Negative Energy is a HUGE Obstacle to Healing

Everything in the Universe is made of energy. We're all buzzing power sources and receptors for energy, but it isn't visible to the naked eye. Energy makes up the foundations for everything we know: own bodies, the furniture we sit in, the thoughts and feelings we experience. It is all energetic.

We make energy inside our cells, and we interact with energy in everything we do. It comes from the earth, sun, food, and other people. It travels through the meridians in our bodies and wraps around us in energy fields.

We all know that energy comes in basically two varieties: positive and negative. The more positive energy within and around you, the higher your vibration will be, and the better you will feel. The end result is an energized you with the ability to show up in your life as your best self.

Negative energy is draining, and if it isn't shed, can eventually cause you to become physically, mentally, and emotionally vulnerable. 

Negative energy often contributes to or manifests as chronic physical and/or mental health challenges as well as various life challenges such as relationship, career, and personal success issues. 

From a biochemical perspective, the digestive tract is considered the first line of defense for the immune system, protecting us from opportunistic microbes and toxic insults that enter our bodies via the food and beverages we ingest. This is not a false statement.

I believe, however, that our TRUE first line of defense is our personal energetic boundary, a limit that says, “Hey! These are my standards for what I will and will not tolerate, which are in alignment with my core values, and I will not waiver!” 

The Struggle Is REAL! How We Get Drained

We can struggle to create and maintain a healthy energetic barrier, and the reasons for this difficulty might be:

• We're not clear about our core values and standards.

• We compromise our standards out of fear: wanting to be “accepted” and “liked.”

• We feel we don’t deserve to have healthy boundaries, and then we don't enforce them. This problem can be conscious, but it is most often subconscious and based on past programming.

• We are highly sensitive and easily absorb others’ bad mojo, and/or tend to take the words and actions of others to heart.

• We allow ourselves to become rundown and exhausted.

If any of the above are true, the gate is wide open for intruders to walk in and wreak havoc.

When this happens, an internal war is waged that depletes our life force and puts stress on the mind and all our organ systems – especially the digestive system, which is home to upwards of 60% of our immune system.

This issue was most definitely a factor for me in my journey with chronic health and life challenges. I continue to work very hard at warding off and shedding negative energy. Recently, a negative situation with one of my siblings knocked me for a loop, and it affected my physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. That situation motivated me to write this article.

I also see this issue commonly with my clients as they seek help with unraveling persistent health and life challenges.

Cultivate Awareness of Negative Energy

It is normal for many of us to get caught up with life, lose sight of our own needs, and ignore common warning signals that negative energy is lowering our vibration and keeping us stuck.

The following are some signs that it is time to detox negative energy:

• Being easily triggered by the words and actions of others.

• A low threshold for stress; being easily overwhelmed.

• Mood swings, anxiety, and depression.

• Loss of focus / concentration / inability to make decisions.

• Mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.

• Unable to relax and enjoy yourself.

• Rumination, looping thoughts, and mental chatter.

• Unable to make headway in your physical health despite solid efforts.

Strategies for Detoxing Negative Energy

Awareness is the first step in getting rid of negative energy. As with so many other health issues, noticing the presence of a problem and then cultivating awareness of the source and the impact is necessary in order to make changes.

Willingness to take steps towards shedding it is the second step.

When you arrive at this point, you'll be ready to work on it. Here are twelve practical lifestyle tips you can implement to raise your vibration:

#1: Make self-care a top priority! Pay attention to the fundamentals of health and wellness. As stated above, a run-down, exhausted person is a vulnerable one! Make sure you are eating a healthy, whole food diet. Drink plenty of purified water. Get plenty of rest. Exercise to some degree daily. Make stress reduction and mindfulness a priority in your daily routine.

#2: Be mindful of what you read, listen to, and how you speak to yourself and others. We engage in a tremendous amount of negativity, and we're often not aware of it! We've been doing it to ourselves for so long we're unaware of the words we listen to, and the words we tell ourselves. We speak to ourselves harshly, and it is hugely draining! Are people always telling you that you are hard on yourself? Do they say you burn the candle at both ends?

Being mindful, learning to notice the way we treat ourselves is an important first step to plugging the energy drain and revitalizing our lives.

#3: Spend time in nature and ground as often as possible. We are energetic beings on a biochemical journey in this energetic world. We're made to plug into the power sources of the natural Universe, and we have receptors for the energy all around us in many, many different ways.

The sounds of nature rejuvenate us. The sun directly recharges our cellular batteries. The earth's surface is covered with electrons that support the normal function of all body systems.

Being out in nature with bare feet connecting to the earth is a powerful way to recharge. The earth's electrons are exchanged with our negative energy and create a stable internal electrical environment in our bodies.

As we have become increasingly separated from the earth and nature, our body clocks are less efficient. We suffer sleep problems and a whole cascade of problems that can be helped by going outside barefoot and connecting with the earth's surface for a little while each day. (1)

#4: Reduce physical and mental clutter. Physical and mental clutter often have emotional connections. We get emotionally attached to things for various reasons: fear of losing a perceived safety net, fear of the future, hanging on to the past, etc. Maybe it's someone else's stuff that is crowding your life and it's a sign that you need to strengthen your energetic barrier.

Our identity can be attached to our stuff also, which can raise our cortisol levels when we have to interact with the clutter. It can bring up feelings of failure and overwhelm us daily.  

