

And for me,

It was through gentle,

Titrated practice across years and years and years,

And it's still changing today.

What can this practice look like?

I'll share two branches here,

Though this topic could be a full course of its own,

And it is,

Elsewhere.

A few years ago,

In an eight-week class on boundaries for highly sensing humans,

Taught by Katherine Liggett,

A fellow Insight Timer teacher,

We practiced in mirrors.

At home,

In an environment with no threats,

No other people,

No reactions to feel,

No belonging to risk,

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and said the words,

Kate,

The music is too loud for me.

Please turn it down.

Over and over,

But slowly,

Not rushing through,

Allowing whatever sensations arose to be there.

It took much slow practice to be able to say those words into a mirror and feel my feet on the ground.

Over time,

I was able to say it with a wide,

Assertive stance.

And let me be clear,

This isn't simply rehearsing a conversation.

This is changing one's physiology.

I was teaching my nervous system it's safe,

Slowly widening its capacity.

Then,

My practice transformed to the second branch,

Embodied imagination.

I would imagine myself at a work site with Kate,

See her come in with a loud stereo,

And feel the sensations that arose in my body.

Then I would see myself asking her to turn it down,

While feeling what that felt like in my body.

For many of us,

This is where boundaries truly begin,

Not with others in conflict or conversation,

But here inside the body.

Within a safe environment,

We practice gently and slowly.

This is how the body learns,

Oh,

I can say these words and I won't die.

My life is not at risk.

It doesn't learn through thoughts and thinking.

It learns by embodied doing or imagining and feeling the sensations.

And over time,

My capacity grew.

Six months later,

I was on a new project with a different co-worker,

Jerry.

He's not someone I had spent time with outside of work and not someone my body felt very comfortable around,

Yet not as scary to my system as Kate.

One day,

He had a podcast playing in our workspace.

After a pause and feeling it was within my capacity in that moment,

I was able to say,

Jerry,

Can we do music instead of the podcast?

Then he put on a 90s rock playlist he'd been playing earlier.

I would have preferred silence,

But I couldn't ask him to turn off the music in that moment.

And still,

It was a huge celebration for me.

I was able to ask Jerry to turn the podcast off.

I grew my edge.

In that class where we practiced speaking in mirrors,

We learned a three-part definition of acting assertively.

The first part was asking clearly for what you want while letting go of the outcomes.

Hearing that first point read felt very scary in my body.

None of my co-workers knew that my nervous system was operating in survival most of the time.

I hardly knew it,

Nor had language to describe this dark night I'd fallen into for years where everything felt upside down.

They didn't know that I collapsed into bed every night after work,

Or that my weekends were spent almost entirely resting just to make it through the next week.

They didn't know how much energy it took for me to be upright,

Social,

And functional,

Or how narrow my window of tolerance truly was.

And I didn't have the capacity to explain any of this.

Explaining was not within my body's window of tolerance.

And I share this all not for sympathy,

But to name an invisible reality many sensitive bodies are living inside.

And this is important to note.

When a system is overwhelmed,

Asking for understanding can feel just as threatening as asking for a need.

In those years,

What I often needed was very simple.

Less noise,

Less stimulation,

More space,

More rest.

But my body could not risk being misunderstood,

Judged,

Or dismissed.

So when I first heard the phrase,

Ask clearly for what you want,

While letting go of the outcome,

It felt terrifying physiologically.

Because letting go of the outcome meant risking disapproval or judgment.

And for my body,

Those felt like loss of belonging.

And loss of belonging felt like death in my body.

And that's a piece so much boundary advice misses.

Now,

That single phrase became my guiding practice for years.

Ask clearly for what you want,

While letting go of the outcomes.

I'm still practicing this to this day.

You can practice through embodied visualization.

Imagining yourself with the other person in the situation and make it as sensory as you can.

See them,

Hear them,

Smells,

Textures.

Feel it in your body and then see yourself asking.

Choose a low stakes scenario and embodied imagine saying what you need.

Do it every night for two weeks and see what happens.

Noticing what you feel in your body.

Two minutes a day,

Truly.

Try it.

So I've found what's needed to strengthen so-called boundaries is somatic awareness.

That's our interoception,

Noticing sensations in the body.

Connection with self.

Connection with the great mother.

Patience.

It's a very slow journey.

Self-love and non-judgment.

Accepting what's here,

Not giving it value of good,

Bad,

Right,

Wrong.

Receiving sensation as neutral information.

Removing a story or telling a wider,

More loving story.

And finally,

Practice with those two branches and more.

And with these qualities,

I played with my edges.

It's that just right push when there's discomfort,

But capacity.

It's tolerable.

This will look so different for each person.

The only one who knows your edge is you.

The one experiencing your body's sensations.

Be aware that when you begin to voice things that you hadn't been able to before,

The people around you are going to respond.

And the responses may be uncomfortable in your system at first.

So by going slowly,

You can titrate and gradually gain familiarity with those uncomfortable sensations.

Here's another example.

Last spring,

I started working in a place where students are asked to take off their shoes because of the winter salt and tracking in mud.

I was tasked with checking in students as they arrived and ensuring no one wore shoes as they proceeded upstairs to their movement class.

Thanks to my highly attuned body,

Even when I was tending to someone making a payment at the front desk,

I knew every time someone was heading up the stairs still in their outdoor shoes.

And also,

Many times,

My body sensed their strong energy,

Their dislike of the shoes-off rule,

And my throat tightened and no words came out of my mouth.

It was too big of an energetic push.

Energy I didn't have.

This wasn't a mind thought.

It happened so quickly.

Energetically saying no and being with potential kickback was too uncomfortable in my body at the time with certain folks.

