Protect Your Light: A Practical Guide to Energy Protection, Cleansing, and Cutting Cords

Energy work has a vaguely new age sound to it, which diminishes the value of this vital practice. In Protect Your Light, Lizos manages to address deeply important concepts and techniques despite sliding into some pretty "woo" terminology. Nonetheless, if only for the information about protecting your energy when engaging with others online, this is an excellent resource.

Part One orients the reader to all of the basics: defining energy protection, describing why it's necessary, noting the symptoms of problems, and then does a very clear, precise, seven-step process for protecting yourself. This section also describes grounding and centering (which are different, for all that they are often conflated.) Finally, Lizos lays out the concepts of Attraction, Intention, and how to identify energy attachments.

Part Two focuses on a variety of techniques -- eleven in all -- to clear energy attachments. Note that in the Sacred Smoke chapter, Lizos does refer to smudging and recommends sage, which is borderline appropriative. (White Sage is the specifically appropriative herb, but few of us know how to distinguish between varieties, especially when they are dried. It would have been clearer had the author not mentioned sage at all, but any one of the many excellent herbs that cleanse energy.)

Part Three takes the reader to the next level of energy work: shielding. Again we have eleven different techniques for protecting oneself from the many forms of low-level energetic nuisances that meander through our lives. Major cudos to the author for clearly describing the potential hazards when working with essential oils (one of the shielding techniques), which are not always safe to place directly on one's skin (to name the most common problem).

Part Four is an invaluable discussion of dealing with energy when interacting with the internet. Beginning with a discussion of how digital spaces are as "real" as physical space, moving through how communication online is still an energetic exchange, the reader is led to understanding that negative energy can get attached even when not sharing physical space. After a chapter about becoming the mayor of your digital space, the last chapter is several techniques for clearing one's digital space.

Aside from the use of sage, my main criticism is based on the terminology Lozos uses. Lightworker, as an example, deliberately excludes anyone who does energetic work outside of the new age community (where, apparently, all must be done in light, eschewing the dark). My perspective is rooted in the notion that we must all understand and embrace both the light and dark as necessary to our well-being. (To be clear, my practice also stays away from the seriously problematic light/dark terminology. I'm using it because the community does.) As well, notions of unicorn rainbows and violet dragons come across as twee, not serious.

Language aside, however, this is an excellent book.

~review by Lisa McSherry

Author: George Lizos
Hampton Roads, 2022
pp. 240, $17.95