Even getting dressed in the morning becomes a stressful exercise when there are too many reminders and things in the way of making a simple choice. What if you didn't have to wade through mounds of clothes that remind you of your weight, or better times, or what you wish could be?

Clearing all these negative messages out of the way opens your life to living in the moment and being more joyful.

#5: Practice gratitude for both simple and big things. Gratitude is a powerful switch we have total control over.

Negative input is like Velcro in our brains, and positive input is more like Teflon. Gratitude makes the positive stickier and drives a wedge under the negative that often releases it.

Making the effort to notice the good things and be thankful for them can connect you to the fact that more good happened than bad. It can feel like a cosmic reset, like the Universe has shifted gears! It reconnects you to things you may be missing: something larger than yourself, goodness in this world, good experiences, and perspective!

There are many ways to list gratitude, and it's often better done in writing because it's hard to argue with the written word. It has a way of taking the power out of the negative, shrinking it down to the right size, and magnifying the good that you missed or dismissed too easily.

Some people simply list five things they are grateful for before going to sleep every night.

Another practice is to develop an awareness of being in a "position" of gratitude. Imagine it's a place to stay in while you go through your day. As you get jostled and moved, you develop an awareness of the things that rob you of your happiness, and you begin to learn the skill of getting yourself back into position. It's kind of like playing a game of king of the hill. (2)

#6: Avoid multi-tasking. Focus on one thing at a time and resist the temptation to divide your attention and try to get too much done. Research shows that multi-tasking drains your energy while focused attention enables you to increase your productivity and energy.

Multi-tasking feels like getting lost in a labyrinth of activity, while focused attention makes you feel confident and clear about your ability to manage time and accomplish tasks. Negative self-talk tends to be associated with multi-tasking, which makes you feel pressure. (3)

#7: Be mindful of your breathing. The benefits of mindful breathing have been shown to be a powerful help in bringing you out of repetitive negative thinking cycles. As you take time to notice your own breath, the consistent, automatic movement of air in and air out is enough to refocus the mind and calm the nervous system. (4)

#8: Incorporate a self-facilitated mindfulness activity of some sort into your daily routine. Mindfulness in its simplest form is staying in the present moment and noticing your responses and thoughts. If you struggle with this a good place to begin can be a guided meditation exercise accompanied by mind-body exercises that feed your brain information about where your body is in space and time.

The information you feed your mind, either way, is what's important. The mind has a tendency to time travel to the future where it frets about what might happen or becomes lost in the past where it ruminates on bad memories. Interrupting the time traveling mind and bringing it into the present moment is what mindfulness essentially is at the root.

When you feel yourself becoming stressed and notice that your mind is time traveling, it is best to interrupt the pattern. An effective way to this is to envision something calming. For example, try imagining yourself enjoying the warmth of the sun and listening to the birds singing as you are walking barefoot outside grounding yourself. Doing this tells your brain that things are good in this moment. It brings your mind out of past regrets and returns it from the fear of the future. You are reminded that the earth moves in consistent rhythms, your feet are on the ground, and your body's most basic needs are taken care of in this moment.

These are the things that bring the brain out of fight/flight and into a more relaxed state.

#9: Shake it off frequently! Shaking when experiencing acute stress is a normal body function and a necessary release for the nervous system. Animals do it, and small children shake naturally when scared. Adults tend to hide their feelings and try to look strong on the outside, but the energy from their stress remains trapped in their body. You can shake your body to release tension, or you can try practicing TRE (Tremor Release Exercises).

#10: Remind yourself that what others say and how they behave has way more to do with them than YOU! How others act toward us is their karma. How we choose to respond is ours!

It's easy to get caught up with others, with what others think, what they believe and say about us, sometimes what they don't say, and how they try to define us. If you've been in a close relationship with someone who engages in this kind of treatment, it might require some exercise to disengage from the interaction.

The amazing thing is that when you disentangle yourself and you define yourself, refusing to give place to what others think and say, they will often take a step back from it, too. Even if they don't, you have freed yourself from that negative influence in your life.

#11: Stay in your own lane! We need to spend less time worrying about others in general and more time focusing on being the best person we can be. What other people think is really none of our business! What others choose to believe, and what they choose to do, is also really none of our business! Learning who you are and how to create the strong energetic barriers you need in your life is a full-time job!

The issues with others can be a source of difficult negativity that has some real glue on it! Only you can get yourself unstuck. Waiting for others to change the way they think and behave is like waiting for the house to clean itself.

#12: Surround yourself with positive energy! We all tend to take on and become the energy of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler took the data from the Framingham heart study and studied it for other issues: obesity, smoking, and happiness. They found that the ripple effect of behavior goes a few layers deep! Your friends' friends and their friends also affect your happiness. It turns out that our networks of friendship and connections have a huge impact on our energetic vitality. Happy friends make you happier. (5)

If you look at your day and your activities as energy-producing or energy-draining, how can you stack the power sources in your life so that your energy balance shifts to the positive quickly? Is your life full of energy draining relationships, activities, thoughts, feelings? If so, can you take small steps using the suggestions on this list, to switch the poles of the direction that energy is flowing in your life?

 References:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265077/

2.https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier

3.https://search.proquest.com/openview/570c0a3a56f374c91ab432e43192accb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=37083

4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005796710001324

5. https://medium.com/the-mission/youre-not-the-average-of-the-five-people-you-surround-yourself-with-f21b817f6e69