Spinning Words Into Vibrational Gold
I have had a profound relationship with words my whole life. I was raised by English teachers, grammarians, literature fiends, and reading specialists who had me reading by age two, though the expectation was apparently sooner than that. My earliest memories are of sitting next to my mother or grandmother or great-grandfather with a book in our hands. I guess the only one really surprised that I ended up in the world of writing and editing, albeit without intent or direction, therefore, would be me.
When it all started I was a musician in New York City playing concerts, taking and giving lessons. I rented tiny studio apartments, moving from one to the next with my mattress and music when my sublets were up. I’d practice early in the morning and after I got home from whatever jobs I could find to support my musician habit, to the serious chagrin of my neighbors on the other side of the super-thin walls. I did not write, think about writing, or see words as a discriminating factor in my life. By this point I did not trust that I had the ability to think or organize my thoughts, let alone have anything worth saying. I suppose being surrounded by people who are so word-savvy had convinced me I would forever pale in comparison.
In New York, in need of a job after another move, a friend and fellow musician attempted to help me out by hooking me up to do some math editing. Uh…no. The editing marks alone filled me with anxiety and a crazy sense that the whole world was one unintelligible mass of indecipherable symbols.
It did get me thinking, though. Inept at writing didn’t mean I couldn’t use all the skills drummed into me from such a young age, did it? You name it, I’d studied it for the SATs. I knew about dangling prepositions as soon as I popped out of the womb. And that’s when, instead of your typical starving actor/server, I became your less typical semi-starving musician/editor.
Having authored, edited, rewritten, ghostwritten, and published numerous books since (and happily no longer starving), I find it’s a new world. I have developed a love affair with words. I love playing with them, sensing them, feeling them, exploring them, and embracing them. When I write, it’s as if all the words in the world are floating around in the ether and the ones I need somehow, one by one, drop down into my lap.
The vibration of words is something that can be felt as powerfully as the vibration of your own heart, and the frequency of words can be as powerful as any action.
Vibration means “moving back and forth from the normal stationary position,” while frequency is the number of cycles that vibrating object completes in one second. A “complete cycle of vibration occurs when the object moves back and forth from its normal stationary position.”
I find this concept fascinating, in particular how it is reflected by and affects the energy of words and, hence, the energy we share as human beings.
Here’s what I want to share about one way energy can be used to help us or hinder us, lift us or undermine us, in our everyday lives.
Take (“M”), for example, a smart—very, very smart—client of mine: a talented musician and artist, retired military who has traveled and lived all over the world; a powerful advocate for others in need. A more highly functional individual you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere, with a crazy wit and the ability to twist words in mind-bending ways.
“M” has worked very hard through the years to use her brilliant mind’s capabilities to try to solve her problems and can tell you more about the medical research than most doctors. Unfortunately, this approach has had limited results. Still, it’s the approach she has been taught should work, and so she slogs on, suffering from chronic fatigue, depression, severe anxiety, and fibromyalgia, undergoing multiple surgeries for various conditions.
“M” is an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person. She is typical of many of my clients who have no trouble feeling anxiety, but draw an absolute blank when it comes to identifying their intuitive sense, their Intuitive Guidance System. When I ask her where she feels her anxiety in her body (that is, somatically), she usually says, “I have no idea.” She draws no connection between how she feels emotionally and how she feels physically, using her mind to assure her that emotional “conditions” are separate from her physical conditions. Like so many HSPs, she’s quick to say she’s hypersensitive, but only in reference to her emotional vulnerability. There is a massive breakdown to connect those dots.
“M” uses words with a scalpel’s precision to deflect with humor whenever she feels the threat of exposure or the truth of what her inner being is trying to convey. She has tried to meditate since we’ve started seeing each other, but “her mind never shuts off.”
What does all this have to do with words and their vibration?
When “M” came to her zoom appointment yesterday after a hiatus during which she was moving to another, much warmer, state, she told me that her anxiety had been ramping up lately—a lot. Fear of not being able to procure the meds she needed when she needed them. Worry about a friend she couldn’t help. Concern that her husband would drive her crazy with his negativity. And then she said something interesting. “As soon as I told ‘P’ that I had an appointment scheduled with you, I immediately calmed down. I pictured myself talking to you and immediately my heart pounded less and I could breathe again.”
Apparently, the only thing that had changed was that she was anticipating her upcoming zoom with me. “I knew talking to you would set me straight again,” she said.
She’d hit the nail on the head. I told her that her brilliant mind was used to filling her head with ideas less helpful than a bicycle to a fish. “M” made a joke at that point—making my point exactly.
Being “set straight” is the way “M” describes feeling in alignment. It’s that place where nothing in the outside environment, no one and no thing, can affect us to the point where we are shaken from our sense of self. “M” feels that way around me because I can be counted on to be firmly rooted in my Unique Energetic Signature when we are working together, and because when I am solidly in my own energy, I choose my words carefully by feeling out their vibration before speaking them out loud. When a number of words become strung together to form sentences, which takes as long as it takes, their vibration as a unit becomes a frequency. That frequency can be felt by anyone choosing to feel it, and it is always felt by me.
I reminded “M” that the use of her brain is undermining the gifts she has been given, her innate abilities. These sensitivities have turned inward and against her as manifested by her many physical ailments. The part of her that learned to despise her sensitivities because she was told they made her weak is so well versed in denial that using words to deflect deeper reflection has become the go-to tool in her arsenal.
Feel uncomfortable? Deflect. Feel anxious? Deflect. Deflection and denial go hand-in-glove when it comes to breaking the pattern of the mind—which will do just about anything to hold on to and protect its territory.
At that moment I was reminded about how, earlier in the day, a colleague told me that when she reads my writing, she always pictures me sitting in front of the computer where I magically download full articles with nary a thought. I laughed, but it’s true in its own way. I told her I use my brain to be self-aware and self-editing, but not my mind, and I use the way my body feels to gauge the truth and authenticity of the words that end up on the page. I wait to feel the words’ energy, vibration, and collective frequency to assess their veracity as a whole.
I asked “M” to try feeling before speaking. Not how she felt emotionally, but how the word(s) she was about to speak would feel in her body. There’s an easy test for this theory. Say out loud, “I hate you.” FEEL it. Now, say, “I love you,” and FEEL that. Few people would be able to say they don’t feel a difference, whether it’s in their shoulder blades, a tight jaw, or pinky toe.
When you are in alignment, in the frequency of your Higher Self, you are poised to speak, listen, write, create, inspire, and uplift yourself and others. Your words carry forth the vibration set in place by your being right where you belong, in your Unique Energetic Signature.
Here is the homework I gave “M.” Try it for yourself and let me know what happens.
Do not speak—I repeat, do NOT speak, do not let any words leave your mouth—until you have felt their vibration somewhere in your body. Take the time to assess their credibility through vibrational logic, not mind-logic; frequency-sense, not common sense. That quip on the tip of your tongue? Bite it back. The well-launched defense? Cut it off at the pass. It’s not about not being allowed to say what you want, but to begin to get a firm grasp on how each word you are about to speak has a frequency that will be translated into being through your body and out into the world. If, by the time you’ve assessed the somatics related to the words you want to say, you forget what they were or decide not to say them, let them go…they were not meant to be said. Then become aware of the focus you applied to experience this experience.
Words are an empowering and powerful way we share energy in this interconnected universe.
Use them wisely, and well.
And remember, If Rumpelstiltskin were an HSP, he’d be spinning words into vibrational gold.
THE HSP TREATMENT BREAKTHROUGH
Elevating Your HSP-ness by Heidi Connolly