Strung Out Episode 147. NOT YOUR MOTHER'S SPRING CLEANING

The work being done on the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral's-stained glass has a great metaphor for our podcast.  The people cleaning the glass mentioned that now was the opportunity for them to remove over 200 years of people's breath residue, smoke from candles and the fire itself.  Our own homes and our very selves have such residue, especially from a long winter.  Not only the physical detritus of the last season, but emotional energy residue as well.  Anne de Courtenay talks to Martin about how to identify, eliminate and restore our own energies and our home, too. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Martin McCormack: Glad to have you with us, and I have my wife Annie here, and we are going to talk about spring cleaning, but not spring cleaning in the traditional sense of getting every dusty little particle outta your house. We're gonna talk about energy work today, and I wanna start by asking you, Annie you studied this.

[00:00:28] So tell us the people listening, a little background about your studying so they can understand where you're coming from, that you're just not pulling this out of thin air. 

[00:00:40] Anne de Courtenay: I don't know about studying so much as just along the way. You pick up some skills when you choose to move through the world.

[00:00:50] Looking at it in a cosmic mindset. And that is to say, at least for me, that it is just, it is more about you. Than spring cleaning, clutter [00:01:00] and dirt. It's there can be energy that's that you carry around or that people deposit into your space or whatever things that you can't see, but maybe you can feel.

[00:01:13] And so I guess along the way I've been able to pick up some techniques that I believe work in terms of moving and clearing energy from your own personal environment and your own sort of three feet around you, whatever you want to call your aura, your the little vortex of energy that swirls around each person.

[00:01:37] Martin McCormack: Let's start in with that in mind, talking about trapped. Because that seems to be something that people talk about quite a bit from decluttering your home. But I think on a larger scale, there seems to be this notion that energy gets trapped. And is that something that happens over [00:02:00] wintertime in a home or.

[00:02:03] Start with the home and then maybe talk about our own personal aura. 

[00:02:07] Anne de Courtenay: I think it happens all the time. It doesn't matter what season it is, but winter might be a little bit more, we might be more prone to getting energy trapped just because we're literally not moving the light and the air through the space the way we would in other times of the year.

[00:02:23] The elements air and lights, light being a representation of fire. These are cleansing, very basic energies. Not energies. They're basic they're elements and in their purest form can be used to refresh a space. In the wintertime, we do it's dark, it's cold the air gets stagnant.

[00:02:50] And so not only do things like actual physical dirt, but also energies, meaning, oh, thought [00:03:00] residues if you're depressed in a space that kind of stuff can hang around. And just build up in the atmosphere unless you consciously move it around and move it out. 

[00:03:15] Martin McCormack: And you're touching on a little bit there about people's own feelings.

[00:03:19] Personalities can add to a space and gum up the works.

[00:03:24] Anne de Courtenay: Right? Yeah. In Chinese medicine there's this idea that the word for energy is chi and my friend Steve would say that's not right, that chi is actually movement, but it's both and really chi is energy on the verge of becoming matter.

[00:03:44] So it's in between. And if we think about it that way, then we can see how it is the sort of thing energy on the verge of becoming matter is something that can accumulate and it. Accrete [00:04:00] into something almost solid or something that can think or something that is slightly sentient.

[00:04:06] That sounds spooky, but I think that's what I'm getting at. When you are in the space of someone who is depressed or obsessed or whatever, and you can feel it, it's different from a place that's regularly cleansed. So for example, when you go into a church and there's the bells and the smells, those things.

[00:04:28] The music literally bells like changing moving through the atmosphere through, through the air is changing the energy imprint of what is in the atmosphere. Same with incense, same with fire same with holy water. This is all stuff that is regularly practiced in places of worship because we want to keep places like that energetically.

[00:04:57] Martin McCormack: So energy can almost become [00:05:00] sentient and you may, without even knowing it, be creating this kind of energy in your house. Like you said, if you're depressed or anxious. Things like that. How about like your neighbor across the street or across the field? If you're living in a rural area, is it possible for somebody's energy to drift into your own home? 

