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How to recognize and release Negative Energies
Why Do I Feel So Heavy, and Where Is It Coming From?
There is a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep.
You can have rested eight hours, eaten well, done everything "right" — and still wake up feeling like you are wading through something. Heavy. Foggy. A little bit not-yourself. For years, I did not have language for this feeling. I assumed it was simply how I was built. Sensitive. A little too much. Someone who needed more rest than everyone else, for no clear reason.
It was not until I began working seriously with Reiki that I understood what was actually happening. That heaviness was not mine. Or at least, not all of it.
I had been walking through my days collecting energy the way a coat collects rain — other people's stress in a crowded waiting room, the tension left behind in a room after an argument, the quiet dread that lingers in a space long after the people in it have gone. None of it dramatic. None of it visible. But all of it real, and all of it sitting somewhere in my body, waiting to be noticed.
This article is for anyone who has ever felt that unexplainable weight and wondered if something was wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with you. You are simply sensitive enough to feel what so many people walk past without noticing. And once you can feel it, you can learn to release it.
What Negative Energy Actually Is
Let's begin gently, because the phrase "negative energy" gets used so loosely that it has almost lost its meaning. It is not a curse. It is not something mystical or frightening happening to you. And it is not a permanent state.
Negative energy, in the simplest sense, is stuck energy. It is emotion, tension, or vibration that has not been able to move through and out of a person, a room, or a moment — so it lingers. Anger that was never expressed. Grief that was pushed down rather than processed. The tension in a house after a difficult phone call. None of it disappears on its own. It settles, quietly, into whatever is nearby — your body, your home, even objects you carry.
This is not unique to spiritual practice. Anyone who has walked into a tense office and felt the air change before a word was spoken already knows this is real. You were reading energy. You just did not have a name for it yet.
What makes this tricky is that sensitive people — and if you are reading this, you are very likely one of them — absorb this stuck energy more easily than most. Not because something is wrong with your boundaries. Because your nervous system is simply more attuned to subtle shifts that others do not register at all.
If this idea of sensitivity and absorbing what is not yours feels deeply familiar, this book is one I return to again and again:
Energy Healing for Empaths — Lisa Campion A psychic counsellor and Reiki master teacher's practical guide to managing empathic overwhelm, setting boundaries, and learning to tell the difference between your energy and everyone else's. Warm, witty, and genuinely useful for anyone who has ever absorbed a room. |
What I am feeling is not always mine. And what is not mine, I can release.
The Quiet Signs You Are Carrying Something That Isn't Yours
Negative energy rarely arrives with a dramatic announcement. It is quiet. It builds slowly enough that most people simply adjust to it, rather than question it. Here are the signs I ask my clients — and myself — to watch for.
An Unexplained Heaviness
A tiredness that does not match your sleep, your effort, or your day. You did nothing differently, yet you feel like you are moving through water.
Irritability That Feels "Not Like You"
A short fuse, a flash of irritation toward someone you love, for no reason you can point to. This is often a sign that you have absorbed someone else's unresolved frustration rather than processed your own.
A Sudden Drop in Mood After Certain Interactions
You feel completely fine — and then a phone call, a visit, or a particular room leaves you flat, tense, or strangely sad. The shift is the clue. Notice when it happens and around whom.
Restlessness or Difficulty Settling
A mind that will not quiet down, a body that will not relax, even when nothing is actually wrong. This often shows up as scrolling, snacking, or pacing — small ways the body tries to discharge energy it does not know what to do with.
A Space That Feels "Off"
Walking into a room — your own home included — and feeling a subtle drop in your mood or energy, without anything visibly different about it.
A Note From My Practice Clients often tell me they feel guilty admitting these things, as though noticing them makes them dramatic or overly sensitive. I always say the same thing: noticing is not the problem. Noticing is the gift. The people who struggle most are the ones who have learned to override these signals entirely. You are not too sensitive. You are accurately perceiving something most people miss. |
Where Negative Energy Tends to Settle in the Body
In Reiki, we work with the understanding that energy moves through the body via the seven main chakras — and that stuck or negative energy tends to gather in specific places, depending on what it actually is.
Below is a gentle guide to where different kinds of stuck energy most often settle, and what it tends to feel like once it has.
Energy Type | Chakra | Where You Feel It | What It Often Feels Like |
Fear or Instability | Root | Lower back, legs, feet | Restlessness, not feeling safe or grounded |
Other People's Emotions | Sacral | Lower belly | Heaviness, low mood with no clear cause |
Suppressed Anger or Self-Doubt | Solar Plexus | Stomach, midsection | Tension, a knot, sometimes nausea |
Grief or Withheld Love | Heart | Chest, upper back, shoulders | Tightness, an ache, shallow breathing |
Words Left Unsaid | Throat | Throat, jaw, neck | Tension, a lump-in-the-throat feeling |
Mental Clutter or Overthinking | Third Eye | Forehead, temples | Headaches, fog, difficulty focusing |
Spiritual Disconnection | Crown | Top of the head | Feeling unmoored, "not quite here" |
You do not need to diagnose yourself perfectly using this table. Simply read through it slowly and notice where your body responds — a small tightening, a flicker of recognition. That response is information. It is your body telling you, quite literally, where the stuck energy has been living.
