spiritual cleansing: clearing negative energy

When life starts to feel like too many things are piling up on you at the same time, like work stress, relationship challenges, family commitments, bills, or you’re stuck in a negative cycle, and burnout feels imminent, it may be the perfect time to think about doing in a cleanse. Spiritual cleansing or energetic purification can raise your vibration, clear emotional blockages, and help you to experience more positive thoughts, spiritual balance, and greater connection with yourself and others around you.

This spiritual cleansing guide walks you through the benefits of cleansing, the signs you need to cleanse, and the things you should know.

Read on to learn about popular spiritual cleansing rituals and how you can use these top cleansing rituals to improve your energy field, physical and mental well-being, and outlook.

What Does Spiritual Cleansing Mean? Your Guide To Clearing Negative Energy

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, weighed down, consumed with negative energy, and things don’t seem to be flowing smoothly, it’s time to consider a cleanse to purify all of your being: your spirit, mind, and body.

Though you can’t see energy, it can be felt—especially when your energy is off.

Sometimes it’s difficult to see how this negativity impacts you or changes your aura, mood, thoughts, or actions. But it does.

Getting rid of this negative energy is critical to feeling good and well-balanced and having a positive mindset.

Benefits of spiritual cleansing

There are many benefits to a cleanse. In addition to eliminating negative or accumulated energies impacting your well-being, a cleanse can be an empowering experience and help you feel like you have more control over your life.

A cleanse can help you get unstuck.

As a yoga teacher and business coach, I have come to see how negative energies can block people in ways that leave them feeling like they are stuck or trapped in their lives, making little forward progress on their dreams or goals because they are burdened by doubts, fears, and uncertainty about their purpose.

Cleansing rituals can help remove negativity and free up positive space for movement and growth.

You can benefit from a deliberate detox and daily clearing rituals, like prayer or affirmation practice. And no, you don’t have to be spiritual, religious, or a yoga teacher to engage in cleansing rituals.

Anyone stressed out, fatigued, or needing clarity or balance can benefit. Also, empaths who inadvertently take on others’ energy and that of surrounding environments can benefit, too.

Purification also offers an opportunity to renew and transform yourself by releasing old patterns and inviting personal growth, inner peace, and spiritual growth.

It also facilitates better alignment with a higher sense of self and a deep sense of purpose.

It can promote emotional healing, inner balance, and harmony and improve coping mechanisms for anxiety, past traumas, fears, or guilt.

Regularly practicing spiritual rituals, like cleansing baths and meditation, is a great way to take care of yourself, clear blockages, connect with your higher power, and improve your health.

Key benefits of spiritual cleanse rituals

• Self-care, compassion, relaxation, and immune system boost
• Unblock unwanted energies and personal transformation
• Improved clarity and focus
• Emotional grounding and stability
• Feeling more desirable emotions, like love, passion, and joy
• Higher sense of self, purpose, and confidence.

5 signs you’re in need of a spiritual cleanse

How exactly do you know when you desperately need a cleanse? Here are five signs that you need to pause and hit reset to clear out emotional and spiritual toxins that have built up.

1. Mental or physical exhaustion. When you feel mentally depleted or emotionally overwhelmed, and the effects of chronic stress, mental fatigue, and negative energies begin to take a toll on your physical health, it’s a sure sign that you need renewal and a reset.
   
2. Relationship challenges. When it feels like you’re stuck in negative cycles of drama and conflict with your partner, friends, family, or work colleagues, or when your meaningful relationships become a source of stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, or fear, and you sense a mounting loss of connection or meaning, it’s time to take pause and reflect.
   
   A cleanse can help support this self-reflection and invite a renewed, more profound connection to yourself and others. It can also help you let go of unhealthy patterns, dynamics, or toxic relationships that prevent you from healing your heart, becoming your best self, or living your best life.
   
3. Lack of motivation, focus, or boredom. If you feel little or no motivation, passion, focus, or clarity in your life or feel bored or unable to concentrate easily, it may be a sign that your spirit needs self-care. Another telltale sign is when you feel you lack purpose or meaning.
   
4. Negativity. If you see the negative in everything and everyone around you, and pessimism dominates your perspective, it may be time to undertake a purifying ritual.
   
   A cleanse can help you renew your optimism and shift your mindset. When you clear away undesired energies, you make room to invite in positive energies.
   
