Energy Clearing Tools for Cleansing Yourself and Your Space
Written By Brandi Fleck
This is a list of suggestions for different energy clearing tools, what they’re most helpful with, and how and when to use them.
If you’re here, it’s probably because you’ve felt how energy can linger.
Maybe you’ve walked into a room and immediately sensed tension. Maybe you’ve left a conversation feeling heavy, foggy, or unlike yourself. Maybe your home feels stale even after it’s technically clean. Or maybe you already have a spiritual practice and want more tools for maintaining your energetic hygiene.
Whatever brought you here, energy clearing is about intentionally tending to yourself and your space so stagnant, heavy, or unwanted energy can move, release, and reorganize.
A note before we begin: energy clearing is a spiritual and self-care practice. It is not a replacement for medical care, mental health support, professional guidance, physical cleaning, or real-world boundaries. Use your discernment, take care of your body, and reach out for qualified support when you need it.
Now, let’s dive in.
What is Energy Clearing?
Energy clearing is when you intentionally clean your external energy field, aka aura, your internal energy pathways, and/or the stagnant energy around you. You “clean” your energy or the energy around you by using different tools or techniques to get it moving, eventually dissolve blockages, and even set boundaries with energies that aren’t yours so they leave you alone.
Boundaries also fall into the category of spiritual and energetic protection. Once you’ve cleansed and set your boundaries, they act as preventative measures that help your energy become less cluttered, so we won’t cover them in depth here.
There are all kinds of human-produced energies as well as spirit and other various entity attachments that can cloud or clutter a space and human energy field, so developing an energy-clearing routine and practicing regular energetic hygiene is just as important as brushing your teeth, washing your face, or even your regular beauty routine. Energy clearing for your body and your space is even just as important as physically decluttering.
Now, before you get overwhelmed because there’s always “another thing that you need to be doing” and this is just one more thing to add to the ever growing list, let me just say that energetic hygiene can be easy, quick, and once it becomes a habit, there are ways you can incorporate everyday practices into things you’re already doing, like showering, so this can be done easily and quickly.
There are other more involved rituals and practices you can also do when you feel like it. Just like how we sometimes opt for convenience foods over cooking a huge Sunday roast from scratch, you can easily tailor different tools and approaches together that will jive with your lifestyle.
And once you start experiencing the benefits of energetic hygiene, like feeling lighter, having more clarity, easier decision making, more self love, knowing yourself better, and even more ease in relationships (over time), you’ll be glad that you worked it in.
Energetic Protection vs. Energetic Clearing
Energetic protection and energetic clearing can be used interchangeably sometimes and feel similar, there really is a distinction between the two practices.
Energetic protection is more about shielding your energy from unwanted influences while energetic clearing is about cleaning and/or reorganizing your energy when those unwanted influences have infiltrated your protective measures.
While energetic protection and clearing are both forms of energetic hygiene, they’re two different steps in the same hygiene process.
For example, you’re in a storm without an umbrella. You become wet and dirty, because mud splashed up on you and leaves fell from trees above you. You then go shower to clean up and get dressed. Next time you go out, you’ll remember to carry an umbrella with you. The umbrella is the protection while the shower was the clearing.
Then, let’s give an honorable mention to energy balancing, which is the third step in the energetic hygiene process. More on that another time.
How Often to Clear Energy
Clearing energy works best when you do it regularly. If you’ve never intentionally done an energy clearing before, you may need a bigger and more frequent effort at first. Then, once you get into a maintenance routine, you can space out the larger clearings further and further depending on how quickly you accumulate stagnant, stale, stuck, or even harmful energy.
Think of it like cleaning a house after someone has lived in it for a while and not maintained it well. You’re the landlord, and they’ve decided to leave. Before you can move forward in a new way with better tenants, you must first do a large deep clean. Then, regular maintenance cleanings make it so that next time there’s a change in tenants (a shift in energy), the deep clean won’t be so difficult or maybe won’t even be needed at all.
So, you must gauge where you’re at and how often energy clearing will be helpful to you, but this is a general guideline based on what I tell my Reiki clients.
If you are in crisis, stabilizing first is important. This can be different per person, but likely means calming your nervous system and getting back to your baseline energy, whatever that means for you. Then you can begin doing clearing work. So, in a crisis situation, get grounded and then work in a larger energy clearing practice one to three times a week (even more will not hurt you). In general, you can do this for four to eight weeks and then slowly taper down and space out your larger clearings so that you’re eventually on a maintenance schedule of once per month or even longer if that works for you.