Common Sources: People, Places, and Patterns
Once you can feel that something is stuck, the next gentle step is noticing where it tends to come from. In my experience, negative or heavy energy generally arrives from one of three places.
People
Not every difficult person is intentionally draining you — though some are. More often, it is someone going through something hard, whose unprocessed stress, grief, or anger you have unconsciously absorbed simply by being near them. This is especially common with family members, close colleagues, and anyone you have a long emotional history with.
Places
Spaces hold energy the way walls hold paint. A home where an argument happened repeatedly. An office where layoffs were just announced. Even a chair that "feels off" for no visible reason. Spaces do not judge what they absorb — they simply hold it until someone clears it.
Patterns
This is the quietest and most overlooked source. Sometimes the negative energy is not new at all — it is an old pattern of yours resurfacing. An old grief that was never fully released. A childhood fear that resurfaces in a familiar shape. These patterns can feel like outside energy because they are so unconscious, but they are actually old residue of your own that has never been cleared.
If this idea of inherited or old residual energy speaks to you, this next book goes deeper into where it actually comes from and how to move it:
Spiritual Cleansing — Draja Mickaharic A classic, no-nonsense guide to clearing negative energy from yourself, your home, and your relationships using simple, practical rituals rooted in folk and spiritual traditions. Short, direct, and a wonderful companion to Reiki practice. |
Four Gentle Ways to Clear Negative Energy
This is where the real shift happens — because noticing stuck energy is only half the work. The other half is releasing it, and this is not something the thinking mind can do alone. You cannot logic your way out of stored energy. You have to move it.
There is no single right way to do this. Different moments call for different tools. Below are the four approaches I return to most often — with Reiki at the center, and a few simple companions around it.
1. Clearing With Reiki
Reiki works directly with the energy body, channeling universal life force energy through the practitioner's hands — or through distance, with intention — to wherever the receiver's body most needs it. It does not force anything to shift. It simply restores the conditions in which energy is able to flow again, the way a blocked stream begins moving once the obstruction is cleared.
What makes this particularly relevant to negative or absorbed energy is this: Reiki does not need to know exactly where something came from to clear it. You do not need to identify the precise source, the precise person, or the precise event. The energy field already knows. Reiki simply meets it there.
During a session, it is common to feel warmth, tingling, sudden emotion, or a wave of tiredness as something releases. Afterwards, many people describe a feeling of lightness they cannot fully explain — as though something they had been carrying, sometimes for years, has finally been set down.
2. Clearing With Tools: Sage, Palo Santo, and Smoke Cleansing
Long before Reiki entered my life, smoke cleansing was already a quiet tradition in many cultures — burning sage, palo santo, or incense to physically shift the energy of a room or a person. There is something to it beyond ritual alone: scent genuinely changes the felt quality of a space, and the simple act of doing something with your hands gives heavy energy somewhere to go.
To try this gently at home: open a window first, so the energy has somewhere to leave. Light your sage or palo santo, let it smolder rather than flame, and move slowly around your body or your room — starting at the front door if you are clearing a space, or at your head if you are clearing yourself, and working downward and outward. Set a simple intention as you go, even just silently: I clear what no longer serves this space. Let the smoke trail where it wants to. Finish by setting the stick down safely to extinguish completely.
This pairs beautifully with Reiki rather than replacing it — many practitioners smoke-cleanse a room before a session simply to prepare the space.
Sage and palo santo cleansing set — Amazon A simple bundled sage and palo santo set is a lovely, low-cost way for readers to begin a smoke-cleansing practice at home, especially when paired with the steps above. |
3. Clearing With Switch Words and Mantras
Sound and language carry their own vibration, and both switch words and mantras work on this principle — repeating a specific word or sound to shift your energetic state, almost like flipping a switch in the body.
Switch words are short, simple, and modern — single words repeated with intention. For clearing negative energy, words like DIVINE, RELEASE, and LET GO are commonly used. You can simply repeat one quietly, on each exhale, for a minute or two, holding the intention of release as you do.
Mantras go deeper still, carrying centuries of devotional energy behind them. The Gayatri Mantra is widely used for clarity and purification, and the simple repetition of Om on a slow exhale is one of the oldest and gentlest ways to settle and clear the energy field. You do not need to chant aloud or perfectly pronounce anything. Even a quiet, private repetition carries the vibration.
4. Clearing With Breath and Visualization
This is the practice that needs nothing but you — no tools, no words, no session. It is the one I teach first, because it is always available.
