Energy Hygiene Overview

Energy Hygiene is the practice of creating wholeness within one’s personal energy field, particularly in relationship to the larger energy ecology of one’s surroundings.  It’s a combination of awareness, skills, and techniques for keeping one’s vital, subtle energies flowing, healthy, clear, life-giving, and positive, as well as doing the same for the subtle energies in one’s environment.

Energy Hygiene - An Energy Ecology

by David Spangler

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We live in a world filled with energies of all kinds.  Some are the electromagnetic forces that light our lights and heat our stoves and bring us voices over the radio and images on our televisions.  But there are other energies that surround us as well, of which most of us are probably unaware but which can affect us just as powerfully.  These are subtle forces generated by life, consciousness and spirit.

These forces are set into motion by things we do and feel and think, by our emotional and mental activity.  There are subtle energies that radiate from our spiritual presence as well.  At a physical level we experience these energies as the chi which martial artists use or the prana that is part of yoga.

These are meta-physical energies, and they are as much a part of our surroundings as the physical ones with which we are more familiar.  They flow between people and between us and our environment.  They form an energy ecology that can affect our feelings, our thoughts, and our overall well-being and vitality in both positive and negative ways.

Engaging with this ecology so that its effect on us and others is healthy, clear, life-giving, and positive is what energy hygiene is all about.

An Energy Body
Just as we have a physical body, we have an energy body as well.  It receives impressions and vibrations from the surrounding energy ecology, and it radiates them out as well, reflecting the state of our own thinking and feeling.  We are each a broadcasting and a receiving station combined.

Just as things you see and hear on the television can affect your emotions and your thoughts, so can these subtle energies as they engage with your energy body, though in a different way.  We respond consciously to things we see and hear, but the energy body resonates with the energies and impulses it encounters.  It becomes like them, like a chameleon changing its skin color to blend with its surroundings.  This resonance is unconscious for most people though the effects are not.  We may feel our thoughts and feelings are our own and not realize we may have picked up some of them through the interaction of our energy body with the subtle energies in our environment. 

Psychic Lint
Generally speaking our energy body has its equivalent to our physical immune system and resists intrusion. But through resonance, it can pick up bits of subtle energies in much the way a sweater picks up lint.  Depending on the nature of this “psychic lint” and the resonance it has with us, it can cling and influence us with its qualities and energy.  Usually, it’s a bit of mental or emotional information, saying “feel this emotion” or “think this thought.”   For example, if you go into a room filled with anxiety, you may not know consciously what has happened but your energy body senses and picks up the anxious energy in the room.  Bits of “anxiety lint” attach, giving you the message, “Feel fear. Feel anxious.”  And this energy message, like any other stimulus from the environment, can pass into your unconscious mind and then into your consciousness.  You find yourself feeling anxious but for no reason that you can detect.

                We are all shedding such psychic lint into our environment all the time from our thoughts and feelings.  Most of it dissipates and is transformed, but some of it persists and builds up, accumulating in certain places or around a person. It can be positive or negative in its effect.  The home of a spiritual person can radiate with uplifting subtle energies, making us feel good the moment we cross the threshold.  But the home of someone in the grips of depression may be filled with depressive thoughts and feelings that give the atmosphere of the place a gloomy feel even if the owner is not present.

                In the normal course of our day, we may pick up and discard such lint many times.  But sometimes it is not discarded. We carry it with us and it can begin to accumulate. Bits of subtle energy become stuck within our own energy body.  When this happens, such a stuck place can become a “lint trap” attracting and holding to other bits of psychic lint that we may encounter.  Energy hygiene is a way of clearing this stuff away and removing it so no one is affected adversely by it.

Energy Connections
In the physical world, we are separated by distance.  What happens to someone on the far side of the earth may seem to have little consequence or affect upon me.  We believe our thoughts and feelings are private, locked within our skulls and our skins.  But in the energy world, we are all connected in profound and interdependent ways.  It’s as if we were all standing on a great trampoline. When one person bounces, it makes the whole trampoline move and we all bounce to some degree.  Subtle energies are not limited by distance.  Thus when a calamity strikes in some part of the world, our energy bodies all feel the effect of the suffering and fear no matter where we are.  We may feel uneasy or restless, anxious or fearful for no reason we can see.

