This guide to meditation, visualization, affirmation, and mantra is designed for “loving, sensitive, open, gentle souls who absorb external vibrations as a sponge absorbs water.” Psycholgist Elaine Aron coined the term Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) for people with this increased sensitivity. Symptoms they experience include feeling physical weariness or pain when exposed to other people’s negative emotions; anxiety and overwhelm in crowds; trouble sleeping when any stimuli are present; a feeling of energy drain.
Shumsky identifies as such a person and advises against medication as a primary solution. Instead, she points her fellow Highly Sensitive Persons toward what she calls “earth energies,” explaining, “It is time to get grounded in our true nature as a child of Mother Earth, before it is too late.” She does this by beginning with our own energy field: chakras, those energy centers in our bodies that give life to our physical actions. Most important of all is what Shumsky points to as the “root chakra” — the one at the base of your spine, which she explains, “links you to the earth.”
To ignore the root chakra is to be closed and potentially unhealthy, resulting possibly in emotions of fear and worry and frustration, and manifesting perhaps in behaviors of addiction, aggression, and other negativities. So she offers physical, visual, and spiritual exercises to connect you with your root chakra, including chants, mantas, meditations, spiritual exorcisms, breathing techniques, and affirmations.
