Is Your Compassionate Heart Burning Out?

By Suzanne Scurlock-Durana

Based on the book,

Full Body Presence: Learning to Listen to Your Body's Wisdom*

Are you someone who cares about other people?  Are you among the first to notice if someone is upset?  Do you like to help those in need around you? Are you someone who often thinks of other's needs before your own?  

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you are probably a person with a lot of empathy. When you are someone who has a lot of empathy it can be difficult to learn how to have both healthy connections and healthy boundaries. Yet, both are required in order to enjoy your life and not burn out as a caring, empathic person. Empathy increases our ability to feel exquisite joy and deep connection to life. It also increases your capacity to feel everything else -- which can include pain, confusion, frustration, and fear.  

The key for keeping your capacity to receive life fully without being drained is in knowing how to take care of yourself so that you stay energized. Many people with high empathy find their attention often goes externally to helping others. They may even get most of their self-esteem from how well they can help those in need around them. Noticing what is happening around you is not the issue. The problem is when we lose our ability to sense what is going on inside ourselves because of the habit of paying more attention to what others need.  

In simple terms, do you know how to turn your attention inward? Often it comes down to habits -- what were you rewarded for in your family growing up? If you were rewarded for taking care of everyone else, it often was at the expense of taking care of yourself. In order to know what you need, it is necessary to know how to sense what is going on inside yourself. Do you know what your needs are? Do you think it is somehow selfish or self-centered to pay attention to your own needs? 

What we are discovering in today's world is that with the stress we all live with on a daily basis, it is paramount that we learn to take care of ourselves. The airlines have it right -- you must put your own oxygen mask on first before helping those in the seat next to you. If you don't, there will no one to help the child or the person in need beside you. It runs counter to how most of us were raised. Yet when we know how to fill our own containers, it gives us a lot more to offer the world around us. Our gifts are more fully and easily expressed. 

The other interesting fact about this is that when you feel good and energized it makes you more effective and often more efficient. Have you ever noticed that when you are tired or frazzled that you make more mistakes? Research has shown this to be true across all professions, not to mention our private lives.  

And, there are distinct skills in how to listen to your inner wisdom that can be taught and learned. I have been gathering these skills from many different sources for a number of years. Initially I taught primarily healthcare professionals. But today more and more regular people are realizing the importance of these skills.

 So how do we learn the skills of staying full and energized? Can anyone learn these? Absolutely!  

First, start by being curious as to what is going on inside of you. Allow yourself to slow down and take your attention inward. You may need to partially or fully close your eyes. Simply notice what is happening inside your body with no judgment. Whatever shows up is fine.  

Once you are paying attention inside, notice sensations, intuitive hits, physical awareness that is new or familiar. Register it all with a neutral mind. Be curious. You are simply drinking in your experience -- it may offer you important information that only your inner landscape can give you. 

Next allow yourself to feel the underside of your body. If you are sitting, feel your sitting bones on the surface you are resting on. Feel the bottoms of your feet on the floor. Allow you awareness to drop underneath of you into the earth. With gravity you are connected to the earth all the time - so feel it! 

Once you are aware of this connection, allow yourself to soak up nurturing energy from this connection with the earth. Like a sponge in a clear pool of water, simply allow nourishing sensations to begin to fill you up a pace that works for you. What would that feel like? Do you best to feel it as well as seeing it. And take your time.  

When you are ready to move on, notice how you feel compared to when you started this inner inquiry.  You have taken the first steps to full body presence. Over time, this simple practice will help you develop a fuller sense of trust and confidence in yourself and the world.  Enjoy!

How I Learned to Trust My Body's Signals*

An excerpt from Full Body Presence

My childhood awareness of the invisible energy dynamics connecting us all, which I shared with you in the Introduction, slowly continued to expand after that summer night in Washington DC. When I was seventeen, I received my first big lesson in how my body could act as a barometer capable of sensing these invisible energy dynamics, informing me of the rightness or wrongness of a situation. Many of us have had a gut sensation when something felt really off -- a sense of danger. Had I then had the confidence to trust my body's signals, which I do have today, the following story would have played out quite differently.

One Saturday night, deep in the warm summer of 1971, I was with an old friend, who unbeknownst to me was in withdrawal after a long stint of being awake on amphetamines. As we sat together, having a normal friendly teenage conversation in his car, in the parking lot outside of a neighborhood pool party, I began to feel a strange but distinct uneasiness in my gut. It was not a response to the tone of his voice or the topic of discussion. The uneasiness continued for well over half an hour, but I continued to ignore it because it seemed unreasonable to feel uncomfortable with my friend. He was such a close friend, like an older brother to me. Besides, I thought it would have been impolite to say anything about it.

