You know the saying: some people are a blessing when they walk into your life, and others are a blessing when they leave! Why do some people feel energizing to be with while others are draining? And more importantly, does it feel good to be around YOU? Host Johnny G discusses how to manage the energy you put out to those around you.

We end every episode of Refractive with the same phrase: “aim your light.” What does that mean? Can you enhance the experience of your fellows by simply entering the room? You absolutely can- and it’s not difficult at all. This episode reviews some practical methods for maintaining a natural lightness of energy and cleansing and clearing any heavy energy that you might be carrying.

For some more great ideas on managing your energy, check out this post from YogaBasics.com: https://www.yogabasics.com/connect/yoga-blog/clear-negative-energy/

For similarly themed content, try these other episodes from Refractive: Energy Work to Support Your Goals, and All About Reiki.

To contact host Johnny Guidry for questions, coaching support, or feedback, email him at RefractivePodcast@Gmail.com or visit www.RefractiveCoaching.com.

Transcript follows (please excuse any autotranscription software errors):

Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try. Day after day, you pretend you don’t hear calling. Or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse. But it’s there ready for you. And it will wait for you as long as you need. My name is Johnny G.

And I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive. Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of Refractive. I’m your host, Johnny G. Today I want to talk about the topic of how to manage our energy. What does that even mean? What does it mean to manage my energy well?

Are there people in your life that you know that always seem to have what you would call as a good energy? There are people that it just feels good to be around. Why is that? Why are there some people who feel energizing or comforting to be around and there are other people who might feel taxing or draining to be around?

This is really at the core of what today’s topic is. I want to be able to show up in the world and have people feel that they are better because they crossed paths with me. Whether that’s through this podcast, whether that’s through the clients that I work with one on one who are trying to change their lives, whether that is the random clerk or cashier that I come across in a store.

This is really important to me. It’s a major part of how I try to live today. It’s not something that I do accidentally. It’s something that I try to do intentionally every day. And so I want to focus on this idea of having good energy. How do you get good energy? How did I get what I would call good energy?

And really, with that, I don’t intend to I don’t intend to brag or inflate my ego. But what I can say is that I get complimented on my energy a lot. I mean, certainly every week, sometimes several times a week, strangers, cashiers at CVS or someone today. I hadn’t seen this person in a long time and we crossed paths today.

And he told me that my energy was invigorating to him. That’s literally what someone told me an hour and a half ago. And it’s something that I value very, very much. I take it as a goal post that I’m doing something correct, that I am living my life in a wholesome, nurturing, healthy way. What I find is that the more I direct my living in a manner that is consistent with my values, the more that I live in a way that enhances love around me, meaning I don’t engage in garbage food.

I don’t engage in garbage activities that drag my my energy down. The more I approach actively soak myself in love through non fear based self-care, through wholesome activities, through pursuing joy, through spending time with people that I like being around. The more I do that, the more people notice, the more people verbally comment on my energy. It’s incredible.

I just I love it. I love it. I love it. And I am, as I often say in these episodes, I am not an enlightened being. I don’t live in a state of consistent enlightenment. And so what that means is sometimes I do engage in behaviors that aren’t so what’s the right word? I engage in behaviors that might bring my energy down.

Sometimes I do watch trashy TV. Sometimes I do let my lust or other instincts get the better of me. And when I do, people stop commenting on the light that I put out. So I base this not just on an idea, I base this on what I have observed. And I have a feeling that if you are listening to this podcast, you care about the energy you put out.

You care about how other people feel when they are around you. And so I want to share what I have learned on my path. Now, listen, I am not some guru. I don’t know anything about anything. There’s a there’s speaking of TV that brings my energy down. There’s that show Ozark and I watched it even though it was so heavy.

And there’s this character, Ruth, and she has a particular quote that I’m not going to say, but it makes me laugh. She says, I don’t know, blank about blank. It’s hilarious. And so when it comes to this stuff, I don’t know, blank about blank. All I can tell you is what I have experienced and what I have observed.

I also want to ask before we get into the content today, I want to ask if you have not subscribed to this show. I ask that you actually click the subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you use. If you have not left a rating and a review of this show, I ask that you do that. Of course, if that’s not something you feel like doing, I, I totally respect it.