[00:05:26] Anne de Courtenay: I think that can happen, but I think it's most likely to happen if they're directing it at you. They might not be, not even be doing it in a, in an intentional way.

[00:05:35] Ooh, I want, I wanna send my depressed, bad energy at my neighbor. But I don't think that a lot of people are conscious of how they put out their energy and how it can affect people. That's just my view of the world. It's not to make you paranoid, it's just to be aware that there's a good reason to cleanse your space and to protect yourself. If you feel [00:06:00] like maybe somebody out there is maybe not having such good thoughts about me because we got into a fight or we broke up, or whatever. 

[00:06:10] Martin McCormack: Can this kind of energy even be sent through an email or a post on social media?

[00:06:17] Anne de Courtenay: For sure. I think that, what do they say? We can't control what other people do, but we can control our reaction to it. So a post on social media or an email, for example, may or may not have really malicious intent, let's say, but you may receive it that way and then you, that starts to gum up your thought process.

[00:06:39] That starts to gum up your emotional fluidity and your ability to step over it and just get on with it. 

[00:06:49] Martin McCormack: So just taking this one step further, if you're the kind of person that's like a news. And you have your computer up and you're looking at news [00:07:00] coming in, you're watching the evening news. Even that kind of energy over time can accrue? 

[00:07:07] Anne de Courtenay: I think so. And it's interesting that you say that cuz I hadn't thought about it this way, but the way at least it works on the internet is when you start looking at something the internet, the interwebs, Google, whatever you wanna call it you're, you are feeding into the algorithm.

[00:07:23] So it'll just keep giving you more of what you're reading. So if you are the kind of person who takes something, let's say you are set to take offense at something because of something that had happened earlier in the day. It's just going to keep on going unless intentionally break that pattern.

[00:07:45] And there's I was reading the other day about this idea of priming in the morning. You literally prime yourself with gratitude before you get out of bed. You prime yourself with gratitude or you prime yourself with thoughts [00:08:00] about goals and like visualizing yourself. It sounds so airy fairy, but I think it plugs into this because you prime yourself.

[00:08:08] In the beginning of the day for what's gonna happen next. So if you open that email where some dickhead says Hey I don't like your art. Stop making art. That's gonna prime you for the rest of the day. And you're gonna start seeing things through that lens.

[00:08:26] So priming yourself in the morning is a way of taking control of that process where you're like, I'm not gonna look in anything. I'm not gonna look at the news. I'm going to devote these 10 minutes to myself where I'm going to think. Having a clear energy and a clear start to the day so that I can steer that boat and so that I can put on the goggles that I want to look through.

[00:08:47] And you don't attract those energies or feed into to the bad energy algorithm that's on the internet or in the world? You're getting into a ritual kind of [00:09:00] approach to how one conducts oneself every day. We are talking about doing a mask clean. The idea of recharging a space, recharging yourself, but since you're talking about the self, why don't we talk a little bit about that instead, besides priming, and you touched on the idea of religions using ritual as a form of cleaning the atmosphere, the space.

[00:09:28] Martin McCormack: What are some things that people can do that in addition to priming, can help them do a spring clean on their own aura, so to speak. What is an aura, by the way? 

[00:09:41] Anne de Courtenay: I think there are different ideas of what an aura is, but that is to say, depending on which tradition you're looking at? But I'm going to say that your aura to me is the specific energy imprint or pattern that [00:10:00] you put off at any given moment, depending on your mood, depending on your thoughts depending on your trauma whatever it is that may even be unprocessed.

[00:10:12] In the Avedic system, you have these seven chakras that line up along your spine and they each spin in a certain way, and they each have a color. And sometimes some of them will stop spinning or they'll be sluggish, or they'll even go backwards and they should all be vibrant and spinning all at the same time.

[00:10:34] For example, if you're putting out some really beautiful heart energy and you're open-hearted and generous and whatever goes with that beautiful, vulnerable, yet strong heart energy. Your aura may come off as a green gold or something, or if you're in tune with some spiritual practices that day, it might come off as purple or this kind of thing.

