Spiritual Hygiene

Spiritual Hygiene may be a new term, but the concept is ancient. Just as we have daily routines to brush our teeth or to wash our face and bodies to cleanse away dirt and bacteria on our physical bodies, having a similar routine for our energetic bodies is just as important.

During the day we exchange energy with hundreds of things and people: the podcast or radio show you listen to on your way to work, the man you hold the door open for at the post office, your best friend who calls to catch up on the phone, or perhaps the gardener working outside of your house. All of these interactions require some sort of energy exchange between you and other people. You put out your energy and receive other energies constantly throughout your day. Taking a few minutes before you go to bed to clean and call back your energy from the day can be the difference between a restful night’s sleep and one where you’re tossing and turning. 

Sensitive, or empathic people often take on the energies of other people and find themselves feeling anxious or worried without really being able to pinpoint “why”. Sometimes, giving yourself a good energetic scrub down is all you need to feel yourself again and return energies that aren’t yours back to the people or places you got them from. 

There are many different “tools” you can use in your spiritual hygiene practice to remove these energies from your energetic field. Plants, flowers, salt, crystals, infused waters, smudging, incense, candles, eggs, and seeds are some of the vessels used in different cultures to clear energy. Most of these tools are derived from plants. There may be a specific plant or combination of plants that can be most helpful for you individually. These plants are called plant allies, and we all have them. If you are interested in learning what your plant allies may be, I can help to channel those for you. 

Plants have been used as medicine in a myriad of ways for generations of time. Plants are sentient and because of their high vibratory frequencies, are able to transmute and transform energies. Like people, plants have different personalities, skillsets and innate talents. Plants have been used for generations throughout the world in almost every culture to clean and protect us. Native Americans use sage, South Americans use Palo Santo, Europeans use lavender, laurel, or rosemary, and Hawaiians use a Ti leaf to clear energy.  

When we work in the realm of plant spirits, we must ask them to support us in our healing, cleaning and protection. This type of work is sometimes referred to as Plant Spirit Medicine, or Plant Spirit Healing. This type of request is done with much reverence, gratitude and intention for the plant you are petitioning to help you. For instance, if you are feeling overwhelmed or anxious, you could call upon the spirit of Lavender to help you feel calm and serene.  A simple process of stating your intention, asking with reverence for help, and offering gratitude to the plant is all you need to do to start working with the sentience of plants. As one of my favorite teachers defines it, 

“Plant Spirit Healing is the use of the vial principle or spirit of plants to direct the life force to fill the space in order to restore balance, well-being, and vitality…it helps us to be more fully who we are, living and inspirited life according to our own true nature.” 

~Pam Montgomery~

My personal spiritual hygiene practice shifts from time to time, but my mainstays are salt, herbal smoke and a few specific essential oils. I’ve tried and tested so many brands that make these products in order to find the “highest vibe” products, and after over a decade, I’ve found my absolute favorites for cleaning my energy field:

• Saavy Naturals Organic Yuzu & Meyer Lemon Salt Scrub
• Majestic Pure Himalayan Salt Body Scrub with Lychee Essential Oil 
• Taos Herb Co. Sage and Cedar Smudge Stick 
• Simplers Botanicals Organic Bergamot, Lemon, Grapefruit E.O.
• Floracopeia Rosemary Verbenone E.O. 
• Eden Botanicals Yuzu E.O.
• Canopy Western Red Cedar Essential Oil  

The ocean is one big energetic salt bath and salt helps to neutralize and balance our electromagnetic fields and is a repellent for negative energies. If I’m unable to get in the ocean at the end of the day (I’m lucky enough to live in Hawaii near a beautiful beach) to utilize nature’s salt bath, I reach for my favorite salt scrub, Saavy Naturals Yuzu & Meyer Lemon Salt Scrub. 

Yuzu is a kind of Japanese citrus fruit that smells heavenly. The fruit is extremely rich in essential oils whose fragrance recalls the notes of grapefruit, mandarin, citron, and lime. In general, citrus fruits are really good at cleaning one’s energy field of sticky, low vibrational energy. If you think about the acidity of a lemon and how its corrosive properties make it a useful ingredient in cleaning products, you can apply that metaphor to your energy field. The properties of lemons soften the minerals in hard water, allowing the cleaning agents to work more effectively- so when you add lemon essential oil to salt, it allows for a deeper energetic cleaning as well. As a word of caution, many citrus essential oils are photosensitive, which means that if you go out in the sun and you have them on your skin, they could create an irritation or in some cases even burn your skin- so be careful! 

