One of the best ways to protect yourself from negative energy is to make sure you are filled with good energy yourself.

However, the stress of our lives can mean that we aren’t always as “filled” with our own energy as we might like.   Sometimes protecting yourself is needed to make sure you don’t take on negative energy. Also, new shamanic healers may be interacting and calling energies that they hadn’t been used to dealing with.  They can need protection while they are learning how to manage these energies.

 

What is Negative Energy?

Negative energy is not “bad” energy.  Rather it is something that is not helping to make you healthier, or it is weighing you down in some way.  Your own stress and worry can be stored in your body as negative energy.  Once the stress is stored in a part of your body, it can cause a weakness there that can lead to illness.

As for sources of “negative” energy outside of you, these can come from a variety of sources.  Other people’s emotions are the most common source.  Spending time in a place where people are stressed out, can cause you to absorb some of that energy.  People who are envious of you can unconsciously send energy to you that is not helpful.  Someone gets angry in traffic, and they can send that anger at you.

Sometimes an environment will be filled with negative energy.   In some cases, the energy simply might not be compatible with you.  For instance, some people feel drained by the busy bustle of a city, where someone else would feel energized by it.  There are some places that just feel better than others.  When you are in a place that is not compatible with your energy, you can feel drained.

Energy protection is a way for you to prevent taking in negative energy from others or from your environment.

 

Energy is Meant to Change Forms

Energy is meant to change forms constantly.  You see this best in young children who can be sad one minute, but joyful the next.  When energy gets stuck in one form, rather than keep changing as its meant to, that is when you can have difficulties with a given energy.

Places of great suffering or grief can have a heavy energy that got stored in that place.  This does not mean that the place is a “bad” place, just that the energy never got transformed.  It is stuck in one form and isn’t flowing and changing as it is meant to.

Shamans are trained how to transform energy from one state into a more positive one.  They use this ability to change energy within themselves, and clear the energies in other people and in spaces or environments.

However, many people don’t know how to do this and may be in need of learning how to protect themselves from “negative” energy.

 

Ways of Protecting Yourself

Visualization

Sometimes visualization is all you need.

Whether you know it or not, you have an innate ability to protect yourself from the energy that is not helpful or healthful to you.  Using a visualization is one of the ways that you engage that ability.  Even though you can’t remember how to create protection, your body knows.  So the visualization sends the message of what you want to do, so that your body can do that.

Most visualizations involve seeing yourself surrounded by protection of some kind.  Eventually your visualizations won’t be needed anymore as the protection becomes a habit.  You don’t want to be too heavily protected all the time, though.  Its not healthy to be disconnected from your environment. Healthy energy protection should allow you to be more open to the world around you.

Visualizations that completely block out the energy of your environment should only be used occasionally, such as when you are in an especially negative environment.  Its best that what you visualize allows positive energy to enter and leave through the protection.

Some Visualizations:

• Blue Egg
  Visualize a see-thru blue egg that allows good energy to come in and out and keeps bad energy out.  The egg surrounds you as you go about your day.
• Mirror
  Visualize a mirror that bounces negative energy back to the sender.  This is especially good to use if you have one person that seems to be sending you negative energy all of the time.  You can the use a mirror for that person only, rather than have heavy protection around you all the time.  You see a mirror standing between yourself and that person, and that anything they send at you goes right back to them.
• Brick Wall
  Imagining a brick wall is a visualization that you should only use for especially bad environments. It blocks out all energy.  If you find you have to use it all the time such as at work, you may wish to consider ways of protecting your personal space with items as discussed below. You don’t want using a brick wall to become a habit.

 

Methods

Many of the methods of energy protection involve filling yourself with positive energy.  Things like pranic breathing, meditation, tai chi or any number of methods can put you in a state where you are less likely to take on negative energy.

Methods that effect the energy surrounding you can also be effective. Breathing is always a powerful way of managing your own energy, and the energy surrounding you.  Sound is can also be powerful and something as simple as humming can clear the space near you of negative energy.

You can ask a guardian spirit or power animal to put protection around you.  They will not do this unless asked, out of respect for your own personal space.  However, they can offer very powerful protection.

Objects

Objects are things you use either to keep your space clear of negative energy, or to provide yourself protection personally.

• Wearing a Mirror
  Some shamans wear a mirror, so that any energy directed at them will bound back to the sender.  This is not always a shiny mirror, but can be a round polished metal disk.  I’ve seen brass ones used in Tibetan practices.
• Stones or Crystals
  Stones and crystals are capable both of transforming energy and for providing protection.  Quartz, amethyst, smokey quartz, hematite, galena, granite, malachite are just some of the stones that can provide protection.  Stones may be worn as a necklace or in a pocket.  They can be placed in a space to keep it clear. Granite is a good way of providing protection for a space. Some stones need to be cleaned in water, salt water, placed in the sun, or buried to be cleaned by the earth.  Selenite can fill a space with good energy, can clear other stones and does not need to be cleaned.
• Water or Fire
  Sometimes people will use water or fire in a space as a an energy transformer.  The negative energy goes into the fire, or the flow of the fountain transforms the energy. A bowl of water that catches negativity and is emptied once a day.
• Smudging
  People burn sage, sweet grass or incense to clear spaces of negative energy.

 

For these tools you can combine clearing with protection to help maintain a healthy space around you.  You can do things like place granite at the four corners of the room, or a piece of granite in your work space under the desk.  As you place the stone, “tell” it that you want it to keep negative energy out of this space.  Stones like quartz and selenite can be used to fill a space with good energy. Amethyst, smoky quartz, galena/hematite, and malachite are good stones to wear as a necklace or put in your pocket to protect from negative energy.

 

Don’t Give Negative Energy More Power

Sometimes you might encounter a person or a situation that is especially nasty.  You might think to yourself, this energy isn’t just negative and want to think of it is as truly bad or evil.  I would caution you against that way of thinking of energy, even when it seems appropriate.

Visualization is very powerful when working with energy.  Sometimes thinking of something as evil can give it more power.  Its good to acknowledge when a negative energy is especially strong, in case you are in need of additional protection from it.  (Or even better, can avoid it completely.)  Your instincts are important and should be listened to. However, labeling energy with a more dramatic title than “negative” can result in a visualization that gives it more power.

The word “evil” and a sense of helplessness often go hand in hand.  It may be better to say to yourself that “this is more than I want to deal with” or “this energy is not healthy for me” or “I’m getting out of here” rather than give it a powerful label.  If you encounter such energy frequently, taking the time to come up with appropriate but undramatic labels is worthwhile (This person has no love in him, or that person has no morality.)  That way you can correctly identify and respond to energy without giving it more power.

 

More Information

This post was an overview of ways to perform energy protection (sometimes called psychic protection).  For more detailed information, Shaman Links is compiling a list of energy protection books in our Shaman Books Directory.  As of this post, we have two of the most popular books listed.

Shamanic Extraction is the way that shaman’s heal by removing misplaced or “negative” energy.

Also its important not to be an “energy polluter” that sends negative energy into your own environment.  The next post discusses expressing emotions without sending them.

There is a very good radio program, an hour long discussion on energetic protection with an expert on the topic.  You can listen to it on the page link, or download the podcast on iTunes:

Why Shamanism Now: Protection – How to with Betsy Bergstrom