Becoming the Ocean

I’m a very sensitive person.

As I’ve peeled away layers of trauma and opened myself more to life, I’ve noticed that my sensitivity hasn’t dulled—it’s sharpened. I can feel the energy of my loved ones, my clients, my friends, my family, even strangers. Sometimes it hits me like a quiet ripple; other times, it floods through me like a wave I didn’t see coming. And often, it’s without my conscious permission.

For the longest time, I believed the answer was boundaries.
The logic made sense: if I could limit how much energy exchanged between myself and others, maybe I could stay grounded. Stay calm. Stay me.
But the thing is, it never quite worked the way I hoped.

Energetic boundaries aren’t like bank limits or time blocks. They’re not tangible. They don’t come with clear metrics or neat formulas. And for someone like me—someone who sees herself as a healer—shutting down, closing off, or running away didn’t feel like a real option. I wasn’t interested in not feeling. I just didn’t want to drown in everyone else’s feelings.

So I tried something else.
I thought: Maybe I need better tools to release what I take in.
If I could learn to cry without shame, breathe deeply, shake it off, cleanse it out—then maybe I could keep receiving without collapsing.
But even then, even with the tears and the self-compassion, I would sometimes still spiral.
I’d feel myself drift far from my center, far from my own life, my own voice. And I couldn’t figure out why.

I brought all of this to my teacher.

He reminded me of an old truth from yoga philosophy:
Emotions are like a drop of ink. If you drop that ink into a small cup of water, the whole cup changes color. It becomes something else.
But if you drop that same ink into a river, into an ocean—it dissolves. The river keeps flowing. The ocean stays vast.

He said “Expand your container Become the ocean”

That’s when it clicked.
The goal isn’t to shrink away from life. It’s not about building walls or fearing connection.
The real solution is to expand. To become so grounded in who I am, so aligned in my body, so deeply resourced in wisdom and tools and practice—that I can hold it all.

Don’t try to build a lid on a cup.
Focus on becoming the ocean.

💙A Poem by Khalil Gilbran💙

“It is said that before entering the sea

A river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has travelled,

from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

💙
U