Highlights of the 2023 Sensitive Success Summit – Part 4

If you’ve been practicing the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) and slept on the 2023 Sensitive Success Summit, an online international celebration of the HSP Trait created by Frida Kabo, you’re in good company.

If you missed Week 3, here are the Highlights from Week 3. I couldn’t watch and participate daily, but I did want to take the time, at my own pace, to benefit from the gems dropped in these half-hour interviews.

All speakers are Highly Sensitive, and each shared their stories, along with what they’ve been learning and finding helpful.

Here are the highlights of these conversations.

 

WEEK 4

 

Georgia Roberts – What is Breathwork?

Georgia, a former actress and pilates instructor, gained experience and certification in Breathwork to get back to the centre. We’ll be exploring various techniques to seamlessly incorporate Breathwork into your daily life. Georgia offers valuable tips, insights, and strategies for managing your feelings better.

She relates that breath is our connection to our soul selves. She believes breath is the bridge between spirit and earth. It’s an easy way to get grounded, centred and calm.

Being aware of our breath allows us to notice, without judgment, how we’re feeling.

Take the time to see how you feel when you’re doing Breathwork. Is your breath getting caught in your throat? Notice where your breath is going? Do you feel anxiety when you notice your breath? Do your ribs expand when you breathe? Does your pelvis open up when you breathe?

Georgia believes our breath is its own entity, it is our life partner and has so much to teach us.

Breathwork is a nourishing, opening process. A process where we can feel safe. 

There are breathwork practices where we are taught to aggressively breathe, to relive the trauma, and to bring things up. This isn’t helpful for highly sensitives whose nervous systems don’t need this added stimuli. Breathwork that focuses only on noticing is particularly helpful for highly sensitives.

Breathwork can be a valuable tool for highly sensitives to emotionally regulate.

There’s a breathwork that is specifically designed to address anxiety and a breathwork practice specifically designed to address trauma. In each case, the practitioner will have specific credentials and experience. 

Georgia relates that being in nature when practicing Breathwork is a beneficial practice for highly sensitives. Feeling the rhythm of what we’re surrounded by in the natural space is grounding and uplifting for highly sensitives.

You can find Georgia at www.georgia-roberts.com

 

Paula Restrict – Menopause

Paula is a psychotherapist who specializes in a trauma-informed approach focusing on menopause and midlife mental health for Highly Sensitive women so they can navigate this natural transition with strength and resilience.

Often, women who are perimenopausal or menopausal are prescribed medication for symptoms like physical and mental exhaustion, fatigue, brain fog, mood swings and anxiousness.

Paula was overprescribed medication (she’s highly sensitive, and her nervous system didn’t require such a high dosage of medicine).

She then noticed that the symptoms of menopause weren’t just symptoms of menopause; they were also symptoms of anxiety and trauma.

Paula relates that menopause is a process in a woman’s life where her reproductive hormones – progesterone, estrogen and testosterone start to fluctuate and decline.

She believes that highly sensitive women can have a more heightened experience of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, potentially because highly sensitives are already predisposed to these symptoms. This is where the focus on mental health comes in. 

Highly Sensitive women who have had adverse childhood experiences have more hyper-awareness / hypervigilance symptoms and are more vulnerable to more heightened perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms.  

Highly Sensitive women who are going through perimenopausal or menopause may experience a heightened experience of their senses, for example, and may recognize that their senses, or specific senses, like noise, affect them more. Which impacts how they feel.

Paula recommends using somatic techniques and tools to help regulate the nervous system, meaning getting into the body, because highly sensitives are deep thinkers and may need to calm the mind and marry the body and mind together.

Combining this with rest and clearing out relationships that are draining can allow for a more resilient experience of perimenopause and menopause.

Paula offers a free Trauma and Menopause Symptoms Questionnaire quiz for highly sensitive women here: www.thebrainbodymethod.com/free-resources.

You can find Paula at www.thebrainbodymethod.com.

 

Kareena Heart – Exploring Shaking Medicine

Kareena has a background in performing arts, including dance and choreography. She focused on yoga and transitioned to focus on body (or somatic) movement as a healing modality. Learn how this rhythm reduces stress, leading to relaxation and revitalization for improved well-being.

She relates that the scientific name for “Shaking Medicine” is called Neurogenic Therapeutic Tremoring, also known as Therapeutic Tremoring.

Interestingly, Shaking Medicine was established by the Kalahari Bushmen, and it is an ancient practice; as such, it’s a well-established health-promoting practice.

Kareena notes we all have an innate primal healing ability to heal ourselves using this modality.

Shaking Medicine is about connecting with our nervous system and allowing the intelligent body to do what it naturally does: release and heal.

