BANISHING:
PRACTICE

EXCERPTS FROM CLEAN SWEEP:
PRACTICES & ACTIONS TO BANISH PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE


BODY / ENVIRONMENT PRACTICES



Goal: Banishing all problems of the body through breath and thus power control.

Needed: A quiet place outside, preferably under a tree surrounded by nature.

Practice:

•    Sit on a blanket or cloth, make sure you are calm and comfortable and are wearing comfortable clothing.
•    Breathe deeply for a minute or two, just let all your problems and ailments slip away for a moment. Close your eyes, relax, concentrate on the naturally calm rhythm of your breathing
•    When you feel you have reached a calm level of ‘natural’ breathing, begin to focus on our in breath and out breath.
•    When ready to begin the banishing, count you in breath to 5, hold the breath for 5, then exhale for 5, hold for 5 and repeat.
•    When you are comfortable with this 5/5/5/5 rhythm, you may add a mental image: With each out breath, see your expelled breath as grayish smoke-like energy, leaving your body and being absorbed by the nature around you. See each in breath as filled with healing light, pulled from the lovely natural energy around you.
•    Continue this as long as you like, until you feel refreshed.
•    When done, make thanks to the divine and nature, as you will, then go.




Feng Shui Home Banishing

Feng Shi is the ‘art’ of keeping the energy or ‘chi’ flowing in a positive manner through your home. It is believed that this ‘chi’ also flows through your body, thus keeping the flow of energy positive and not ‘stagnant’ is the key to both physical and environmental health. While this art is Chinese, similar arts can be found in India and elsewhere. Feng shui is the art of ‘fixing’ chi issues, acupuncture and acupressure is the art of fixing chi issues in the body. It is believed that the environment and body are connected through the flow of chi, which negative chi in the environment leads to illness.

Goal: To ‘fix’ the areas of your environment that are leading to energy (chi) stagnation of are creating ‘negative chi.’

Note: Clearly Feng Shui is a complex and ancient art form and cannot be fully addressed here. Yet here are some basic ‘fixes’ that can help anyone banish negative energy and stagnation.

Procedure: De-clutter and ‘fix’ your home!


In your living room: Arrange seating with care, avoid sharp angles and people should be facing the door. If not possible, have a mirror doing so. Circles are better than angles!
In your home office: Keep your back to a wall if possible, your back shouldn’t be to the door.
Stairs: Stairs that lead directly to the door are not good; they let all the chi flow out. Place something like a crystal or small mirror over the doorway or a table with nice items on it between the stairway and the door.
In the bathroom: Keep the toilet seat down and all drains stopped up.


 Bedrooms: 
Use room just for bedroom, not as an office or other thing. Your bed should not be in front of the door. 
 Get rid of all clutter under the bed and remove that TV!
Clutter and piles: Get rid of them in and out of the house! They will get in the way of chi flow.  Clean out drawers, cupboards, attics, garages and all rooms. 
Eliminate EVERYTHING that is not needed, that is broken, or which doesn’t still fit. Even if you cant ‘see’ the clutter, it is affecting you.
. 
In the kitchens: Keep the kitchen clean, keep all pointed utensils pit away, and use all the burners regularly.
Handy tools:
Use mirrors: To keep energy circulating about your home, but don’t put them facing your bed or anywhere you want to relax.
Use crystals (often hung on strings) to redirect chi or stop it from ‘draining’. For example, if your back and front door line up, this is bad. Chi comes in and leaven, but you want healthy energy to stay! Hanging a crystal over the door helps this.
Color: This is crucial in Feng Shui. Make sure the colors you choose ‘fee good’ and are energetically appropriate for the rooms they are in. Color therapy has been proven to help people and some colors seem to heal more than others.
Plants: These are great chi generators and can ‘soften’ a hard spot or help keep chi flowing.


HEART PRACTICES

Letting go of the Brambles (Emotional Pain)

Pain and pleasure imprint on our emotional minds more than anything else. All our emotional, whether they are positive or negative, cause us pain or pleasure for the most part. Anger can be pleasurable, love can be painful. Logic is not present in this discussion! Yet, the truth is that while we hold onto pleasure and those things that bring us pleasure, they do not cause the heartache and sometimes trauma that emotional pain causes. In romance, it is not the friendly breakups we remember or obsess over, it is the horrible ones. Jobs we leave voluntarily do not obsess us as much as getting fired

Goal: To let go of painful or traumatic emotional experiences, to banish them from our mental tape-loops and dreams!

Procedure:

•    Find ALL physical and electronic traces of the pain-causing person/situation, no matter how small and gather them together and thrown out. Even email and docs should be deleted and even deleted from the deleted items file!
•    NOTHING should physically exist when you are done that even remotely reminds you of the situation/person/pain.
•    Now, in a calm place and time, eyes closed, visualize this:
•    You are holding a thorn-covered branch, a bramble. It hurts, it causes pain and agony, your hand is bleeding! This bramble is the painful person/situation. Name it as such. Curse it! It is old and tired and dead but still you hang on to it!
•    You have tried to let go, you hand begins to heal, but then you grip it again. Again you feel pain, again you bleed!
•    Now, breathe the deeply. Silently forgive yourself, forgive the others, and forgive everyone involved. This is the price you must pay to let go.
•    Now, breathe deeply, feel the pain leave you with each deep breath.
•    Slowly let go of the bramble. See it fall to the ground. Slowly it sinks into the ground and becomes part of the earth.
•    See your hand heal, the blood disappear. The pain is gone.
•    Smile. Time to move on. You have awoken from a bad dream.
•    Get up, go out and have fun!