[00:10:59] [00:11:00] Your aura may be sensed or perceived by people who are sensitive to it and who can see it in different ways. It might, doesn't have to go to, according to that color scheme, but it could be patterns, it could be tactile for some folks. When you are interacting with someone who's more of a drawn your energy or they have a sticky, there's a sticky feeling sometimes to some folks where.

[00:11:23] Something, just, it's, you're not gelling with them. There's, they're keeping you away, or they're maybe even worse. They're trying to like, pull you in a way that doesn't feel right. So that's, I guess that's the aura. And you can work to maybe cleanse it or reorganize the patterns in which it moves so that you are connecting to your higher self or to your optimal, the optimal Marty. What is that for me today?

[00:11:53] Is it that I wanna be open-hearted and vulnerable? Is it that I wanna be really productive? Do I need to summon up some kind [00:12:00] of courage or ambition so these are all things that you can, I think, that you can manipulate with intention. 

[00:12:07] Martin McCormack: For myself, the idea of cleansing energy, so I feel like I'm running at peak performance makes a lot of sense to me. I can't see my aura. I just don't know what that really is. However, I do believe that I accrue gunk over time, especially through the winter months, which is low light. People that have seasonal effective disorder, that sort of thing. There's a heaviness that comes with it.

[00:12:41] And so it's ironic you get into this first bit of spring and I feel more fatigued than I have during the winter. I need more coffee to get myself energized. So for people that are experiencing that kind of [00:13:00] feeling, where it might not be coming from another person, but let's just assume it's coming from my aura, needing some sort of reorienting.

[00:13:10] What do you recommend?

[00:13:14] Anne de Courtenay: Sometimes I think it helps but isn't necessary to be able to name what it is that is gunking you up. So let's, for example, say, This is not about you, but it's something that I think everybody can relate to, which is if you've just been through a breakup. Let's say everybody knows, my God, that is like a profound thing that will affect your aura.

[00:13:39] We don't even have to call it Aura, but it'll affect you emotionally and energetically and mentally, and you are not yourself. You are in some completely altered state. It's an altered state and it's something you do have to go through. But I think if you can cleanse yourself of [00:14:00] whatever you identify as the thing that's pulling you down. Is it guilt? Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it regret, remorse those kinds of things. Yeah, you can intentionally say, okay,  today I'm not gonna like rush this process. I'm not going to not process this process or these emotions, but I am going to intentionally refresh myself. Because You're just gonna start, you're just, especially after something like a breakup or some other kind of trauma, you are going to naturally just keep producing more and more gunk outta yourself as you move that stuff through.

[00:14:36] And so imagine yourself as a little gunk factory. It's coming outta your pores. You just have to clean, keep cleaning it off so that the stuff that's, that has yet to come. Comes out easier, does that make sense? 

[00:14:51] Martin McCormack: It makes sense. I'm wondering what tools do you do besides priming?

[00:14:57] Anne de Courtenay: Okay. I'm just giving the sort of the [00:15:00] context for why would you wanna do it? Like why would you wanna move this trapped energy? Number one is pretty obvious, like just intentional bath. That's a really, that is a time-honored that's what baptism is, right? Like literally get cleansed of your sins.

[00:15:18] You are born into a new life. You were born into a new day, so you can ritually, bathe. Salt is one of the most purifying elements that we have. Salt and water together, very purifying. You can add to that by adding the element of air, which would be some kind of aromatics. People like to use eucalyptus or whatever you can add that to the bathwater.

[00:15:41] You can just have it in the air around you. And then light a candle and now you got all your four elements, fire, air, water, and earth. Salt is earth by the way. So with intention, like you can take a shower and just do it to clean your body and get to work, but it's not the same as [00:16:00] intentionally saying, I am removing from me this energy that doesn't serve me in the bath. So that's one thing. Another thing is if you I don't know if maybe bathing isn't your thing or you wanna try something different, you can. Everybody is familiar with smudging, which is the burning of sacred herbs or fragrant herb.

[00:16:26] And you can have the smoke. So that's what elements are that, that's air and fire and and earth to some degree because you're using so you know, a plant which is born out of the earth, which in itself is made of the elements of all four elements. And so you burn that all around yourself.