If you are starting at a baseline that is not in crisis mode, you could try starting with a larger, deeper-clean method every two weeks to a month and just do smaller methods in between for maintenance.
You’ll need to feel it out though.
Good guidelines to gauge when it’s time to do a personal field clearing are:
You’re starting to feel emotionally heavier than normal
You’re experiencing anxiety out of nowhere or a lot of fear
You feel stuck or stagnant in life
You lack clarity around your purpose or path
You are having trouble making decisions
You feel you’re being unduly influenced by external forces
You’re making choices that don’t feel like you
You don’t feel like yourself
You’re experiencing low self esteem
You’re experiencing a lot of negativity in or around you
You’re looping in the same experiences just with different people
(Remember, this is not medical or professional advice. Energy clearing is also not a replacement for medical care or professional advice. You are responsible for your own energetic hygiene and personal wellness.)
Good guidelines to gauge when it’s time to do a house or living space clearing are:
You just moved into a space for the first time
You’re experiencing staleness, boredom, or creativity blocks while in your space
Someone just came over and immediately changed the atmosphere and mood
You just had a heated exchange or toxic interaction in your space
Someone spoke poorly of other people or you in your home
Gossiping was going on in your space
Things are unexpectedly breaking or several accidents have been happening (like stubbed toes or dropping valuables, for example)
You’re losing items more than usual
Your pets are being erratic or seem on edge
You experience unexplained temperature changes that aren’t due to a physical issue or HVAC/ventilation issue
There could be more indicators, but this is a great start. Also, remember that energetic clearing isn’t a one-time, cure-all for these scenarios. It takes time to play out. Emotional processing, mood changes, relationship changes, and behavior changes may result from a real clearing and those things often also contribute to the bigger picture of your fulfillment, clarity, and peace.
How to Choose the Right Energy Clearing Tool
Before we dive into the actual tools detailed in the rest of the article, here’s a quick guide for choosing the right tool for the job.
For daily maintenance: shower visualization, aura spray, selenite, physical cleaning.
For emotional heaviness: Reiki, bath rituals, cord work, grounding.
For stagnant body/home energy: smoke cleansing, physical cleaning, selenite, sound.
For attachments to people: boundaries, behavior change, cord cutting/plucking.
For deeper or unsettling experiences: call in an experienced practitioner.
Crystals for Energy Clearing
Crystals carry energy signatures and purposes of their own. Many can help shift energy depending on your desired outcome, but two immediately come to mind for energy clearing.
You Might Also Like: Crystals for Healing Trauma
Selenite as the All-Purpose Energy Cleanser
Selenite is a high vibrational self-cleansing crystal with the purpose of clearing energy. It works by dissolving lower vibrational frequencies.
You can use a selenite wand to clear your own personal energy field or your space. You can wave the wand through your field to remove energetic debris that might be weighing you down, giving you anxiety, or clouding your judgement, for example. I like to spiral it around my body and spend extra time in front of parts of the body that feel out of sync, heavy, or tight.
Focus on the past by spiraling the selenite around you in a counter-clockwise motion or seal in a clearer, higher vibe future by swirling it around you in a clockwise motion.
In your house, you can wave a selenite wand in corners, around base boards or ceilings, and anywhere that might feel heavy or stale.
You can also place selenite statues, lamps, or carvings around your home to act as purifiers of the space on a continual basis, much like you’d place air purifiers around your home. Except with selenite, you don’t have to change filters or do much to maintain them other than keeping them dry so they don’t disintegrate.
If your selenite does disintegrate or break, simply replace it as that’s the sign it has completed its life cycle.
Black Tourmaline as a Negative Energy Absorber
Black tourmaline does its job best when it’s on your person in the form of jewelry or a stone you can keep in your pocket, purse, or bra. It absorbs negative energy so your body doesn’t have to, acting similarly to a piece of activated charcoal would if you ingest it — sopping up toxins or filtering the energy like activated charcoal filters water.
Similar to selenite, you can also place tourmaline stones around your house in areas you feel like need refreshing.
Because of black tourmaline’s sponge-like and filtering like metaphysical properties, it requires you to clean it and charge it from time to time.
