The Sense Behind the “Off” Feeling: Listening to Your Inner Knowing
What is that hit in your gut when you walk into a room and something feels off? Do you notice it? Do you listen? That sensation is one of the ways your intuition speaks to you. In energy work we call these pathways the Clairs—from the French clair, meaning “clear.” They describe how we receive information beyond the five senses.
Most people know about clairvoyance (clear seeing) and clairaudience (clear hearing). The gut sense you feel is often clairsentience (clear feeling). Sometimes it lands as claircognizance (clear knowing)—a truth that you know, without a logical path. Both can be present at the same time.
As an Intuitive Energy Healer, I work with these senses every day. They help me recognize when I’ve “got it right” as I tune into someone’s field. That’s important—I’m not guessing. I’m listening with my whole system.
Reading the Room (and Why You Do It)
Everything—people, spaces, conversations—carries a tone or “vibe.” You’ve felt it when you enter a crowded room and sense the emotional temperature before anyone speaks. Without realizing it, you adjust: your posture, your volume, even your breathing. We’re wired for connection, so we unconsciously match what we’re around.
Now imagine growing up in an environment that didn’t feel safe or steady. You had to read the room constantly. Over time, that hyper-responsiveness becomes your normal. Years later, you might find yourself in a relationship “feeling out” the temperature all the time—never quite landing in your own body. You know something isn’t right, but you can’t name it. You only know you’re exhausted and unhappy.
That pattern isn’t a flaw; it’s a skill that kept you safe. But it can also keep you disconnected from your own knowing, your truth.
Rewiring Starts in the Body
You can absolutely change this. The brain can learn new pathways, and we begin with the body. Before awareness, before big changes, we build safety.
I call this foundation grounding. Grounding is a weighted, steady feeling in your body—a felt connection to the support beneath you. Think of it as your inner “safe and sound.” When grounding becomes familiar, the body tells the brain, We’re okay. From there, the nervous system quiets, and your intuition becomes easier to trust.
Healing doesn’t happen without a sense of safety. That’s why I don’t rush this part in sessions. We take the time we need so your system can learn that being present is safe. Trust—between your body and you, and between you and me—is what allows transformation. This work is co-creative: we move together, in a rhythm.
What Grounding Feels Like
A gentle heaviness in your body
Slower breath without forcing it
Muscles softening
More space inside your chest and belly
The sense that you can observe the experience and stay with yourself
A Simple Grounding Practice
Feel your feet. Sit or stand and place your attention on the soles of your feet. Notice points of contact with the floor.
Breathe low and slow. Let the exhale be a bit longer than the inhale.
Name the now. Quietly identify three things you see, you hear, you smell, and one you feel inside your body.
Claim your space. Imagine a gentle boundary around you—like a soft blanket—keeping you connected to yourself while still in connection with others.
Two minutes is enough to begin. Repetition teaches your nervous system that it’s safe to be present.
Returning to Your Own Frequency
When you’re grounded, you stop automatically matching everyone else’s vibe. You can still sense the room, but you’re no longer lost in it. This is where clairsentience and claircognizance become reliable allies rather than alarm systems. Your body becomes your friend and you can trust your inner knowing.
This is the heart of my work: helping you come home to your body, settle your nervous system, and restore the internal environment where your intuition can speak clearly. You were never missing it—you were simply managing too much noise to hear it.
You can learn to listen again. Start with your feet. Let your breath gently move through your body. Feel your body settle down. Build safety first. From there, your clear feeling and clear knowing unfold—one steady moment at a time.
The Overloaded Nervous System: Why We Can’t Ignore It Anymore
It’s not up to you. It’s not even about you in the way you’ve been taught to believe. It’s bigger than that. Everything you need to know has always been inside you. You can feel it in the steady rhythm of your heartbeat. When you’re connected to that inner wisdom, life begins to make sense. The fog clears, and suddenly you see with crystal clarity—no more wiping the film from the windows, just direct, honest sight.
Most of us don’t live from that connected place. Instead, we move through life with blinders on because, from a young age, we were trained to ignore ourselves. As children, we absorbed our environment like sponges. If it didn’t feel safe, we adapted—shutting down parts of ourselves just to belong and avoid rejection. We were told to be polite, mind our manners, and stay quiet. So we learned to silence our gut, our heart, our feelings. And when we grew up, we carried those same rules into adulthood. Life didn’t unfold the way we hoped, but we kept our heads down, trying to be the “good girl” or “good boy.”
The problem is, we’re not children anymore. This is our life, and yet many of us aren’t truly living it. We’re navigating adult responsibilities—mortgages, careers, families—while unconsciously reacting from the frightened five-year-old inside us. The pressure builds, and it has nowhere to go. Eventually it feels like we’re going to explode.
Our brilliant brains register the pressure as danger. They do what they know best: release cortisol, send pain signals, trigger anxiety. Suddenly, we’re walking around with tight necks, chronic stress, panic attacks, or depression. We head to the doctor, get prescriptions, maybe even surgeries—but nothing seems to resolve the real issue.
Because the truth is, the symptom isn’t the “real” problem. It’s the overloaded nervous system that’s been carrying the weight of silence, repression, and survival for far too long. Until we tend to that, until we learn to reconnect with the wisdom of our hearts and the safety within our bodies, the cycle will continue.
The good news? Healing is possible. Clarity is possible. And it starts by remembering that the peace you’re looking for has always been inside you.
