Hello Tanya

Ep.05- Bottles, Bubbles, and Zips: Protecting Your Energy

• Tanya Barlow • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Welcome back to the Hello Tanya Podcast! This week I'll be discussing three powerful methods taught by my spiritual healer for protecting your energy from negativity and maintaining emotional boundaries in challenging situations.

• The Bottle Method involves visualising yourself inside a mirrored bottle that reflects negative energy away while keeping you safe
• The Bubble Technique requires visualising yourself inside an iridescent bubble that completely shields your energy
• The Zip is a subtle, physical gesture of running your finger from between your eyebrows to your hairline that creates an instant energy boundary
• These tools are especially helpful for those who tend toward hypervigilance or sensitivity to others' moods
• Mirror work Moment- Try incorporating mirror work into existing routines like skincare or brushing your teeth to make it a regular practice

Next week, I'll be discussing "Vitamin N" and not taking things personally.


Production design, intro music and video by Christopher Stratton. Podcast photos by Frances Carter. Find Tanya at @hellotanya and the pod at @hellotanyapod on IG, and https://www.youtube.com/@hellotanyapod <3

Speaker 1:

Hi hello, welcome back to another episode of the Hello Tanya podcast. Hi, hello, welcome back to another episode of the Hello Tanya podcast. This is where I share pocket-sized tips, tricks, tools for your toolbox, things for learning how to love yourself and protect yourself, and just lessons that I've learned from seeing a spiritual healer for the last three years. If this is your very first time here, welcome. I recommend starting from the very beginning, episode one, for a little bit of context of how we got here. We're kind of building each episode all right, okay, episode five, wow, wow, wow, episode five. How are we going? I hope we're all feeling like luck magnets, learning to be a little bit kinder to ourselves, focusing on the good things and knowing that they will come your way. Have you started enjoying your own company more? Have you started speaking to yourself in the mirror with kindness? If you have or haven't tried any of these exercises yet, I'm still glad you're here with me. Thanks for taking the time to have a little peaceful moment, whether it's with your morning coffee, your commute or while you drift off to sleep. Today I'll be sharing how Lika, my spiritual healer of three years, has taught me how to protect my energy. Oh yeah, we are deep in the woo. This one requires some visualization and a little bit of faith. There are three different methods I'm going to talk about today, and they're all pretty similar in function. I found these two tools particularly helpful when I was feeling anxious about a social situation or when I'm feeling a little low or nervous. Nowadays, I'll just use these tools when I see my nail clients or when I'm just leaving the house. All right, okay.

Speaker 1:

The very first time Lika told me about this, I was, of course, skeptical. Like okay. I'd heard various versions of this, like golden light or using sage or crystals, but this was new for me. She told me okay, we're gonna start with the bottle. Okay, she told me to imagine myself shrunk down like honey, irunk, the Kid style, and inside a tiny, tiny bottle with the lid, I imagine, like a cork on the lid, tightly sealed. She tells me to imagine that the bottle is coated in silver, chrome or mirrored so that it reflects any bad energy or vibes or whatever back towards who might be sending them to you. She tells me to imagine myself dancing in the bottle. Okay, christina Aguilera, she tells me to imagine myself dancing in this tiny little bottle. Somehow, this part took it too far for me, like imagining myself in a tiny mirrored bottle was bad enough, but now I got to be dancing. Anyway, I smirked internally but I studiously took notes.

Speaker 1:

What I like about a lot of these tools is when there's a real world or physical element, like physically flushing that key that I talked about in episode two. This time she tells me to find a tiny bottle and in real life and wrap it in tinfoil to signify the chrome or the mirror, like finish, and carry it around with me as a reminder. She calls it jumping into the bottle. You jump in your bottle and dance as you have nothing to worry about because you are protected. She tells me to think about the bottle if I am tired or around dark or low or heavy energy, and that I'm safe inside of it and that it's full of love and pink energy. Um, okay, so I found a tiny bottle. I found a teeny, tiny bottle. I dutifully wrapped it in tinfoil and I took it around with me everywhere I went, making sure it was always nearby. I took it overseas, I kept it in my pocket, I took it everywhere. One time I thought I left it, but it's funny how it did kind of make me feel safe. You know, it was like like I had precious cargo, like I was carrying little me in a dancing, dancing, tiny little me in this tiny little bottle, like like precious cargo. You know, little me in this tiny bottle, knowing that big me was looking after it. I'm not sure if that was the intention, but a welcome side effect, I guess. So that is the bottle. You jump in your bottle and I try to like tap. I tap the top of my head as if that's like me corking the bottle and like, boom, protected, I'm in my bottle.

Speaker 1:

The bubble concept is pretty similar. Now it doesn't require going out and blowing bubbles or anything. I guess it's mainly about being intentional and a little bit like Glinda's bottle I'm sorry bubble that she flies around in. Okay, almost exactly like Glinda's bubble. Lika tells me to take a deep breath and exhale. Like I'm blowing up a balloon, using your hands to hold the outside of it as it gets bigger, hands to hold the outside of it as it gets bigger With every breath. Imagine it filling up with love and protection. And the colors. The colors are a rainbow, iridescent, sparkling.

