Raccoon Reading List: Clear Home Clear Heart
By: Jean Haner
Hay House c. 2017
I haven’t written a book review since, maybe, middle or high school so let the wild book rumpus begin.
As this is my first Mineralogy Project book review let me set the tone.
I will only be reviewing books I like and think are useful for me and therefore possibly for you in some way. If I read and don’t like a book I won’t bother bc, why spend the energy blasting it when I can just move on.
That being said, I approach books about energy and stones like I am picking cherries (or whatever fruit or veggie you’d like to pick). I read them carefully, take notes, try to process and actually understand what the author is saying. If I find myself zoning out, I put the book down and come back to it. Because it’s important to get all the information into my processor (some combination of my intellectual mind // critical thinking capacity paired with my emotional or energetic resonance with what the author says). But then I sift // rinse // select. I don’t tend to take any singular authors ideas whole cloth. I try to understand them and then figure out what about their ideas and frameworks is useful or applies for me in my understanding of energy and further developing my practices towards becoming and being a RESILIENT EMPATH. I read these books like I am trying to understand the whole concept, but then search for resonances. For tools, for ideas and practices that help me in my own journey of discovery and growth.
This book is a phenomenal resource. In that Jean Haner is a thoughtful and intelligent energy worker who has taken the time to actually write up and share // teach her literal system for clearing energy. This book is primarily a how to manual for learning to clear energy, and therefore is an absolutely awesome offering from the author, because if you have the time and patience to work through the book carefully you can take away everything you need to begin to practice clearing energy – both for people and in spaces.
In addition to spending the majority of the book walking us through the literal practices of energy clearing, Jean Hanner has some incredibly insightful thoughts on how energy holds in spaces – how a single high amplitude event or a series of small sorrows or pains can imbed in your space and objects over time. The book is a mixture of how to clear info and stories about clients who the author worked with for personal clearings and space clearings. Some of the most potent ‘learning’ moments for me in the book are actually take aways from her space clearing sessions. Those stories helped me to literally see examples of how disrupted qi held in a home space can cause repeating problematic energy patterns, and how addressing and clearing these spaces and objects in our home that hold disrupted energy can lighten, brighten and free up our homes to become places of positive nurturing neutrality or balanced energy as opposed to boxes we live in full of little swirling toxic (angry, depressed, anxious etc.) energy vortexes that call us back into those old patterns.
Thoughts on target audience
While I loved the client stories interwoven through the book, I do think that it indicated something else as well which I want to address. The book’s target audience seems to be people who want to learn space clearing but are skeptical about if energy and space clearing practices are ‘real’ and actually effect our daily lives. So, some of the time I felt like the author was going out of her way to prove that what she does is real and effective – ex. “story about a client whose life was dramatically altered after a space clearing, followed by ‘we can’t be sure it was the clearing that did this but it does seem related’” Cue me sighing and being like, YES we CAN be sure it was the clearing and resetting of energy that catalyzed all these shifts in their life and your work is incredibly powerful, I want to learn lol!
As someone who already ‘believes’ and just wanted to learn about her techniques and frameworks I found this a bit heavy handed or unnecessary. Like, hey Jean don’t worry, no convincing necessary here I absolutely believe in the power of what you do and just want to learn about it. I think often books that talk about energy are considered pretty out there for mainstream culture so the authors spend time either convincing // stating their case or kind of awkwardly addressing how ‘out their’ the topic is. There is a lot of “you don’t have to believe it you just have to do it and it is so powerful you will begin to believe because you will learn from the doing” which I think is a great approach but it’s definitely keyed in to a different target audience than me, and many of you dears who are enthusiastically metaphysical and already know the truth of these underlying unseen energy realities. For me, it actually takes away from the thrust of the book and the work a bit, in that sense that she is trying to convince us of something or sell us on believing and I think the work stands on its own and is powerful and should stand it its power more and self-explain a little less.
Where she really ‘gets to it’
Her two final chapters “how and why does clearing work” and “clearing: a new approach to mindfulness” are kind of the core of the book and the work. On one hand I feel frustrated she didn’t have these chapters at the beginning as I think they add great layers of understanding to the energetics of the clearing work. But then I also wonder if maybe the book is formatted this way, with the how to at the beginning and the explanation at the end, in order to encourage us to dive in and be unafraid to try the clearing techniques, like to demystify them and make the practices as actionable and practical as possible. I also think there is a strong possibility they aren’t out front because of the target audience thing, like she wanted to prove how well the techniques work before she explains the energetics of them (?) not sure. I go back and forth with if I think she should have put this info up front or if I think it’s best to have it at the end.