The next thing I knew, his hands were around my throat, and he was strangling me. He was so strong I quickly and completely passed out. When I regained consciousness, I was trembling all over. My head was pressed against the car door. My friend was plastered to the other side of the front seat, behind the wheel, obviously shocked and horrified at what he had done. He apologized profusely. I, too, was in serious shock. Every cell in my body screamed at me to get out of the car now. This time I listened. I managed to open the door and crawl across the parking lot to a friend's car, where help was waiting. It took years of emotional healing and bodywork to melt the internal scars of betrayal and fear from that event. If I had paid attention to my gut and honored the message it was giving me, I could have avoided the whole situation.

Several years later, having established trust in my gut knowing, I was able to avoid another potential disaster. I was on a date with a popular basketball player in college. We were drinking and laughing at a party in someone's dorm room. The music was loud, and people were having a good time. At one point, however, I noticed that people were leaving. Soon my date and I would be the only ones left. My gut gave me that alarm signal I had experienced years earlier. This time I listened. I made up an excuse about needing to go to the bathroom, but I left for good. Later I discovered that this basketball player had date-raped several women on campus. Although I had learned the hard way initially, I did learn to listen to my gut.

What about the other body signals of this invisible world of energy dynamics? I learned more when I gained an understanding of breath and conscious movement and brought these practices into my life. Just before I left for college in the fall of 1971, I took my first yoga class. I loved it. Somehow, I instinctively knew that the conscious awareness I was being taught about breath, movement, and slowing down would bring me closer to connecting intentionally with the experiences I had previously undergone only serendipitously. As I faithfully practiced the yoga asanas and meditation each day, I began to notice a quieting in my system that I had never known before, as well as a growing ability to hear what my body was saying to me.

By my last year of college, I had firsthand experience of how my intention and Full Body Presence could combine to create a powerful synergy. I was in a dance performance in which I was a tree. My entire role was to stand solidly, center stage. Another dancer, a young man about forty pounds heavier than me, had to climb up one side of me

and down the other. I was chosen for the role because I could stand most strongly and firmly. I did this by taking my conscious awareness inside my body to feel myself growing roots, like a big oak tree, down through the stage floor and into the earth. Once I was rooted, I was almost immovable. Although I could walk away whenever I wanted to, I had nonetheless created a strong connection to the ground beneath me.

Everyone was amazed when I held the weight of my fellow dancer. For me, this ability was simply an extension of what I had been playing with for several years. Later, I would learn that in the martial arts and certain meditation practices, this same use of intention and body awareness is well known. But I was discovering all this on an adventure of my own, exploring intention, energetic connection, and Full Body Presence.

My Parents' Presence

My parents' willingness to continue growing throughout their lives was a great example for me. And the ways in which they were limited by their life experiences affected me as well. For instance, my mom took me to my first yoga class, which was a pivotal part of my journey. Mom also has a gentle, quiet energy and a huge, warm heart, but like many women in her generation, when I was growing up, she couldn't model healthy boundaries. She let people walk all over her, had a hard time asking for what she needed, and put everyone else's needs first. So, while I learned to be a warmhearted presence from my mother, I was also left with huge questions about being powerful and female.

My father was an incredible thinker and a powerful public speaker. I grew up wanting to be like him. He had a presence that commanded attention, which gave me permission to do the same. The flip side was that his public presence exhausted him. What I later discovered is that my father had ready access only to his mind and upper body, which left him with a Disrupted Body Presence and explained his depletion and exhaustion at the end of every Sunday service.

My parents were unable to convey to me an appreciation for my lower body and all that the lower body represents -- gut instinct, sexuality, intense creativity, movement, and grounding. Although I had a loving family, as I grew into adulthood, I understood that both my parents had deep issues of shame around their sexuality. Both experienced childhood traumas that caused them to energetically withdraw from their lower bodies and severely disrupted their Full Body Presence. They did not pass on the abuse they had received, but their fear of lower-body energy left a gaping hole in my understanding of the lower body in a healthy person.

As is often the case, my religion taught me to judge and control my body. We were Baptists. Full-hearted singing and righteous (upper-body) presence were modeled, but the energetic awareness of the lower body -- legs, feet, and pelvis -- were not understood to be vital for supporting a compassionate heart and full experience of life.

