Although hardly an ardent Trekkie, I have a favorite episode to which I frequently refer in my classes. Said episode, “The Empath,” while not one of the more popular ones, had a profound effect on me, for reasons that were at the time painfully clear. This rather simple morality tale centered on a young mute woman who (along with the captain and his faithful senior offices) is held prisoner by an alien race. The alien captors seem bent on torturing the inveterate trio in an increasingly gruesome manner. What we soon learn is that the young mute is an empath–a sensitive able to transmute the suffering of others through touch. The purpose of the sadistic treatment of all concerned is to teach the young empath altruistic compassion by putting her in the presence of suffering and caring humans. Through this horrific experiment, the aliens hope to instill in her (and, by example, her empathic race) a willingness to overcome their fear of suffering so that they might willingly use their exceptional powers of healing for the greater good.

The scene that remains imprinted in my mind was the moment when the conflicted empath finally touched the badly injured “Bones” and his wounds disappeared from his body, briefly transferred to the empath and soon faded away, leaving the empath weak and spent. That such a graphic scene should still seem so poignant may speak more of some aberration in my masochistic psyche than the power of its imagery. What seemed disturbingly clear was that I, like so many highly sensitive individuals who ultimately found their way to bodywork, resonated with the heroine of this sentimental tale, in some odd way knowing that my reality was not dissimilar from hers. This issue would emerge many times in my life and, in various guises, would frequently show up in my practice.

Along similar lines, I recall a story shared in my first craniosacral class about a middle-aged nurse who had attended this class earlier that year. After the student completed the first exercise, she looked at the instructor with tears in her eyes and said: “Oh, I just can’t do this. I feel everything.” She promptly got up and left the room, never to return. The point was not to frighten us but to suggest that such gentle and passive work could open doors to places deep within our clients and that such experiences could be not only powerful but also emotionally overwhelming for any sensitive and unprotected practitioner.

Thoughts of such an experience filled me not at all with trepidation, but rather a sense of connection and profound recognition, even though I had hardly begun to learn the rudiments of my craft. What struck me as strange was not that the student left but that everyone in the room would not feel this way more times than not. Furthermore, dancing in this realm held a strange fascination for me, rather like my wild imaginings of whirling dervishes or yogis as they slipped into sublime states of altered consciousness.

Unfortunately, however, my initial experiences with this empathic realm were anything but ecstatic, but rather, exquisitely painful trance-like states that were frequently frightening, overwhelming, and debilitatingly painful.’ These unpleasant impressions were clearly “not me,” but rather some distorted transmogrification of my client’s reality, often searing with pain and noxious olfactory assaults that initially overwhelmed me. Let me say before I proceed, that I do not in any way consider these experiences atypical, that their effects were transitory, and that I over time learned to process them much quicker than my melodramatic language might so far suggest.

The following two short examples will prove illustrative of my experience. During my first visceral manipulation class with Structural Integration instructor Liz Gaggini in 2000, she was explaining that the pancreas is not an organ but more accurately a gland and that glands are not very happy about being touched and become irritated quite quickly. I should also point out that this was a normal, healthy pancreas as far as Liz could determine. Within a few seconds of Liz making very light contact with the student’s pancreas, I began to sweat. This sweating began almost immediately and continued uninterrupted throughout the entire palpation. I suspected that I was too close and began defensively backing up during the demo and soon found myself pressing into the mirrored wall about 20 feet away. In an effort to protect myself, I was reflexively jamming myself into the wall as if I could mitigate this unremitting assault. As soon as the palpation was over, the sweating and intense sensation of heat immediately stopped and, while I felt a bit weak for several minutes, I was able to ask questions coherently and try to explain my bizarre behavior to my fellow students many of whom I know to be exceptionally sensitive and intuitive practitioners.

The second incident happened last year. A friend flew me to his home in northwest Montana to do some sessions with a woman about 70 years old with spondylothesis (stress fractures in the vertebral arch that cause the vertebrae to slide forward and painfully impinge on the spinal cord and nerve roots). My first night there we went out to dinner and perhaps not entirely coincidentally met the woman and her family-who I suspect hoped we might be dining there. After meeting and touching her I received a wealth of emotional and nociceptive information that was unpleasant and hard to filter out. During the subsequent meal, the woman’s pain was so palpable that I had great difficulty eating. At irregular intervals, I felt excruciating pains shooting up my back into my head. They were searing and rather like sustained electrical surges. They persisted throughout the meal and since the woman was sitting next to us, I had difficulty discreetly explaining to my friend what was wrong with me. He clearly could see that I was uncomfortable. When we left, I told him about my experience; fortunately, he was trusting enough not to dismiss my experience as nonsense. The next day, after he prodded me to do so, I told the client what I had felt and she reported that she frequently had the identical sensation and that it often incapacitated her for days at a time.