Begin by sitting somewhere quiet, with both feet on the ground. Take three slow breaths, letting your exhale be slightly longer than your inhale each time.
Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your stomach. Silently or aloud, say: Anything that is not mine, I now release with love. Let the phrase be simple. You are not performing it. You are simply telling your energy field what you intend.
Visualize a soft, warm light beginning at the top of your head and slowly moving down through your body — through your throat, your chest, your stomach, your legs, and out through your feet into the ground beneath you. As it moves, imagine it gently gathering anything heavy, foggy, or not-yours, and carrying it down and away, like water finding its way to a drain.
Finish by placing both hands over your heart and taking one final, slow breath. Notice — without judging — whether anything feels even slightly lighter than before you began.
This is a small practice. It will not undo years of absorbed energy in one sitting. But practiced regularly, it becomes a quiet, steady habit of putting down what was never yours to carry in the first place.
Curious What's Actually Weighing on You?
I would love to offer you something — as a gift, with no strings attached.
Send me a short note at hello@reikifindsyou.com about how you have been feeling lately, and I will personally share which chakra is likely holding the most tension for you right now, along with one simple Reiki-based practice to begin releasing it. This is my way of saying: you are not imagining this, and you do not have to carry it alone.
Ready for a Deeper Release? Write to me at hello@reikifindsyou.com and tell me a little about how you've been feeling, and I will personally point you toward where the heaviness is likely settling — as a gift. No charge. No obligation. And when you are ready for a full Distance Reiki session built around clearing what no longer belongs to you, I am here for that too. |
Protecting Your Energy Going Forward
Releasing what you are currently carrying is essential. But the gentler, longer-term work is learning to carry less in the first place. Here are a few simple habits that genuinely help.
Pros of Regular Energy Hygiene
• A noticeably lighter, clearer baseline mood
• Faster recovery after difficult conversations or environments
• Greater ability to tell the difference between your feelings and someone else's
• A stronger, steadier sense of self over time
Cons If Energy Is Left Unaddressed
• Heaviness and fatigue that quietly compound over weeks or months
• Increasing difficulty distinguishing your emotions from absorbed ones
• A tendency to withdraw from people or situations without understanding why
• Old patterns resurfacing again and again without real resolution
A few small daily habits make a meaningful difference: ending each day with a short version of the self-clearing practice above; setting a gentle internal boundary before entering a known draining environment, simply by silently saying I am open, but I am protected; and keeping a candle, plant, or piece of moving water somewhere in your main living space, all of which support a sense of continually refreshed energy in the home.
If you would like a guided way to bring this kind of protection into your daily life with crystals and ritual, this is a lovely companion:
Protect Your Energy — Energy Secrets A focused, beginner-friendly guide to positive vibration and toxic energy protection, with practical daily rituals for keeping your field clear once you have done the deeper release work. |
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if what I'm feeling is mine or someone else's?
A helpful question to ask yourself is: did this feeling arrive gradually, in proportion to something happening in my own life — or did it arrive suddenly, after being near a particular person or place? Absorbed energy tends to feel sudden, disproportionate, and slightly foreign, almost like wearing someone else's coat. Your own emotion tends to feel more familiar, even when it is difficult.
Can negative energy actually affect my physical health?
Stuck or unprocessed energy is understood, in Reiki and many energy traditions, to settle in the body and contribute to tension, fatigue, and stress over time. This is not a substitute for medical care, and any ongoing physical symptoms should always be discussed with a qualified healthcare provider. Reiki works alongside conventional care, never in place of it.
Do I need to know the exact source of negative energy before I can clear it?
Not at all, and this is one of the more freeing truths in this work. Reiki and most energy-clearing practices do not require you to identify the precise source. Your energy field already knows what it is releasing. Your task is simply to create the intention and the space for that release to happen.
How often should I do energy clearing practices?
There is no fixed rule, but a simple guide is this: clear daily if you are highly sensitive or regularly in draining environments, and clear whenever you notice that familiar heaviness arriving if you are not. Like physical hygiene, energy hygiene works best as a gentle, consistent habit rather than something reserved only for emergencies.
A Closing Word
You were never meant to carry everything you feel.
Some of what settles in your body in any given week genuinely belongs to you — your own grief, your own growth, your own becoming. But some of it was simply passing through, left behind by a room, a conversation, or a person who was struggling, and it found a quiet, sensitive place to land. That place was you, not because you are weak, but because you are open.
Learning to recognize the difference — and gently, regularly, releasing what is not yours — is not a complicated spiritual skill reserved for a few. It is something you already have the capacity to do. You simply needed permission, and a little bit of language for what you have likely been sensing all along.
You can put it down now.
I release what is not mine, and I keep what is.
Love and Light, Kanu
Medical Disclaimer The content on ReikiFindsYou.com is for informational and educational purposes only. Reiki and energy clearing practices are complementary practices and are not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions regarding a medical or mental health condition. |
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