The Issues Are in the Tissues
A Personal Story of Somatic Healing
Entering the Work
I lay down on the massage table; it was my turn for abdominal work. I was attending a 4-day workshop called Brain Therapy—a combination of Cranial Sacral, Myofascial Release, and Massage designed to take tension off the brain and calm the nervous system.
At first, it felt like any other session. But as my partner began working, something deeper stirred.
The Emotional Release
A familiar sensation rose within me. I looked into her eyes and said, “I’m about to have an emotional release.”
The words had barely left my mouth when the tears came. Grief poured out of me—the kind of grief that folds you into the fetal position. A memory resurfaced, one I thought I had already processed years ago.
I sobbed deeply, my whole body shaking with sadness. The release went on for what felt like half an hour. Then, when the waves finally passed, I was left completely exhausted.
The Healing Response
What I experienced was more than emotion—it was energy my body had been holding for years. After resting, I slowly re-oriented myself, walking around the room before stepping outside to place my bare feet on the ground.
Grounding in nature calmed me immediately. Thank goodness this happened at the end of the workshop—I had no capacity for more bodywork that day. My body had already done what it needed to do.
The Issues Are in the Tissues
That moment gave me a profound understanding of something I’d been taught: “the issues are in the tissues.”
The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Our bodies hold memories, emotions, and experiences long after our minds believe they’re resolved. With all the bodywork I had received, my nervous system finally felt safe enough to let go of what I’d been carrying.
The Aftermath
Once the energy was released and I rested, I felt incredible. My body was lighter. My breath expanded. My ribcage felt like it had more space to move. Most of all, I had energy again.
What I realized is that holding onto old emotions had been silently draining my life force. The moment I let them go, that energy became available for living.
Why Somatic and Energy Work Matter
So many of us walk around every day feeling depleted, not realizing our bodies are holding on to old stories. Those unprocessed emotions weigh us down, even when our minds can’t see them.
This is the beauty of Somatic and Energy Work: it clears the space for healing. It allows you to thrive, to breathe deeper, and to bring more of yourself into your daily life.
Sugar, Beliefs, and Freedom: What Addiction Taught Me About the Brain
By Jackie Hudiburg
Addiction is so misunderstood. Most people who haven’t lived it assume it’s a willpower problem. I wish that were true — it would’ve been so much easier to fix. The reality is far messier: trauma, family patterns, brain chemistry, mental health, learned coping strategies — all of it can play a role. For me, the story started with something most people don’t take seriously: sugar.
When sugar went into my body it produced a craving I could never satisfy. I was told it was an allergy. My body had an abnormal reaction. So I removed it, and for months the craving was gone. I felt free. Then one holiday hot chocolate later, the familiar pattern returned. I binged, I cried, and I lay on my bed wishing I were dead. Same loop. Same shame. Same promises to myself — broken.
That relapse taught me a hard truth: sugar wasn’t the whole problem. If the substance alone were the issue, I wouldn’t have picked it back up knowing what I knew. I picked it up because it was familiar; because when I needed relief, it worked. Food soothed. Food buffered. Sugar offered comfort and ease when nothing else could. It served a purpose — until it didn’t.
The missing piece: my mind
What I didn’t see then was how much my mind had been practicing this pattern. Over years I had trained myself to respond to stress, pain, and emptiness in the same ways — and my thinking had become the script that directed those responses. I trusted my mind. I believed the stories it told me: This will make you feel better. This will bring you the relief you’re seeking.
Cleaning up my body cleared the fog enough to finally illuminate the unconscious beliefs running my life. That awareness was humbling — sometimes humiliating — because it meant admitting I’d been living by lies I didn’t even know I believed. But once you see the truth, you can’t unknow it. That’s where the real work begins.
What changed everything
Two shifts altered my path.
First, I stopped relying on awareness alone. Awareness felt good, but it didn’t change the old wiring. So I committed to true mindset work — honest, persistent practice of identifying and questioning the beliefs that had been steering me. Not airy platitudes or quick fixes, but the daily, sometimes ugly work of rewriting what I’d long accepted as true.
Second, I asked for a mentor — a coach, a spiritual guide— someone who could see what I couldn’t see in myself and who wouldn’t let me hide. Having another pair of eyes, another mind to mirror mine, made all the difference. It’s one thing to recognize a pattern; it’s another to be held accountable while you unlearn it.
Removing the substance was necessary, but not sufficient. You have to look at the brain patterns and the unconscious beliefs that reach for the substance in the first place. For me, cleaning the body opened a door. Coaching helped me step through it and start living differently.
You don’t have to do it alone
If you’ve been trying the same strategies and getting the same results, hear this: that is not failure — it’s feedback. The mind that built a habit and belief systems isn’t always the mind that can deconstruct it. That’s why coaching, consistent accountability, and mind-body approaches are powerful. They offer a different orientation to change: practical, relational, and action oriented.
You don’t have to be labeled an “addict” to relate to this — plenty of us are trapped in patterns that serve a purpose until they don’t. Scrolling until your shoulders ache. Eating to quiet an ache you can’t name. Over thinking, over-responsibility, numbing out. These behaviors offer comfort in the short term yet block us in the long term.
I tasted freedom. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t quick. It was messy, slow, and humbling. But it was real — and sweeter than anything I’d chased in a binge.
If you’re ready to look honestly at what’s keeping you stuck, to see the stories that run under the surface, and to try something different with someone walking beside you, reach out. You don’t have to figure this out alone — and you don’t have to keep living the same loop. Freedom is possible. It’s waiting.