Speaker 1:

You keep blowing and blowing and blowing until you imagine that you can fit inside of it, just like Glinda's, just like Glinda's bubble. You're blowing it as if it is totally encompassing you, filling it. She tells me to imagine myself bouncing around in it like literally boing, boing, boing, protected from whatever is around me. Now I would occasionally do a smaller version of this, like, say, I'm at a social function and I'm alone and I'm going to the bathroom and I'll just kind of like breathe out and just slowly kind of create a circle around me, almost like a big bubble or just around my head, and then that's kind of like my little mini version of it. I would imagine that I was like getting bigger and bigger and then I'd be on my way.

Speaker 1:

So that is the bubble, again very similar to the zip. It's just taking that moment to be intentional about protecting your energy and just like filling it up. You're in your bottle, you're in your bubble, and then you're on your way and you're protected. And finally, the last way that Leek has taught me to protect my energy is the zip. So I like this one because it's a little bit sneaky. It involves a physical moment sorry, a physical movement which is small and quite low-key, and it's a great tool when faced with a difficult situation.

Speaker 1:

The zip is kind of like a top-up of the bottle or bubble, a physical reminder. It's like zipping your energy up or being like, nope, no, thank you, I don't want anything to do with this, I'm just going to keep my energy with me and your energy up. Or being like, nope, no, thank you, I don't want anything to do with this, I'm just going to keep my energy with me and your energy is yours. Thank you very much. Not engaging, not going to be affected, nope, no, thank you.

Speaker 1:

So you take your thumb or forefinger or whatever and you swipe up your forehead, kind of like between your eyebrows up to your hairline, that's it. And you can be very sneaky with it. You know, just like a little, oh, I'm just brushing my hair away, just doing a little this up up between your eyebrows, up to your hairline zip. And I find myself doing this action pretty often because it does look like you're just pushing your hairline, pushing your hair away. And I find it particularly helpful when someone is being just straight up rude to my face or just being disrespectful or incredibly negative, or, you know, you're just kind of faced with oh, that's a lot, I'm not going to take it on. I am in my bubble already, but I'm just going to zip, do this movement, and it's a physical reminder that, like what's yours is yours, what's theirs is theirs, I am protected and minding my own business. Thank you very much. I won't let this touch me. Thank you very much. And it can be super subtle and it's very, very handy when keeping calm in tense situations. It's just a little comforting action and a comforting movement for me and it's just a physical reminder of not letting something energy vibes, negativity touch you.

Speaker 1:

As someone who used to be very hypervigilant, like monitoring vibes and energy of a room, reading faces as I enter a room, feeling overly sensitive to non-verbal cues or, say, like a dishwasher being emptied too loudly, you know, reading that is like taking it personally or like someone's like must be mad at me because I'm being overly sensitive about something we we won't get into why, but it rhymes with experiencing emotional shabuse. These tools have been really, really helpful to me personally. It took the power imbalance away. I stopped monitoring everyone else's energy around me and, just you know, took it back to myself Instead of like letting there be a power imbalance, of like relying on the unreliable narrator of the roommate or, you know, negative self-talk or being hypervigilant and being sensitive. You just don't let others, others moods or feelings dictate your own. How I feel is my responsibility and only mine and no one else's. A little zip or having a little look at my tiny bottle or just making sure it's in my bag or my pocket was just like a little reminder that I'm in charge of my own fate and how I operate the world, no matter how much brainwashing I'd had in the past. So those are the three ways that Lika has taught me how to protect your energy when you're feeling a little wobbly, in a situation where you don't feel safe, when you're dealing with negativity or even just being in a social situation where you're not sure how to navigate lots of different vibes.

Speaker 1:

All right, now we are back to our mirror work moment time. As a reminder, mirror work is essentially gassing yourself up in the mirror, approaching yourself like you're a fan and your best friend because you are, you should be your own best friend and telling yourself things that you've always wanted to hear. We want to try to aim for up to five minutes of this and, yeah, it's going to feel like an age to begin with and you do get used to it, like, honestly, you do get used to it. I'll give you an extra mirror work tip today. Why not try it while doing your skincare routine, makeup routine, hair, or after you brush your teeth? Any time that you are spending in the mirror or the bathroom anyway can be a time where you can do some mirror work, right, right, right. Okay, all right. So let's build on what we've done so far. Okay, I'm going to take my mirror here we go, all right. So let's build on what we've done so far. Hey, okay, I'm going to take my mirror. Here we go, all right.

Speaker 1:

I love you and I'm proud of you. I trust myself, I value myself and I accept myself. I can do it alone. The universe is always with me. I am ready for miracles. Thank you, universe.

Speaker 1:

And why am I so lucky this week? I'd like to invite you to also try saying I am too strong to be broken. I am powerful and protected. Oh, oh, that's a good one. Oh, that's a good one, all right. That's us for episode five. I hope you try bottles, bubbles and zips. I hope that it makes a bit more sense now, and thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. I've put a lot of love and vulnerability out here and I'm really proud of the work that I'm doing and I hope that there's a little tiny nugget that you find that you found helpful in all of this. Thank you, all right, I love you, I love me and thank you, as always, for spending time with me.

Speaker 1:

Next week I'll be talking about vitamin N and not taking things personally. What's that? I guess we'll find out. Ps, it's not a supplement. Imagine if this was all leading up to me selling supplements. That's crack up. Anyway, I just want to say, as usual, a huge shout out to Christopher Stratton for all of his help in creating this beautiful set. He's the production designer. He played the music in the intro. He's built this set like. He edited the intro video and filmed it like. I'm so grateful to you, christopher. Thank you so much, you talented, talented friend. And, as always, thank you to Francis Carter for the dreamy photos for this podcast. All right, that is us for episode five. I'm gonna press the outro button and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.