Moving Beyond My Legacy

Yoga and meditation helped me to bridge the gap left in me. I began to feel more present throughout my entire body. And while I am eternally grateful for what I learned, I also found limitations in these ancient systems. They were highly codified and rule-bound as to how one should experience the body. The underlying premise is that the breath and the body it fills are to be brought under control. I was still being told how to experience my body rather than freely exploring its natural and unique exquisiteness.

My understanding of many religious and spiritual systems is that being connected to life, to God, to the Universal All, the Tao, whatever name one uses, ultimately means controlling and leaving the body -- not fully inhabiting it. This didn't feel right to me. After all, I was learning to trust my body and my gut feelings. So while I continued my daily yoga and meditation practices -- growing my "energy muscles" and learning to focus -- I instinctively kept searching for something more.

The birth of my first child catalyzed a journey that made my spiritual practice a more practical part of my life. My seventeen years of having an hour a day for spiritual practice was over when I had my baby. All new parents can relate to this. I could no longer take time to cultivate the steady peacefulness my hour of spiritual practice provided. I now needed a way to connect to healthy resources in the midst of my busy life instead.

The same year my daughter was born, I also began teaching Cranio-Sacral therapy regularly, so I needed to find something that would support my strong and integrated presence as a teacher in the classroom. How could I bring Full Body Presence to my life with all the challenges that parenthood and work brought? It was at this point that the Five Principles of Full Body Presence were first conceived.

I began to distill the wisdom I had learned from the various teachers and spiritual practices I had known -- from the lessons learned as a child on that front pew, bathed in the resonance of church singing, all the way to lessons on hearing the whispers of wisdom from the animals, trees, and rocks, which my indigenous teachers taught me. I was clarifying the principles for setting and following a laserlike, focused intention as well as surrendering to the all-encompassing flow of life energy available to all of us. I was also learning how trusting in this flow opened more possibilities for my healing and growth and how feeling life's energy in my own body and letting it integrate throughout my system gave me more access to my gifts and vitality. I began to recognize how using my mind as an ally, instead of a critic, expanded my capabilities as a therapist, teacher, mother, and wife. Finally, learning to choose from moment to moment what was most life-giving helped me to move from the exhaustion and overwhelm of infant care and healing work to the joy of my family and life again.

I needed to be able to discern a healthy direction in my life on a moment's notice. I needed to understand how the navigational system of my body operated optimally and what to do when it was awry. I needed to have clear, simple questions to ask myself that would guide my day. The Five Principles did that for me. They are tried and true guidelines that work hand in hand with the Explorations.

In all the years that I have been peeling away layers and learning to move into the truth of who I am, I have been deeply challenged and deeply rewarded. Walking this path feeds and amplifies my creativity. I have developed confidence in what I am doing because I have learned to act from the core of who I am. And I have witnessed this same process of evolution in my students over the last twenty-five years. They consistently tell me how this work catalyzed them into making their dreams a reality, helped them make peace with things in their lives that they were struggling with, or allowed them to deal with a personal tragedy without shutting down.

Full Body Presence

Interview with Suzanne Scrlock-Durana

What exactly do you mean by full body presence?

When I talk about full body presence I mean my, or your, capacity to be present, to feel sensation, to know where you are and where you are not, in your body. The definition in the book is "the ability to feel all parts of your body, with a good flow of healthy energy moving through you. In order to have a healthy energy flow moving through you, you need connections to your inner and outer healthy resources, and you need to have a healthy sense of your personal boundaries. To know how to ground and fill up with whatever nourishes your cells.

So what does full body presence give us, as human beings? What is the payoff?

It gives us more of a sense of aliveness, of being in each present moment, able to feel more of the joy that is here for each of us in any given moment.

What about when life circumstances are less than wonderful and we find ourselves really stressed out? Perhaps we are in stressed out?

Actually in those circumstances Full Body Presence skills really start to shine. If you are stressed out about something, chances are you are feeling your heart tighten down or you may have a sense of tension somewhere in your body. When you become aware that you are walking around like that, then the skills help you change that state of being. We would call that a disrupted body presence. So let me give you a recent example. I was driving to pick up a friend and as I approached this intersection, two cars pulled out on either side of me, both of them looking like they were headed for my lane. I rapidly slowed my car, but in the meantime, my heart rate was up, my nervous system was over-stimulated in an unpleasant way. Years ago, that feeling would have stayed with me for quite awhile. I might have gotten a headache, or at the very least felt off balance for a while. Instead, I registered the sense of tightness in my chest, and let my awareness drop behind the tight place into my spine. Then I took my awareness to my sitting bones on the seat and my feet on the floor. Notice, I did not say, I thought about my sitting bones or my feet. I actually felt - with my sensory awareness into that part of my body. This gave me a broader sense of my body, which relaxed my chest and within minutes my nervous system was back to a normal relaxed state.