                We live in turbulent, troubling times.  The news is filled with one crisis after another from war and terrorism to economic turmoil to global climate change.  People are afraid, and this fear is often intensified by public media.  Through our technological ability to communicate images, thoughts, and feelings quickly and dramatically, we have developed ways of blowing our psychic lint—particularly our fears, anxieties, angers, hatreds, and pessimism—around the world so that it affects all of us.  Where in previous centuries, such subtle psychic lint would have dissipated and transformed, now it is repeated, reinforced, and strengthened by global media and our subtle energy connections until it accumulates in our world, no longer just “lint” but true psychic pollution weighing upon all of us.

Energy Hygiene
Energy hygiene is a procedure for dealing with psychic lint and psychic pollution.  It is a way of working with subtle energies to create a clear, clean, positive, vibrant and healthy energy environment both within ourselves and in our immediate environment.  When we use these procedures to deal with larger issues of psychic pollution in the world, then it becomes energy activism, which is simply energy hygiene for the planet at large.

More Than Protection
Good physical hygiene is about more than taking a shower or keeping clean; it’s about all that we do to ensure the health and optimal function of our body.  The same is true with energy hygiene.  There are techniques of “lint removal” that can be learned and also ways of protecting ourselves to keep the psychic lint off in the first place.  But energy hygiene is much more than just a defensive or cleansing process.  It’s about vitalizing and expressing a healthy wholeness of spirit, mind, heart, and body.  It’s about honoring and nourishing sovereignty, identity, coherency, and boundaries on the one hand and developing and practicing connectedness, engagement, love, and a compassionate participation in life on the other.  Energy hygiene is the expression of an incarnational spirituality.

Three Rules
There are three rules of good energy hygiene.

• Flow
• Positivity
• Connectedness 

Each of us is like a pool of energy.  As long as energy is flowing in and out in a healthy way, this pool is alive, clear and clean; when this flow is obstructed by a buildup of psychic lint, then the pool can begin to stagnate.  Restoring and maintaining a healthy flow of energy is important.  A good walk, physical activity, learning something new, doing something kind for someone else are all simple ways of restoring flow; there are also techniques for restoring this flow on a subtle energy level.  The exercise included here is one example of such a technique.

Being positive is more than just practicing positive thinking, though that can be helpful.  Positivity is a condition of being radiant, open, giving, confident, and strong.  It is an energy state as much as a psychological one.  There are many ways of developing and maintaining this state, but they are all enhanced by valuing and honoring yourself and standing in your uniqueness and sovereignty.

Connectedness opens us to a larger world beyond ourselves and enables us to participate in a greater wholeness.  Just as a pool stagnates that is unconnected to living streams of water and ultimately to the ocean on the one hand and the wellsprings deep within the earth on the other, so we need to be connected to the vitality and life, the spirit and wellbeing of the world around us.  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.

If you would be interested in a class on Energy Hygiene, please click here to see if a class is currently available.

Standing

Standing is the core exercise in the practice of Incarnational Spirituality. This exercise has physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual aspects to it. These aspects are designed to be done all at once, but I’ll present them as separate categories.

Physical          The physical action of this exercise is simple. From a sitting position, you simply stand up. Be aware of the physical sensation and felt sense of standing. Feel the work of your body, the power of balance that keeps you upright. If you are already standing, become aware that you are standing and be mindful of the felt sense of standing. If you are physically unable to stand, you can still assume an inner attitude of standing, perhaps simply by straightening your spine as much as possible.

Emotional       Feel the power of being upright. Feel the strength of rising up against the gravity of the earth. Feel how standing singles you out and expresses your individuality. You stand for what you believe. You stand up to be counted. Standing proclaims that you are here. Feel the strength and presence of your identity and sovereignty.

Mental            Celebrate your humanness. You are an upright being. You emerge from the mass of nature, from the vegetative and animal states into a realm of thinking and imagining. In standing, your hands are released from providing locomotion. Feel the freedom of your hands that don’t have to support you but can now be used to create, manipulate, touch, and express your thoughts and imagination.

