The holidays. Visions of sugar plums NOT dancing in your head because you have to be stuck in a room with toxic relatives at Thanksgiving, shop in crammed malls brimming with impatient shoppers, and ___________(insert your own most energetically overwhelming holiday activity here)? For the empathic, the season brings the need for a good stiff martini and a week in the Bahamas to recover from all the gleeful cheer. So how to clean and clear your energy so you don’t want to ram the yule log up Aunt Blanche’s arse?

First, say NO! NO! NO! to any invitation which doesn’t add to your energy and juice you up. In all likelihood, no one has ever died because of hearing the word “No.” If they have, then it was their time to get 6 feet under. You have the responsibility to take care of yourself and enjoy Nov. and Dec. however best serves you. The word “NO” is equally advisable for donating handmade Christmas cookies to little Biffy’s school Christmas party, or any of the other myriad requests women especially are asked to fulfill during the festive season. All this doing and doing for others can leave you needing Mother’s Little Helper, and I hate to tell ya, but Keith Richards probably took all of those already!! Help yourself by liberally employing those two magical letters-NO.

Love your bathtub–dose it up with 2 cups of epsom salt and 2 cups of raw organic apple cider vinegar. This gloriously detoxes both body and aura. I do this around 3 times a week–my energy field feels as fresh and new as a puppy’s after this. My husband thinks I smell like an ambulatory Massengill douche, but oh well. Got hitched for better and for worse, right? Right.

Hie thee into Nature as much as possible, for as long as possible. I find Mother Earth to be still kind to my aura even in the quiet of winter. Hug a tree. Make a snow angel. Find a sheltered place to meditate, such as inside a cluster of bushes, which will keep the wind from freezing you. Carry a huge comforter in your chariot and wrap up snug as a bug whilst relaxing on a bench at a park. Don’t eat yellow snow.

Burn sage around yourself, your abode, and inside your car daily. Or at least 2-3 times per week. This smelly herbal is like Mr. Clean for your aura. Yeah, so it reeks like bad weed. It works.

Honor your intuition. If you just feel and know that you have no business attending an event, then don’t. You don’t need any more reason than that.

A daily protection prayer finishes my list. Every.Single.Morning. Say to yourself, ” I feel only the vibration of love and restrict all others.” Or whatever you fancy. Visualize you ending your day feeling just as energetically cleansed and cleared as you did in the morning.

There. Try those tips and spare Aunt Blanche’s arse.