Shaping Energy to Flow Is the Craft | by Jaclyn Lanae
Soul Craft | Whatever it is, it will move through you
The art of crafting a soul is, at its core, an exercise in energy management. A conscious, loving intentional awareness and adjustment of our own energies, perspectives, and belief systems in order to create a more wholly embodied energetic self. It’s a focused shift of state, not just mood.
Soul crafting encourages us to tune into our most authentic energy, like getting to just the right place on a mountain top to receive a strong cell signal, and then reinforcing that energy so it can be shared out into the world - whether through joining a political movement or being a more present mom or just bubbling over with a joy that uplifts everyone around us.
Of course, tuning into, adjusting, and reinforcing our energy asks that we first sense it.
Last month we talked about what the energy body is, and now it’s time to begin to take up the art of sensing ourselves.
For so many of us, our initial awareness of energy in our bodies and the ability to manage it comes through our emotions. We cerebrally understand happiness, turning it into a thought before we acknowledge its vibration in our bodies; we understand loss before we’re aware of the ache in our chest; we understand disrespect before we notice that it flares in our throat and sends flames roaring up our cheeks.
Societally speaking, however, we are often woefully uneducated in the actual feeling of our feelings. Rather than sit with the discomfort of a wrenching heart, for example, we intellectualize it. We analyze it. We ask ourselves what went wrong, or why it hurts like this.
Of course, this is an absolutely essential part of moving further into our humanity; learning to grow through conflict, and survive pain. The problem, the block, arises when we get stuck in the thinking-it rather than the feeling-it. In the analysis rather than the expression.
This is not a character flaw, it’s often parroted behavior. Either we didn’t have emotionally aware caretakers or parents, or if they were, they spoke to and with us about our emotions rather than helping us to explore the physicality of them – perhaps unintentionally suppressing instead of regulating and exploring. This makes it difficult to “get into” the feeling and allow it to exist as what it is, leaving us aware of the emotion and the knowledge that we’re uncomfortable but unsure what to do from there.
So, we go back to what we were taught or observed.
Maybe we label it as something else. Then, because there isn’t as much emotional attachment to the proxied feeling - or simply because we know better what to do with it - it can also feel like it’s easier to let go of the emotion. To “get over it”.
We “…have a dominant emotion, like anger or anxiety,” says Psychology Today, and “We channel all the energy and focus into that emotion, partly because it helps us avoid other, less familiar feelings".
For example, if, perhaps we felt manipulated by an authority figure we translate that deep violation into a feeling that we know how to process. Our shame or sadness becomes defensiveness, and then superiority. Our grief becomes victimhood, and then anger.
Alternatively, (or additionally) our caregivers may have villainized feelings entirely, or felt shame themselves when they felt… well, anything. They may have tried to express emotions but were punished for doing so. Or they weren’t sure what they were feeling and so, of course, they had no idea what to do with us and our very big, very confusing feelings.
Particularly if our feelings fell outside the “norm” of gendered emotions. Girls are punished for feeling anger or even umbrage, for pride and confidence, and boys are punished for embarrassment or sadness, for gentle lovingness or cherishing. This is part of how boys are socialized to a fragile stoicism and girls into a self-shamed compliance.
We may have gleaned from those scenarios that the way to cope was to lean into our victim-hood and look for someone else to deal with the feelings and make us feel better.
Or, perhaps, our feelings (and by extension, ourselves) we labeled “too much” and so we learned to hide our emotions, or ignore them all together.
The mind is so strong that it can shove all the energy of a deep and complex emotion down into our tissues, and leave it there - unprocessed. But being out of mind does not mean “processed”. Emotions stored as energy in the body fester as do other wounds, and eventually become toxic. Healers of all kinds will attest to the truth that stored trauma creates disease in the body: everything from lupus to chronic fatigue, heart attacks to ulcers can be rooted in unprocessed emotions.
Again, avoiding emotional processing is not a character flaw. Nor is it a signal that we’re broken. The behavior is a normalized, conditioned, modeled response to deep emotional pain or intense feeling of any kind.