Mythic            When you stand, your spine becomes a magical staff, the axis mundi (center) of your personal world, generating the field that embraces you. The spine is the traditional wizard’s staff along which dragon power flows and the centers of energy sing in resonance with the cosmos.

Spiritual         Standing, you are the incarnate link between heaven and earth. Your energy rises into the sky and descends into the earth. Light descends and ascends, swirling along your spine in a marriage of matter and spirit. This energy is both personal and transpersonal, giving birth to something new, something human, individual and unique.                  

In doing this exercise of Standing, you physically stand if you are able.  If you are not able to do so, then be as upright as you can be in your physical situation and “stand” mentally and emotionally. As you do so, work through these levels of sensation, feeling, thought, energy and spirit, appreciating the power, the freedom, the sovereignty and the presence emerging from the simple act of standing. Celebrate the spirit and energy of your unique individuality and presence.

 

Holding (a)

Like the first Tune-Up Exercise on Standing, this is also a physical exercise and involves an equally familiar and simple procedure: sitting down and forming a lap. A lap is a physical form of holding. It is the form of a cup, a bowl, a cauldron or a grail. Imagine kids climbing into a lap: it is a place of love, comfort, healing and transformation. In this exercise, simply sit down and form a lap. Go through the following elements as you do so, exploring the felt sense of each. Inherent in the lap is your power of holding which is at the heart of blessing. Also, be aware that when you create a lap, you are also manifesting boundaries, which are the extent of your lap. Your physical lap is not infinite, though your love may be!

Physical          The physical action of this exercise is simplicity itself and the opposite of the Standing exercise. From a standing position, you simply sit down, allowing your legs to form a lap. Be aware of the physical sensation and felt sense of being a lap. Feel the relaxation of sitting but at the same time the power and receptivity of forming a lap. Explore the felt sense of the space that is created in front of you, around you, and within you when you sit and form a lap. 

Emotional       Feel the power of being a space of holding. In your sovereignty, you are forming a space of comfort, a space of healing, a space of encouragement and upliftment. In this space, negativity can be received and transformed as you hold a presence of peace, of love and of strength.

Mental            Your mind is also a lap. It is a cup that holds your thoughts. As you sit, let your mind go beyond the contents of any thoughts you may be holding. Let it simply appreciate the space within it. Let your mind fill with that space. If thoughts come, simply welcome them and let them sit in your mind-lap for a time, then move on. Remember, you are holding them, they are not holding you. You create and own the space they occupy. Sit in that space, be at peace and feel the power of your mind to be a lap.

Mythic            The cup is the oldest of magical images. It is the grail of the sacred, the cauldron of magic and wisdom, and the cooking pot that creates nourishment, the womb of life, and the space that holds the cosmos. Your lap is this space, this grail, this cauldron, this womb and this cup. When you sit and a lap is formed, you are in resonance with the place where transformation can take place and new life is born.

Spiritual         Sitting, your lap is the presence of the sacred. It is a place of love, a place to receive and comfort pain and suffering, a place of healing. In the space of your lap you are in resonance with the primal space that holds all things and allows them to be. God is a lap!

     In doing this exercise, you sit and as you do so, work through these levels of sensation, feeling, thought, energy, and spirit, appreciating the power, the freedom, the sovereignty, and the presence emerging from the simple act of forming a lap.

Holding (b)

This exercise is a variant expression of the Lap exercise, focused on your self. Repeat the Lap Exercise, creating a lap both physically and inwardly as a state of mind and being.Let yourself enter a condition of holding. Imagine that you are in your own "lap." Hold yourself. Gather all the parts of you that you can think of, including those parts that you may not like so much or feel cause you problems. You are not doing anything to these parts or selves; you are just holding. As you hold yourself, gain a felt sense of the will that holds you together, so to speak. There is in each of us that which is willing to be incarnate, willing to have parts, willing to have a personality, willing to have a body, willing to create a space and allow and hold all that makes us up. How do you experience that? What is the felt sense of this to you? Just let yourself be held and honored by yourself, by the loving spirit of your own inner lap. When this exercise feels complete, stand up and let your lap dissolve. But remember that you continue to hold yourself.

