I Don't Protect My Energy. I Transmute It.

Lately, I have been thinking about a phrase I hear often in spiritual circles: "You should protect your energy when working with people."

I understand what people mean when they say it. In many ways, it is well-intentioned advice. We live in a world filled with stress, conflict, grief, fear, and emotional overwhelm. It makes sense that people would want to create boundaries between themselves and experiences that feel heavy.

For years, I tried to adopt this perspective, and yet, if I'm honest, it never sat quite right with me. The more I reflected on it, the more I found myself asking a simple question: If we are all expressions of the same source, why am I protecting myself from another human being?

Not because I am naïve. Not because I think every person is safe. Not because I believe boundaries are unnecessary. But because to me the language of protection often feels rooted in separation. It seemed to suggest that there are people carrying good energy and people carrying bad energy. That some energies should be welcomed and others feared.

Yet when I looked around me, I rarely see good people or bad people. I saw human beings. I see wounds. I see grief. I see joy. I see fear. I see longing. I see people doing the best they can with the level of awareness they possessed at that moment. And underneath all of it, I see the same thing: a spark, a light, a soul. Sometimes shining brightly. Sometimes buried beneath layers of pain.

But always there.

The older I get, the harder it becomes for me to see another person as an energetic threat. What I often see instead is someone vibrating out of coherence. And that feels very different. A person can be angry without being evil. A person can be reactive without being dangerous. A person can be wounded without being toxic. A person can be struggling without being something I need to protect myself from.

That realization has slowly changed how I relate to the idea of energy. Today, I no longer think of myself as someone who absorbs energy. Deeply I've always know I am someone who transmutes it.

Not because I possess some magical ability, but because I have spent years learning how to sit with discomfort. My own discomfort. My own grief. My own anger. My own shame. My own wounds.

For much of my life, I have been an over-functioner. I thought my job was to fix everything, carry everything, manage everyone, and make sure everyone was okay. It has been exhausting. What I have eventually discover is that healing is not about carrying other people's pain. It is about learning how to remain present in its presence.

There is a difference. One depletes us. The other transforms us.

I think this realization has profoundly influenced the way I work at Shoreline Glow. People often ask how I spend so many hours each week in intimate conversation with clients without feeling drained. The truth is that I do not view my clients as energetic burdens. I do not believe they are depositing something into me that I need to remove later.

I see them as human beings navigating life. Some arrive carrying stress. Some arrive carrying heartbreak. Some arrive carrying exhaustion. Some arrive carrying joy and excitement. Some simply need a quiet place to breathe for ninety minutes.

I do not feel responsible for carrying any of it home.

What I try to offer instead is presence. A regulated nervous system. A calm environment. A safe space. A moment of coherence. Because coherence is contagious too. Just as anxiety can spread through a room, so can calm. Just as fear can influence a nervous system, so can peace.

Perhaps what I am really doing during a treatment is not protecting my energy. Perhaps I am cultivating coherence. Holding a frequency of presence long enough that another person remembers what it feels like within themselves.

And maybe that is what healing often is; Not fixing. Not rescuing. Not absorbing. Not protecting. Simply creating conditions where coherence can emerge.

The interesting thing is that when I try to explain this in spiritual circles, people often look at me like I have three heads. Many still seem to view the world through the lens of good versus evil, positive versus negative, high vibration versus low vibration. I understand why. I used to see things that way too. But something about that framework always felt incomplete.

Because the moment we label another person's energy as bad, we are attaching a judgment to an experience that may simply be revealing suffering.

What if what we call negative energy is simply pain? What if what we call low vibration is simply fear? What if what we call darkness is simply a soul that has temporarily lost its way?

I am not suggesting that harmful behavior should be tolerated. Compassion and boundaries can coexist beautifully. I can recognize the light within someone and still choose not to hand them unlimited access to my life. I can see the humanity beneath a person's wounds while also acknowledging when their behavior is harmful.

The difference is that I no longer need to fear them. Because fear assumes there is something to defend against. What if there isn't? What if there is simply a human being standing before us carrying a story we cannot yet see? What if beneath every expression of incoherence exists a deeper longing for wholeness?

Perhaps that is why the idea of transmutation resonates so deeply with me. Not because I believe I am immune to the world. But because I believe awareness itself has a transforming quality. The more conscious we become, the less we need to fear what passes through our lives. We simply meet it. We witness it. We understand it.

And sometimes, through our presence alone, we help it find its way back into coherence.

I no longer see good vibes or bad vibes. I see pure, beautiful energy in motion.

Yes.... Sometimes organized. Sometimes disorganized. Sometimes coherent. Sometimes incoherent. But always carrying information. Always revealing something. Always inviting understanding.

And perhaps that is the greatest shift of all.

I do not need to protect myself from the light hidden beneath another person's wounds. I simply recognize that some people are closer to that light than others at a given moment.

So these days, when someone tells me to protect my energy, I simply smile. Not because I think they are wrong. But because I have come to understand my relationship with energy differently.

I do not absorb..... I transmute.

And where there is transmutation, there is coherence. And where there is coherence, there is often healing. And where there is healing, there is glow.