How Do We Nurture Our Empathic Design?

If “The Human Design is an Empathic Design,” as Vitality Medicine states, then an important question becomes: How do we nurture that design?

We live within what I call Connected Realities. We are continually in relationship—with other people, our families, our work, our communities, nature, food, air, information, culture, and the environments we move through every day. We are not isolated from these realities. We perceive them, interact with them, and respond to them.

For some of us, that responsiveness is especially strong. We notice the mood in a room. We feel it in our bodies when someone we love is struggling. We track what our children, partners, friends, coworkers, or patients need. Our mood can change with the phases of the moon. We take in enormous amounts of information, sometimes without even realizing we're doing it.

This can be a beautiful part of being human. Empathy allows us to connect, care, perceive, respond, and participate deeply in life. It can also cause suffering when the dominant reality we are living in does not support or nurture kindness, love, and connection. 

In these dominant broken systems, our empathic design also needs to be nurtured because the system itself does not support it. That is not a personal problem; that is a systems problem. The problem lies in the toxic soup you are swimming in, not in you, not in your SELF. 

So how do we support an empathic design?

Dr. Heather rafting in the Grand Canyon— Reseting and Being Stoked

Spend Time in Nature

Nature is one of the most powerful ways I know to return to ourselves.

Go outside. Walk among trees. Sit by water. Garden. Put your feet on the ground. Watch the birds. Feel the sun. Find a place where, even for a few minutes, you are outside the continual demands, noise, information, and pressures of everyday life.

Make your Home a Healing Environment

Your home should ideally feel safe and comfortable. This is not always possible or within your control. However, please make at least one space, even if it is a corner of a room or a she-shed, your own, a place where you can go for nourishment and rejuvenation. 

Choose Life-Enhancing Connections

Not all connections have the same effect on us.

Pay attention to the quality of your relationships. Who allows you to relax and be yourself? Who makes you laugh? Who listens? Where do you feel safe enough to be honest? Who leaves you feeling more alive after you've spent time together?

We need life-enhancing connections.

One of the simplest Vitality Medicine questions is:

Do I feel better or worse after this interaction? Energized or depleted?

This doesn't mean we eliminate everyone who challenges us. Difficult relationships and experiences have a place in life too. It simply means we begin noticing the effect our connections have on us.

Be Brutal

My word for last year was “Brutal”. I wanted to focus on being able to be “Brutal”. As a high empath, what I feel is “brutal” is something like saying no to someone, drawing a boundary. It is not at all brutal in everyday life; it just feels that way to me when I know I am going against something that someone else wants.

However, it is important to prioritize your Self and your own needs. As empaths, often what we most want is good for everyone, actually, even if it feels harder for people initially. We usually have a broader vision and need to push for that, even if it feels “Brutal”!

Create Practices That Bring You Back to Yourself

Yoga, meditation, qigong, tai chi, breathing practices, prayer, stretching, bodywork—there are many ways to create moments of stillness and reconnection.

The point isn't to add another obligation to your life. The point is to create opportunities to come back into relationship with yourself and your body. 

One practice I do when I feel dispersed and drained: I lay on my tummy or back and close my eyes. I feel into my cells and call my cells back to me. I imagine them coming back into my limbs, core, and midline and refilling my Self. 

The same is true of walking and exercise. Movement doesn't have to be punishment or something we do because our bodies aren't good enough. Movement can be a way of inhabiting our bodies, circulating energy, building strength, and feeling alive.

Journaling and reading can provide another kind of space. They allow us to reflect, process, integrate, and sometimes hear our own thoughts again underneath everything else we've been taking in.

Pay Attention to What You Are Taking In & Be Discerning

If we are empathically designed, then our inputs matter.

Think about how much information comes into your nervous system in a single day—news, social media, texts, emails, podcasts, television, other people's opinions, work demands, family needs, advertising, noise.

Check in how you feel in your body and nervous system while you are engaging and how you feel afterwards. Do you feel enhanced and energized or drained? Do you feel calm or anxious?

Be brutal in what you engage in. Personally, I can’t do any news if I want to maintain my positivity and healing presence for my patients. I pray for our world and know the big stuff, but I can’t monitor the day-to-day and keep my vibration high enough to be effective in my life. 

Practice Vulnerability & Transparency With Safe People

One of the ways we become isolated is by believing we have to carry everything ourselves, that we are not enough, and that it is our own problem. This comes from a deep belief that the world is not safe. While that may be true, we need to focus on the ways we are safe and tell our bodies so. 

We don't tell anyone what is really happening inside ourselves. We keep functioning. We keep helping. We keep showing up. And eventually we may begin to believe that we're the only ones struggling—or that the struggle itself means something is wrong with us.

Find safe people with whom you can be transparent and vulnerable. 

Vulnerability doesn't mean sharing everything with everyone. Discernment matters. It means having relationships where you can tell the truth about what you're experiencing and still feel safe, respected, and connected.

Sometimes simply discovering, “I'm not the only person feeling this,” changes everything. And just being able to share with someone enables CONNECTION. And that connection in itself HEALS.

Learn to Receive Help

Empathic people are often very good at giving help.

Receiving it can be another story.

We may pride ourselves on being capable, independent, and the person everyone else can count on. But connection isn't meant to flow in only one direction.

Giving help matters. Receiving help matters too.

Ask for help. Let someone make you dinner. Let someone take something off your plate. Let your partner care for you. Let your friend listen. Build a healthcare team. Allow yourself to receive.

This is also a cellular matter. Many of us have what I call “Cellular Armouring”. This is something that our bodies do in intelligence when they do not feel safe. They close up and protect. But eventually you learn that this armouring can also keep you trapped within yourself and a limited reality. 

Being able to receive help is not a weakness.

