Picture two women walking into the same room. Same age, similar backgrounds, comparable careers. On paper, their lives look almost identical. One lights the room up. People lean toward her, conversations deepen in her presence, and opportunities seem to find her. She moves through life with an ease that others can’t quite name but everyone can feel.
The other woman is exhausted. She works just as hard. She ticks all the boxes, is reliable and consistently shows up, but something is leaking. Something feels off. And no matter how much she achieves, the sense of aliveness she’s chasing keeps slipping just out of reach.
What’s the difference between them?
It’s frequency.
Your emotional state has a frequency. That frequency is shaping your life in a measurable, observable, and deeply practical way, one I return to constantly in my work with women in midlife, and one that has fundamentally transformed how I understand the process of real, lasting change.
Enter: The Map of Consciousness
The Map of Consciousness was designed by Dr David Hawkins (no relation!) – a psychiatrist, physician, researcher, and spiritual teacher who spent decades investigating one deceptively simple question: why do some people flourish, while others, despite every external advantage, seem to contract?
What he discovered and documented in his landmark 1995 book Power vs. Force, and later expanded in The Map of Consciousness Explained (2020) was both scientific and profound. Hawkins proposed that every human emotion carries a measurable energetic frequency, and that the cumulative field of that energy doesn’t just determine how we feel, it determines how we function, how we connect, and ultimately, what we are capable of creating in our lives.
His methodology used applied kinesiology, or muscle testing, was admittedly controversial in mainstream academic circles. But the framework itself has been embraced across integrative medicine, coaching, psychology, and spiritual communities worldwide, because it maps something that so many of us intuitively know to be true:
How we feel inside radiates outward and it shapes every single thing we touch.
The Scale: From Shame to Enlightenment
The Map of Consciousness runs from 1 to 1,000.
At the bottom sit emotions such as shame (1–20), guilt (30), apathy (50), grief (75), fear (100), desire (125), anger (150), and pride (175). These are what Hawkins calls states of profound contraction. Life force is diminished and possibility feels absent. The world feels like something is being done to you, rather than something you are actively, powerfully co-creating.
At 200, everything shifts.
Courage at 200 marks the move from force to power. Below it, we operate from survival, manipulation, fear, and ego. Above it, we begin to operate from integrity, and authenticity, from something that builds rather than depletes.
From there the scale continues to rise: neutrality (250), willingness (310), acceptance (350), reason (400). And then the frequencies most of us persistently search for – joy (500), peace (540), love (600) – all the way to enlightenment at 700–1,000, a state Hawkins associated with the great spiritual teachers of history.
The threshold that strikes me most profoundly in my coaching work?
At 250, wellbeing begins.
Energy starts to shift and increase at neutrality. At the simple, courageous willingness to stop resisting what is. To release the grip of judgment – of yourself and your life, and open to possibility.
Worth noting: the numbers aren’t literal Hertz measurements. They’re a logarithmic scale, which means the jump from fear to courage isn’t just 100 points, it’s an exponential leap in life force. Even one level of movement is more significant than it sounds.
That shift is closer than most of us realise.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
In my work with women in midlife, I see this map lived out in real time, every single day.
So many women arrive carrying the weight of decades. They have been people-pleasing, over-performing, dimming themselves down, running on empty while keeping everyone else’s world afloat. They are exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Depleted in a way that holidays only temporarily mask.
They aren’t broken. They are energetically depleted. Their life force; their natural, luminous vitality, has been leaking steadily into emotional states they were never taught to examine, let alone shift.
When a client arrives for our first session, I’m always quietly asking: where is she on this scale right now? Not to judge or categorise, but to meet her exactly where she is and to understand with compassion and precision what is actually happening beneath the surface.
A woman operating from fear needs something different than a woman at pride, who needs something different again from a woman hovering at the edge of courage. The coaching conversation, the practices, the reframes, all of it shifts depending on where the energy actually is.
The map gives us a language, a framework and a way to locate ourselves honestly, without shame, and then ask the only question that truly matters:
What would it take to move one level higher?
How the Map Guides My Coaching Work
Here’s how I use this framework practically with clients:
As a diagnostic tool. In our early sessions, I’ll often ask a client to sit quietly and honestly consider: if I had to name the emotional state that feels most like you right now, the default frequency you return to, what would it be? The answer is almost always illuminating, and almost always met with a long exhale of relief. Being seen accurately, without judgment, is itself a shift upward.
