Feng Shui Tips Help You Spring Into Action To Renew Your Home
It is no accident that "Spring Cleaning" is a practice familiar to our grandmothers that we still employ today. According to Christan Hummel, author of the Do-It-Yourself Space Clearing Kit (One Source Publications), cultures throughout history have aligned their basic activities with the rhythm of the seasons to achieve desired results. "The spring, when life is bursting forth with abundance, is a time for new projects and activities," says Hummel. "By synchronizing our home activities with the cycles of nature, we align ourselves with the natural pulsation of Life."
According to Hummel, the Feng Shui technique called "space clearing" in our home or office is just the ticket. She offers simple techniques to clear the old stagnant energies of our homes or offices to make way for new opportunities in the year ahead.
Here are some of her key recommendations on how to clean up clutter and the stuck energy where you live based on the principles of the ancient Chinese practice.
According to Hummel, clutter has four main causes:
1. Time: We lead busy lives and lack of time creates jobs left undone; as a result, clutter piles up.
Problem: These piles drain our life energy making it more difficult to tackle the tasks at hand so that a vicious cycle ensues.
ACTION: Take baby steps. Tackle your clutter problem the way you would eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Take one hour a day, or even one hour a week, but be dedicated to that hour and devote yourself to tackling the piles of paper, old clothes that need mending or the unfinished jobs that clutter up your office or home.
2. Space: With increasing prices of homes, many of us have found ourselves downsizing and space is an issue. With professional organizers commanding upwards of $50/hour, it behooves us to liberate as much of our space as possible by clearing out the clutter piles.
Problem: The clutter triggers a visual alert in the brain when we see it staring us in the face day after day. Feelings of powerlessness, guilt and anxiety are common results as we try and sidestep these "to do lists" which call for our attention each time we pass by them.
ACTION: Out of sight, out of mind! Free up the space by getting the clutter put away and out of sight until you have the time to deal with it. Having it sit in front of you each day doesn't make it go away any faster.
Pack up the unnecessary or inactive items and put them in storage, in the garage or out of the common living areas. This frees up those important Ch'i zones and also gets the visual space clear, leaving your mind more at peace and you feeling more rested and able to deal with the clutter when the time comes. Remember the one hour a week you committed to?
3. Emotional connection: Sometimes we resist deciding on something because we have emotional connections to the items. The classic example is inheriting your dead relative's teacup collection. What to do with them? One can only have so many teacups anyway, right? But they are precious, and you don't want to let them go. So they sit there for months and years holding the dead energy and the indecision.
Problem: The emotional baggage associated with these items is choking that invisible Ch'i which is the lifeblood of your home.
ACTION: Do some emotional release work, a closure ceremony, perhaps one in which you feel gratitude, appreciation and love for the person in question, then let their items go. Keep one or two representative items, and give the others to special people, family members, friends, special organizations close to your heart. Let grandma's cups circulate in the community, not stay locked up in your living room.
4. Unseen causes of clutter: Unresolved emotional issues such as financial stress, arguments, prolonged illness, or the death of a family member are all significant elements in creating blocked or stagnant Ch'i. Like a river, Ch'i flows when healthy, and when blocked becomes stagnant. Clutter, like leaves and debris collecting in a blocked river, collects in these blocked Ch'i paths in the home.
Problem: The unseen issues manifest as very visible-and unsightly-messes.
ACTION: Go around the house to places where there have been past traumas or difficulties. Do a cleansing ceremony (sage, or candles work well) and intend that the blockages be cleared from that space. Intentionally bring in something which represents more flowing energy, such as a fountain, chimes, or living things like plants, to bring life energy back into that area.
With some small investment on our part, we can dramatically change the energies of our environment, making our homes a sanctuary to reflect our highest intentions and dreams. As Nature renews itself in the Springtime world outside our windows, so too can we renew the spaces where we live and work.
