Energetic Hygiene Keeping Your Prana Pretty

What is energetic hygiene? In the physical world, we are separated by distance. What happens to someone on the far side of the earth or even in the next room may appear to have little effect on us.

We believe our thoughts and feelings are private, locked within our own minds and bodies. But, in fact, we are all connected in profound and interdependent ways. It’s as if we were all swimming in the same pond and when someone splashes, we all feel the ripple-effect of the water to some degree.  The energetic world may be subtle and even unnoticeable to some on a conscious level but it is indeed a part of how we feel and operate in our everyday lives.

Although we are more affected by those we spend the most time with, these subtle energies are not necessarily diminished by physical distance. When a natural, political or social crisis strikes in some part of the world, our energy bodies all feel the suffering and fear no matter where we are. We may feel uneasy or restless, anxious or fearful for no reason we immediately understand. We are living in turbulent times. The news feeds us information on one crisis or another (war, terrorism, economic turmoil and global climate change) every day. In previous centuries, before technology communicated everything happening in the world, the subtle energies dissipated and transformed and never reached us with such impact as they do now. Today, true energetic pollution weighs on all of us. I remember the day the news broadcasted the initial attack on Afghanistan following the 9/11 event. As I watched the news, I experienced shooting pains up and down my back, which lasted for months.

As we get older, we forget how good we are supposed to feel. Do you remember how much energy you had as child? Would you be willing to accept you can have the same energy levels now? We don’t realize we are supposed to feel happy, vibrant and light. Everyone knows how important it is to take care of the physical body. We learn from an early age to eat right, exercise, brush our teeth and wash our bodies. What we perhaps don’t realize is that energetic hygiene, the act of clearing our energy field (also referred to as prana, aura, chi and chakras) is equally as important as physical care.

Our energy field gets dirty, heavy and stays in a low vibration with every negative thought, deed and action we put out into the world or is put upon us. We get imprinted in our energetic field and chakras. Over time, this buildup of uncleared energy starts to feel burdensome.  Most of us carry this around without knowing it. We may experience feelings of physical, mental and emotional pain without realizing the source of our dis-ease. Dis-order then comes from having absorbed and stored polluted energy.

Our energy body contains the equivalent of a physical immune system and resists intrusion. Through resonance, it can pick up bits of subtle energies in much the same way a sweater picks up lint. Depending on the nature of this “energetic lint” and the resonance it holds with us, it can cling and influence us with its unwanted qualities and energy.

We live and work with people who are angry, intentionally hurtful or otherwise emotionally destructive. Many personal, societal and familial influences cause us to carry or hold onto stresses, worries, negative emotions and limiting beliefs. Negativity of any kind—whether the source is work or home, general life circumstances, the actions or words of another person or simply our own unresolved anxieties—diminishes and contaminates our personal energy supply and creates emotional contamination.

For example, you may enter someone’s home or office space which is filled with anxiety or sadness. Without realizing it, you may start experiencing similar feelings which you cannot account for. You have unwittingly absorbed the negative energy of the people in the room. You play a part in this absorption. If there is any part of you that has some small similar buried feeling of what exists in the room, but was not previously active in your consciousness, may now be amplified and an active part of your conscious mind. You have now not only activated and amplified your feelings, but have also become a carrier of them in a greater volume and can unintentionally pass them on to others.

If we set the intention to understand the absorbent nature of our energetic field, we can begin with a regimen of keeping it clean.

There are two important aspects of doing this:

Becoming aware of our organic thoughts and feelings we realize are responsible for our own happiness and wellbeing while simultaneously generating these feelings of wellbeing that others may absorb by being around us. Secondly, we become aware of what we are allowing to come into our field (that others have generated) so as not to pollute what we have generated within us and, subsequently, send that back out again. It’s a two-way street!

“We create good energy conditions for ourselves not by isolating ourselves behind shields and barriers but by creating good energy in the world around us. Compassionately and lovingly participating in the life of our world and contributing to the wellbeing of all life is a vital part of energy hygiene.” —David Spangler, ”An Energy Ecology” essay

How we clean our energy and keep it clean, physically and mindfully.  