If it breaks, it’s either gotten too full or taken a particularly large, direct hit on your behalf. Thank it for its service and bury or dispose of it, then replace it if needed.
Physical Acts of Cleaning Your Space
The act of physically cleaning actually has energetic side effects as well.
Sweeping dirt out the back door, vacuuming and emptying the filter then removing the trash from your space, and even dusting or wiping down counters can move energy out that you no longer want to be in your space.
Physical movement, in general, requires contraction and expansion of muscles and this moves fluids as well as energy to different places so they can be processed and removed from the body.
Physical movement is one of the most common ways to clear energy and it’s something we all do without even realizing it.
Smoke Cleansing with Herbs, Incense, and Plant Bundles
In general, burning an herb bundle and wafting the smoke around your field or in the corners and other areas of your house can be extremely cleansing. Smoke has been shown to physically cleanse and clear bacteria and other pathogens as well.
Depending on the type of clearing you want, you can learn about the metaphysical properties of a particular herb and those properties will influence the atmosphere and feel of the clearing.
For example, Palo Santo is said to be more about ushering in positive energies than it is to be about banishing negative energies while white sage can be helpful in banishing.
I’m particularly fond of using pine for cleansing, as it has Appalachian folk magic roots commonly used in floor washes, cleansing fires, and even pine smoke is used to clear stagnancy, repel evil, and banish negativity.
Rosemary is particularly good for cleansing your meditation area, witchy altar, ritual tools, or even stagnant energy in your space. It can be grown in your backyard or in a windowsill and is easy to come by sustainably.
Bay leaves are often associated with prosperity, so including bay leaves in with your bundle can influence stagnant energies around abundance, money, and resources.
Even burning a simple incense stick or cone can clear the energy and make a noticeable difference in the atmosphere of your environment, even if just for a short while.
If you want to do this ethically, use an herb bundle that is native to where you are located and/or that is most closely entwined with your culture or lineage.
You can also do research and try to find sustainably sourced materials.
Regardless of the herb bundle or stick you choose to use and its metaphysical properties, you can also usher in positive change moving forward and clear your path by rotating the smoke around your body or space in a clockwise motion. Use a counter-clockwise path when you want to clear past energies.
Sound Clearing as a Smoke-Free Option
If you have asthma, are sensitive to smoke, live with pets or children, or simply prefer a smoke-free option, sound is an excellent alternative for energy clearing. In fact, I offer a chime cleanse as an alternative to smoke cleansing in my own Reiki practice.
In energetic work, sound is often used to clear stagnant energy by creating movement, coherence, and vibration in targeted areas. Instead of using smoke to move energy, you use sound waves, rhythm, and resonance.
Here are a few sound-clearing options you can try.
Singing Bowls
I love a good sound bath. Experienced sound bath practitioners use vibration, tone, and resonance to help the body and energy field relax, reorganize, and return to a more coherent state.
Many sound healers also pair different singing bowls, tones, or frequencies with the body’s chakra system. In this framework, playing a bowl associated with a particular chakra can help bring attention, movement, and balance to that energy center through resonance.
Chimes or Bells
You can strike a chime or ring a bell anywhere you’d like to break up stagnant energy. The sound acts as a pattern interrupter, helping denser or heavier energy loosen, shift, and dissipate.
You can use chimes or bells around your body, in the corners of a room, near doorways, around your altar or meditation space, or anywhere the energy feels stale.
Clapping or Knocking
If you don’t have chimes or bells, you can clap around your energy field or clap and knock around the walls of your house to break up stagnant energy. The sharp pop acts as a pattern interrupter in a similar way to bells or chimes.
This is also why you’ll often see tarot readers knock on a deck before beginning a new reading. The knock symbolically clears the previous energy and helps create a clean slate.
Music
Simply playing music that brings you joy, peace, movement, or a sense of positivity can shift the atmosphere of a room and lighten your mood. That, too, can be a form of energy clearing.
You can use calming music to settle the energy, upbeat music to move stagnant energy, or emotionally resonant music to help you process and release what has been sitting in your body or space.
Tuning Forks
I have the least personal experience with tuning forks, but they are another common tool in sound healing and energy clearing. When you tap a tuning fork, it vibrates at a specific frequency. Practitioners often place the tuning fork near the body or around a space with the intention of bringing the targeted area into resonance, coherence, or balance.
From an energetic perspective, this can be understood as helping stagnant or lower-frequency energy shift so the field can feel clearer and more harmonious.
