~Creating Internal Space - Spring Cleaning of the Mind~

Spring is around the corner... Or is it here...? Oh the sun, its been a beaut seeing you these past few days!

Is it just me or does it feel like spring is slower to come around this year? Only within the last weeks have I noticed the beautiful budding in trees and feel that nature is beginning to bloom.

With that comes the typical spring cleaning of your closet and house. Why do we do this? It is a symbolic way to mark the seasonal transition, right? I remember as a child this was a time for cleansing and preparing for a change, a shift of sorts. My mom would help me pack up my winter clothes and swap them out for my spring/summer clothes. It was a rite of passage, a literal transition into a new season, a new way of thinking, and longer brighter days...

I think of spring as a time to get the gears going again. Especially, after a cold, dark, rainy winter, its time to fall in love with the outdoors (not that the love has stopped but the motivation to explore is reinvigorated). So with the physical process of spring cleaning perhaps we need to apply the same mechanism of action to our internal head space!?

Admittedly, I wrote this entire blog post weeks ago before the COVID pandemic struck the planet...

So here we go:

----------- Pre-COVID perspective--------

Clearing out the mental debris and making space for more opportunities that will serve you. I was chatting with a dear friend of mine a few weeks ago and we were talking about the rigidity in our lives. How each of us and our partners just felt bogged down and that we had lost some of that spontaneous flexibility. I mean her and I are both vibrant, motivated beings trying to create a career. Each of us creating our own businesses that inspires us and those around us, and same goes for our partners. So balance is key, especially while juggling work, school and all of the things...

She then proclaimed that her and her partner were going to lighten things up, stop taking life so seriously. This includes dancing at home, taking more skip days, being silly, at least this is how I interpreted it. Well I took a page from her book, I have been singing more in the car (I know I have to be careful with the distracted driving tickets that the police tend to be handing out like parents do candy to children on Halloween...). HA!

The next thing that she said that resonated with me was that when you fill your plate up with too many activities, to much work, homework "to-do's", etc.. you are closing doors to opportunities that have not even presented themselves yet.

So you aren't even allowing any space for things that serve you to be drawn towards you. If you look at the Universal Laws one of them is the Law of Opportunity, this law suggests that opportunities for your souls growth will present itself when you are ready to take them.

That means if you have too much going on and you are getting caught up in all these tasks, where does this allow for stillness/a gap, that break in yourself that allows the soul to grow? It does not exist. You have shut that door before it even presented itself to you.

------------in the midst of COVID-----------

Now we have an abundance of time, at least that what people keep saying. So have you already tackled your spring cleaning or are you procrastinating like me?

Have you already created that space physically or mentally? Or do you feel stuck, as if you cant quite switch the gear into second?

So think of this month as a spring cleaning for the soul and the mind, creating space in there to allow you to attract towards you the things you WANT in your orbit. Especially now! Take this time to ask the hard questions, explore yourself, your partners/friends/families? Who are you in the stillness? Who are you during this time? Do you sit in your thoughts or do you avoid them by keeping busy and building distractions...? Why do you do this?

In regards to cleaning I have struggled with finding the motivation to do the deep clean physically. Perhaps this symbolizes my internal state of idling as well. Then yesterday I had an excess of energy and a weird head space, so I decided to harness that energy, plug in some music, and go and scrub my bathroom and bedroom. It felt so good afterwards. I felt purified, I felt calm enough to sit by a fire, read a book, and then cried at my book... followed by watching the sunset at 7:00 pm (YAY the days feel longer). It was truly a beautiful day.

Despite how surreal the world is that we are living in, it felt good to tap into this rite of passage and help with this seasonal change. This helped clear my mind. It is allowing me to transition into this new season, this new world, this way of living and just BE.

Think of this year's spring cleaning as a physical task and a mental purification. Cleanliness is a part of the Yoga Sutra's - Sauca which means to clean/purify. Its important that the space you live in matches the mindset you want to inhabit.

This is the time to reconnect with yourself, spark new passions, explore old passions and hobbies, be silly, take the layers off and discover the beauty that is you. And once again take this time, this season, this life to just BE. Be you.

Picture taken in Mui Ne, Vietnam, January 2020. I just loved this dragon.