Some physical techniques:

Sandalwood incense: disperses prana, which breaks up dirty energy. By sweeping incense through your house with the windows open, you will break down and then flush out congested energy. Make sure the incense gets to every room.

OM: get a CD of or play online the mantra “Om.” It matters who chants it, by the way, because the energy and power to break up dirty energy is different.

If you’re sensitive to this energy, you will immediately notice a difference in your surroundings after doing either one of these.

Take Sea salt baths regularly: Put about two pounds of Sea salt (no Epsom salt, which has other excellent uses) in a bathtub of water. Soaking in this draws out and disintegrates dirty energy in your system. Soak for about 20 minutes max because after this time period, the dirty energy now in the water can be drawn back into your body. If you don’t have time for a bath, a salt shower also works.  Step away from the water, cover yourself with salt, and rinse away after a minute or two. You’ll feel the difference!

Exercise and get outdoors: Exercise is extremely powerful for cleansing our energy fields. When a part of our body moves, especially vigorously, the chakras become activated, spin and powerfully propel dirty energy out. If you exercise regularly, you know that when you stop for several days, you start to feel “clogged” or “blocked up.” Walk on the grass barefoot. Sit in the sun for 20 minutes. An endless source of prana is literally right outside our doors!  

Some mental techniques:

Grounding: Visualize a grounding cord running out from your tailbone, dropping down to the center of the earth and connecting. Then open up your feet as wide as your hips, making the space hollow for full release. Visualize growing roots out of your bottom and feet into the earth. Then feel the roots bringing nourishment back into your body from the earth.

Cleansing: Visualize a silver shower, rinsing away any energy that is not supporting you. Rub your hands together and then pull them apart just an inch. Feel the energy surging between them, then use your hands to wipe off any energetic debris from around your body.

Filling in: Imagine a huge, golden sun above your head, calling all your energy from all directions in time back into it and then pouring the golden energy into the top of your head, into your entire body and space around you. Feel the spark of divine light in your belly button and allow it to expand and fill your body and the space around you. Notice a source of light above your head; allow that light to shine into your body and the space around you.

Shielding: Imagine a rose in front of you, representing your energy just outside your space. Ground the stem to the center of the earth and let it collect all the positive energy of the world and process it to benefit you. Surround yourself with white light. Say to yourself, “I am impervious to negative energies around me.”

When you practice energetic hygiene diligently, your energy body becomes more refined; the particles of energy that make up your aura become cleaner and smaller. They also vibrate at a higher frequency. A refined energy body can absorb more good energy from all frequencies. This quality of refinement is compounded: as you practice good energetic hygiene, you can absorb more good energy, which, in turn, makes your energy body lighter and even more refined. This enables you to take in even more refined energy, and so on. A refined energy body is also stronger energetically, which enables you to resist ailments more effectively and rebound more quickly if you do get sick (or energetically depleted). You are now also more skilled in cleaning off patterns from other people in your space that are not supportive.

The advantage of recognizing your mind as an energy field is that you can begin to understand how the conditions in this field affect your conscious thoughts and feelings. You can begin to take control over the energy field instead of being controlled by it.

Consider, finally, that in order to feel well, you also need to generate higher energies in your personal energy field. This involves learning how to respond positively to life’s circumstances, but it also involves learning how to receive more energy from the source of such energy, which we’ve touched upon in the exercises here.

To understand how this can be done, explore the natural flow of energy between your higher being and your lower being and experience how that feels. This will also make it clearer how you can protect and purify your energy field. Learn how to prevent negative energy from entering your energy field. Learn how to purify the energy already in your energy field. Learn how to stop generating negative energy within your own mind. And finally, learn how to expand the flow of positive energy from the higher part of your being outwards to everyone you encounter!

First published in Radiance Magazine January 1, 2018