These tremors help to reduce over-activity in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. The body’s complex neuroendocrine system regulates our stress response, our emotions, energy storage, and release.

We are voluntarily shaking the body.

What we’re striving for is to experience involuntary shaking or to experience the body shaking you. When this happens, it means your body is allowing itself to heal.

It’s about gently working within your own range of motion while breathing deeply, either in through the nose and out through the mouth or breathing in through the nose and out through the nose.

It’s important to stop after a shaking exercise or ‘pose’ and notice how your body is feeling and how the body part you were shaking feels, and then profoundly relax. Then, see if anything is different.

There may be a tingling sense. We can then invite the whole body to involuntarily shake or to tremor. When first starting, it may take a few sessions to activate your tremor.

Shaking Medicine is a re-setting of the nervous system.

Vitality will increase, the immune system will be strengthened, symptoms of fatigue will decrease, and sleeping at night will be more refreshing. We’re releasing tension through the tissues. This may be the same feeling you feel after a massage. 

Shaking Medicine can be tailored to individual needs, for example, pregnancy and those who’re dealing with an illness. It is a fun way to activate your healing.

You can try out Shaking Medicine on Kareena’s YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/@KareenaHeart, and you can follow her on Instagram at www.instagram.com/@kareenaheart.

 

Anita Popat – Using Social Media for Change

Anita is a Social Media Strategist specializing in helping sensitive introverts in service-based businesses create engaging content that attracts clients. Explore the power of social media for effecting change in our modern world.

She relates it’s a good idea to have a social media strategy and know what you’re trying to achieve with your social media.

A system, or plan, includes how often you’re going to post, what you’re going to post and to mix up your content.

Frida asked how do you find the balance? How do you know what works for you? Because social media can feel overwhelming.

Anita suggests in order to find the balance, it’s about becoming confident (which can take time and practice) as well as really becoming clear about who you want to help and then knowing your purpose.

Anita suggests choosing a platform(s) you like spending time in and where your ideal clients are.

She recommends avoiding trying to be on “all” the platforms, as it’s not sustainable. Meaning it’s about more than just posting content; you need to engage with people on the platform. 

It’s essential you feel comfortable on social media and find your own way of doing things and saying what you want to say.

She relates sensitive introverts must manage their time on social media, so setting a time limit. 

You can find Anita at www.anitapopat.com and on Instagram at @itsanitapopat.

 

Dr. Lisa Winters – Connecting with Animals

Dr. Lisa Winters is a veterinarian, pet tarot, and animal communication expert. She uses her skills in animal communication to empower pet owners to advocate for animals and co-create for a better world.

She relates that animals communicate with us in the way that offers the least resistance.

She teaches animal owners how to “listen” to their pets. Animals communicate with their body language, their voice and a myriad of other ways.

She believes highly sensitives connect with animals so easily because animals are non-threatening, they give unconditional love, they live in the moment, and they are here to teach us and to help us heal (as well as heal with them). 

Often, the animal(s) that come into our lives will have quirky characteristics and mirror things (e.g. anxiety) that are there for us to heal with our pet. It’s not just ‘pets,’ though.

Dr. Winters relates we can communicate with our spirit animal or totem animal as well.

Dr. Lisa Winters guarantees you’re already having conversations with your animal. It’s a matter of learning to connect with the animal and (with the assistance of a mentor) developing the skills to ‘hear’ what the animal is ‘saying’ back to you.

Losing a pet can be a difficult thing for a highly sensitive, as they connect deeply with their pets. But Dr. Winters advises that that pet came into your life (to help you with something) for a specific reason.

She believes when a pet dies, they are still ‘around’ and care for you. Dr. Winters also does pet memory readings for owners whose pet has transitioned.

You can find Dr. Lisa Winters at www.animalconnection.net/link-in-bio.

 

Charlie Ropsy – Creating a Home

A Home Alchemy expert specializing in Classical Feng Shui, design, and personal development. Charlie offers personalized guidance and uplift-conscious living products to enhance your lifestyle. 

Charlie relates that as a highly sensitive, she’s always struggled with her environments. They were either too hot, cold, or humid, or not humid enough, or too many ‘things’ around, etc.

She related that this also caused her to not feel comfortable in her own body, contributing to her already existing feeling of ‘not belonging.’

She believes it’s essential to create a home that feels safe and supportive and enhances your experience of ‘life.’

Charlie believes ‘home’ is acceptance. Home alchemy is a holistic way of creating your ‘home space.’ It’s a way of arranging ‘energy’ in your home and how energy flows in your home.

So, as we make changes to our ‘home,’ we will notice a change in the energy of our home. She believes we need to strive to be in balance in our home environment.

She suggests we can start transforming our home into a more accepting place for us by choosing one room or one corner of a room and asking ourselves, “How do you feel about that space?” The colour, the shape, the texture, the patterns. What comes up in your body or your mind?