[00:16:46] It's helpful if you get someone else to do it. And you move it all along your. Somebody who might be sensitive, might know, might notice that. Okay. I feel like the energy, like it's [00:17:00] stuck and sticky right in this place, so like around your heart or your shoulders or it could be even your lower back or something like that.

[00:17:11] And they'll concentrate on that and make sure the smoke really envelopes that space. 

[00:17:17] Martin McCormack: Would you recommend that people take the smudging outside, take off their shoes, that kind of thing, to ground yourself in the earth? Is there an exchange of energy or something like that happens? I've always understood that earth serves as a ground. 

[00:17:34] Anne de Courtenay: That's true. And we have to remember that again, intentionally. The Earth can take it, whatever it is that you need to release can be released down into the earth.

[00:17:47] But at the same time part of the imagery there is burning it off and having it go off into the atmosphere and taken away and maybe cleansed by the sunlight or whatever you want to call whatever you, that makes sense. That makes the [00:18:00] most sense to me. But you could take your shoes off or not I don't know. All the times I've smudged or been smudged, I've usually had my shoes on. Okay. And yeah, of course doing it outside is a good idea. Just so you don't set off any smoke alarms. 

[00:18:14] Martin McCormack: We're gonna take a little break here. We're talking with Anne about spring cleaning, and we just touched on some tips for cleaning your aura.

[00:18:25] When we come back, we're gonna talk about the old domicile and what to do to get it ready for springtime. You are listening to STRUNG OUT.

[00:18:39] We're back. Let's move on to the house. And I think homes are a little trickier because most of the homes that people live in they're not the first occupants of a house. And so there's energy there to begin with. We already established before the break of how energy [00:19:00] can come to you in several different ways and can take up residence, so to speak. Yeah. The psychic dust bunnies that exist in a house. So we just had a spate of warm days and it really felt like spring was coming through. What do you recommend to people as the first thing to do to get their space ready? 

[00:19:29] Anne de Courtenay: Opening the windows is usually the obvious thing that we can do, but yeah cleaning, even though we said that cleaning, like actually cleaning the physical dirt is not what we're talking about. That is also part of it. Let's say that your attention is a flashlight, and so any place that you put your attention is like shining a flashlight into it.

[00:19:53] Shining a flashlight into those corners that have been dark and neglected in collecting dust [00:20:00] bunnies. And so do I think that energy can collect in dark corners? Yeah, for sure. The places where we store away our memories. Just this morning I was looking for some photos. And I found all of these photos from college like 25 years ago or more than that even. And those were good ones, people can put letters away or things that they wish they, they don't wanna look at anymore. And those things just even though you're not aware, you're not thinking about them all the time.

[00:20:32] When your brain remembers that, oh, that box in the attic, it just reinforces the energy. I think that's up there. And there's a sense of dread. So when you open it up, you're like, okay I'm ready to look at this. I'm ready to shine my flashlight of attention on it. Maybe get rid of it.

[00:20:49] Martin McCormack: I'm thinking of a piece of art that was drawn for Switchback by a guy that later went on and he [00:21:00] didn't didn't like us anymore to put it bluntly. Now, I've held onto that piece of art. Why? Because I, it represents for me a timeframe though. I look at it and I think immediately of that person. So your recommendation is get rid of it. 

[00:21:18] Anne de Courtenay: I would get rid of it if it's bringing you more pain or anxiety than it is joy. Or good feelings. Why would you wanna keep looking back, looking at it? If it's important for you to remember some lesson that you learned, maybe you can keep it and you can, do some kind of intentional work around removing the charge of that person from the art that he made. 

[00:21:46] Martin McCormack: This is an area where I think a lot of people get hung up myself as well. I look at stuff and I think this could be a legacy. But at the same token, I'm like, Chuck it. But then you come across these things, like [00:22:00] you're talking about pictures that have warm fuzzies, but a million pictures is about as bad as having one negative picture. There are things in your home that just clutter in and of itself becomes a problem. Even too much fond energy. So how do you take care of that if somebody's home is from floor to rafters in warm memories isn't that then clutter? 

