The Conduit

Feet on the ground.

Skin pressed against the pale hardwood.

Cold.

Not the kind of cold that sits upon the surface.

The kind that enters.

The kind that travels upward through the soles of your feet, through muscle and tendon, through marrow and bone.

Pulsing:

In.

Out.

Relentless:

In.

Out.

Like breath.

Like tides.

Like blood finding its way home.

I sit quietly and wonder:

What exactly are we?

A collection of atoms?

Electrical impulses?

Biology?

Or something more?

Science tells us that every living thing carries an electrical charge. Our hearts generate measurable electromagnetic fields. Our brains communicate through electrical signals. Every sensation, thought, memory, grief, joy, and fear is transmitted through tiny currents firing across intricate neural pathways.

We are matter.

Yet we are also energy in motion.

And some of us seem to feel that motion more than others.

There are people who walk into a room and immediately notice the tension.

The unspoken argument.

The sadness hidden behind a smile.

The child who is struggling.

The parent who is barely holding it together.

The friend who says, “I’m fine,” while their eyes tell a completely different story.

Science has names for some of this:

• Sensory processing sensitivity.

• Emotional contagion.

• Mirror neuron activation.

• Co-regulation.

  
  

Researchers have found that some individuals process environmental and emotional information more deeply than others. Psychologist Elaine Aron spent decades studying what she termed Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), individuals whose nervous systems appear to take in and process more information from their surroundings.

Highly perceptive?

I would think so.

These individuals are often more attuned to subtle shifts in facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and environmental stimuli.

They notice.

Everything.

The beauty.

The chaos.

The suffering.

The possibility.

And sometimes it feels less like observation and more like absorption.

And then I wonder…

What if the healers, empaths, intuitives, counsellors, artists, and deeply sensitive souls among us are not necessarily seeing something different than everyone else?

What if they are simply noticing more?

Processing more.

Feeling more.

And carrying more than their nervous systems were ever meant to hold alone?

But science only explains part of the experience.

Across cultures and centuries, people have described similar phenomena through entirely different language.

Empaths.

Healers.

Medicine people.

Energy workers.

Intuitives.

People who could “feel” things before they happened.

People who sensed illness.

People who carried the emotional burdens of their communities.

People who claimed to see spirits.

To receive messages.

To channel wisdom.

To act as a bridge between worlds.

Whether one interprets these experiences through spirituality, psychology, or a combination of both often depends on the lens through which they view reality.

Yet what fascinates me is not whether every claim can be measured.

It is that these archetypes appear in nearly every culture humanity has ever created.

The conduit.

The absorber.

The translator.

The one who feels.

I wonder if what many of us call healing begins here.

Not in possessing some extraordinary gift.

But in possessing extraordinary openness.

The willingness to be touched by the world.

To allow joy to move through us.

To allow grief to move through us.

To sit with another person’s suffering long enough that they no longer have to carry it alone.

Not taking it from them.

But witnessing it.

Helping them metabolize it.

Helping them make meaning from it.

Perhaps this is why so many of the “feelers” gravitate toward creative expression.

Art.

Music.

Dance.

Writing.

Movement.

Nature.

Meditation.

The nervous system was never designed to endlessly absorb without release.

What enters must eventually leave.

Breath enters.

Breath leaves.

Blood circulates.

Tides rise.

Tides fall.

The forest sheds.

The snake sheds.

Even stars collapse and become something new.

Perhaps creativity is simply the body’s way of completing the cycle.

Of transforming what was absorbed into something that can be released.

Something beautiful.

Something useful.

Something healing.

And maybe that is the deeper question.

Not whether energy exists.

Not whether spirits exist.

Not whether certain people possess gifts beyond our current understanding.

Those questions may remain unanswered for some time.

The deeper question may be:

What do we do with what we feel?

Because some of us feel everything.

The grief.

The tension.

The wonder.

The beauty.

The suffering.

The possibility.

And perhaps our purpose is not to carry it.

Perhaps our purpose is to channel it.

To allow it to move through us rather than becoming trapped within us.

To create.

To connect.

To heal.

And in doing so, we discover that we, too, are healing.

And I suppose that, in the beautiful messiness of being human, we make mistakes along this journey called life.

Perhaps one of the dangers of being a conduit—whether described through science, spirituality, or simply the way we move through the world—is that we begin to mistake absorption for healing.

We convince ourselves that by opening our hearts, by carrying another’s pain, grief, suffering, or even joy, we are helping. That if we can understand enough of it, hold enough of it, or fix enough of it, perhaps the suffering around us will lessen.

But the body keeps score.

The nervous system keeps score.

And eventually, even the strongest conduits reach capacity.

What was meant to flow through us begins to settle within us instead—the grief, the worry, the heartache, the weight of stories that were never ours to carry alone.

And when enough remains unspoken, unreleased, or unprocessed, the body often finds its own language.

A tightening in the chest.

A restless mind.

A migraine.

Exhaustion.

Illness.

A quiet withdrawal from the world.

Not as punishment, but perhaps as a message.

A gentle reminder that even the conduits of this world were never meant to absorb endlessly.

Rivers must continue to flow.

Forests must shed.

Even the lungs know this truth: we cannot inhale forever.

Eventually, we must release.

Perhaps that is why so many of the feelers, caregivers, helpers, counsellors, parents, teachers, healers, and empaths find themselves cycling through periods of burnout, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, migraines, autoimmune illness, or profound exhaustion.

Not because they are weak.

Not because they have failed.

But because what was meant to move through them became trapped within them.

Maybe healing was never meant to be the act of taking on another’s pain.

Maybe healing is learning to witness it, hold it gently for a time, and then allow it to continue its journey.

To trust that we do not need to carry every burden in order to love deeply.

And perhaps our greatest growth as conduits comes not from learning how to absorb more, but from learning how to release more.

To understand that caring for ourselves is not separate from our ability to care for others.

It is the very thing that makes it possible.

The conduit is not the one who absorbs endlessly.

The conduit is the one who learns how to let energy, emotions, grief, beauty, and wonder pass through—without becoming the container that holds it all.

With Love,

Mel Watts