But the more people that subscribe and the more people that leave reviews. It has nothing to do with money. I don’t get a dollar from this, but the podcast platforms take the podcast more seriously when they find that listeners like it. So reviews make a big difference in how podcast platforms might suggest my show to people who are doing searches for new podcast to listen to.

So I thank you in advance. Please leave a review. Please leave a star rating and please subscribe if you feel inspired to do so. It is how you can it how you can support this so that more people encounter the messages of these episodes. Let’s move right into energy management and just some background info. Now, you might hear this referred to sometimes as energy hygiene.

If we’re talking about how to cleanse our energy, how to manage what we put out in the world. I also want to address a concern that some of you might have if you come from a traditional religious background. I can tell you, because I went to Catholic school for kindergarten through 12th grade and I was taught a lot of Catholic dogma and tradition, and there was always warnings and concerns about the occult.

I recognize that a lot of you listening might come from a more traditional Christian background or maybe from a muslim background or from another religious faith that warns against engaging in a cult. But I want to also remind and I’m going to use Christian examples because that’s my background, that Christians do an awful lot of energy cleansing and energy management.

And I’m going to go through a list of traditions, behaviors, features of worship that are exactly intended to cleanse our energy. So my point is to say that what I’m encouraging you to do in this episode is not intended to be a cult behavior. What I’m encouraging you to do is to manage the energy you put out, and it all comes from intentions.

And some of the behaviors that we do are simply vehicles to channel our intentions. Right. When I light a candle, it is an act that is intended to focus my to focus my intention. If a priest likes incense in the mass, it is an act intended to focus the energy of that priest in this symbolic act. It’s all about directing energy.

So here we go. In Christianity, specifically in Catholicism, a part of the mass is that the priest washes his hands. Now, if you’ve ever watched it, there’s no soap. There’s none of that happening. It’s not a real washing of the hands. It is a symbolic sprinkling of water on the hands that is meant to be a ritualistic cleansing.

It is a it is an energetic cleansing. It is a symbolic cleansing. There’s the wearing of white garments by a priest underneath the charitable. The charitable is that big, colorful poncho looking garment. But underneath all priests wear a white garment. It is a an energy cleansing intention. It is a visual representation of the purity inside of the priest.

There is then these concepts of incense using oils, oils to anoint so many of the Christian sacraments and the Catholic sacraments use oils to anoint. There’s the idea of using ashes, which is not only a part of Catholicism, but other sects of Christianity. There’s holy water, blessing of holy water and sprinkling it on the crowd or anointing yourself with holy water.

All of these are meant to be visual representations to channel your energy into cleansing your spirit. That’s what this is about. That’s what we’re doing. We are setting intentions and channeling our energy to ask the Holy Spirit to cleanse us before we engage in some sort of act, whether it’s a mass or whether it’s a worship or whether it’s any other type of situation.

There’s the meditation on holy mysteries. So in Catholicism again, which is my particular area of some expertise. There’s the Rosary where each decade of the rosary focuses on some other holy mystery. And so and then by chanting, saying the same words over and over and over and over again, we cleanse our energy, we cleanse our brain, we cleanse our thoughts, and we prepare ourselves to receive the grace of God.

That’s the intention of saying the rosary. The intention of saying the rosary is not necessarily to pray for my neighbor who is having surgery tomorrow. The intention of praying for the rosary is to cleanse my thoughts and to cleanse my spirit of the worldly heaviness. And I do that through chanting and incantation and through symbology, iconography. There’s the calling on of the Holy Spirit, which is something a priest does many times during any mass, any Sunday.

The calling on of this this spirit guide to come down and to support us, to cleanse us, to help us make ourselves clean. In fact, there is a scripture quote during the mass where we say, and I won’t go into the origin of the quote, it’s from it’s from the New Testaments, from one of the gospels. Lord, I have not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

In other words, cleanse me, cleanse me. I’m inviting you to help me heal. I’m inviting you to help me cleanse. There’s then the act of confession. The act of confession is not just a Christian act right there. There is a holy holiday in Judaism where you are confessing to wipe clean your year and start the year fresh. There is, of course, in Christianity, there are many, many different religious observations that involve confession.