It is part of connection.

When I realized this about myself, I created a practice where I just imagine a little door on my cells, and I open it just a little to start a flow and connection. I don’t ask my cells to fully open; that would be too much, but just to peek. Once you get comfortable, you can check in with your cells in different environments. In some environments, your cells can be fully open in giving and receiving lovely positive vibrations and establishing a beautiful coherence within you and in connection to your environment.

Think of a sunset at the beach. Are there other places you can be truly open to receive and feel safe doing so?

Learn How to Be Healthily Selfish

The word “Selfish”  has been given a bad reputation in our culture, and it is particularly tied to women and keeps women in a particular place. 

Think of what you may consider “selfish”. Focusing on yourself and your well-being? Like going out and meeting friends, getting a pedicure, placing your exercise class in front of your child’s school drop-off?

Would those things be considered selfish if you were a man?

Stop and think about that!

Taking care of yourself doesn't mean you stop caring about other people. It means recognizing that you are also one of the people deserving of your care.

My mom taught us daughters from the very beginning: Do something nice for yourself every day. And she did it! And now, at 76.5 years old, she is reverse aging. 

These nice things don’t have to be expensive or impressive. Drink your tea as a gift to yourself. Take a bath. Sit in the sun. Read a book. Take a walk. Make yourself something nourishing. Go to bed early. But do it with the intention and conscious awareness that you are doing something kind for yourself.

Because you deserve it!

Dismantle Shame, Guilt, and Self-Blame

No child is born saying, “I am bad!” “I am guilty!” “I should be ashamed!” No, indeed, we are born believing in magic and miracles. We expect to hop on our unicorn and find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that we can grow up to be a famous rock star, Olympic gymnast, astronaut. 

It is not until we get older that we are taught to think less of ourselves. That we are not good at something. That bad things that happen are our fault.

Pay attention to the stories you've been taught about yourself.

This is NOT A PERSONAL PROBLEM. This is a CULTURE and systems problem. When the soup you are swimming in is toxic, you feel deficient: 

I'm too sensitive.

I'm too emotional.

Why can’t I do better?

Why can't I keep up?

Why can’t I BE BETTER?

When you realize you are taught that it is not innate to you, you should be PISSED! 

The personal is political is a feminist anthem. When you realize it is systemic, it gives a different standpoint. 

I encourage you to reclaim your imagination and the magic of your youth. Embody that again and stop giving others power over your Life and Self. 

Remember: You Are Enough

One of the stories we need to dismantle is the belief: “I am not enough.”

Years ago, I did a coaching training with a man from Chile who had taught and worked with people around the world for nearly 50 years. He told us that the “I am not enough” feeling is something specific to/particularly strong in the US. 

Our culture continually tells us we aren't thin enough, successful enough, productive enough, young enough, or doing enough—especially as women.

And when your worth is measured by your productivity (Thanks Prodestant Work Ethic) and how much money you make, how can we win? There is always more to do and have. 

Yet again, another area to get mad and stop buying into as a cultural norm.

You are already enough. You are amazing. You are unique and individual, and there has never been anyone exactly like you before, and there never will be again. Claim that and don’t waste this precious life. 

Nourish the Body You're Living In

Our empathic design is embodied. We experience everything through a physical body, so caring for that body matters.

Eat nourishing, healthy whole foods. Move. Sleep. Hydrate. Pay attention to how different foods make you feel. Limit alcohol, drugs, or other things that repeatedly pull you away from yourself or from the life you're trying to create.

The question doesn't have to come from judgment.

Ask instead:

Does this support my vitality?

Food, air, water, sleep, movement, environmental exposures, and our physical surroundings are all part of the Connected Reality our bodies are continually responding to.

Know Your Limits and Honor Your Boundaries

This may be one of the hardest practices for empathic people.

Know when you've had enough.

Know when you need to leave. Know when you need quiet. Know when you can't take on another responsibility. Know when someone else's need cannot automatically become yours.

Sometimes honoring a boundary can feel almost brutal—especially when you're accustomed to being available to everyone.

But boundaries aren't necessarily a rejection of connection.

Healthy boundaries can allow us to remain connected without losing ourselves.

Find Your Team

We aren't meant to do all of this alone.

Create your own reality with people who support the kind of life you are trying to build. Find your healthcare team. Find your friends. Find your community. Find the people with whom you can both give and receive.

And look for workplaces, organizations, and communities that value empathy rather than simply extracting it.

Because nurturing empathic design isn't only an individual responsibility. The systems we're part of matter too.

A family, healthcare system, workplace, or business can be organized in ways that support human beings—or continually deplete them.

Where Is Your In-Breath?

I think about this as the rhythm of in-breath and out-breath. This was taught to me by the Rudolf Steiner philosophy underlying the Waldorf education. I was lucky enough to be in Waldorf schools from kindergarten through 8th grade, and the Waldorf school day is built around this rhythm.

There are natural rhythms to days and seasons. The Out-breath is giving, doing, caring, producing, performing, helping, and responding.

The In-breath is rest, receiving, stillness, recovery, nourishment, and integration.

Both are necessary.

If your life consists almost entirely of out-breath, eventually there is nothing left to breathe out.

So ask yourself:

Where is my in-breath? How does my day support in- and out-breaths?

And this isn't only a question for individuals. It's a question we should be asking of families, workplaces, businesses, and healthcare systems.

If we value empathy in our caregivers, then we also need to create environments that protect that empathy, replenish it, and allow the people doing the caring to receive care themselves.

And perhaps one of the most powerful practices is also one of the simplest:

Pay attention to what brings you to life.

BE STOKED!

Learn about what makes you happy and follow your heart in earnest pursuit. This will often make you break the mold of what you are expected to do. AND THAT IS GREAT!