Note: Repeat if necessary.


Mirroring anger/love

When confronted with another’s anger or the anger erupting from within, there are ways to mirror and cam such anger. When immersed in anger, it is hard to stop and think and harder not to react with anger. Anger and hatred spread, one angry person can infect a whole room with negative emotions. This banishing is useful when confronting unacceptable anger or hatred directed at you or it can be used to help yourself confront this demon and cam the fires.

Goal: To deflect, calm and eventually banish the anger of another or your own anger.

Procedure:

•    When you are confronted by someone who is escalating in anger, do NOT react to the anger. Visualize yourself as a mirror. Calm, cool, merely reflecting that anger back to the other.
•    Listen to what the person is yelling. As they begin to escalate, begin to talk to them.
•    IMPORTANT: make sure your TONE of voice EXACTLY matches theirs. You will almost hear a ‘click’ as you match their tone.
•    All your words should be reasonable and NOT angry or even addressing the anger. You may say something like “You seem angry. What can I do to help you with this?” etc.
•    As you continue talking, after you link tones, slowly lower your voice.
•    The angry person will (!) also begin to lower his or her voice.
•    Speak lower and lower in tone, positive things. Then sit down if it is appropriate.
•    The person attacking will either break away and leave or will calm down.
•    Afterwards, see the anger as red energy flow through you both, into the ground.

NOTE: This technique can also be used with yourself by using an actual mirror.
When you are furious or filled with hate, before dumping it out of yourself, find a mirror (bathrooms are perfect) and visualize your reflection AS THE ONE YOU HATE. Begin tour angry rant and slowly lower your tone until the worst of the anger drains away.
Pause, breathe deeply. When ready, confront the object of your anger with CALM displeasure. Begin by stating your feeling and explaining why.


MIND PRACTICES

Source of thought Meditation Banishing
Banish Compulsive Thoughts

Goal: To examine your actual thought process and discover the root or unhealthy or unhappy ‘compulsive’ thought-streams and banish them.

Procedure:

•    Sit in a quiet place and meditate. Make sure you will not be interrupted for a while and that noting is pressing at the moment.
•    Close your eyes, relax, and breathe deeply.
•    When you are calm, ‘pull back’ from your thoughts and observe them. Let your thoughts just drift in and out of your mind. They will arise spontaneously: Doing laundry, work tasks, a shopping list, thoughts about family, strange images from movies and TV…. let them drift.
•    As they arise, it is crucial that you NOT attach to them nor ‘follow’ them. Ex: ‘Thought: Oh, I have to make dinner tonight! Follow: What shall I make? Pasta sounds good. Ok, Ill need sauce and Id better go to the store, Oh, Ill have to get salad too- that reminds me…. etc.
•    When you catch yourself ‘following’ a line of thought, STOP. Begin observing again.
•    As you observe your thoughts flow by, observe your emotional reactions to them.
•    What thoughts trigger anxiety? Anger? Sadness?
•    Where are they coming from?
•    Now, find one that keeps repeating, that keeps coming back and triggering a bad feeling.
•    Stop that thought. Examine it. TRACE IT BACK.
•    For example, maybe the thought of shopping causes anxiety. Stop. Trace it backwards- why does this thought bother you? When did you associate anxiety with shopping? Trace it back, like a chain.
•    It is likely that one thought will lead back to another to another and so on When you have reached a place where you feel the anxiety comes from, breathe deeply in and out.
•    Let the anxiety flow down and out of you. Meditate on this thought. Relax.
•    Keep focused on it until it no longer bothers you.
•    Let it go.

 

Slowing down & Processing- Banishing Hyper Thought

The hyper-pace of incoming data, media and so on has speeded up in our culture to such a degree that people are in constant anxiety just trying to ‘stay on top of’ everything they think and do.

Goal: To slow down your mind and sanely process ideas, tasks and thoughts so as not to simply REACT to things without being fully aware or ready to deal with them.

Procedure:

•    When feeling overwhelmed and like your head is going to burst, sit in a quiet place. Relax. Breathe deeply. Be comfortable. Make sure you are not disturbed.
•    Now, withdraw from the chaos of your mind a bit. Observe your thoughts.
•    Do NOT try and control them, do NOT focus on ANY of them. Do not get ‘hooked’ into following any of the thoughts. If that happens, stop and begin again.
•    Now, simply watch your thoughts flow by, like they are racing by on a movie screen.
•    Breathe deeply. Slow your breath down. Relax.
•    As your breathing and heart slow, so will the frantic flow of your thoughts.
•    Now, count your thoughts!
•    Ex: Oh, I was late to that meeting! (1) My foot itches. (2) I hope it is sunny tomorrow (3)
•    That is all. Just count them. When you reach 100, stop.
•    Now, let a thought come. Hold it. Examine it. Deal with it.
•    You have banished that over run and overwhelmed feeling. You have control of your mind, not the other way around!
•    In this way you can slow the process and focus on the most important thoughts/plans/needs.