She did not seem upset or surprised by this discussion. Rather, it created an immediate bond between us. Such a reaction is not always to be expected. In general, we must be very careful how we share this sort of information, as we will often be met with confused questioning or outright fear. The fear factor here is huge and should never be minimized. Injudicious or abrupt sharing of personal information you sense can prove very upsetting and in many instances will send the client running for cover. Just as a therapist must be extremely deliberate and careful in the pacing with which he introduces questions and difficult issues, so an intuitive may choose to withhold information that may not now be appropriate for the client to receive and internalize. In many cases, in fact, such sensitive information retrieved need not be shared.

Having such an awareness and using it to shape your words and techniques may incalculably deepen your clients’ experience at a subconscious level. Also, you should never forget that such information might well put you in a tricky position of power-a position that you must always approach with humility and respect, as the possibilities for inadvertent abuse are rife. Too much information is a very dangerous thing and you must always put the client’s needs and psychological abilities to hear and integrate ahead of any well-intentioned need to share information you assimilated through non-ordinary sensing and touching.

With all these caveats in mind and many others that an empath would certainly learn as he worked, it would seem that there are certain therapeutic arenas where such sensitivity might prove particularly useful. Once a highly sensitive individual learns how to moderate the input he receives, certain fields would naturally attract him. For instance, those modalities that are more passive and require monitoring and effecting subtle changes in the client’s system or the fields that emanate from said individuals would be a natural “fit” for an empath. Unquestionably, many so wired do choose such specialties and develop loyal clients who appreciate and gratefully respond to their gifts. Such would seem a natural marriage of kindred spirits and fill an important need not met by Western allopathic practitioners. Medical intuitives, shamanic healers, Barbara Brennan practitioners, sound healing practitioners, energetic healers and those proficient in certain subtle osteopathic techniques would certainly feel at home in these and similar modalities, ones where their empathic gifts are more likely to be refined and developed. Of course, one need not be an empath to be an osteopath, but when engaging in certain subtle types of sensing, having access to the wealth of sensory impressions available to empaths would certainly enrich the experience and guide the therapist as he patiently waited for a healing force to manifest or for some subtle shift in the client’s system.

This notion of the wealth of sensory data accessible to empaths leads us rather indirectly to a connection, however seemingly oblique, with a world I find fascinating-that inhabited by autistics. Much of what we know about their world is provided by a relatively small group of high-functioning autistics and those who suffer from the related condition called Asperger’s syndrome. One such individual, Temple Grandin, has written three books on her life as an autistic and her fascinating work with animals. There have also been several books and novels written by and from the perspective of young autistics, such as the imaginative mystery novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. From such insightful sources, we develop a much clearer understanding of how a few members of this remarkable community process and experience their worlds. As to how the vast majority function and process, we can only speculate at this juncture.

One of the most common experiences described by autistics is their sensitivity to jarring stimuli whether it is loud noises, bright lights, or too much sensory input. They report having an aversion to large crowds; in self-protection they retreat internally and may engage in repetitive behaviors that calm themselves. They also have difficulty interpreting ambivalent meanings and social behaviors that we accept as normal. One reason for this seems to be an inability to generalize and a concomitant focus on details. They also seem to “see in pictures” rather than process their environment verbally as most of us do.2

What particularly struck me in the many books I have read on the subject were autistics’ problems with sensory input, their visual processing of incoming data and their penchant for focusing on details. All of these features sounded profoundly and disturbingly familiar to me as I suspect they may to many others similarly wired. I go back to that nurse who said she felt too much during her first craniosacral palpation, the relatively direct CV-4, and left the room in emotional overwhelm, retreating from intense stimuli as we all instinctively do. Dealing with the sensory input that surrounds us is painful for sensitives and autistics in part because both groups have poor filtering skills. However, this sensitivity that distances for survival may also act as a bridge between individuals with kindred processing problems. This unconventional insight may have some implications for neophyte sensitives who might be drawn to autistics without quite understanding, the attraction.

Potential advantages of empathic practitioners working with autistics became clear to me in my work with two young autistic boys last year. The more profoundly impaired of the two was a ten-year old with apparently minor brain damage who could not speak and had poor coordination and k profound learning and processing difficulties. The first time he and his parents came to the office he was extremely agitated and acted out so badly-rocking, screaming, shaking-that his father had to remove him k from the waiting area and hold and comfort him several times.

What gradually became clear was that he was reacting to a group seminar that was taking place in the back of the center where some rather intense emotional work was going on. These folks broke for lunch at one point during this protracted emotional outburst. As they paraded by, I suspect their emotionally raw state was “read” by it my client who simply panicked because he could not filter out all this unresolved leaking distress. When I finally figured out this rather obvious fact (this was, after all, my first such case so be tolerant gentle reader) I explained my insight to his parents who were not entirely convinced. Yet it seemed l. I was correct; once the participants in the seminar left, he calmed down and we got some work done. Of course, some damage had already been done so this settling took some time but, generally, the session went quite well.