The purpose of confession is to cleanse yourself, to cleanse your energy, to cleanse your spirit. That’s what this is about, right? It’s directing your energy. It’s managing your spirit there. My mother, in fact, had her local priest come in to her home and bless it. So blessing of a space. Blessing of a home. Right. So what what is the purpose of blessing of a home?

It is to wrap it in protection. It is to cleanse it from lower or heavier energies. That’s what this is about, Right. And so this is something that’s very real. It’s done today. It was done by my mother two days ago. There is fasting, which we know is not only done in Christianity, it’s done in Islam, it’s done in Judaism.

There is also it’s a fasting through all sorts of different religious observations. There’s fasting and Buddhism. And so all of this by denying a cleansing the body, voiding the body of food, we open ourselves up to to spiritual reception, to gifts, to a higher vibration. So this is a form of preparing ourselves, right? That’s why historically Catholics would not eat meat on during Lent because it was meant as a purification of the body in preparation for Easter, in preparation to celebrate, to welcome in the celebration of the resurrection of Christ.

That was the intention behind the fasting. Why do we give something up for Lent again? It’s an act of spiritual purification. This is energy management. This is energy hygiene. There is Jesus who went out into the desert for 40 days to prepare himself before his ministry kicked off in earnest. And so that again, that was that was that an act of physical cleansing?

That was an act of spiritual cleansing. There are silent retreats that people go on all the time. It is meant to be an act of spiritual cleansing and energy management. All of these are examples of Christianity using energy management to purify our spirit, purify our energy, and prepare us to better participate in the spiritual life. That’s what we’re talking about today.

So thank you for bearing with me as I went through this. I just want to put you at ease. I’m not asking you to engage in some sort of occult practice that is at odds. I’m asking you to go inside yourself and find out where am I inviting heaviness into my life, into my spirit, into my energy? Where am I inviting in the heaviness?

And can I proactively reverse that trend? That’s what we’re talking about today. So for this second half of the episode, I want to talk about simple ways to manage your energy. One of the first things that I’d like to reference. I first heard this from Eckhart Tolle, who is wildly famous. So of course, many of you may know more about Eckhart Tolle than I myself do.

And in his book, in one of his books, he talks about if you want to feel your energy body, if you want to feel your spirit, then just look at your hand. Look at your hand. And I want to invite all of you as you’re listening to just relax. Let’s relax for a second. If there’s any tension in your body, maybe you’re holding tension in your jaw or your shoulders.

You know, I clench my my pelvic muscles a lot without realizing it. So just feel. Are you holding any tension? Let’s just let it go. Just imagine all parts of your body just softening, relaxing a little bit, and then I like to do it with my eyes closed. I think it’s better. I think it’s easier this way. So I’m going to invite you to just close your eyes, and I want you to direct your sensory attention, your feeling, your sense of feeling into your hand.

And what I want you to do is I want you to kind of like maybe your hand is resting on your leg or on a table or on the arm of a chair. Can you feel the textures of whatever your hand is resting on? Now I want to challenge you. Can you feel the air around your hand? And I don’t mean wind.

I don’t mean the motion of wind. But can you just feel maybe the coolness of the air on the back of your hand?

Take a second. You can feel what your fingertips are touching. But can you feel what the back of your hand is touching, which is air?

What does it feel like?

Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this. I promise.

Now, I’d like you to feel through your entire hand. Can you feel if you sense inside your hand? Can you feel any type of maybe a slight tingling or a slight buzzing inside of your hand? Just some sort of subtle sensation.

This might take you a few seconds if you haven’t done this. So I’m going to be quiet for maybe five or 10 seconds. And I just want you to feel. Just focus in. Bring your attention to the inside of your hand. And can you feel any sensation of either movement or energy or buzzing or vibration?

If you haven’t, you might want to just press pause and just try. It might take a couple of minutes. This is now. This is a skill that we can learn. And there’s a reason that I’m having you do this actually says this is this is a part of your energy body. If you were able to feel that now, I want you to pick one of your feet.