SPIRIT PRACTICES


Incense & Smoke Banishings

Procedures:

•    First, choose incense or ‘smoke’ to banish the area or person- see the ‘banishing herb list’ at the end of this section for some ideas. Make sure it is the purest form of incense or herb, especially if the banishing involves smoking or smudging. Make sure the herbs have not been sprayed with chemicals, were harvested appropriately etc.
•    For smudging, the herbs should either be wrapped with a cotton thread or dried completely. For smoking, herbs should be ground up, no stems. For incense, if pure herbs or resins are used, a self-igniting charcoal is used.
•    If smudging, have a symbolically appropriate vessel to catch the ashes in. Often a shell or appropriate pottery bowl is used. Having appropriate symbols on them is helpful like a symbol of your religion or one of protection.
•    For smoking, a sacred pipe that has been charged should be used. There is a complex and interesting tradition around Native American sacred pipes and ceremonies using them- investigate if this is a path that interests you.

Procedure:

•    Clear & clean the area to be banished and yourself. Center yourself. Meditate/pray/chant etc. If you are doing this for a person, they should be seated before you. Face either north or east, depending on your spiritual tradition. (North is the direction of the Earthing, of Banishing, East the direction of the Dawn, of new beginnings…)
•    Light the herb/incense/smoke- offer it to the heavens with an appropriate prayer/chant/etc. to deity.
•    Offer some to the earth in a similar manner.
•    Offer smoke to the 4 directions with a prayer/chant etc. (some go: E, S, W, N- some make a cross and go: E, W, S, N- up to you)
•    Inhale; direct some smoke in/over/around yourself with an appropriate prayer/chant etc. to purify YOUR mind, heart and body.
•    If you are banishing someone else, do the same for them, with appropriate prayers/chants etc. Have the person, line by line. Repeat the prayer or chat with you.
•    Declare (and visualize) the place/person FREE of all negative or evil influences.
•    Bury the ashes in the ground at the end, thanking Mother Earth.
Note: A number of tools can be used in banishing with smoke.


Tree Banishing

Tree banishing is a very ancient and pervasive idea that is still widely practiced in a number of places. The idea is so deeply entrenched even in our culture that we don’t realize it. Trees are planted near graves of course, but originally they were planted to keep ghosts away, to purify the area and as a way to connect with the deceased. Birch trees, seen as banishing ignorance and evil in ancient Norse tradition and even today are often planted near schools, though most have forgotten why. We still ‘knock in wood’ for luck, a practice going far back into Pagan cultures where tree spirits were known as powerful beings to call upon. Today, no one argues the positive affects trees and forests have on people and the planet. This banishing practice taps into the idea that trees are complex energy systems as well as material beings and those they spiritually purify as well as purify the air.

Practice for personal banishing:

•    Find the healthiest, biggest and nicest tree you can. The kind of tree you use can symbolically connect with what you want to banish. For weakness you may want to use an oak for example. See the chart at the end of this section for ideas.
•    First hold the tree with both hands and put your forehead on it. Close your eyes. Open yourself to the tree. See if it is the ‘right’ tree for you. Maybe even ‘ask’ the tree for help in banishing!
•    If this is the right tree, then turn around and lean against the tree with your full spine against it OR sit at the base of the tree in this way.
•    Pray/chant etc. and breathe deeply and rhythmically. Fully relax you whole body. As you breathe out, see the negative forces flow out of you and down into the tree’s roots. As you breathe in, feel and see the energy of the tree flow from the leaves down into the tree and into you.
•    Do this for as long as possible.
•    When done, pray/chant etc, acknowledge that the negative force is GONE.
•    Hold the tree and thank it and the Mother Earth.
•    Leave some token of yourself buried at the base of the tree.

Procedure for Planting Banishing

A similar banishing can be done by planting trees (or other important banishing plants like rosemary or holly) in areas that are negative or have negative influences.

•    First, choose the right banishing plant or tree (see the charts at the end of this section) and make sure they are not saturated with chemicals, are healthy and you know how/where to plant them so they will prosper.
•    Next, consider planting a charm, amulet or special stone or item significant to what is being banished in the home with the plant. Trouble with a neighbor, for example, might be banished by planting the nasty note from the neighbor in a hole with a holly bush facing the neighbor’s house! If you do decide to plant something with the tree or bush, charge it before hand.
•    Clear the area and yourself before the planting.
•    Have everything (compost, spade, water, pre-dug hole) ready before you begin.
•    Bless the area and operation with a prayer/chant etc.
•    Plant the tree, bush or plant,
•    As you push the dirt down with both hands, pray/chant etc exactly what you want this plant to do- visualize it happening.
•    Water the plant thoroughly. Thank it and the Mother Earth.
•    Water and pray/chant etc. over the plant for the next three days.
•    The last day, pray/chant etc- declare the bad energy GONE, repelled etc.


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