Use your imagination to visualize what changes you could make and see how those changes make you feel.

Of course, de-cluttering is a powerful tool to use. One drawer at a time, one closet at a time. There are things we’re holding on to that we don’t necessarily need, but we do for emotional reasons. 

In this case, we can create a ritual where we express gratitude for the memories attached to the item and then find a new home for it (give, sell, etc..).

In this way, we open up the space the item was taking up to allow for new opportunities and new experiences in our lives. This is a form of self-care.

The critical thing to remember is there’s no ‘perfect’; only what works for you; your home needs to be a place where you can rejuvenate. 

Charlie feels we must create a space “where we belong” where we feel connected and comfortable in our environment.

You can find Charle at www.charlieropsy.com.

 

Linda Westlund – Following the Moon

An Intuitive Healer and Modern Mystic on a mission to help Highly Sensitives live a life of love rather than fear by using techniques like Soul Coaching, Intuitive Writing Healing, and Moonology. Linda explores how the moon’s energy can strengthen your connection to the world around you.

Linda relates that she feels highly sensitives are much more connected to the natural environment than they may know.

So, the moon’s phases or transits can affect highly sensitives more. It’s a matter of working with the natural cycles of life.

If we use this information, according to our astrological sign, we can adjust our schedule to be more productive or get more out of our rest time. 

There are other tools we can use. For example, on a new moon, we can write down what we want to create, setting an intention.

On a full moon, we can write down, or set an intention, on what we want to release from our life.

Linda relates that, as a society, we seem to “push” into things instead of setting intentions, taking action on those intentions and allowing for the mindset of receptivity.

So, moving from ‘fighting to move upstream’ to ‘receiving’ or working ‘with’ life instead of feeling like we’re fighting to move upstream. 

You can start by getting curious about the moon phases and begin tracking them and noticing people’s behaviours and how they correspond to the moon.

You can find Linda at www.facebook.com/linda.i.westlund.

 

Birgitta Granstom – The Weird Ones

Birgitta Granstrom will emphasize celebrating individuality and the beauty of being different or “weird.” She’s a pioneer in the coaching industry with expertise in personal development and leadership. Notably, she founded the first ICF Accredited Coach training program in Sweden and served as the president of ICF Nordic in Stockholm.

Birgitta believes that highly sensitives know they’re different because they want answers to the hard questions, the “whys” of life. They tend to have a more advanced awareness.

She notes that the ‘weird ones’ are very good at adapting; however, adapting too often can cause problems, in that doing this too much can cause mental health issues.

She further notes you’ll know you’re hiding your ‘weirdness’ if you feel symptoms like frustration, sadness and confusion.

Birgitta believes our ‘weirdness’ or neurodiversity is something to be celebrated and urges you to become more curious about yourself. It’s also essential you find community or support.

She adds that you need to know “where” and “when” you use your weirdness. So, share your weirdness with those you trust.

You can find more weird ones at https://www.lifespideracademy.com.

 

Cam Nicols – Force of Nature

Cam is Certified as a life coach, guiding and empowering sensitive individuals to find their voices and actively engage in life. Known for emotional and psychological expertise.

Cam believes that highly sensitives have an intuitive understanding of how nature works and how the natural work works. He thinks we can harness this understanding and become our own force of nature.

He relates it’s a matter of aligning and finding balance within ourselves. 

Understanding our emotions plays a big part in this.

Emotional understanding and emotional regulation, coming from a space of non-judgement, are tools we can use to help us.

He goes on to say that the conditioning and ‘roles’ we feel pressured into filling throughout our lives mean we’ll need to detangle ourselves from who we were taught we ‘need’ to be (to belong).

In fact, we need to embrace our diversity and our uniqueness. When we do this, we come from a place of authenticity.

He notes there are things we do or ways we’ll behave that show us more about us. Viewing this with curiosity is helpful. 

Cam relates we can look at what is our biggest weakness and how is it a positive? 

For example, procrastinators. We can think we’re a big procrastinator. But why? Do you procrastinate on that task because you don’t like doing it? Because what that’s really telling you is where you don’t want to place your energy.

Another example is where or from whom does my negative self-talk originate or come from? Is that something you believe, or does it have to do with someone else?

Cam adds that it’s good for highly sensitives who are going through a challenging time and experiencing difficult emotions to know that, just like nature, when we remove judgement of those emotions and allow them to be, they will change. 

You can find Cam at www.coachwithcam.com.

 

Let us know if you found any helpful gems. For sure, I found tons of valuable treasures throughout this online summit for Highly Sensitives!

The following blog post will be an overall review of the patterns we noticed throughout the Sensitive Success Summit.