5. Disconnection with yourself. A cleanse may be in order when you’re feeling lonely or disconnected from yourself, detached or distant from your intuition, higher purpose, spiritual beliefs or practices, or lacking self-awareness.
   
   Cleansing rituals can help you reconnect to yourself, connect to your divine essence, rekindle your purpose, reignite your inner fire, and trust your intuition.

Things You Should Know about spiritual cleansing

A cleanse is a form of self care. It is a uniquely, personal experience.

It is important to keep in mind that cleansing rituals are not substitutes for medical advice or evaluation by mental health professionals, especially in the event of severe emotional or mental distress.

Important spiritual cleansing tips:

• When doing a cleansing ritual, be sure to choose a quiet place where you can focus on you and your self-care
• Minimize any distractions; this includes noise (set your phone to silent mode) and clutter in your sacred space
• Think of the cleanse as a conscious, deliberate act to nurture your mind, body, and soul.

The Top Cleansing Rituals To Improve Your Energy Field

When it’s time to purify your spirit, mind, and body to remove negative energies from your life, there are a number of popular spiritual cleansing rituals options available to you.

1. Remove negative energy with smudging

Smudging with sage is a popular, though ancient, practice for removing negative energy. Indigenous peoples burned sage to eliminate unwanted energies, and the practices continues now.

Sage is a plant that is frequently used in spiritual rituals. It is dried, then burned. It releases fragrant smoke that is believed to help release negative energies and remove blockages that interfere with emotional wellbeing.

Burning sage is also thought to improve air quality and have a purifying effect to enhance fresh air.

Spiritual cleansing with sage is a ritual that some do with regular devotion. For many, it offers an instant energetic uplift, increases spiritual awareness, and sharpens intuitive powers.

For those who are sensitive to sage or smoke, there are smudge alternatives. For example, dried lavender, sweetgrass, and rosemary are alternative herbs that invite tranquility and positive energy.

There are also smokeless alternatives to burning smudge, which include clearing energies with clear quartz crystals or salts.

Things You’ll Need for spiritual cleansing:

• Smudge sticks or wrapped bundle of dried smudging herbs (such as white sage, dragon’s blood smudge sticks, palo santo, cedar, lavender, juniper, or rosemary)
  
• A match or lighter
  
• Optional: feather to spread the smoke; smokeless energy purification alternatives like clear quartz crystals or stones; Abalone shell to catch embers or ashes from burning the smudge.

How to Smudge:

Carefully light the smudge stick or bundle of smudging herbs.

As the smoke billows off the smudge stick, take your hand or feather to wave the smoke over and around your body, starting from head to toe.

Then proceed to smudge, moving the smoke around your home, room, or space that needs cleansing.

2. Do a visualization meditation

Visualization meditation is a powerful spiritual cleansing ritual that can transform well-being and mental health and clear unwanted energies away.

Visualization meditations can facilitate radical self-acceptance, cultivate gratitude, and allow for a genuine connection with your higher self.

Visualization meditations can include guided imagery, practices like Chakra-visualization, where you visualize colors throughout the body, or peaceful meditation, where you imagine yourself at your happy, serene place.

Things You’ll Need:

• A quiet, comfortable place to sit, free of distractions
• A bolster or meditation pillow, if desired
• Guided imagery audio visual recording

How to do a Visualization Meditation:

If you’re new to meditation, know that it’s not always easy for beginners or even those experienced to sit down and focus. Rest assured, you’re doing it the right way.

Begin by taking a comfortable seated position on the floor, such as in a cross-legged position (”Easy Pose” or Sukhasana) on a pillow or bolster, or sit on a chair; sit tall and straight, but in a way that feels most comfortable to you.

Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths, and embrace the space, quietness, and solitude to be you—to exist, right here now.

Next, set your intention; shift your thoughts to removing energy blocks or any other intention relevant to your meditation goal. If you have a guided recording, follow that.

Otherwise, take deep inhalations and calming exhalations and allow your mind to visualize a place where you feel content, safe, free, unencumbered by negativity.

Visualize light and positive energy permeating your body, traveling to all parts of you and moving through your third eye and chakras. Feel the energetic release of emotional blockages.

Continue to breathe. Continue to allow the light and positive energy to fill you and your spirit.

3. Take a spiritual cleansing bath

A spiritual bath ritual is a practice that is about purifying the mind, body, and spirit, so that you can release unwanted energy, find inner peace, and balance in your world.

Soaking in a bathtub filled with hot water has long been associated with deep relaxation and cleansing.