Finally, after a good energetic scrub down with salt, or a dip in the ocean, I use one of three different plants to smudge my energy field (or sometimes a resin called Copal if the energy feels really heavy and sticky). My three favorite smudging plants are also the most common: White Sage, Cedar, and Palo Santo. My favorite resin is Copal. 

White Sage is the standard sage most people think of when working with herbal smoke or smudging. Other plant relatives can also be used in place of White Sage, but they have slightly different properties or energetics. Using alternatives to White Sage is also a great way to support the conservation of this plant, as it is currently being overharvested. If you do use it, please know a little goes a long way, and only using one leaf instead of a whole bundle suffices for cleansing purposes. White sage has great properties for removing negativity, cleansing, and protection and because the use of the plant in this way is steeped in tradition, the energy of its properties is potentiated or deepened. In addition to its clearing and protection properties, Sage smoke is beneficial in clearing viruses or bacteria floating in the air, as it has many antimicrobial properties. I actually keep leaves of sage in an Abalone shell in my bathroom near the toilet to help cleanse the air after answering nature’s call. 

The next plant I absolute love as an herbal smoke is Cedar. While I don’t feel the clearing or cleansing effects of Cedar are quite as pronounced as those of White Sage, Cedar has other great properties like creating balance and grounding within a space. For instance, if you’ve taken a salt bath, and feel pretty clean energetically, but your mind is racing because of an interaction or worry you’ve had throughout the day, Cedar can help ground your energy field. 

Finally, we have Palo Santo. Palo Santo is actually the wood of the tree, not the leaves like Sage. This also creates a sustainability issue for the use of this tree. So again, please keep in mind that a little goes a long way. The use of this particular herbal smoke for purification comes from the indigenous people of the Andes. When the wood is burned it’s believed to clear negative energy and restore tranquility and calm. I like to use this herbal smoke when I’m feeling a little sad or depressed as I find it helps lift my energy as well as gently clearing and calming my field. 

If something really heavy has occurred, or someone with really negative energy has been in my home, I like to pull out the big gun, Copal. Copal works by bringing out negative energies and transmuting them into positive energies. The resin of the Copal Tree is actually what you burn on top of a charcoal coal. If you’ve got a bird feather, or wand to waft the smoke around your home, that also assists in moving energy out of your home. I’ve found it to be very effective for dense, stagnant or stubborn energy. It has been used traditionally for physical, emotional and environmental clearing, which makes it great to use in a healing or sickroom.

After I’ve completed my physical clearing ritual using salt, smoke & essential oils, I say a short prayer or intention out loud to release energy that is not mine out of my field and return it to the people it belongs to, or return it back to the light to be transmuted. Before doing this through prayer or intention, I connect myself to divine love and light and ground my feet into the earth (placing Cedar Essential Oil on the bottoms of your feet can help with this if you’re having a hard time). I also call upon the energy of Archangel Michael (this is not necessary if you don’t feel resonate in working with the Angelic Realm), the light and medicine of my plant spirit allies, and any other spirits of divine light that are around me to help clear any other energy that’s not mine or does not have my highest out of my field. I offer gratitude to the “low vibrational” energy for giving me insights about myself and others and claim my sovereignty from the energy before visually lifting it off me and seeing it merge with divine light. And, then I (usually) enjoy a sound night’s sleep!

There are so many ways to cleanse our energy fields, even simply having the intention of doing so is enough, however; I’ve always enjoyed rituals and traditions and find that taking 10 minutes nightly to complete this practice makes all the difference for me in reducing anxiety, worry, and restlessness. It helps to bring about a sense of peace and calm, which helps me to reduce stress and sleep solidly throughout the night. I always love hearing about people’s cleansing rituals and find it fascinating how others connect to the energetic realm. Please share your personal practices in the comments below if you feel so inclined. 

May The Plants Be With You, 

Mary