[00:22:32] Anne de Courtenay: It sounds like you're talking about hoarding almost.

[00:22:35] Martin McCormack: I think people hoard to certain extents. We like to think of the extreme, but the truth is over our lifetimes we accrue and I think part of this is trying to keep our own mortality at bay. Is there a reason energetically to get rid of things [00:23:00] just for getting rid of things?

[00:23:01] Anne de Courtenay: Yeah. And that is so that your spouse, if you die before them, or your children don't have to deal with that crap after you're gone, you can look at it as in an act of love. Just like setting the stage so they don't have to deal with that. Plus your funeral, plus the grief of your death. Now they gotta go through all your stuff, do the estate sale or whatever.

[00:23:23] It's ugh. But yeah, I think I get what you're getting at, which is is that stuff holding energy? Yeah, it is. If it isn't going to serve, probably, if it isn't going to serve some sort of purpose later. I think I think a lot of the people, a lot of the reason people hoard is because they think I'll use it later.

[00:23:44] And then there's the people who hoard who are just like  I just cannot move myself. Take it away to throw these empty food containers into the trash. That's a different kind of thing 

[00:23:57] Martin McCormack: I also think that [00:24:00] accruing stuff is easy, but then after time it's very hard to get rid of stuff, period. If you have all these letters from high school and you look at it and you say, oh yeah, I'm gonna get rid of that. It takes the process of going through 'em, shredding them, whatever you want to do. You right. In the city, you can't burn. So even getting rid of good stuff for spring cleaning and physically in the house, it takes some effort, right?

[00:24:30] Anne de Courtenay: Sure. Getting rid of actual physical stuff takes some effort. 

[00:24:35] Martin McCormack: Why don't we take a break here because when we come back I want you to give some steps by steps that kind of mirror what you talked about for cleansing the aura of oneself. What do you recommend people can do to not only get rid of trapped energy. Clean your house, but prevent it from coming back. You are listening to [00:25:00] STRUNG OUT. 

[00:25:02] And we're back. And with the time that we have left on this podcast, I'm gonna turn it over to you and just have you talk about direct ideas on how to sprinkling that house open. The windows is starter, but what else? 

[00:25:18] Anne de Courtenay: So first I just wanna say that if anyone's ever seen my house, they know that I'm not like some kind of expert on moving stuff out because we certainly have a lot of stuff. But as far as energy goes we're just, I'm just talking about residual energy that builds up over time, over a season, over a traumatic experience or over some emotional hardship that you have. It's really important to move that out. And sometimes, yeah it means getting rid of stuff that reminds. Of this bad thing that happened or this painful thing that happened. Sometimes it really does mean getting [00:26:00] rid of stuff, deleting stuff off your phone. Take, yeah, getting rid of letters, getting rid of pictures these kinds of things because the way our minds work is the more we see it, the more.

[00:26:13] It often tends to reinforce so yes, it could mean that, and boy does that feel good. And then you don't even realize that you miss it, right? But as far as energy goes, that's stuck in a house. You can do all the same things that we talked about in the beginning that one would do in a place of worship, for example, which would be smudging or incensing.

[00:26:35] It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be smudge with all the smoke, although I do find that when things get really heavy, the more smoke, like to the point where you can't see clearly through the air, the better. So you can the traditional way of doing this is to start in some part of your, to close [00:27:00] all the windows first and to start in some part of your house and then, Counterclockwise around the rooms as best as you can and smudge.

[00:27:12] And make sure you get the tops of the ceilings and the corners in the, of the ceilings. Make sure you especially get doorways windows things where places where things can get in. Or they may linger in that sort of liminal space, an opening so ke I would go through with your smudge or your incense and go around your house that has all the windows closed.

[00:27:42] Go clockwise or counterclockwise and then end up in some part of your place, the back, I don't know how it would work. And finish. Complete the smudging. Complete the sensing, open the window and then fan it all out. And then say whatever you wanna [00:28:00] say, go back to your source. Go in peace. Do not return.