What about emotional pain?

I treat it the same way with one small difference. I feel whatever I am feeling, and then I expand the container of my body around it (like I did in the intersection situation). Then I ask myself what I am believing about myself or my life that is making me so miserable. It is often an unconscious belief or expectation that is running my show. Maybe I am feeling like I am alone, and lonely and always going to be lonely, etc. Or, I maybe I am feeling like I am somehow flawed as a human being and therefore am deficient in some way. Or I might feel like I am too much, that people are not going to love me because I am just too much, I overwhelm people and situations and lose love that way. Whatever it is, I can then hold that thought or expectation and ask myself if it is really true at this moment. And it rarely, if ever, is actually true in this moment. So as I hold the container of my being around the area in pain, I cradle it, holding it with love, and letting it slowly, slowly integrate back into the rest of me when it is ready. This is a really quick synopsis of a process that can take from minutes to days or weeks, off and on, of working with this integration process.

Does it have any practical applications in terms of physical pain?

Absolutely. Areas of physical pain naturally hold tension and tend to wall themselves off. IF you have a pain in your heart and you can allow yourself to feel the strength of your spine and the way that your ribs are cradling your heart, it spreads out the awareness of the pain which actually allows it to disperse (slightly or greatly.)

How does it help with burnout?

When I am in my body and connected to healthy resources that help me stay energetically full, then I am I begin to register it when events or life are wearing me down and I can slow down and rest or plan my day to be able to slow down later.

What kinds of people find these skills most useful?

Those in healthcare (MDs, RNs, PTs, OTs, MTs, PAs) as well as those in non-hands health related professions such as coaches, psychotherapist, social workers, hospice workers, psychologists, etc.) and other professional and non-professional caregivers such as parents (esp. parents of special needs children), adults caring for their elderly parents, ministers, foster parents, etc.

How does full body presence help those of us in healthcare and other professional and non-professional caregivers?

It helps us to have healthy boundaries so we don't inadvertently      pick up the our patient's or client's pain or fear. It helps in that we become what I call the "largest pendulum in the room" with those we are caring for, so that our calm, centered presence pulls everyone in the room into that calmness rather than our being pulled off center by their pain, fear, worry, etc.

Are there some fun, easy applications for the grounding and filling FBP skills?

Try using it on an airplane next time it gets turbulent or someone around you is feeling afraid. I have a funny story on this one. I was taking a puddle jumper flight (45 minutes) one time with one of my instructors and it got kind of rough. I told her I would be concentrating on not throwing up if that happened. Well, as the air got rougher, I noticed myself feeling calmer and calmer. I had no trouble at all. I was astounded and pleasantly surprised. She was sitting across the aisle from me with her eyes closed and I finally realized she was grounding me! And sure enough, she confirmed it when we got there. Seems she hates to see people throw up so she was insuring that would not happen to me!

Any other fun applications?

Well, as I write about in the book, it works wonders with grumpy children, scared pets, and babies. Your presence, with no words at all, can be such a calming factor in any situation like that.

How about in the bigger picture of discernment?

Well, one of the big things that full body presence gives you is excellent access to your own inner knowing about all kinds of things, from what is most right for you in any moment, to what is really off and needs to be avoided at all costs. And as you practice your full body presence, grounding and staying full, your trust of your inner knowing gets really strong. It is nice, to not second guess yourself all the time. You just know inside. And when you don't know -- meaning you don't have a hit about something it usually means you need to wait to make the decision, don't jump on prematurely.

How did you come to this work initially?

It came in waves or layers across a lot of years. I got parts of it from the sense of energy vibration that I loved in my church growing up when everyone would sing. That is a full body experience if you are singing full out. Then my yoga practice and meditation practices; and then T'ai Chi and Qigong along with my indigenous teachers, and then all my bodywork training, esp. CranioSacral therapy which teaches us to listen acutely with our hands. I quickly realized I could feel a whole lot more if I listened to the people on my table with my entire navigational system, my entire body, not just my hands and my heart. It really expanded my skill level as a CS therapist and instructor.

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*Is Your Compassionate Heart Burning Out?, How I Learned to Trust My Body's Signals (an excerpt from Full Body Presence) are reprinted here with permission of the publisher, New World Library. Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, CMT, CST-D, teaches and speaks around the world and lives in Reston, VA. Visit her online at http://www.fullbodypresence.com.