Chanting, Singing, or Humming
Chanting, singing, or humming can be a powerful way to clear your own energy because your body becomes the instrument.
These practices may help calm and regulate the nervous system through breath, vibration, and vagus nerve activation. Energetically, they also move energy through the throat chakra and voice, which can be especially helpful if you feel blocked from speaking your truth, expressing yourself, or being heard.
Calling In Your Spirit Guides for Energy Clearing
You can simply notice how you feel, ask your spirit guides to clear your energy field for the highest good, notice any shifts in or around your body (including physical sensations and/or emotions), and say “so it is.”
Believe that it is done and it will be done.
Anyone can talk to and work with their own spirit guides, but I tend to believe this is a more advanced approach. Especially if you can’t feel the shifts at first or see your guides, you’ll need to rely on faith that this worked in order for it to work.
So, ensuring you have a close and trusted relationship with your guides first can help with this method of energy clearing.
Using Water Rituals to Clear Energy
Running or moving water is a universal cleanser. Much like physically cleaning your house has energy clearing benefits, so does physically cleaning your body. Here are a few ways to harness water for energy clearing.
Shower Visualization
As you’re rinsing your body in the shower, envision any dark dirt, sludge, or even smoke in your field simply washing away as the water trickles over you and goes down the drain. Allow the water to rinse you until you “see” or “feel” that any energetic “dirt” is completely gone.
This type of ritual works best to wash away any negative interactions or attachments that occurred simply by going about your day.
In some cases, you may feel there is a “stain” in your energy that won’t simply wash away. This may be indicative of a deeper emotional wounding that will take more than one rinse to heal and clear. In this case, consider going to a Reiki session for assistance with deeper healing and cleansing.
Bath Visualization
If you’re a bath person, take your bath as you normally would. You can add different salts, herbs, and oils that carry symbolic meanings (and therefore energy) with them depending on the goals of your cleansing. Perhaps you want to ground and release the mental clutter that’s coming in from the collective energy field. Or perhaps you want to rinse off the negativity encountered during the day—whether that be awful news you saw in your feed, a horror movie you watched earlier in the evening, or a conflict that was draining at work.
Wash with your tailored bath water (even just pure bath water will do fine). Imagine the water pulling toxins out of your body and the water getting darker as you bathe or soak. Then, when it’s time to get out, step out of the tub, dry off, and then imagine all that darkness going down the drain with the bath water.
Using Moon Water for Cleansing
Many people drink moon water for healing and manifestation purposes. You can also set the intention that it will clear your internal energy meridians as it hydrates and washes through your body. You can also use moon water to make aura cleansing spray, detailed below.
For your house, you can put moon water in a spray bottle with lavender or peppermint essential oil (or any oil you desire) to refresh upholstery, bedding, air, furniture, and more. For more information on making moon water, see my most popular article: Everything You Need to Know About Moon Water.
Using Aura Spray
You can use regular water or you can use moon water and add several drops of clary sage essential oil to it. Then, simply spray it in a clockwise motion around your body to remove debris from your field and lock in clarity for the future. Or, spray it in a counter-clockwise motion around your body to remove debris from your field and also release the past. You can also spray it around your field with the intention that it’s removing collective energy clutter or negative energy that was caught up in your field and imagine it refreshing your field and then taking darker particles down to the ground with it as the mist falls around you.
Removing Attachments to Other People
You can remove attachments to other people in several ways. Typically, real, physical action and changed behavior in your relationships is the most common way people do this. For example, you break up with someone, decide to move out, or decide to speak less even if you still want to maintain some contact. Sometimes, life just takes us in different directions and attachments naturally dissolve as well.
Oftentimes, removing their items from your space helps. Processing grief and any emotions around the detachment can also help. Many times, this healing is enough to dissolve attachment over time. Even with this natural energetic dissolution that takes place after the physical dissolution of a relationship, you still can have your memories. Many people are able to look back on a tumultuous relationship with fondness after time has passed because there are still positive aspects, things you gained, and lessons you learned that helped shape you and your experiences.
However, when you’ve chosen to take action to become less attached to someone and you still regularly feel the pull of their personality, way of being, essence, or even just think about them to the point of it impacting your daily life, it may be time to layer in ritual and/or mindset shifts into your efforts of clearing this energy out.