And I want you to just feel into your foot. What are the sensations that you can observe in your foot? Just feel it. And then I’d like you to feel inside your foot. Sense inside your foot. You have nerves all through your foot. So I want you to actually intentionally bring your attention to these nerves. And can you feel any type of just a subtle, energetic feeling inside of your foot?

All right. Now what I’d like you to do is I would like you if you feel that that energy inside your foot. I would like you to direct that energy to move up your ankle, up your leg, through your torso, through your chest. Just feel it. It’s almost like a big, gentle jellyfish, just like a big bubble of energy that you can just feel if you you can direct it to move.

And this bubble of sensation, for me, it feels like it might be about ten inches, you know, eight or ten inches in circumference or so. And I just feel it moving through my through my torso, through my chest. I can feel it as it moves into my shoulder. I can feel kind of like the tingling in my shoulder.

Now. And I just move it down my arm into that same hand that I sensed into a moment ago. And now I sense my hand with that slight buzzing. Can you feel it?

Okay, so now I want to bring you to the next level. I want you if you can feel your hand buzzing. That’s where we left the energy. You don’t have to move at this time. I just want you to feel the energy in your hand. And I also want you to feel the energy in your foot at the same time.

Can you feel that slight tingle in your foot as well as the slight tingle in your hand at the same time?

This is a little bit more difficult to do. It might take practice or I’m going to give you another five or 10 seconds. All right. If you weren’t successful in feeling both your foot and your hand at the same time. I encourage you to practice this. Again, it’s a skill that you can build. The reason that I have you engage in this exercise is that directing your energy is as simple as feeling.

That kind of feeling, that sensation and moving it. Sometimes I direct energy into my body, like if I sense that someone that I’m talking to is is being loving towards me, I might actually I don’t know the right word. I guess. Suck in the energy of love from that person. It’s like receiving. It’s like it’s like opening up to receive the love of that person.

And sometimes when I’m with someone and I feel this urge to pour out my love, I actually beam my love from my chest to the other person. It’s like a solid column of light that beams from me to that person. This is me managing, directing my energy.

The next step on top of this, I personally like to use the the the imagery of my chakras. I’m. I use the chakras because it resonates with me. So I want to talk about cleansing the chakras and the reason I do this is because it feels good. It actually gives a positive sensation and I need to be able to direct my energy by doing it, which is why I had you feel your hand and had you feel your foot and had you feel both at the same time because it requires you to direct your energy in order to kind of cleanse your energy centers.

Now, chakra is just that. It’s an energy center in your body. And so there are seven chakras within the body. There are other chakras that extend above and below the body. And there are many, many, many other chakras and smaller chakras, energy vortexes and things that through other. But there are seven main chakras. Each chakra corresponds to a color of the traditional human spectrum of light.

So we start with red and red chakra is in your base. It’s right at the bottom of your spine and the color associated with it is red. And so when I want to manage my energy, if I want to have good energy, every once in a while, I’ll just be lying in bed or and I’ll be like, Oh, I want to make sure that I feel like I cleanse my energy that I like.

I’m only having good energy flowing through. And I’ll, I’ll imagine my, my chakra, that red chakra down by the base of my spine. And what I do is like, I imagine it like a large, clear gemstone and, and with little bits of cloudiness in, I just imagine the cloudiness fading out and it’s left with just sparkling clarity so that if I were to shine a light through that big gemstone, there would be nothing inside the gemstone to refract the light.

This is why I call the podcast refractive. So by cleansing that and all of this is just in my imagination, right? Is it real? Is there is that part of my body really a red energy? Who knows? I don’t know. I don’t know this. I’m not even sure if I believe that. I don’t know. What I’m saying is that this is an energetic practice that feels good.

It makes me feel lighter after I do it. It’s relatively easy and I get results from it. So, again, I’m not asking you to believe anything I’m saying. This is one method for cleaning your energy. So I imagine the red chakra, I imagine that it begins to sparkle with extreme clarity and I imagine that the glow of it expands far and wide.

It just shines out almost like a lighthouse in all directions from that part of my body.