But you will notice what ended up being most powerful for me in the book mostly came out of her incredibly thoughtful explanations in those last sections! You could perhaps read them first and then read the book through and read them again at the end? Would that be too much? I don’t think so!
Now that I have taken care of that… lol.
Let’s talk about two of the most potent moments in Clear Home Clear Heart for me!
Nourishing
The most powerful take away for me from this book is Jean Haner’s perspective on how a home should feel, when the qi is flowing in a vital and health manner through the space. If the qi is not flowing into your home healthily (no or little qi coming in the front door) “This is usually an indication that there’s so much stress or residue built up, its blocking energy from coming in to support you in your home. In that case, you may even be using some of your own personal qi to boost the vitality of the space – and this is not what we want. The space should be nourishing you not the other way around.” (p. 126) This being my single most powerful take away from this book, that our home space should be nourishing us (when the qi is properly flowing and energy is balanced)!!! Does anyone else immediately resonate with a deep longing for that statement to be true? Or a deep exhaustion from someone finally naming the imbalance – which I hadn’t even realized was wrong. WAIT??? I shouldn’t be using my own persona qi // energy to boost the vitality of my home space, it should in fact be supporting and nurturing me energetically (mind blow!).
Being
The second thing that has just really stuck with me from the book, which doesn’t exactly weave into the below resonances I will address with the rest of my energy frameworks has to do with the author bringing Chinese cultural and spiritual concepts and Buddhist ideas into the work. The work is essentially a form of mindfulness practice, which she goes into in chapter 13: clearing: a new approach to mindfulness. This particular piece of it has stuck with me powerfully: (yes I am including a whole paragraph here)…
“We’re not educated in how to “be” in our culture. All our values revolve around how to “do”- to achieve, to look for what’s wrong and fix it, to get results. As soon as we reach one goal we’re taught to start towards the next one. Forward movement is the key to success! It’s wonderful to have a sense of drive, but if we’re in constant “drive” mode, it throws our systems out of balance, first on a sprit level, then an emotional one, and eventually a physical one as well. Chinese medicine teaches the value of yin and yang in every aspect of life. All that doing is very yang, and that’s great. But we need to balance it with equal time and energy devoted to yin: stillness, peace and allowing ourselves to feel. In other words, being.” (p. 197)
Learning her technique for energy clearing is about “being” not “doing” perhaps part of what makes it intimidating or uncomfortable for us. And equally what is so powerful about the work. It is mindfulness and presence and practice, not thinking and doing.
CONSISTANT RESONANCES
This book has three astoundingly resonant consistencies with the three years of stone work I have done with Naisha Ahsian and on my own using the BHC course model and her book:
- Elemental Energies
- Balance as the goal of energy work
- Entrainment as an energy healing technique
ELEMENTAL ENERGIES
First, is the framework of viewing energy // energetic bandwidths in relation to the elements. Everything I do in relating to stones uses elemental energies. The work I did with Naisha Ahsian was all based on the Western five elements and how different energy centers in the body (working up from the root) resonate with different elemental energies (Earth, Fire, Water, Wind and Storm). Although Jean Haner uses the Chinese elements, which are a bit different, and which I am now thrilled to connect with and learn more about! She also sees energy as something one can connect with in individual vibrational bandwidths based on element – JUST LIKE THE WORK I ALREADY DO! That kind of blew my mind honestly.
These resonances are what lets me know I am on track. It is so cool that these two practitioners using totally different models and even using different ideas of elemental energy have entire energy work frameworks based on the same fundamental understanding! Working with our energy system via connecting with individual elemental energies, with the goal of balancing our energy system. And to Balance.
BALANCE
The fundamental goal of Jean Haner’s work is completely the same as the work I have already been doing: BALANCE. Restoring balance in the energy field via connecting with and clearing or balancing the elemental energies. “Clearing is really just about bringing balance back, either to a person or to a space.” (p. 194)
Balance being the underlying goal of the vibrational tools and practices I have accumulated and engaged with over much of the past 7 years. We don’t want to ‘rid’ ourselves of ‘bad’ energy so much as we want to identify stuck or sticky spots that are too heavy or are negatively affecting us and allow flow to return, in this allowing balance to return. (p 113 & 194) For me this concept is one of the barometers for if I agree with or resonate with a new approach / framework I am reading, how does balance factor in to the authors understanding of energy work? For me, in my work and understanding of vibrational healing and energy: the focus always comes back to balance, bringing energy into balance.
