“And what is man without energy. Nothing, nothing at all.”
~Mark Twain
Included are five exercises to help you get started with your energy hygiene practice. These exercises are an excellent way to help you stay centered and balanced.
- The first exercise is about grounding, which gives you a steady foundation and connection to the earth.
- The second exercise is connecting with earth energy, which helps to neutralize and cleanse negative energies, and helps to ground, protect, and replenish you.
- The third exercise helps you to cleanse your energetic space and provides protection for you.
- The fourth exercise helps you clear your energetic space.
- The fifth exercise is about calling your energy back plus giving back other peoples’ energies.
Tips for those newer to energy medicine and meditation and those wondering if they are doing things “correctly” are included at the end.
Grounding Exercise
Ever forget where you put your keys? Ever bump into a chair by accident? What about drive somewhere not really being aware of the journey from point A to point B? These are examples of being ungrounded. When you’re grounded your spirit is in your body, allowing the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of yourself to work for you.
Grounding is the single most important and useful energetic tool in my opinion. It’s the process of removing excess energetic charge by transferring it to the earth. When you’re grounded you’re able to be in a state of neutrality allowing you to feel balanced and at home in your body. Being grounded allows energetic changes to stick. Without adequate grounding, other energetic tools will not work as well. Grounding is the foundation. It’s paramount to a good energetic practice.
There are many ways to practice grounding. Here’s one I use every day.
- Sit upright in a chair with the soles of your feet on the ground.
- Close your eyes.
Grounding to the center of the earth.
- Take a few deep, cleansing breaths. Breathing in and breathing out.
- Visualize, sense or feel a special area in the center of the earth that’s unique to you. (For instance, visualize an area in the center of the earth that has your name or initials on it. What does it look like? Is there a certain color, trees, or water? Skip this part if it’s not helpful for you.)
- Visualize, sense or feel dropping a connection from your tailbone area down into this special region in the center of the earth. It’s helpful to make the “connection” at least as wide as your hips. It can be anything that appeals to you and helps you feel connected (e.g., redwood tree, waterfall, ship’s anchor, column of light, steel girders, crystals cascading down into the center of the earth, mountain, a certain color, magnets ~ one at your tailbone and one in the center of the earth, etc.)
- Sit and feel the connection to the earth.
Practice this daily for at least 2 minutes. Set a timer if it’s helpful.
A few other ways to ground include:
1) Lay down on the grass or floor, breathe deeply, and allow gravity to help you feel more grounded.
2) Sit in a bathtub with water. Continue sitting in the tub while the water drains out. The pull of the water as it leaves the tub helps some people more fully experience what grounding is like.
3) Using a sound or tone to set their grounding is helpful for some.
It can be useful to find every-day reminders to help you ground. For example, every time you sit on the toilet, ground. (This is something that helped me when I was learning to ground and was juggling many demands on my time. It was one of the only places when I was actually sitting down by myself!) Be creative and find what works for you.
What did this exercise bring up for you? Grab your journal and jot down some notes about your experience with grounding. Did you sense a connection to the earth? What did it feel like? Were there any emotions that went along with this exercise? Have you ever felt grounded before?
Energy From the Earth
The earth provides an amazing resource of energy.
The earth resonates at 7.83 Hz and provides an amazing resource of energy. Earth energy can help balance the nervous system so you feel more at ease. Connecting with the energy of the earth can help reduce feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. It’s a great practice especially for those of us who tend to be highly sensitive and energetically aware.
Our feet are a primary way in which we connect to the earth. There are chakras on the bottom of your feet that help you connect with earth energy. It’s helpful to have your feet chakras fully open when doing this exercise, as this allows more earth energy to enter your system. Some people find that visualizing a certain color, texture, or temperature helps them connect more fully with earth energy. Taking off your shoes and socks can also be helpful. Find what works for you. It could very well change over time. Be open and creative to the process of connecting to earth energy.
To connect with the energy of the earth, practice the following.
- Sit upright in a chair with the soles of your feet on the ground.
- Ground. (See grounding exercise.)
- Open your feet chakras. Some people find rubbing their feet back and forth on the ground helpful in opening up the feet chakras. Visualizing a fully opened vegetable steamer facing away from you in the center of the bottom of each foot is another way to help open your feet chakras.
- As you breathe in, visualize, sense or feel bringing energy from the center of the earth up through your open feet chakras, ankles, calves and thighs and into your tailbone area. (It’s helpful to imagine the leg channels being the size of your thighs from your ankle through the calf area and up through your thigh area, as this allows more earth energy to bathe your energetic systems.)
- As you breathe out, visualize, sense or feel the earth energy dropping down from your tailbone area into the center of the earth.
- Continue visualizing the energy from the middle of the earth up through your leg channels and down from the tailbone area like a circuit.
Do this exercise for at least 2 minutes each day. Set a timer if it’s helpful.
What was your experience with this exercise? Grab your journal and jot down some notes. Did you feel the earth energy? What was your experience of it? When have you felt earth energy in the past? Were there emotions that went along with this exercise?
Golden Sun Technique
The Golden Sun Technique helps you cleanse your energetic space. With a cleaner aura, there’s more room for you to bring in what you want in your life.
Golden sun technique.