Then I move up to my bellybutton and it just inside my torso, around my belly button is the orange chakra. And again, I imagine a an orange gemstone maybe the size of a grapefruit. I don’t know, a softball. And it’s a little cloudy. And what I do is I just imagine all of the impurities inside that gemstone fading out.

And what’s left is brilliant, sparkling orange clarity that shine out brightly like a lighthouse in all directions. So right now I have brilliant red and brilliant orange shining out for me. I move my attention up to my solar plexus. This is the area just behind the bottom of my ribs in there, yellow. And you pick whatever shade of these colors that you like the best.

Maybe your red has a tinge of purple to it, or maybe it has a tinge of orange. You know, for my yellow eye, I use kind of like a canary yellow. That’s my favorite. And I imagine this big gemstone kind of like a, you know, just a big, beautiful yellow diamond. And it’s a little cloudy. And I visualize it becomes very clear light passing through it.

It’s no interruption, it sparkles. And yellow light spills out for me in all directions, like a bright beacon. I move up to the center of my chest, around my heart, my lungs. And there I have the green chakra and I like to imagine the same green that you see in a rainbow. You know, that very, very vivid green.

It’s almost like the green of a really clear emerald. And there’s a little bit of cloudiness in that big gemstone. And I just clarify it. And right now I have an intense glowing red, orange, yellow and now green beacon of light that directs in 360 degrees all around me. I move up to my throat and there is my blue chakra.

And this blue chakra, it’s the color of blue again that you think of from a rainbow. It’s like a an electric blue. It’s an electric blue. It’s like a bright. It’s almost like a neon sky blue. And that that chakra just in my throat. It’s a little cloudy and I see the cloudiness just fade away and it becomes intensely bright, sparkling and clear, shining out in all directions.

I move up to the middle of my head, just kind of behind the eyes. In there I have an indigo chakra, and I didn’t know what Indigo was, but Indigo is actually it is a blue. It’s a deep blue and has just a hint of kind of like a purple to it. It’s a very, very, very rich blue with just a it’s like cobalt blue that has a hint of purple in there.

I have this big gemstone of that color and I’m just letting the cloudiness escape, leaving nothing but perfect clarity. And with all the others, it shines out. It radiates out intense light. And then lastly, just at the very tiptop of my skull, I have the violet chakra Violet, a soft purple, and I let the cloudiness fade away. And what’s left is the most beautiful amethyst color is crystal clear, and that violet light shines brightly in all directions.

Oh, and with just something as simple as that visualization, you have cleansed the energy in your seven energy centers. I don’t know if you feel better, but I immediately feel better. I feel better right now. And I was feeling good before this. And I feel, I don’t know, I feel healthier, I feel empowered. So let’s move on some more ways of cleaning your energy.

There’s just a few left that I’d like to share. Setting intentions is probably the most powerful thing you can do when it comes to managing your energy, to putting out good energy. So there’s a couple of ways. Number one, I like to have a morning routine, and in that morning routine, I think about my day. I think about what’s going to happen.

I ask for guidance that throughout the day I might be shown the right thing to do so that I can be of maximum service. I ask for guidance in any moments of doubt or confusion that I might be just nudged in the right direction. And if you don’t believe in God, that’s okay. You can set the intention for your intuition to give you guidance.

I asked to be shown how to best serve others. I asked that my thoughts. I asked that I get support in clearing my thoughts of wrong motives. When I say wrong motives, I mean dishonesty, self-pity, making myself of the victim or the center selfishness, you know. And some people, just like a priest does during the mass, also in their morning routines, like to light a candle and just enjoy, just sit in the peace of watching the flame.

Maybe there’s a meditation that like that you might like to do, or a chant, maybe there’s a lighting of some sort of incense or a scented candle. All of these are ways that you can cleanse your energy and start your day on a strong foot. I mentioned that using your intention is one of the most powerful things you can do.

But one of the ways that I proactively use my energy with other people, right? So not only do I try to clean my energy and have nice, clean, bright energy around me, but when I’m with another person, I proactively send them my energy. And sometimes it’s through a visualization like I might actually. I mentioned earlier that I kind of send out a column of light of love from me to them, that’s me directing my energy.