[00:28:04] I release this to. The purifying energies of the sun or God or whatever the earth but you can't stay here, and that's, yeah. It could mean external entities. It could mean external energies and things that come the, and like to sit in your house because we're, for whatever reason, they're, they wanna sit here.

[00:28:28] Yeah, I'm talking about ghosts, spirits, whatever. But also it could be intentions that are thrown at you from people. Who don't necessarily have your best your wellbeing in mind and not to say that those people are trying to hurt you. They're just not having some great feelings about you.

[00:28:51] And it could be feelings that you have about yourself, feelings that you have about things that happened to. That you just chug it out and you chug it [00:29:00] out and you're obsessed to a certain degree and you keep thinking these things and they hang around like a cloud because mentation, like we were saying, she is energy on the thought on the verge of becoming on the verge of becoming a solid matter.

[00:29:19] It's also like these like mentation and. Is energy on the verge of becoming an action. You've been through the breakup you don't know what you're gonna do. You know what, but let that action be, I'm going to cleanse this out. Let it culminate in that and let it be, I'm gonna move forward.

[00:29:38] I'm going to heal. I'm gonna detach myself, whatever it is. I'm gonna take all this stuff out. I'm gonna smudge it out and have usher it out the back window. And I'm gonna do it as many times as it takes for me to shift my consciousness and for me to make, to feel like the atmosphere in here is clear.

[00:29:55] So that's one way. Of course there's water[00:30:00] if you wanna hit it with all the elements air and fire are part of are part of sensing or smudging, that's two of the elements. And then water and. The way we would do that is exactly the same thing. You would mix water and earth or mix salt into some water.

[00:30:20] Great if it's holy water or spring water or something like this. And so they mutually purify each other and then you go through with I don't know, a piece of rosemary or. Something and you again you go through just like they would at church and sprinkle that water everywhere in your house.

[00:30:41] Martin McCormack: What about keeping energy from coming back in 

[00:30:46] Anne de Courtenay: Keeping energy from coming back in. Once you've cleansed your house, you would do well to. Take some steps to keep energy from coming back in. Some people use stones for that. So like for example, you could put selenite [00:31:00] wands. We have selenite wands over most of our windows and doors here at our house for that reason.

[00:31:07] There are fung shui things that you can do with mirrors to keep the energy from bouncing into your house. It's reflected back out let's see. And you can intentionally, again, you can ward the space. If you want to, and as you go along, sensing or sprinkling with water, you can at the same time ward the space and then you can seal it with a rock or a stone or something like that will keep those energies out. 

[00:31:40] Martin McCormack: I've heard you talk about needing to recharge stones from time to time. 

[00:31:45] Anne de Courtenay: Yeah. The idea is as they're doing their job they collect some stuff. For example, I gave my friend who was going through a really horrible it was, you just got the feeling like it wasn't just bad luck, it was like [00:32:00] something else.

[00:32:01] And I gave her a black tourmaline pendant. And so she wore it and it shattered. It just shattered. And I'm like that maybe this sounds crazy, but like the level of negativity that was constantly coming at her for whatever reason, like even that stone, which is known for being highly protective couldn't hold it all.

[00:32:28] So I think it worked for a little while and then it just, it like, just spontaneously busted while she was wearing it. So yeah, those things can be cleansed. You take them out on a full moon. Or like summer solstice, that's when I do it. I'll take all our stones out and I'll stick 'em on the roof and have them absorb the sunlight have the sunlight course through them on that day of the longest sunlight right of the year. And have that cleanse them. You could cleanse them in water that kind of thing. 

[00:32:57] Martin McCormack: I think that we've given people a lot [00:33:00] of things to, to go on and if you have questions, you can always reach me through my website, martin mccormack.com. You, sign up on the emailing list actually, and you can write me directly and if you have specific questions we can get back to you.

[00:33:21] I want to thank Annie for giving us her wisdom today. Thank you, Annie. 

[00:33:25] Anne de Courtenay: You're welcome. 

[00:33:26] Martin McCormack: And we'll talk to you guys all next week. Bye-bye.[00:34:00]