However, a spiritual bath goes beyond the physical, but also touches the mind and soul. Spiritual bathing can also immediately transform your mood.

You can take an ordinary bath experience up a notch to create a spiritually transformative experience by preparing the ritual bath with a cleansing intention and using bath salts, like epsom salt, to purify your aura, essentials oils to relax you, and herbs to heal and soothe you physically and mentally.

Your personal intention becomes the purpose of a ritual bath and makes the time in the tub your own empowering experience.

Things You’ll Need:

• A bathtub or soaking basin
• Salts to purify the energy, such as Himalayan or Epsom salts
• Baking soda to detoxify your body and neutralize toxins
• Essential oils, such as calming oils like lavender and rosemary
• Herbs or flowers, such as sage, chamomile, or rose petals; choose based on their purifying properties based on your needs and intention
• Optional: popular crystals, such as clear quartz or amethyst which have healing properties known for cleansing and have energy amplifying properties; tea bags; moon water; relaxing music.

How to prepare a spiritual cleansing bath:

Prepare for your spiritual bath by cleaning the tub, cleaning the surround and room, removing clutter, and smudging the space with your favorite smudge stick, like white sage or lavender to clear away any negative energy.

Set a clear intention, draw the bath water, add the salts, baking soda, essential oils, and any herbs or flowers to the water. Bathe with mindful intention.

4. Self-Love Bath

A self-love bath is a spin on the the cleansing bath, except that the focus is specifically on self-love and compassion to help heal, nourish your soul, and to release unwanted emotions and self-critical thoughts.

There are many self-love, self-nurturing, and peace-inducing plants and flowers you may add to your hot bath.

According to Star Bright Farm, “the healing powers of herb-infused liquids have been recognized for thousands of years, dating back to the old Egyptians wherein Cleopatra was reputed to wash in rose petals.”

One of the most beneficial acts of self-love is making time for spiritual bathing and reconnecting with one’s inner self.

Things You’ll Need:

• The same ingredients as for a spiritual bath, plus:
• Essential oil specifically associated with promoting relaxation, calm, tranquility, such as lavender
• Optional: crystals associated with love, like rose quartz, candles, incense, or even relaxing, mindful music.

How to prepare a self-love bath:

Take a few minutes to prepare as you would a spiritual bath. Ensure your sacred space is prepared well to receive you, so that you can literally soak up spiritual energy.

When you set your intention, think about self-acceptance, allowing the grip of negative thoughts and self-doubt to release, and visualize yourself flooded with self-love.

If you choose to use crystals, you can place them around the bathtub or in the bath water; it is believed that the crystals help to raise the energetic vibration and clear away undesirable energies.

If you choose to light candles, choose candles that support your intention and set a calm ambiance.

While you bathe, say positive affirmations, such as I am worthy of love; I am worthy of inner peace; I am enough. Enter and exit the bath mindfully; keeping your awareness on you.

4. Cleansing crystals

The use of cleansing crystals is deeply rooted in ancient traditions and spiritual practices.

Crystal healing spans many cultures and civilizations. For example, the Ancient Greeks and Romans used crystals for healing purposes, and believed that gemstones could bring health, good fortune, or love.

In traditional Chinese Medicine, crystals have been used to promote health and wellness , by setting them on various meridian system points on the body.

And Indigenous cultures have used crystals in shamanic rituals, for spiritual healing, for connecting with the Earth’s energy and spirits, and as vibrational medicine.

Spiritual practitioners have long been believed that certain crystals hold healing energies and properties that can affect the energetic field around a person.

It is for this reason that crystals are a popular spiritual cleansing tool, and allow you to cleanse your energy field.

Crystals are believed to have vibrational frequencies and specific energies. It’s even thought that healing crystals can help align the chakras, or body energy centers, and promote emotional and spiritual health.

Using crystals can help you manifest good energies, and bring balance and calm into your life.

Things you’ll need:

• Crystals of your choice, depending on your desired goals.

How to use cleansing crystals:

There are many ways to use purifying crystals. A popular way to use them is to set an intention and explore visualization while holding or focusing on a crystal.

To reap the full benefits of crystal spiritual cleanse rituals, you’ll want to learn how to clean your crystal rocks of physical impurities and charge your crystals.

This care is essential because energy is thought to accumulate in the stones, and can affect their healing impact.