Several minutes into the session, I started observing a pattern of behavior that did not seem random and seemed to indicate some sort of communicative effort on the part of my young client. As I moved from d area to area in a generally planned manner, I noticed certain responsive patterns I in the boy. Some were subtly withdrawing and some seemed more clearly a moving into me, as if my client were guiding me in choices of where to work and for how long. The child was never static and seemed to be constantly resisting, redirecting, or assisting me. At first, I suspected that I was looking for meaning where there was none; that my desire to “prove” that I was effecting change was coloring my perceptions, offering deceptive suggestions of implicit meaning and that in fact his actions were purely random and a function of either involuntary responses or chance coordinations between my work and his self-directed movement. And yet, there it was, over and over again.’ I tentatively remarked on this seeming pattern to the child’s parents who seemed totally mystified by my suggestions. Their skepticism seemed to throw a wet blanket on my insights, and yet I found it harder and harder to see these patterns as random. I sensed that the boy was broadcasting an ever-stronger signal on some unfamiliar yet resonant frequency.

The kicker came at the end of our short session, some 20-25 minutes in duration. He appeared restless and began making sounds that seemed disapproving or perhaps irritated–it was hard to tell. I quickly removed my hands and said: “So we are done for today, are we?” He did not respond directly but slowly began to sit up and soon got off the table. Then a most remarkable confirmation of my observations occurred. Instead of walking back to his parents, he slowly leaned over the table and pushed his butt out away from the table and stood there expectantly. I was totally floored by this action. In an instant I understood that he wanted me to work some more on his hamstrings and that he somehow knew that this would be a perfect way to both tense and present them to me so that I could easily and directly work along their taut bellies. When I expressed my surprise to his parents, they seemed so confused both by his actions and my interpretation of them that they just sat watching in stunned silence. This just had to be right. I did perhaps two minutes of moderately direct work on these chronically hypertoned hip extensors and when he had had enough, he simply stood up and watched me. “Done for today”, I announced confidently.

I had one final surprise. He began to slowly walk towards me and seemed to want some more direct contact. I was again confused and asked his parents what they thought was his intention. His mother said that he wanted me to hold him and after getting his parent’s permission, I allowed him to climb up onto my lap while I held him firmly until his curiously distressed dad abruptly picked him up and took him out of the room. Apparently, such behavior was extremely unusual for him, particularly with a new therapist. A deep connection had been made and he was expressing his gratitude. A very special moment for us both.

After the child left, I told his mother that I did not believe that he was retarded but in some ways incredibly intelligent and that his kinesthetic awareness and communication skills were exceptional-in fact, more highly developed than in any child with whom I had worked. Unfortunately, this proved too odd an observation for her to accept. It blatantly contradicted all her previous experiences, since all other therapists had not said any such thing in her several years of seeking treatment for this exceptional and, I suspect, gifted boy.

When she asked me why no one else who had worked with him had ever said or observed the things I had, my immediate answer was that perhaps they just didn’t know how to listen to him. I believe that the unconventional nature of my work created much confusion in these loving parents, yet they continued the therapy for a few months. Also, I have no specific answer as to why other skilled and perhaps better-trained specialists failed to interpret or manifest the behaviors I watched unfold with wonder and joy. Such speculations might seem to reek of judgment and narcissistic self-aggrandizement. “The facts, ma’m, just the facts.”

The sessions were special for me and my young charge who experienced genuine excitement at the prospect of our sessions and seemed to slowly blossom as a person. He soon became more happy and communicative in his special way and also experienced some interesting improvements in his walking and coordination. I suspect that my ability to connect to this child was largely a result of some deep connection between us and that the nature of this connection seemed to have more to do with problems of processing sensory input and communicating our discomfort to others than some special skill that my excellent training afforded me. Unlike the Star Trek heroine, I had no fear of feeling or suffering too much. Rather, accessing through my naturally distorted lens some fractured dimensions of this child’s jumbled reality felt more like coming home than some alien “fantastic voyage.” For those of us who live with the often-painful reality of processing the world empathically, the trade-offs are huge, particularly once we learn how to entrain with others without becoming a prisoner of their painful realities.

NOTES

1. An important question that I have never been able to answer is why traumatic experiences are easier to read and see than those of a gentle or positive nature. But such seems to be the case in my experience.

2. All this is beautifully explained in Temple Grandin’s and Catherine Johnson’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (New York: Scribner, 2005) and in Grandiri s earlier Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism (New York: Vintage, 1995).

3. I have dealt with these issues of perceptual bias for seeing pattern in my recent article: “The Pattern Conundrum: or, what Is the Sound of One Hand Rolfing°?” Structural Integration, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Winter/December 2004): 20-24.