We don’t want to fear energy, we don’t see it as negative or bad we just see it as stuck and out of balance. By using tools like energy clearing we are able to bring energy back into balance – these simple clearing techniques in her book being in that way incredibly empowering – because they allow us to identify imbalance and take action to balance the energy ourselves using two common dousing tools, a pendulum and dousing rod. (She explains a pendulum as a “biofeedback tool” and a dousing rod as “a simple tool to locate something unseen in an environment” – if that’s useful to your understanding of the tools). Again, this is me looping back to why this book is of so much value. Because it isn’t primarily theoretical it is a how-to manual on energy clearing using a framework that I fundamentally find sound and effective.
I do find myself honestly however still a bit intimidated by the idea of being a newbie to practicing // the implementation of this work. I have a pendulum and have begun to learn how to communicate with it, but I feel self-conscious and not yet sure of who and how to work on practicing personal clearings and space clearings. I am going to let that simmer for now and be open to finding a community where I can begin to experiment with offering and receiving clearings. And I will definitely keep you dears up to date as that progresses!
ENTRAINMENT
I love the connection in the energetic framework used by Jean Haner in relation to the crystal work from my teacher Naisha Ahsian. Specifically using the power of entrainment to shift another person’s energy state in a positive sense. (p. 191)
Fundamentally, Jean Haner sees the work of energy clearing as opening a neutral supportive energy space for someone else while they process out old stories and trauma. “It’s our feeling, it comes packaged with that energetic charge from our past. But what if someone else was to tune in to allow that though or emotion that holds tension for you? To them, it’s just a piece of information, just some energy. It has no charge for them because it’s not theirs… it has a totally different energetic frequency than any of their own pain… This is what happens during a clearing. You connect with the energy of some stress in the other person’s system, but because you have no history with that feeling, it’s not challenging for you. So you can relate to it in an entirely different way than they have been. And in that process, the act of your welcoming and witnessing it releases it, lets it finally relax and disappear.” (This complete gem of an explanation buried on page 190).
Because it’s not your own trauma, you are able to hold space for it and clear it without being triggered. You can entrain the person you are clearing into your energy space and then go through those stuck and sticky bits with them at the distance of witness not judge and allow those energies to clear from their system.
Interestingly, the Primus Activation Healing Technique that I took a workshop on with Naisha Ahsian in 2020 uses the same concept. You use the primus meditation and energy state of being grounded, heart centered and high amplitude to bring a client into parasympathetic nervous dominance via hands on healing work. The key to this work being that you are higher amplitude then the client and therefore they can simply lay down and by laying your hands on them and maintaining a high amplitude primus state you bring them into resonance or entrain them with your energy system offering them a way to immediately access the rest and repair state regardless of what their relationship to the priums practice is. You cultivate the energy state and bring someone into it with you using entrainment. This practice is completely consistent with Jean Haner’s approach.
Most commonly we entrain with someone else’s high amplitude energy accidentally, and most commonly this feels like getting dragged into someone else’s ‘toxic’ (to our system) energy state. If you hold a high amplitude energy state (volume not flavor of energy) you set the energetic tone in interactions, but if you are interacting with someone whose energy is louder or more high amplitude than yours you often become entrained into their energy state. For example, my super toxic boss was very angry – like seething – all the time. I would be in a ‘positive’ energy state but my amplitude was quiet so when I would go to interact with him I would immediately have an animal response of fear and being under threat, I would entrain to his energy and feel his anger and begin to sweat and become anxious and unfocused. It’s actually an animal survival mechanism, to feel energy that may be a threat and have your body respond to it before it even reaches the level of our conscious mind. Most commonly we entrain with someone else’s high amplitude energy accidentally and it is difficult for us to process it or regain our center and settle back into our own energy state. This is one of the greatest challenges of being empathic or energetically porous. We, especially as children, lowered our amplitude to feel out and sense others and so we could better understand our environment and know if we were safe or not, if someone else’s energy was upset or unsettling we often attempted to manage it through our words and actions – to actually shift their energy state – not just because we wanted them to feel better but also because we actually felt a survival need to not feel their unsettled or unsafe energy.
While entrainment may most often have been experienced accidentally or subconsciously and this can often feel very disempowering (like a boat being thrown around by a wild sea, unanchored).
The cool thing is (!!!) it is also possible to hold a high amplitude state that you can bring others into and use as a healing technique. If you are the higher amplitude energy and you intentionally choose to hold a loving grounded state, you can bring others along with you! This is the sum total goal of the primus meditation I have been doing 4-5 days a week for the last three years, to be the one who sets the energetic tone by being the highest amplitude energy in interactions and choosing to ‘flavor’ that energy with a heart centered space and a commitment to the light and the wellbeing of all beings. I love that both teachers use this approach – though for very different frameworks.