New attachments to people, no matter how weak, can form every day. Removing attachments can be part of a deep cleaning of your field and then doing a light version of removing cords on a regular basis may help keep your path through relationships clearer.
Using Cord Cutting Rituals
When an attachment to another person is particularly strong and causing negative situations in life, a cord cutting can help clear the energy between you, which often results in a changed dynamic through different actions. You’re more able to interact in an objective or non-triggered way because you are more emotionally detached from a situation.
A cord cutting can be used when you still need to maintain contact with someone but need less attachment to their energy. Many people also use cord cuttings if they want to go no contact, but I find that a cord plucking is much more effective for going no-contact.
To do a cord cutting, you can use candles and twine, encircled by salt on a safe surface as a physical representation of severing the energy. But you can also simply imagine that any energetic cords emanating from your body to theirs be cut.
Using Cord Plucking Rituals
When you want to go completely no-contact with someone and maybe not forget them completely but remove them from your life and remove yourself from their life and sever any possible tie, you’ll want to pluck the energetic cord or cords from the root instead of simply cutting the cord. This type of ritual is very powerful and leaves a gaping hole where the root was that you must tend like an energetic wound so that nothing unsavory grows back in it’s place. You can choose what you want to grow back there after you’ve healed the “soil.”
Clearing Past Life Attachments
These rituals described above can also apply to clearing out energy from attachments in past lives. If you suspect that some of the issues you’re having currently are linked to past life experiences, perhaps try past life regression to see what you can learn, and work there to remove those ancient attachments. Then, do cord cuttings or pluckings at home as you feel comfortable.
I experienced the healing of a karmic relationship in a past life regression once. In it, I learned the origin of a relationship that has been looping and playing out over lives and that I’ve grappled with in this lifetime as well. When I saw how the dynamic originated during the hypnosis session, it made it easier for me to let go of this person and remember her with fondness in this lifetime for her purpose and our big-picture roles we played in each other’s lives. In this instance, the past life regression helped me see the lesson I was to learn from the interaction. Once the lesson is learned, it’s much easier to let go of the old dynamic because you don’t need it anymore. So, this attachment immediately dissolved for me.
While I remember her fondly, I bet she won’t be popping up in my life ever again. And that’s okay.
When to Get Help with Energy Clearing
You can absolutely begin clearing your own energy, even if you’re new to the practice. Many forms of energetic hygiene are simple, intuitive, and safe to explore on your own, especially when you’re working with tools like water visualization, sound clearing, crystals, smoke cleansing, prayer, or intention.
That said, there are times when support can be helpful.
If you’re carrying years of unprocessed grief, trauma, stress, or emotional heaviness, working with a Reiki practitioner or another trusted energy worker may help you begin from a more supported place. This does not mean you are incapable of clearing your own energy. It simply means you may benefit from having someone hold space while deeper layers begin to move.
The same goes for clearing a home or physical space. If you’re maintaining everyday energy in your home, you can learn to do that yourself over time. But if you’ve never cleared a house before and the energy feels especially heavy, unsettling, or beyond your current experience level, it may be wise to call in someone with more practice. This could be an experienced Reiki practitioner, psychic medium, spiritual practitioner, or trusted spiritual leader who understands the kind of clearing you need.
This is not about fear. It is about discernment.
Some energetic hygiene is personal work you will need to practice for yourself. Some clearing is easier with support. Knowing the difference can help you feel more empowered, more grounded, and more effective in your practice.
Honoring Your Energy Clearing Practice
Ultimately, energy clearing is part of a larger energetic hygiene practice that you likely already do in some ways or that would be easy to add into routines you already have to help you feel lighter and less stagnant in your life and relationships.
Your energy clearing practice should work for you. You can make it as involved or as minimal as you’d like. Your intentions matter most.
Remember to approach energy clearing from a place of love and self care. There’s no need to fear energy. When you approach energy clearing from a place of care, it has a tendency to work better. The more you practice, the more you’ll be able to leave fear behind and notice how everything is working together for you.
There are a multitude of energy clearing tools available. In time and with practice, you’ll figure out which tools work best for you and in which scenarios.
Happy clearing!
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Hi, I’m the founder of Human Amplified. I’m Brandi Fleck, a recognized communications and interviewing expert, a writer, an artist, and a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and Reiki Master Teacher. No matter how you interact with me, I help you tell and change your story so you can feel more like yourself. So welcome!
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