As a compass for change. Rather than reaching for a dramatic leap, as in “I just want to feel joy!” the map teaches us to take the next honest step. If you’re in apathy, the move toward grief is progress. If you’re in anger, moving toward pride is movement. The goal is not to rush to the top. It’s to keep rising, one courageous step at a time.
As a reframe for “negative” emotions. One of the most liberating things I witness in clients is the moment they stop pathologising their anger, grief, or fear. Understanding that your frequency is information can change everything. Anger sits higher than apathy. Feeling something is always a step above feeling nothing.
As evidence of their own transformation. When a client who arrived in apathy starts to feel flickers of willingness, we celebrate that tiny spark of maybe this could be different. Because that shift, quiet as it might feel, represents a fundamental change in her energy field. And energy, once shifted, creates momentum.
Practical Ways to Raise Your Frequency
Real frequency elevation is honest, embodied work. Here are the practices I return to most often, both personally and with my clients:
1. Name it without shame. The first and most powerful shift is simply witnessing where you actually are, not where you think you should be. Right now, today, what is your honest emotional frequency? Awareness alone begins to move energy.
2. Move your body. Energy lives in the physical body, not just the mind. Yoga, walking in nature, dancing in your kitchen, a long swim, all interrupt stagnant emotional patterns stored in the body and create space for higher frequencies to emerge. I have never finished a beach walk still operating from the same state I started with.
3. Curate your inputs with discernment. Everything you consume: the people you spend time with, the conversations you have, the social media you absorb, the environments you inhabit, all carry a frequency. And your field absorbs it. Discernment is my word for 2026, and one I return to constantly. What are you allowing into your field? Is it raising you or depleting you?
4. Seek out awe and wonder. Beauty, music, art, nature, meaningful conversation, or great literature are portals to higher frequency states. They bypass the thinking mind and speak directly to something deeper. When you feel stuck, don’t push harder. Go find something that moves you.
5. Serve and contribute. One of the most consistent findings in Hawkins’ work and in my own lived experience, is that genuine acts of service elevate frequency dramatically. Showing up fully for someone else, contributing your gifts, being of use are direct pathways to the higher states of the scale. The women who thrive most in my programs are almost always the ones who show up most generously for each other.
6. Work with a coach. We cannot always see our own patterns from inside them. A skilled coaching relationship creates a held space where honest witnessing, gentle challenge, and genuine transformation become possible. Having someone reflect your frequency back to you, with skill and care, accelerates everything.
The Ripple Effect Is Real
The most extraordinary aspect of Hawkins’ work is that the scale is not linear in its impact.
A single person operating at a consistently high frequency, with genuine love, peace, or joy can, according to his research, counterbalance tens of thousands of people operating at lower states. The field effect of one fully present, courageous, loving human being is staggering.
The ripple effect of one woman choosing courage over fear, acceptance over resentment, love over self-abandonment or presence over performance is infectious. It affects every room she walks into, every relationship she touches, every woman watching quietly, thinking: maybe I can do that too.
This is the work I feel called to do in the world. Because a life lived at frequencies that diminish and deplete is no longer acceptable, especially when we understand what is actually possible.
So, What Frequency Are You Currently Emitting?
If you were to reflect honestly, what frequency are you experiencing right now.
Are you in fear, operating from a place of threat and contraction? Are you in anger which, while uncomfortable, is at least alive and moving? Are you hovering at the edge of courage trembling at the threshold where everything begins to shift?
Or are you already living in pockets of acceptance, willingness, even love and simply not giving yourself credit for how far you’ve already come?
There is no wrong answer. There is only an honest one.
And from that honest, clear-eyed, compassionate, courageous reckoning with where we actually are, everything becomes possible.
Personal reflection
I’m forever trying to live as the highest version of myself. Some days I reach love, then something unexpected occurs and I’m right back at grief or anger. This being human isn’t easy but the good thing is being aware of these states means that you can notice where you are and make small steps to climb the ladder again.
That is where the real work begins. And it is, I promise you, the most worthwhile work you will ever do.
I’d love to hear from you.
Drop a comment below: What frequency do you recognise in yourself most right now? And what’s one small, honest shift that could move you one level higher?
And if you’re ready to do this work with support, to have someone walk alongside you as you rise, I’d love to connect.
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