THE BIG CLEANSE

WE’VE PURGED OUR KITCHEN CABINETS OF SUGAR AND CULLED THE CLOTHES THAT DON’T SPARK JOY, BUT WE MAY HAVE ARRIVED AT THE MOST BENEFICIAL (AND EASIEST) CLEANSE OF ALL

It’s gone from niche to mainstream, so is energy clearing all its cracked up to be?

the whole crystals, energy-clearing, aura thing snuck up on me. It started fairly innocently when my aunt gave me a pink quartz crystal in a teeny drawstring linen bag. “It really helps with stress and draws good energy towards you,” she said. Did she mean to glance towards the living room strewn with toddler toys and the kitchen table piled high with work? In the past, I might have rolled my eyes. This time, a thought occurred to me: could I afford to turn away good vibes? By chucking this in a drawer, am I telling the universe I want bad ones? And so I did what investment bankers with helipads do all the time: I hedged my bets. I zipped the crystal safely into my handbag (where you can still find it) and got on with my life.

Fast forward two years, and as I type this I am (non-ironically) swigging water from a glass bottle with energising stones locked in the bottom and a motto that reads “Drink a little magic”. Full disclosure: I am supposed to cleanse it in the moonlight, but am yet to go full-tilt woowoo, so for now it goes in the dishwasher. I also close my eyes and imagine my head is exploding with golden light when I get a headache (if it doesn’t work I take Panadol, obvs). Honestly, there’s so much angst in the world that I’ve grown fond of affirmations and small self-care efforts that are steeped in energy-healing – and it seems I’m not alone.

In a (completely non-scientific) straw poll of friends and colleagues about whether they have a whiff of any (or all) of the above in their daily life, I was surprised to find everyone I spoke to had dabbled or dived in. Some developed their understanding of energy flow through regular yoga and meditation practices, while others had come across know-how through podcasts and platforms like Goop. There were less obvious things, too: having a rule to unfollow any accounts on Instagram that make you feel not great, or blasting feel-good music to shake off a tough day. All of these efforts, I have discovered, are just some of the ways we cleanse ourselves of negative energy.

The most surprising story came from my friend Rosie, 28, who has been a see-it-to-believe-it person for as long as I’ve known her… at least that’s what I thought until she matter-of-factly told me about a game-changing energy-healing session she had after her last break-up. “I was stuck in this loop of feeling fine, but with a constant hum that something wasn’t okay in the background. There was a sense of heaviness in my head… and this might sound weird, but my bones, too,” she says. So after a rough crying jag triggered by a sighting of her ex with his hot new girlfriend, she booked a healing session. “I decided to be open to it, even though I wasn’t convinced it would work on me.” During the session, Rosie felt as if her body was being contorted into all sorts of shapes, even though she was lying flat on a treatment bed. She saw bright lights and, at one point, an angel spreading its wings and wrapping them around her body. Afterwards, she felt lighter. “Something had shifted inside me,” she says.

Until recently, opting for energy healing when your symptoms sound kind of like depression or anxiety would have been something to keep on the QT. My actress friend Georgia has been having Skype sessions with an energy coach in Spain for years. She started because she was struggling to move on from all the hard knocks that come with her line of work. “As an actor, you have to bounce back really quickly from multiple rejections, but it’s hard to let go of how that makes you feel, which can then start to show up in your work,” she says. She tried to take control of her mental state loads of different ways (regular yoga, various detoxes and therapy, among other things), before an actor-friend passed on energy coach Maria’s number.

After her first session, Georgia describes feeling a sense of relief and, many years later, still calls Maria when she feels overloaded. “I didn’t mention it to many people at the time, because admitting that you paid someone in an entirely different country to unblock your energy was like being that person who spends all their money on the clairvoyant line,” she says. But these days, she hands out her healer’s details on the regular.

“More and more people are turning to energy healing,” says Sydney-based energy healer and empowerment coach Kay Wilson. By way of understanding how it all works, she describes our body as being like a circuit board. “When you’re in a relaxed state, your energy is flowing around easily and you feel light and happy and content,” she says, likening it to the way you feel on holidays. “However, this flow changes when someone says or does something that challenges you in some way or you find yourself in an environment that feels insecure or threatening.” In that moment, your energy contracts and that feeling of hurt or anger has a vibration. “If it keeps happening, your body starts to tuck it somewhere in your system so that you’re able to carry on as normal to the eyes of everyone around you,” says Wilson. Over time, an energy block builds up in your circuit board. “And that’s what I tune into when people come to see me,” she says.

Often, blocked energy can result in a physical complaint, too. For women, Wilson says it shows up in our guts and tummy (“that’s where the chakra that holds self-worth and confidence is found”)

“IF OUR ENERGY IS compromised, IT WILL AFFECT OUR vitality AND WELLBEING”

and our throat (“because we don’t always speak our truth”). When I tell her I struggled with regular bouts of laryngitis for many years, she nods wisely. It’s no coincidence, she says, that it cleared up around the same time I really started to work on speaking up.

So how do you know if you’re a little backed-up… energetically speaking? “You know when someone is in love, it’s like they glow? Conversely, when someone is really stressed over a period of time, they seem as if they’ve aged overnight because the quality of our energy is fundamental to our being,” says David Flakelar, a practitioner of energy medicine. “It’s like water to a plant – it needs to be clean, free-flowing and in balance to sustain a healthy organism. Energy provides strength, flexibility and function to our body, so if it’s compromised, you will see this manifested as a symptom physically, emotionally or mentally, affecting our vitality and wellbeing.”

I know I’m not alone in saying that feeling vulnerable, low in energy and generally blah is something that happens quite regularly. Fortunately, there is plenty we can do to get that energy flowing when a healing sesh isn’t on the cards. According to Wilson, throwing on some tunes and dancing around your living room is a good start. “When you move your body like that, you really expand your vibrations,” she says. There are also things to avoid: “Don’t listen to news that will create fear in your system and stay away from overly negative people,” she says. Our words also hold a lot of energetic sway: “Rather than use vocab that is self-deprecating or flat-out negative, actively work to use words that lift you up.” By simply choosing to say you’re having a “challenging” time rather than a “terrible” one, it actually keeps your energy in a good spot. Suddenly those good vibes don’t seem too far out of reach.