With the onset of the cooler weather, we are starting to embrace more warming breathwork in yoga class, targeting the 3rd chakra (solar plexus area). In yoga, your 3rd chakra is your centre of personal power and can be badly affected by negative energy, aggressive people and overwhelming surrounds, like big shopping centres. For empaths and highly sensitive people (HSP), stimulating this area can help them build resilience and cope with life’s stressors better.

I would say at least 60% of my yoga students are empaths or HSPs or a combination of both. Sensitive and introverted, these are gentle, highly attuned souls. The other 40% of my students are more resilient and can bounce back from stress better. Approximately 15% of the general population are empathic/HSP and their most defining characteristic is their immune response to ordinary life. An empath/HSP filters less information through their nervous systems and they take in more from their environment. It’s theorised this can often be a survival mechanism set up in the womb or as a baby, particularly if the baby or toddler did not feel safe. Often this can be due to the emotional state of the parents, a high stress pregnancy perhaps or if a caregiver was emotionally or physically volatile. But often, we are just born this way.
Babies can’t regulate their own nervous systems. They need their caregivers to attune to them in order to regulate. If they don’t get that, their nervous systems adapt and they develop a high degree of sensitivity so they can pick up on any threat at the earliest possible moment. You know these little people. As babies they hate loud noises and bright lights. They cry a lot and need to be carried constantly. As toddlers they can’t bear loud aggressive children and meanness. They often become very shy. Even as adults, they simply don’t have the resilience or armour to cope with the aggressive bits of life. Where a normal person might get annoyed or a headache, for the HSP, their body arcs up into a full flight or fight response. Those with HSP have a higher chance of developing things like autoimmune conditions and allergies.
So, what to do? Start by embracing your empathic/HSP nature and come to yoga. The physical asanas, the breathwork, the mindfulness and the friendly people in class will calm and soothe your immune response. Come regularly, and this calm state will become your new normal. Avoid people who constantly make you feel disempowered, sad and shamed and remove yourself from situations before you are left exhausted. Clean up your diet and remove foods that inflame your system. Embrace your empathic/HSP nature as a gift, as a superpower, and shine your light for other souls to follow suit. It’s kindness that will heal our world.
Margot Wagner
Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree
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