 

Where Stars Meet

1. Imagine a spiritual star at the center of the earth. It’s a green star radiant with the power of planetary life. Imagine the light from this star rising up through the earth, surrounding you, bathing and nurturing the cells of your body and forming a chalice around you.
2. Imagine a spiritual star within the sun in the sky. It’s a golden star radiant with the power of cosmic life. Imagine the light from this star descending from the heavens and pouring into the chalice of earthlight that surrounds you and fills your cells.
3. Where the light of these two stars meet in you, a new star emerges, a radiant star of Self-Light, born of the blending of the individual and the universal, the planetary and the cosmic, the physical and the spiritual. This Self-Light surrounds you and fills you, radiating back down deep into the earth and out into space, connecting with the star below you and the star above you. You are a Chalice of Self-Light within a pillar of spiritual energy rising from the earth and descending from the cosmos.
4. Take a moment to feel this Self-Light within and around you, your connection to the earth, your connection to the cosmos, your connection to your own unique and radiant Self. Take a deep breath, drawing this Light into and throughout your body; breathe out, sending this Light out into your world. Filled with this Light of Self, attuned to heaven and earth, go about your day.

An Energy Hygiene Exercise

Dealing with Fearful Energies

This is a sample energy hygiene exercise for dealing with fearful energies.  A consequence of feeling fearful energies is constriction, the “deer in the headlights” syndrome.  We freeze.  Our energies seize up. Flow is diminished.  We lose connection to the universe.

Here is a very simple exercise to get flow going again:

1.  Make a Connection:  Reach out and touch something.  Feel its texture and nature under your fingers.  Let your attention flow towards the object you’re touching.  Appreciate it for what it is.

2.  Expand your Heart:  Think of a happy memory or pleasurable moment, something that gives you an inner sense of expansion, and draw that memory into your heart where you can feel it as a warm glow within you.  Allow this glow to expand.  Positive feelings create openness and receptivity in yourself and in the world around you.

3.  Send Love through your Connection:  Direct the feeling of this expanding glow out from your heart, down your arm and into your fingers and into the object you’re touching.  Feel love develop for the object you’re touching.  Pause to appreciate the relationship and flow you have with this object.

4.  Connect to Cosmos:  Be aware that you are standing within a vast, living world, one filled with abundant, flowing energy and love.  Let the feeling of spaciousness surround you and fill you.  Imagine the whole cosmos embraced and held by a loving presence.  Feel the love of this presence flowing into your expanded, glowing heart and down your arm and your hand and your fingers into the object you are touching.  Feel yourself and this object expanding as this spaciousness flows into and around you.

5.  Connect to Environment:  Let this flow of spacious energy and love flowing from the cosmos through your heart and into the object you’re touching now flow out from that object into the environment around you.  As it does so, you find yourself and your energy field bathed and participating in a flow of energy from the cosmos and the sacredness within it through you and around you into and through the object you’re touching and into the environment.

6.  Complete the Circuit:  See the flow of spacious, loving energy rising from your environment back into the cosmos, back into the sacred, completing the circuit.  Just feel the energy of this flow moving through and around you, bathing you, bathing your environment; it’s a current flowing from the sacred into you, through you, out from you and into the environment through the object you’re touching, and back into the sacred.

7.  Hold your Energy:  As you stand in this flowing circuit, hold yourself and your energy field, along with whatever fears, negativity, or stuckness you were experiencing, in this flow, like holding dirty clothes under a rushing stream.  You don’t have to do anything except release your energy field to be filled, cleared, cleansed, and blessed.

8.  Complete.  When you feel complete, let go of the object you were touching, breaking the circuit.  Invite and allow the sense of connection to a larger, more spacious whole and the sense of your own energy flowing and circulating to integrate gracefully into your body and into your life.  Express your gratitude to all involved and to the world around you.  Your flow restored, go about your daily activities.

                If you would like to explore the possibilities and usefulness of energy hygiene in your life and learn other exercises and techniques, please click here to see if a class is currently available.