5. Spiritual cleansing prayer

Reciting or chanting spiritual prayers is a practice that can empty the mind of negative thoughts, allow for emotional release, and allow connection with the divine or universe, depending on spiritual beliefs.

The effects of prayer on the mind, body, and soul are often profoundly impactful.

One of my favorite karma clearing prayers is The Loving Kindness Prayer. You repeat this prayer four times.

The first time you fill in the blank with the name of someone you love; the second time with the name of someone you feel neutral about; the third time with someone with whom you’re not on the best terms; and the last time with I .

May ____ be filled with loving kindness.

May ___ be peaceful and at ease.

May ___ be well.

May ___ know happiness and the roots of all happiness.

Things you’ll need:

• A prayer, affirmation, mantra, or word that you can repeat
• A space or place where you feel comfortable to recite a prayer aloud or silently

How to practice spiritual cleansing prayer rituals:

You do not need to be religious or go to church to practice spiritual cleansing prayers or to experience the benefits of prayer.

You can enjoy the transformative power and emotional and/or energetic release of prayer, anywhere—while sitting comfortably on your couch, washing the dishes, or in the car during rush hour traffic.

Choose a prayer; say, chant, repeat, sing, or meditate over the words out loud or silently in your own mind. Feel the vibrations of that prayer reverberate through your entire being—mind, body, and soul.

6. Use auric cleansing sprays

Auric sprays, such as DIY or purchased sprays, formulated with essential oils or natural cleansing ingredients, can influence the energetic field around you, known as your aura.

Auric sprays are thought to balance energies, transmute negative vibrations, bring protection, restore harmony, and help align the energetic centers in the body known as the chakras.

Things you’ll need:

• Auric spray pre-purchased or
• Make your own auric spray using purified or moon water and essential oils; spray bottle

How to practice auric cleansing spray rituals:

To practice auric spray rituals, first find a calm, peaceful place. Set your intentions, take a deep breath, and spray.

You might spray around your body or spray a specific place on your body; you might also spray your bedroom, your pillow before you go to sleep, your car, or personal work space when you feel that your creativity or productivity is blocked.

7. Harness the power of the full moon

The full moon offers incredible opportunities for spiritual rituals. Collecting moon water for drinking, cleansing, spritzing, or bathing is one such practice.

Moon water is a celestial liquid charged with divine energy and vibration from the moon.

It is believed that moon water can help revitalize and heal you. Ayurveda suggests that moon-charged water can even reset your menstrual cycles and provide emotional uplift.

Things you’ll need:

• A clear glass jar or container for holding water

How to harness the energetic power of the full moon:

Place your container of water outside at night, under the glow of the full moon. A glass container is preferred, as it will absorb the moon’s energy best.

8. Practice gratitude

Another powerful spiritual cleansing practice is to practice gratitude. Writing down or journaling what you are grateful for, as well as writing down the energies or obstacles that you’d like to move out of your life can be spiritually empowering and affirming.

Journaling is also a creative art form that allows you to connect with your spiritual energies.

Bringing awareness to energies, such as by listing your fears, can help release energetic blockages, free up mental space for gratitude and appreciation in the physical body, and improve your spiritual connection.

Things You’ll Need:

• Pen and paper or a journal

How to Practice Gratitude:

Make a list of all you are grateful for in your life, as well as a list of the negative energies or blockages that you wish to eliminate. Repeat this spiritual practice daily or when you feel you could use a reset.

When to do a spiritual cleanse?

The time is always right to do spiritual cleansing rituals. You know your body, mind, and soul better than anyone else, so tune in and listen.

If you are feeling it’s time for a pause, reset, or to welcome more positive energies into your life, it’s time for a healing.

When you feel like you are stuck in negative cycles, bogged down by limiting believes or patterns, it’s definitely time for self-care.

Conclusion

A cleanse is a powerful tool and complement to daily self-care and entire body wellness routines.

Taking a few moments to create time to remove negative energies and old patterns that no longer serve you from your inner world, can make room for positive energies and divine light in your life, and move you closer to creating and living your best life.

Sources:

The Use of Gemstones in the Chinese Community, media.neliti.com/media/publications/167150-EN-the-use-of-gemstones-in-the-chinese-comm.pdf.

Smudging, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudging.

How to Create a Spiritual Bath at Home, cosmopolitanme.com/beauty/how-to-create-a-spiritual-bath

Aruyveda and the Full Moon, artoflivingretreatcenter.org/blog/ayurveda-and-the-full-moon/