So I practiced each week.

I noticed when I was able to voice something to the most gentle energy,

And I noticed what it felt like in my body when my mouth stayed shut as I watched a student go up with shoes.

And whether I could voice it or not,

I absolutely celebrated the awareness,

That slow tracking of sensations.

As I got more comfortable in this new environment,

On my fourth week there,

I asked every student to take off their shoes.

It was a huge celebration for me.

And the funny true side story is that after that particular class,

Their teacher told me they were softening on the shoe policy now and I didn't need to ask folks.

So I'm grateful for the weeks I had that opportunity to practice as it absolutely widened my capacity.

Uncomfortable?

Oh yes.

And that's how I grow my edges.

I can't emphasize enough that this is a continual practice.

And to illustrate,

I'll share a final example,

Which is recent for me at the time of this recording.

A few months ago,

I left a part-time job,

Which we'll call Retreat Center,

Because my body gave me the signs,

Which is the Great Mother speaking through me,

Giving direction for my soul's full expression in this body.

Although it was a perfectly lovely people with a perfectly lovely role,

As my practice is to drop the story,

It didn't need to make sense to the mind.

I simply listened to my body.

So the weeks prior to taking action on that decision is a story for another day,

Full of ups and downs and tension between what my soul knew I needed to do and what my mind and fear were communicating.

But ultimately,

I left with strong relationships at the Retreat Center,

Leaving the door open for future one-off projects.

After ending that role,

I got so much energy back.

New paths emerged,

Growing my soul in all the right places.

I'd known in my body and soul that leaving was the right choice.

And yet that new energy I felt afterwards only confirmed the nudges I'd received.

About a month later,

I receive a text from my previous employer at Retreat Center.

She wanted to know if I'd be interested in a short one-time project.

My body immediately constricted.

My energy fell.

I knew right away this was not aligned.

And yet,

Imagining saying no to this person nearly felt more uncomfortable.

So first,

I avoided the text for 24 hours,

Because I didn't want to experience any of those sensations.

Very human.

Then,

I found myself using mind.

Well,

What if it's only four or six hours?

What if I could knock it out in a weekend?

It'd be pretty simple for me.

I already know the ins and outs.

It was incredible how quickly I was making up reasons why I could do this,

Just so I wouldn't have to tell my former employer,

No thank you.

And yet,

I'm committing my life to the practice of creating space for the Great Mother to speak through me,

And actually listening,

Following through,

In the tiny nudges and the larger.

So,

Saying yes,

Simply so I wouldn't have to experience the sensations if I said no,

Was not living in alignment with my greater truth.

Saying yes to a project which didn't light me up was saying no to my soul,

To Source.

The next day,

I took my time crafting a response that felt true.

I imagined saying it and felt very uncomfortable sensations.

I pendulated between a neutral to pleasant sensation,

Back to the uncomfortable ones that arose when I imagined sending this message,

Knowing they will never understand why I'm truly saying no,

How I live in accordance with my body and divine instruction,

Even though I'd said I'd be open to it a month ago,

Letting go of the outcomes.

Then,

I spent a few minutes doing what my system does not do by default,

But what has been a powerful practice for me.

I imagined sending my response,

And that her reply was beautiful and completely accepting.

I have another audio here titled Imagining Wonderful Scenarios if you want to learn more and practice this yourself.

That day,

I was able to send the text,

Turning down the project offer,

And celebrated that I was saying yes to my soul.

And I want to be clear,

What mattered most in this final example wasn't the decision itself.

It wasn't even that I was able to follow through on what my body was asking.

Because while in this case I had the capacity to follow its guidance,

Even when it brought discomfort,

In many other moments the discomfort is too great and I stay with what feels safer to my body.

What I celebrate,

And what matters most,

Is the willingness to listen,

To pause,

To feel the sensations that are within my capacity to feel,

To turn down the volume on other voices and sources so I can hear the quiet nudges of the Great Mother.

And when I do have the capacity to follow through,

Even without a storyline,

Without knowing where she's leading,

I celebrate that too.

This is the practice I'm devoted to.

This is the practice that makes my attunement sharper,

Strengthening my intuition.

This is the practice I return to again and again.

What living in alignment actually looks like.

Not one big dramatic boundary,

But a devotion to noticing,

Over and over again,

What's true in the body,

And slowly learning to trust it.

Sometimes that truth leads us to stay,

Sometimes it leads us to leave,

Sometimes it leads us to say yes,

And sometimes to say no.

And often the most challenging part isn't knowing the truth,

But being willing to feel the uncomfortable sensations that come forth when we honor it.

So as we move towards our closing,

Before you return to your day,

I invite you to pause just for a moment.

Take a breath,

Here and now.

And I invite you to sense into your body,

Is there one sensation you can feel?

This might be tension,

Temperature,

Tingling,

A numbness.

There's no right answer.

Nothing to change,

Nothing to understand or make meaning about.

Raw sensation.

And if noticing sensations is new for you,

Can you feel where your body is making contact with a surface or with the ground?

I'm taking one more breath together.

Great job.

This right here is the practice.

Being willing to pause and listen.

And with each moment of noticing,

You are strengthening a very important capacity.

Our minds are thick with programming and false stories.

Our bodies tell us the truth quietly.

In sensations,

In nudges,

In subtle signals we learn to recognize over time.

When we listen to the body,

Even briefly,

We begin to live a little more in alignment with what's true for us,

For our souls,

With the Great Mother,

Creator,

Source,

God,

With this vibrant web of life.

May you feel supported as you walk this path.

May you feel accompanied by something greater.

May the wisdom of your body guide you to remember who you truly are.

Go well and rooted into your day.

Thank you for being here.