A topic that sometimes arises on the classes we teach is that of energy and the concept of ‘protecting’ your energy and ‘energy being drained by other people and circumstances’. Stewart Blackburn and I explore this here.
Indeed, in some spiritual circles, there is a common belief that certain people or situations can “drain” our energy. Spend time around the wrong person, the story goes, and you’ll walk away depleted. Sometimes these drains are referred to as ‘energy vampires’.
In this article we address this notion from a Huna perspective.
In Huna, we take a very different view. Rather than seeing ourselves as fragile beings whose energy can be taken from us, we recognise that energy follows attention. What we focus on grows. Where we place awareness, we place power.
So instead of asking, “Who is draining me?” we ask: “Where am I sending my energy… and do I want to keep sending it there?”
This shift matters, because the first belief is disempowering. It quietly hands our wellbeing over to other people and circumstances. The second brings us back to choice, and choice is where real power lives.
It is a misconception that we can “pick up” someone else’s energy, like it’s a contagious disease or a bad reputation. Something is definitely experienced here, but this way of explaining it is a metaphor, one that includes the idea that energy is transferable against one’s will. This metaphor is very disempowering as it suggests that we are powerless to deal with “catching” this negativity. A very different metaphor, one that is considerably more empowering, is that we are resonating with the energy of another person.
This means that we have within us the same energy that we consider negative and that we don’t like. The other person’s behaviour or thinking can evoke a similar response in us. This phenomenon can be easily seen in noticing how we respond to unpleasant things that we have some experience with versus experiences that are entirely foreign to us. Take for example a man’s understanding of menstrual cramps. He is likely (hopefully) to be very sympathetic, but he has no real reference for judging the intensity of that feeling. And similarly, a woman’s understanding of what it’s like to be hit in the testicles will be less than that of a man’s.
We don’t resonate with experiences we don’t have some familiarity with, but we can resonate strongly with what memories we already carry. So, what looks like taking on someone else’s negativity is to feel the same negativity within us. Feeling this means that we have some work to do to process that feeling to let it go. We must take responsibility for our feelings, not blame others for how we feel. The experience of “taking on” someone else’s energy is a wake-up call to deal with feelings we have resisted.
It is critical that we each acknowledge to ourselves that we alone are responsible for how we feel. No one makes us feel any which way or another. We are in charge of how we respond to any given situation. We can choose from a variety of responses depending on how good we want to feel. This is us using our natural power for our benefit and the benefit of those around us. And it all starts by choosing how we want to feel.
From a Huna perspective, if we find ourselves resonating with an energy that doesn’t feel good, we are not broken, vulnerable, or under attack. We are simply focussing in a way that isn’t serving us anymore and we can choose to shift our focus.
Sometimes that might look like softening the breath, shifting posture, bringing attention back to the heart, or changing the story we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening. Sometimes it simply means stepping away, not from fear, but from clarity.
A gentle reminder you can take with you:
Other people don’t drain our energy. We direct our energy and we can redirect it.
If this theme speaks to you, try noticing over the next few days where your attention goes. When you feel tired or stuck, ask: What am I feeding with my focus right now? What would I rather nourish instead?
Small shifts in attention can create surprisingly big shifts in experience.
If you are interested in exploring this and other topics around energy, we are teaching a four part live online workshop Make Energy Your Friend in July 2026. Find out more here: https://www.urbanhuna.org/event/make-energy-your-friend/
