I am so glad you found it helpful! I haven't been on the Forum much lately (just busy...), but when I read this, I thought, oh, I have to post. I really like hands-on, "energetic hygiene" practices like this. Concrete actions we can take to clear our space and stay grounded.
Hang in there! It will get better. When, exactly, I don't know, but I know that it will.
HOW TO CALL YOUR ENERGY BACK
Feel overwhelmed by the news and doom-scrolling? Call your energy back, it's easy. Here's how:
The intention is to reclaim your energy, and remove energy that doesn't serve you.
Sit down with feet on the floor. Uncross your legs. Leave your hands, palms up, on your knees. (Alternatively you can stand, arms at your sides, palms facing forward.) Close your eyes. Drop your grounding cord from your root chakra into the center of the earth (attach it to the cystal core of the earth). Take a deep breath and then say this:
"I call my energy and power back to me from every person, place, space, entity, and dimension. Anyone or thing attempting to use my energy, you do not have my consent to use my energetic vitality. I call my energy back."
Then imagine a magic filter (kind of like a French coffee press) moving from 3 feet above your head and down through your entire body with the intention of filtering out all energy that does not serve you (stuck energy or anyone else's energy that doesn't serve you). Then send all that non-helpful energy down your grounding cord to the center of the earth's crystal core to be cleansed and recycled.
You should feel a warm and/or vibration while doing this. Your anxiety level and feeling of heaviness and despair should be lifted. You can do this multiple times a day as needed to re-balance.
@Andy Thank you for posting this wonderful grounding practice! I love the French coffee press! We all need this kind of practice.
It is similar to a system I was taught years ago that I even made a recording about and posted on this website for several years.
Go here if you want to try it: https://jeannemayell.com/brief-guided-meditations/
I do it with my classes and with the Circle. It has an added piece where you first open each chakra with a cleansing ball of white light. Then you do a final cleanse with a white light whirlwind that you pass over your body then send it down into the center of the earth where the negative energies are burned by earth's fires.
You stand up with feet planted on the ground, and then imagine a ball of light on the top of your head. You make that ball of light with your own aura. Then you cleanse and rebalance each of your chakras using that ball of light and saying a mantra as it moves through each chakra, starting with your third eye:
- I am the soul (light opens your third eye)
- I am the light Devine (light opens your throat chakra)
- I am love (light opens your heart chakra)
- I am Will (light opens your solar plexus (below the heart chakra)
- I am Fixed design (light opens your Hara (where the naval is).
- I am the earth itself. (Light opens your root chakra.).
Each time that ball of light comes down and opens a chakra, you have it come back up through your center and open your crown chakra.
Then -- this is where the practice is similar to your French Coffee Press practice -- you take that ball of like and turn it into a whirlwind of white light just above your head about three feet! Then you bring that whirlwind down over your whole body, cleansing and balancing all of your energy. Keep it going down into the earth where it is burned by earth's fires!
https://jeannemayell.com/brief-guided-meditations/
@jeanne-mayell @raincloud you're welcome. And thanks for the additional cleansing meditation Jeanne.
The chakra balancing guided meditation will cleanse your chakras of toxic energy and free you to be the authentic you again. It is at the moment free on this website. Go here (it's also in the menu on this website under Guided Meditations): https://jeannemayell.com/brief-guided-meditations/
@jeanne-mayell Thank you for the reminder of the chakra clearings! I have always loved that whirlwind one with the ball of white light.
@andy Thanks for this! Love this imagery, especially the coffee filter! Great stuff. I have also been taught imagery of a car wash...you are on the conveyor belt and the water is slowly moving through your field, cleansing it.
These are all such great tools and reminders to us to keep that energetic hygiene going!
@jeanne-mayell This was wonderful! Thankyou! It may have even helped to put tinnutis at bay.
Thanks for sharing those wonderful grounding and clearing techniques.
@cc21 I love this house clearing idea. I am currently purging my home from the stuff I've accumulated over the years, and it occurs to me that your energetic hygiene technique will also be a great last step in clearing those rooms of any residual and unwanted energy.
@andy, I smiled when you drew the French press analogy. This may sound funny but I'm a big coffee drinker and thanks to you, my morning ritual is already reminding me of your ritual to clear and ground.
@jeanne-mayell, thank you for posting that Chakra balancing meditation. I'm a color/visual person and it speaks to me. I always love when you sometimes incorporate that practice in our Circle of Light meditations.
Hope in Dark Times -- resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair and what victory really means for movements of social change by Rebecca Solnit -- worth reading these days.
My cousin Andrew (@thehappymedium) reminded me of a wonderful book, Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit, and that reminded me of the incredible review of hope literature by Maria Papova HTTPS://WWW.THEMARGINALIAN.ORG/2016/03/16/REBECCA-SOLNIT-HOPE-IN-THE-DARK-2/?MC_CID=F6304B3833&MC_EID=986CB7181 4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">(The Marginalia). Here is a snippet of what Papova wrote:
“There is no love of life without despair of life,” wrote Albert Camus — a man who in the midst of World War II, perhaps the darkest period in human history, saw grounds for luminous hope and issued a remarkable clarion call for humanity to rise to its highest potential on those grounds.
It was his way of honoring the same duality that artist Maira Kalman would capture nearly a century later in her marvelous meditation on the pursuit of happiness, where she observed: “We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. That is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.”
In my own reflections on hope, cynicism, and the stories we tell ourselves, I’ve considered the necessity of these two poles working in concert. Indeed, the stories we tell ourselves about these poles matter. The stories we tell ourselves about our public past shape how we interpret and respond to and show up for the present. The stories we tell ourselves about our private pasts shape how we come to see our personhood and who we ultimately become. The thin line between agency and victimhood is drawn in how we tell those stories." -- Maria Papova
For anyone who wants to receive some high quality reviews of great literature each week, I recommend Maria Papova. Here is her full review of Solnit's book along with some references to other great "hope in dark times" quotes.