- Take a few deep, cleansing breaths ~ breathing in and breathing out.
- Ground to the center of the earth. (See grounding exercise.)
- Visualize a beautiful gold sun overhead.
- Allow the brilliant golden light to radiate down from the sun so that every cell of your body and every part of your aura is completely filled with pure gold light. Hold this image for at least two minutes.
- When you feel comfortable, visualize a loving gold or white light surrounding and protecting your cleansed aura.
For the most benefit, perform this exercise a minimum of one to two times per day.
What did this exercise bring up for you? Use your journal to jot down some notes about your experience with the golden sun technique. Did you sense the loving golden light in your body? What did it feel like? Were there any emotions that went along with this exercise? Have you ever felt something like this before?
The Island Technique
The Island Technique is a wonderful and easy way to remove negative energy from your space to make room for the life you want to create!
Energy needs to flow unimpeded to create an optimal atmosphere for conceiving what you want in your life. Negative thoughts and emotions result in stagnant energy. Letting go of the negative thoughts and emotions can allow more flow in your energy system leading to a more conducive environment for reaching your dreams. One way to do this is the Island Technique.
The Island Technique is super easy!
- Create an imaginary island in the middle of the ocean.
- Visualize putting fears or negative thoughts out on the island.
- Create more islands if needed. There’s no limit to the number of islands you can create.
The island technique.
That’s it! By sending negative thoughts and emotions to islands you remove negative energy from your space. Mother Earth will compost and neutralize the energy on the islands allowing you the space and freedom to create what you want.
Ideas of what you might put on the islands include:
- Fears about your business
- Fears about your future
- Fears about what others think – including clients, family members, well-meaning friends, your partner…
Have fun creating islands!
If islands don’t work for you, use your creativity to come up with another way of getting negative energy out of your space. For instance, you can create dumpsters and put negative thoughts and emotions in there. One client even visualized putting negative thoughts and emotions onto clipboards and then deleted the contents of the clipboards.
Use your journal to write down your reactions to this exercise. Were you surprised by what came up for you during the exercise? What emotions arose? How do you plan to integrate this tool into your life?
My Energy, Your Energy
Ever feel drained after talking with someone or at the end of the day? It could be because you left your energy outside of you and/or picked up someone else’s energy. One energetic tool I use every day is making sure I separate energetically from all people, places and things throughout my day and call back all my energy. This technique helps you get other people’s energy out of your personal energetic space and reclaim your own energy.
Here’s what you do.
- Say your name (e.g., My name is Nancy)
- Say the other person’s name (e.g., Your name is _________.)
- Say five unique things about you (e.g., I have my own unique handprint…).
- Say five unique things about the other person (e.g., You have your own unique handprint…).
- Return the other person’s energy (e.g., I give you back all of your energy).
- Imagine a golden bowl above your head.
- Call back all of your energy into the golden bowl (e.g., I graciously receive all of my energy back neutralized and cleansed. I always like to make sure my energy is neutralized, cleansed and in present time before I bring it back into my energetic space).
- Visualize, sense or feel pouring your collected energy into the top of your energetic space and allow it to filter down.
Do this exercise daily as often as you like.
The more unique the five items are to you, the more completely you have the opportunity to separate your energy from the other person.
This technique can also be performed with places and things. For instance, whenever I fly on an airplane I always do this exercise with the people on the plane AND the airplane itself. You can do this exercise after a visit to the supermarket, after a phone call or reading an email. Before you go to bed at night do this exercise with your phone, computer and any other electronics. There are no limits to this exercise.
In your journal write down what this practice brought up for you. To whom did you return energy? From whom did you receive your energy? How do you see this tool being helpful to you?
Tips For Those Newer to Energy Medicine and Meditation
It’s normal to get distracted while completing the exercises. If you find this happening, gently come back to the exercise when you notice your mind has wandered. It can be helpful to focus on your breath as a way to bring you back to the moment, breathing in and breathing out.
Some people find it helpful to approach the energetic tools from the lens of a child. Children tend not to be tied to the outcome. They attempt new things with a beginner’s mind, enjoying what unfolds. Perhaps imagine yourself playing the part of a magician or shaman and then try practicing the tools.
If you’re wondering if something’s “working” or if it’s all in your head, keep going with it. It’s the analytical mind that’s doing the wondering. With this type of energy work our mental mind gets to take a break. It may take some time to get used to this. Using the “Energy from the earth” exercise as an example, some of the experiences I’ve heard clients talk about include: feeling tingly in the legs or feet, seeing colors or images as the earth energy is cycling through, and feeling a temperature change or a sense of ease in the body while completing the exercise.
There are those that can easily visualize images while others sense things or feel it in their body. All methods of detecting energy are equally good. With practice you’ll begin to notice how you tend to recognize energy.
There’s no perfect way to do these exercises. For me, it’s about increasing awareness and noticing when my mind wanders (and it does daily!) and guiding it back to the task at hand with compassion. There’s no right or wrong way to practice these tools from my point of view. It’s so much about intention, being in the moment, compassion and amusement (particularly when I catch my inner critic telling me the way it thinks I “should” do things).
As you continue on your journey I invite you to bring in compassion and amusement. These attributes will help raise your energy to a higher vibration, which is helpful when you want to create the life of your dreams.