Consciousness Hygiene for Beginners (like me)

February 12th, 2026 by Kelly Kienzle

I have a lot of grit and grime in my head.  I have brain-clutter about the sadness, anger, and uncertainty in our world now.  And I also have a joyous muddle about compassion, peace (those monks!), and small acts of kindness.  Often the former out-shouts the latter.  And that is why I am practicing consciousness hygiene.

Hygiene for your Brain

Consciousness hygiene is just what it sounds like – – the practice of regularly cleaning your consciousness so that you are free to act and say and think what is most important to you.  We have so many inputs from the media, friends, and colleagues who send information, news, and opinions to us.  Some of this information is helpful and some just builds up as grime in our minds, clogging our gears and slowing our progress.

I can’t function well when there is grime in my house, and I certainly can’t function well when there is grime in my head.  So, here is how I am practicing good hygiene of what I take into my consciousness:

6 Steps for a Cleaner Consciousness

First, I purge:

• Set those time limits on my phone – – for realsies.  It’s good endurance training for our brains to learn to go without
• Keep the first hour of my morning free from news coverage.  My body just spent about 8 hours processing what happened the day before.  Let’s give it a minute before feeding it more information to process.
• If I am repeating myself in a political conversation, change the topic.  No one needs to hear me repeat myself, least of all me.

Then, I re-stock with clean items:

• When I leave the house, speak to at least one stranger. Kindness sets off a chain reaction in others that fuels them to be kind to the next person they see.
• Put my brain on periodic sabbatical.  I have done enough internal thinking to last a few lifetimes.  Let me just focus on, for example, a song instead. (Hello, Aretha!)
• Get outside.  Nothing cleans out my brain like a physical breeze in the outdoors.  The Japanese call it forest-bathing.  I call it walking-while-looking-far-ahead-of-me.

Being Mindful About Our Minds

What we bring into and allow to remain in our consciousness impacts how we feel and what we choose to do.  While there may be much we cannot control in the external world, our consciousness is fully within our power to clean out and rebuild exactly as we wish.

 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.  And in that space is our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl