Day 7: Reverence for Your Home

My home is my sanctuary. My office is also my sanctuary. These are places where I walk in and just feel "Ahhhhhhh". This is how your home, your office, and even your car, or places where you spend a lot of time, should be. How much does your home contribute to your sense of health, wellbeing and ease? A great deal! When your home or office is a mess, cluttered, and disorganized, this creates mental and emotional turbulence that supports the stress response rather than a restful awareness response in the body-mind. This can translate into chemicals being released in the body that contribute to dis-ease, weight gain and other issues that make us feel fatigued, unhealthy, unhappy, frustrated or discontent. In the ancient arts of Feng Shui (environmental aspect of Chinese Medicine) or Vastu Shastra (the environmental balance aspect of Ayurveda), the environment plays a big part in how we feel, how we attract prosperity into our lives, how harmonious or disharmonious our relationships are, and how energy in our life flows in general. 
Take the time to go through your home and see where you might eliminate clutter (the first rule of Feng Shui and Vastu). The extreme expression is hoarding for which there is always a deeper issue(s) at hand and these underlying issues need to be confronted and gently dealt with so as to heal at the first cause. Think of how you feel when you clean out a drawer, a closet or a room. It feels good, doesn't it? Where there is clutter, there is stagnation and just like the energy channels of the body, when we clean up clutter and unblock the stagnation or blockage, prana or life force is restored and we feel better, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The same is true in our environment, and since we are simply extensions of our environment, these things affect us in subtle and not so subtle ways. A clear desk invites a clear mind. Getting into a clean car or walking into a clean, uncluttered house or office invites health, wellbeing, prosperity, and harmony. There will be more on this later, but for now, how do you feel reverence for your home, your office, car or anywhere you spend your time? Is there fragrance, beauty, flow, connection, and a sense of openness and possibility? I have things that I do to create and nurture that sense of reverence I have for my home and office. I adore flowers and always have fresh flowers in their various stages on the kitchen and coffee tables and in the bedroom. I light incense and a candle when I enter my home or office as ritual and a point of transition from home to work or vice versa. Take a moment to think or better yet, feel, who you are when you are in these places and do they speak to the reverence your have for your Self and your environment? What can you do to make your environment more conducive to the goals and dreams you have set for yourself, your relationships, your career and home life. In the quiet moments of contemplation about this, you may be surprised as to what you discover... Ahhhhh. ; )

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