Emotional Plumbing - Free the Inner You - Here in Holland
So, here’s a question, can someone feel another person’s emotions by touching them?
Not just a vague feeling but a deep intuitive understanding of emotions that drive or hold people back.
All sound a bit like mumbo-jumbo? Well, I have always been sceptical about people making bold claims like this but when I met one I decided to go and investigate. The result is the podcast ‘Emotional Plumbing.’
Sue Susnik describes herself as a coach for highly sensitive, highly intelligent and multi-faceted people. It’s a description which doesn’t really do justice to what she does.
She is a kind of ‘emotional plumber,’ a person with a highly developed skill to surface emotions in people.
“You know when people have potential but they can’t release it, that it is blocked, and they can’t be their full potential , their full Me? Well, I’m like a plumber who comes along and unblocks it and lets it flow.”
“The way that I do that is quite specific, it is by working with the energies in people. And I know that is going to sound totally wacky.”
It does sound a bit crazy, but Sue is a scientist. She studied at Cambridge University and has a PhD in Environmental Science. Take this into account and you start to realise this is a serious proposition.
How does it work in practice?
Sue walks around me as I lie face up on a massage table (fully clothed) and she begins to ‘listen’ to the signals she is receiving.
She hones in on my head and lays on her hands. She is feeling a strong sense of frustration she says, an image of someone pounding their fists against a closed door.
She’s tuned into frustrations I have been having in my work – it is impressively accurate.
“It’s a way that I feel sensations in my body that gives me information about what the person needs. So, I feel a draw in my arms and I’ll feel that I need to move my arms in a certain direction, to put my hands on say, the leg, or the foot, or the hand of the person I am working with.”
“And what’s happened over time is that the sensations have become more specific – so I can put my hands on somebody and if, for example, they have some strong grief then I can feel the experience of grief in me and I can say to the client I feel grief and they can tune into that.”
“It’s almost like there is a resonance between us that then helps me to amplify for them what they are feeling and then they can process it and digest it and that’s where the unblocking comes in. That’s where the release happens.”
Sue admits that at the moment there is no scientific explanation for what she does, she says she just knows that it works for her.
In a way it is similar to a proven phenomenon knowing as Mirror Touch synesthesia – there is a well documented case of a US physician Joel Salinas who can feel patients physical pain.
And Sue also points to the work of renowned Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk on trauma as also perhaps providing the start of an explanation for what she does.
“If I am not for you then don’t work with me. I am not out to necessarily to convince people. I am just there to say this is what I do, this is how it works and these are the benefits that people can get from me. These are the insights people can get from me.
“If you don’t think it’s the thing for you and you come along then there’ll just be piles of resistance, so I would say go and do something else. Go and do something that works for you,” says Sue Susnik.
Going through the experience of meeting Sue certainly broadened my horizons – I left the session with a sense that this was someone with a unique gift. A gift being used to help people tackle deep-seated issues and live better lives.
Listening to the podcast will give a much better impression than reading the words on this page.
Here in Holland is the podcast in English about life with the Dutch – it’s produced by Andy Clark – contact him via [email protected] or Facebook – website – you can subscribe to get all the podcasts in via your iPhone podcast app or your Android app of choice. Or follow on Soundcloud