It’s also one of the many ways that we detach ourselves from our feelings, and in doing so we distance ourselves from our power. This is part of our grown-up aching, and unnamable sadness. It’s part of the compliance expected of women to be quiet, to be palatable and neutral, to be less.
In denying or undervaluing our feelings, we are denying and undervaluing ourselves. We are sending ourselves the energetic message that our feelings don’t matter, or are shameful, or are too much for other people and as such, dangerous. (Which also sends the message that other people’s comfort is more important than ours - an ideal perspective for compliance with patriarchal socialization.)
The truth is, our feelings can be dangerous - to people who don’t respect us. To people who can’t or won’t acknowledge their own human-ness and associated feelings. Our feelings are dangerous - to our oppressors.
Our feelings are powerful. Desire drives us forward and helps us manifest. Joy inspires us and guides us toward our purpose. Shame lets us know we did something wrong, or something wrong was done to us. And working with it can help us heal - but it can also help us maintain humility and empathy for others. Vulnerability creates space for deep, lasting connections - particularly with each other and that’s where we become even more powerful. Together.
Feeling our feelings makes us stronger. Our ability to be uncomfortable makes us that much more resilient. Our ability to be feeling humans makes us more connected, and spurs us on to fight for each other and not just ourselves.
Connecting with our feelings connects us to the deeper, personal, emotional and spiritual power within each of us. When we are healed (and healing) we are stronger versions of ourselves. Our feelings are energy, and if we want to connect to the deep well of energy that is available to us, we have to get comfortable with feeling our feelings.
Energy can never be destroyed, and that fundamental truth means that the way we reconnect to ourselves and embrace our power is by giving some concentrated attention to how we are really feeling, and bravely allowing ourselves to “sit in it”. To feel the feelings in our body, and let our body process them.
According to the article, “Mapping Emotional Feeling in the Body: A Tripartite Framework for Understanding the Embodied Mind,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews:
Emotions are not confined to the brain or viscera alone—they are lived through the body, shaped by our actions, and structured through culturally acquired schemas. Body-to-brain pathways provide the physiological foundation for emotional sensation, particularly through interoceptive organs such as the heart, lungs, and gut.
These organs which also give us information about our body-state, wellness and disease, and our feelings.
In short, emotions are an energy that is received or generated, and then held and/or processed, by our physical body. Our bodies are both the sensing instrument, the storage container, and the expressive mechanism.
Patriarchy wants us to believe that emotions aren’t real, energy sensing is woo-woo dogma, and that how we feel doesn’t matter. Yet that same oppressive and manipulative ideology weaponizes our feelings against us.
Rationality is attributed to men - and they are loudly lauded for it (despite often acting in wildly irrational ways). Expressive women are labeled irrational and shamed. And we’re all rewarded for stoicism and ignoring energetic cues.
One of the fundamental ways that we can reclaim our personal and collective power from the clutches of patriarchy and capitalism is to reclaim the power of emotion and master the art of energy perception.
That feeling you get when you know someone genuinely has your best interest at heart (or when you know they don’t)… That urging you feel to call your mother without knowing she’s at her lowest… That sense that you should say yes to this opportunity and no to that one…. The awareness that something is being hidden from you… All of these are moments when your body is sensing an energy and processing it into an actionable response - providing us all with incredibly useful tools for navigating our lives and our world at large. If only we will learn to wield it.
Soul Craft encourages you to practice tuning into your own feelings - and not just the emotions that seem to come in through your head or your heart. Tune into the feelings that you encounter with your nose and your mouth and your fingertips. Take some time to notice how all the tiny little sensations show up in your body and you will dial up your sensing mechanism, and supercharge your superpower.
If you happen to be a paying subscriber, I’ll be elaborating on the “hows” of this work in bonus posts and the Soul Craft Circle of the Medusa Rising Discord channel.
Jaclyn Lanae is an embodiment coach, author, and freelance writer who came to this work the long way—through experience, loss, and repair. She writes for people in moments of transition, helping them move forward without self-abandonment in love, conflict, & change. Follow her on Substack at https://jaclynlanae.substack.com/ or connect at AuthorJaclynLanae.com.
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