How Often Do You Take an Energetic Shower?

We shower every day.

We wash the dirt, sweat and grime from our skin. We wash our clothes. We clean our homes. We wash our cars so they shine again. We clean our windows so that light can pass through them clearly.

But how often do we clean what we cannot see?

How often do you take an energetic shower?

As we move through the world, we are constantly interacting with other people—their moods, experiences, fears, beliefs, expectations and ways of seeing the world.

We walk into a room where there has been tension and somehow feel it.

We spend time with someone who is anxious and notice ourselves becoming unsettled.

Someone makes an offhand comment and, hours later, we are still carrying it.

We scroll through social media, listen to the news, move through crowded spaces, navigate other people's expectations, care for our families, support our friends and absorb the emotional atmosphere around us.

And sometimes, without even realising it, we carry pieces of those interactions with us.

Like invisible dust accumulating throughout the day.

Not everything we encounter belongs to us.

Some things are ours to examine, certainly. Sometimes another person's words reveal something within us that genuinely needs our attention.

But sometimes we are simply carrying something that was never ours in the first place.

Someone else's fear.

Someone else's belief about what is possible.

Someone else's expectation of who we should be.

Someone else's anger.

Someone else's urgency.

Someone else's idea of success, beauty, parenting, ageing, spirituality, worthiness or how life should be lived.

Layer by layer, these things can begin to accumulate.

And perhaps an energetic shower is simply the practice of clearing them away.

Cleaning the Window

I often think of our being as a signal—or perhaps as light.

Our work is not necessarily to become brighter.

Perhaps we are already bright.

Our work is to notice what has accumulated around that light and what may be distorting its expression.

Imagine a beautiful window.

When the glass becomes covered in dust and grime, the sunlight coming through it appears duller. The light itself hasn't changed. Nothing is wrong with the sun.

The window simply needs cleaning.

Wipe away the layers and suddenly the light pours through again.

Clear.

Undistorted.

Unobstructed.

Perhaps we are much the same.

Over the course of our lives, we accumulate layers: conditioning, expectations, criticism, fear, comparison, experiences, other people's belief systems and ideas about who we are supposed to be.

Eventually, we can mistake those layers for ourselves.

But they are not necessarily who we are.

Sometimes the practice is not about adding another technique, belief, identity or version of ourselves.

Sometimes it is simply about removing what doesn't belong.

Allowing natural Inner Coherence.

Let Your Skin Breathe

There is another reason we shower.

We wash our skin so it can breathe.

And I wonder whether our energetic field needs the same care.

A moment to wash away the residue of the day.

To release conversations that are still playing in our minds.

To put down emotions we have unknowingly carried for someone else.

To question beliefs we picked up simply because we were around them long enough.

To clear the noise.

Not because other people's energy is inherently "bad" or because we need to protect ourselves from the world.

But because discernment matters.

What is mine?

What isn't mine?

What am I choosing to continue carrying?

An energetic shower doesn't need to be complicated.

It might happen in an actual shower, as water runs over your body and you imagine everything accumulated throughout the day washing away.

It might happen while swimming in the ocean.

During meditation.

Walking barefoot outside.

Sitting quietly beneath a tree.

Breathing deeply for five minutes before walking through your front door.

Or simply closing your eyes at the end of the day, or after a challenging conversation with someone, and asking:

What did I pick up today that isn't mine to carry?

And then allowing yourself to put it down.

From the Inside Out — and the Outside In

There is another side to this metaphor that I find beautiful.

Cleaning the window doesn't only allow our light to travel outward more clearly.

It allows light to enter more clearly, too.

When we are covered in layers of noise, fear, expectation and other people's beliefs, we don't only distort what we express into the world.

We may also distort what we receive from it.

A compliment passes through an old belief of unworthiness.

An opportunity passes through fear.

Someone's kindness passes through distrust.

Our intuition passes through layers of other people's expectations.

Reality reaches us through a window covered in fingerprints.

So perhaps energetic hygiene is not about building walls around ourselves.

It is about becoming clearer.

Clear enough for our own signal to move outward without unnecessary distortion.

And clear enough to receive what life is offering us without immediately filtering it through everything we have accumulated along the way.

Perhaps We Don't Need More Light

We clean our windows.

We wash our bodies.

We rinse the salt from our skin.

We wash our cars until they shine again.

Maybe our inner and energetic worlds deserve the same simple maintenance.

Not because we are dirty.

Not because the world is dangerous.

And not because we must constantly protect ourselves from everyone else's energy.

But because living in the world leaves residue.

And sometimes we need to consciously release it.

Perhaps the question isn't:

How can I become brighter?

Perhaps it is:

What can I gently wash away so the light that is already here can move freely again?

So tonight, when you step beneath the water, perhaps take an extra moment.

Feel it moving across your skin.

Let the conversations go.

Let the expectations go.

Let other people's stories go.

Let the day go.

Keep what is yours.

Release what isn't.

And step out a little clearer than you stepped in.

Your light was never missing.

Perhaps the window simply needed cleaning.

With love,

Kim x