MY ONE DISAGREEMENT
My one bone to pick with this book is that the author sees energy from a human centric perspective. She does acknowledge geopathic stress and emfs, but her primary understanding of energy is of how human energy gets stuck or imbalanced inside us or imbeds in space. She is in fact a bit snarky about non-human energy. I realized when I read the book back in 2019 I got defensive and bristled at this, because she essentially makes a comment that crystals only have the energy of the person who gave them to you but that that ‘wears off’. Which obvi frustrated me. What I will say about it now after further discussion with a friend who helpfully pointed this out – it’s just a human centric view of energy. How our energy imbeds in our environment.
It is ok for me to own that I don’t resonate with that perspective. I find that it provides a super limiting understanding of vibrational healing tools and how they affect our energy system. Crystals, as simple elemental compounds in geometrically particular atomic shapes, vibrated at unique energy frequencies that some people’s energy systems respond strongly to. Believing that energy tools from our natural environment don’t have their own unique vibrational bandwidth and therefore energetic offering or imprint of their own is limiting // I think it is a limited understanding. Likewise, working with essential oils and plants is a beautiful and growing part of my practice. I see each plant and oil as having a unique energy and unique energetic interaction with our system. On this point, I have decided it’s ok to agree to disagree, I see plant, animal and mineral beings as energetic entities and it is ok if the book’s author doesn’t speak to that or agree with it, because I find so much of the rest of her framework helpful and of value.
ENERGY CLEARING EXPERIENCE
Engaging with energy clearing in my own life: ripple effects from the book…
It seems clear from Jean’s work that we are often too ‘close’ to our own home and family for them to be optimal practice environments. In fact, it works better to engage in clearing work with people and places that hold neutrality for you so you can be available to the person you are clearing to hold that neutral ‘being’ space for them when they are triggered!
In the meantime, I have been incredibly excited (and also relived) to have found an experienced energy clearing professional in Seattle who studied with Jean Haner. I don’t want to get too into my own home & personal energy clearing experience in this book review because it is definitely still unfolding, and I think it deserves separate ruminations. But WHEW. Let me tell you briefly that it has been an incredibly powerful and gentle experience for me.
When I read the book first back in 2019 I knew I needed someone to do a clearing for our space – since hubbs and I moved back into and are fixing up my family home which is full of all sorts of energetic, emotional and practical layers of ‘psychic dust’ and ‘dusty ass real dust’. We moved into the downstairs in winter 2020 and the upstairs a few months ago, and are cohabing with my mom who now lives in the apartment downstairs. So, I knew we needed to restore healthy energy flow to the space after moving upstairs this Spring. I feel like I have been watching the energy in the space in relation to the clearing out of the corner of my eye for about 2 months now… first the energy beginning to shift before the clearing, release during it and integrate the past three weeks. The space feels lighter and brighter // distinctly less heavy than it did before the clearing.
But, what is even more fascinating to me is that our relationships to the space are evolving – for me it feels less contentious as we continue to fix up the worn out bits and pieces, I feel less frustrated and stuck and angry, more in flow with the ongoing process. My mom has been venturing out into the world more, going to more in person events and on trips and it seems like her tether to the house has also shifted, brightening and lightening and becoming more flexible. The energy is definitely still integrating and settling and we are going to do a separate clearing for the downstairs space, so I will keep you posted!
But, I do have to say, it is with the most incredibly huge pile of gratitude to this book that I found Misa who did our house clearing a few weeks ago. It feels like we have undergone a psychic deep clean, so many years of heavy energy lifting and letting in room for change and evolution and dynamism that the space needed. More than anything undergoing this process has felt like a tremendous relief. I hope sometime soon to begin feeling like the house is actually nurturing us! I feel like Misa was able to hold that loving neutrality, she also picked up on the most unsettled corner of our living space in a hilariously strong fashion that legit blew my mind… I will tell that story later… but all I can say is – I came into the work a “believer” already and have come through the process just so incredibly blow away by the power and potency of restoring our home’s energy to a more balanced state. It was like the house went to therapy, or something, and came back to us a healthier home, better able to be here for us and less heavy and hung up on it’s own past. What a relief.
I may write more about this space clearing experience later but for now here’s the info for the wonderful woman who did our space clearing in case you’d like to get in touch with her she is awesome! misa@enlightenedbackpacker.com