There’s a writer that I really like. She’s a spiritual writer named Caroline Macy. She talks about sending like a a host, like a just like a a sphere, a small sphere of just white light from you to them. It’s just a an offering of love. Sometimes I just use eye contact. I’ll make eye contact with someone who doesn’t need to be long eye contact.

And during that, I’m thinking, I’m sending you love or I love you, I love you. And I just look at them and just think that and that is sending that energy to them. It is a beautiful, beautiful way to interact with other people. And if you want people to respond well, to you, man, look at them and just think, I love you.

I love you for who you are. I don’t need you to be different than you are. I don’t need you to respond differently. I just love you and watch how people open up another tool that I use to cleanse myself when I’m feeling heavy. Because even though I do these things, it doesn’t mean that I always feel like when I feel heavy, I have a way to address that.

So if I find myself in a funk for some reason, sometimes it just sneaks up on me. I imagine that. I imagine my whole body right I sense into my whole body. Remember, we sense into into our hands and our but I sense into my whole body. It’s sometimes it takes me like 30 seconds to actually feel the tingling all over.

But I feel it from the tip of my head to the bottom of my toes. And then I test it out. Can I feel it in my finger? Am I, am I fingernail? Can I feel it right in the bottom of my butt when it’s on the chair? Can I feel it? Can I feel my nipple Right? Can I feel the tip of my nose?

Can I feel it all Tingle And when I have when I can feel that life, energy all over, all over. Then I just imagine this gray mist just leaving me, leaving that energy field and that gray mist is how I see the funk, the heaviness. And as that gray mist just evaporates off me, almost like. Like your breath on a cold day as it just leaves, I release it back.

I don’t hate that gray mist. I love it. Thank you for teaching me what you’ve taught me. And I release whatever can be released back to the creator. Thank you for this lesson. I offer this back to you. And I just, like, I just sit there in the visualization until there’s no more mist coming off of me. And what’s left just like that chakra clearing exercise.

What’s left is just crystal clarity. And as you probably know, when you take all of the the colors of visible light and you layer them on top of one another, you get white light. And so as the mist finishes leaving me, I imagine that my entire body becomes bright, bright, bright white light. And I just glow. I glow so strong that you could see me from the moon.

You could see a pinprick of white light from from, from space. It’s just beautiful, pristine, perfect, blindingly lovely white light coming out of me. And I feel better. And people notice. People notice sometimes when I’m in a situation that’s uncomfortable, maybe I’ll be on the subway and two people will get in an argument. I, I imagine that there’s a bubble around the whole subway car, and I just then I just pull the mist out of the subway car the same way that the mist evaporated off my body.

I visualize a bubble of light around the subway car, and I just pull proactively the mist out of the subway car. And this is my gift to the people. They’re in the car with me that their fear because the people around the two arguing individuals are uncomfortable. Right. They might be uncomfortable right now. And so let’s just pull that fear out.

Let’s just let’s just let that heaviness, whatever can be released, let’s let it release. And I just use the power of my white light and my love to just send peace to everyone, not just the two people who are arguing, but everyone, all of us. And it’s the way that I offer my energetic gift to all of the people around me in that car.

You know, I end every episode with the words Aim your light. And I hope that you now understand what I mean when I say aim your light. Because if you want to contribute to the world, if you want to be a light in the world, you can expand your impact by aiming, by being proactive about the energy you put out to others.

It’s about shining as brightly as you can, and that is your gift. That is your service to the world. And when you do it, your life will feel better. That’s my experience. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode today. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, my friends, aim your light. Take care. You’ve been listening to Refractive podcast and this is Johnny G.

If you found today’s content uplifting, if you think it might make somebody day better, give it a share on social media, click like Subscribe. All those things helped to expand this podcast availability to new audiences. I’m a speaker, a coach, and facilitator based out of Washington DC, but I travel a lot. If you think I can be of service to you or to your organization, help people get unstuck or move into their authentic power, shoot me an email.

My email address is Refractivepodcast@gmail.com. Take care. Thanks for listening and aim your light.