First, a story.
After I did the house clearing, my client’s house felt lighter, brighter and fresh. It was easier to move through the space. The heaviness, like thick mud, that I felt before, transformed. She told me that she felt it too, she said, ‘it feels lighter’ and it brought tears to her eyes. In the days following the house clearing, she felt a new feeling of motivation. Also a difficult conversation with her husband bubbled up that produced an unexpected resolution of harmony in their lives.
Ancient traditions teach us that our house has a spiritual energy, or ‘spiritual ecosystem’, that needs tending, and acknowledge that this spiritual energy influences the quality of our life. Great care is taken to restore the balance of this energy by cleansing and refreshing the house through space-clearing rituals.
The fact that the house was built in the first place is a disruption to Nature. This disruption creates an imbalance in the energy of the house. Traditionally, ceremonies were performed and offerings were given to mitigate the imbalance created when a dwelling was built. In some cases specialized altars were created to maintain that balance.
In modern times it’s not likely that our homes were built with this level of care and tending.
A house continues to be influenced by the experience of the people who live there. Some of these experiences can disrupt this spiritual energy and some life situations have a stronger impact than others. Space cleansing rituals are performed to restore the balance.
These disruptive influences can be divided into 3 main categories:
1.There are things that happen in the house that affect this spiritual energy. Such as:
- Strong unresolvable conflict between the occupants
- Robberies
- Violence in the house
- Leaks and floods
- Chronic illness
- Mold
- Clutter/disorder
- Death
2.There are things that happen outside of the house that affect this spiritual energy. Such as:
- Crime in the neighborhood
- Violence in the neighborhood
- Living near a funeral home or graveyard
- Clutter/disorder
3.There are things that happened in the house before you even moved in that also affect this spiritual energy.
The older the house is the more it’s been through, both inside and outside. So historic houses need extra care and consideration.
These energies need to be cleared out with appropriate space-clearing rituals to bring the space back into balance.
The BTB Feng Shui tradition from China, pays particular attention to what the previous occupants experienced, referred to as ‘predecessor energy’. The things that happened to the previous tenants have an energy signature that remains in the house. If the space isn’t cleared, then it’s like living in the energy field of the previous occupants. It’s seen to be like taking on their karma and the karma of their challenging experiences (divorce, bankruptcy, chronic illness). Over time, the lives of the people who live there now can become intertwined with the lives of the people who came before.
For example, a client of mine who went through a divorce while living in her home, told me that the previous five plus occupants of her home had all gotten a divorce while living in that house.
All these things can disrupt the spiritual ecosystem within a house which in turn can influence the health and life balance of the people who live there now.
Doing a house clearing or ‘space clearing’ is like creating a fresh start for your life to flourish instead of living entangled with the histories of the previous occupants. A house clearing refreshes the space by clearing out the old stagnant energies and by rebalancing the spiritual ecosystem of the house.
Different traditions have different methods for how to clear the space and restore the balance so that the home and people can be healthy. These different traditions speak about it in different ways but by and large they hold the same view that this is necessary and practical.
Ancient people were practical. If it wasn’t significant to the quality of their lives and their health, they didn’t waste their time.
I’m trained to do house clearings in both the Feng Shui tradition from China and in the Nahua tradition of central Mexico.
After a good clearing the space feels lighter and brighter, and there is a sense of motion and movement in the space. It’s common for people to feel really good in their space afterwards, and to express a sense of relief.
One client contacted me for a house clearing because she felt stagnant energy in her home. Before she moved in, the house had been neglected for a long time. It hadn’t been physically cleaned in years and there were rats. After a lot of deep cleaning and repairs, it was all in tip top shape. But when she moved in, it didn’t feel good and it was hard for her to feel settled in the space. She felt repelled to be in the bedrooms and wondered how she was going to sleep in there.
After the house clearing and land blessing that I performed using methods from the Nahua tradition, she said that it felt so much lighter. When she first walked in she said she felt joy and elation and like her chest was expanding, like her heart was lifting up like a balloon. She said she could now co-exist with the space freely side by side. She was relieved.
I worked with a couple who lived in a rental house that had been remodeled just before they moved in. It had new paint, new carpet, new windows and a new refrigerator. Shortly after moving in the previous tenant started stalking the couple. This previous tenant eventually began stealing plants from the yard. The couple learned that she had been evicted for taking the windows and refrigerator out of the house. My clients were at their wits end as this had been going on for many months before they asked for my help. I prescribed some Feng Shui remedies, and protection and space-clearing rituals. And the previous tenant stopped stalking them and stopped taking their plants.
The other blessing was that the couple felt really good in their house for the first time. The husband hadn’t realized that he had been avoiding being at home. Now, he started playing music again and spending time at home. And out of the blue, immediately after the space clearing, the landlord finally followed through with his promises to put on the new roof, paint the house, close up the crawl spaces and help my clients remove the junk on the property.
