First, a little back story.
In 2002, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. It had flared badly enough that I had to leave my job as an attorney on disability. The plus side? I got a handicapped hang tag. The down side? I needed it.
The following year, while adjusting to life outside the traditional work force and working on writing poetry for children, I stumbled across a Barnes & Noble University class about feng shui, which used Jayme Barrett’s book, Feng Shui Your Life (1st ed.), as a mentor text. Sadly, B&N discontinued that program, but it was awesome while it lasted. The book is wonderful, and the second edition is especially good. I’ve put a link to it at the bottom if it’s something you might be interested in.
I was then (and am still now) really delighted with the changes I made in my home due to feng shui. And it’s also where I was first introduced to the idea of clearing or cleansing the energy in my home.
As you might imagine, the whole “becoming disabled and having to learn new limits” thing was a bit of a challenge for me (and still is, if I’m being honest—who likes limits? Nobody, that’s who). I’d gotten a bit down in the dumps about it, and was moping around my house, trying to sort out what to do in life. Taking the steps in the book to get the qi (chi) energy in my house moving again really lightened things up in lots of ways, and made it easier for me to enjoy being at home.
In 2011, I got divorced from my second husband. After he moved out, clearing the stuck energy in the house helped me to feel like the house was all mine again, and it cleared any of his remaining energy out of the house. It was a way of reclaiming the space, and it worked.
Also in 2011, while in the midst of my divorce, I unexpectedly met and fell in love with my sweetheart, Morris, who became my husband in 2016. Now, Morris had his own house, which is where we now live. And it’s one that he had shared with his prior partner of 18 years, before she left him. Their story and reasons are complicated, and they aren’t relevant (or, really, anyone’s business). But she had suffered some serious losses in life while living here—a parent, a child, an ex-spouse—and the areas in the house that were exclusively hers to use had super heavy, sad energy. I mean, those rooms were enough to bring you down.
The affected areas were the master bath (Morris had dominion over the hall bath), the walk-in closet, and a small spare bedroom that her deceased son had used from time to time when visiting prior to his death. It probably didn’t help that they were all dull spaces, with dull wall colors, but truly, they were depressing spaces. I could feel the heaviness as soon as I crossed a threshold into any of those three spaces.
I’m positive it’s because the woman who lived here before me was seriously sad for quite a while before she moved out, and the rooms that were limited to her use alone (especially the bathroom, which Morris NEVER used) absorbed a lot of that. Also, Morris had repainted most of the rooms in the house, but not the closet or master bath.
I cleansed the energy in all three spaces, and let me tell you—this was A LOT of stuck, heavy energy that needed to move along. The spare bedroom took one clearing until it felt fine. The walk-in closet took quite bit more effort, but one lengthy clearing (lots of light, music, and sandalwood) made it okay. A second clearing a week later went much more quickly, and the closet was finished.
The master bathroom? Well . . . let’s just say that it took quite a bit more work than you might expect for a room that is essentially 6 ft x 9 ft in size. After one lengthy energy clearing, it made it to just about neutral (not great, or even good, just to “not awful”). Part of it was the heavy energy, and part of it was the depressing wall color (beige with a faux painting smear technique in brown — yes, it looked sort of like poop smears, to me).
So we did a second clearing the following weekend, then repainted the room a pale robin’s egg blue. Then we cleared the energy again, and that did the trick. It’s been a happy space ever since.
I get it if all this sounds extremely woo-woo to you, and if you wonder whether this is nonsense, but I seriously hope you will give our 5-Day Energy Clearing Challenge a go, especially if you have a room in your house that just feels “off” to you somehow. Your worst-case scenario is that you end up with a tidier space that smells nice, so obviously, that’s a good result. Your best-case scenario is that you end up with a room that is tidier, smells nice, and feels lighter and happier all round.
Click here to sign up for the 5-day challenge, which is starting on August 19th. And here’s the promised link to Feng Shui Your Life.
