Essential Stories: From Clutter to Cherry Blossoms
Hello WSFS!
I am still struggling with keeping my dining table clutter free. I keep piling stuff up here. My mother’s table has piles and my brother’s table has piles. What’s going on here? I appreciate Terah’s comments during the webinar on the psychological aspects associated with clutter and I will investigate this further. It’s apparent that it’s going to take more inquiry as well as discipline.
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Life on the Yang Side – Where’s my Yin?
By Liv Kellgren, WSFS Instructor
I’ve been thinking about Yin and Yang lately.
Yin is a slow, patient waltz; Yang is a fast, tripping polka. Yin is an easy whispering beckoning; Yang a loud, demanding push. Yin can be a calm, sweet smile; Yang can be a wild, breathless anxiety. But they’re not glued in these extremities, they slide along the Yin-Yang Spectrum. Also, they are not alone in their positions, as they each need the other for self-identity. For example, that slow, patient waltz can feel really Yang if you’d rather sit out the dance altogether. They are always in relationship to each other, they aren’t fixed in their expression, they each exist as a part of the whole… Sounds a little too much like a riddle. The Yin-Yang spectrum is Nebulous? Changing? Fascinating? Yesyesyes.
As you can see, I’ve been thinking A LOT about Yin and Yang lately. Perhaps you’ve seen the circle, two spinning paisleys, the black one with a white eye and the white one with a black eye. Sometimes I even think they are watching! Those “eyes” remind us that within all Yin is Yang, and within the Yang there’s a little Yin, too. I even notice how Yin and Yang somersault around each other, each taking turns in the predominant role. Together, they symbolize balance. Or at least the search for Balance. I know I’m looking for Balance.
Like most people in-this-culture-at-this-time, I live on the Yang side of life. (And I like it!) A pot of coffee, workout at the gym, grocieriesplaygroupsearrands and then naptime for the kiddies at noon. Yep, some days do indeed squish together. This life in the suburbs with two kids under 3 has become a life of early mornings, to-do lists and a tile floor covered in loud, hard toys. It’s all too easy for me to turn my engines on full speed and gogogo; It’s an automatic setting at this point. But I’ve learned it’s unsustainable (unfortunately): Too much coffee = reflux. Stepping on toys hurts. What day is it, really? How do I create/find/allow for moments of peacefulness – especially if everything else in this life right now is not?
The one gift that Life on the Yang Side has for people like me (like us?) is that just about anything else is Yin. Looking at the Yin Yang Sliding Scale of Sanity, I’m waaaaaay over on the Yang Side. Not as far as it can go by any means, but far enough that there’s wholelotta Yin waiting to be discovered! I’ve been able to incorporate some Yin features into our daily lives that have helped me find some important moments of balance.
• We go outside for a walk – even if it’s just around the block – once or twice a day. This may seem a little Yang-ish, but we walk slowly, look at bugs, pick flowers, meander, hold hands, look at stars.
• We don’t watch the news. Ever. We have a TV and cable and Roku for kiddie movies, foreign films and stand-up comedians, but no “reality” TV. This alone has nearly erased that wild, breathless anxiety.
• We stop and listen to each other. To talk to the toddler, I’ll get on her same level, make eye-contact and summarize back to her what I heard. To talk to the baby, I’ll get on his same level (or lift him up to mine), and agree with everything he babbles, filling in the incomprehensible gaps. (The toddler now listens and talks to him the same way!) My husband and I stop what we’re doing, turn toward each other, make eye-contact and listen – without responding. These moments have established a deep connection between us and the freedom to self-express.
And I’m looking for more. Life on the Yang Side can be a challenge. And I want to create/find/allow for even more moments of Yin. What is it that YOU do to seek out Balance?
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The Big Rug: Why Feng Shui Works
By Becky Iott, WSFS Instructor
I help my clients and myself create beautiful environments that we love to live and work in. I don’t promise more.
But I remember that when I first heard about Feng Shui and I took that sad picture of two beached boats out of the part of our home associated with Fame and Reputation, and replaced it with an image of a serene woman wearing a freakishly beautiful headdress, a huge misunderstanding about my family swiftly corrected.
I remember when a client cleaned out a storage room filled to overflowing and untouched for 20 years, and within weeks found the perfect house she had wanted for decades.
I remember the woman who gave away all the clothes that made her feel less than her best (almost all of them) and bought a few nice things she loved, and received a significant promotion and salary raise.
I know about 1000 stories like these.
I also know it doesn’t always work this way. Sometimes Feng Shui works more like a novel than a blurb. That’s why I don’t guarantee Feng Shui at all; but, I have a lot of confidence in it. I don’t know what will happen when you clean out your closets or make your front door beautiful and welcoming or arrange your furniture for comfort and conversation. But I can imagine what might happen. You can too.
People sometimes say that Feng Shui is “only psychological”. But human nature is psychological and Feng Shui is about humans as a part of nature. And things go better for humans psychologically when we live and work in safe, beautiful environments surrounded by what we love and value. We feel better. We look better. We make better decisions. We work smarter. We think more clearly. We behave better. Please, give me “only psychological” every day of my life!
If Feng Shui were only psychological that would be enough for me, but, something else happens when we enhance our environment. I can understand that the amazing headdressed woman in my house made us feel better about ourselves and that affected others’ thoughts about us too, but the correction of the misunderstanding came fast–I would use the term automatic–one thing followed the other seemingly as cause and effect.
Cleaning out the old stuff from storage helped one client lighten her load psychologically and she easily found the house she wanted. Getting rid of the old wardrobe propelled another woman to move forward professionally. But the changes in these circumstances were also swift and unexplainable.
For me, this is synchronicity, a deep form of intelligent coincidence where things come together in one’s Feng Shui, one’s feelings and one’s circumstances that are simultaneous or nearly so.
That brings me to the big rug. I’m a slow jammin’ kind of Feng Shui practitioner in my own home. I take my time, girls, to find the right thing, the deep and sexy thing. The wall is blank until I find the image I really want to see. And the living room floor didn’t have a rug for years because I couldn’t find just the one I wanted to see every day and wanted to feel under my feet.
This year I found it. A luscious wool oval with big gardenias, free flowing as if they were painted with a gigantic wet brush. No repeat in the pattern so it looks like art, a pale beauty against the dark wood floor, soulful partner with the pear colored sofa, piquant contrast to the dark purple chair. I’m feeling the happy only psychological effect of it right now.
It makes the room feel like a room, a whole thing with an identity, and a gracious, spacious welcomeness. It is a happy elegant rug and as soon as I installed it in our Wealth and Prosperity gua big happy elegant things began to happen. My husband is a musician and was offered a gig for too little money so he asked for double thinking they would find someone else, and they found the money for him instead. I had wanted to start a particular writing project for 15 years, and it started coming out of me without strain. And, the really big thing, I had one of those personal insights you don’t get often, a big internal shift in my understanding of my identity that life circumstances continue to rearrange themselves to accommodate.
I could have found a rug years ago, but not this rug. This rug is synchronous, the big rug that ushers in big transformations. Did the big beautiful rug bring us big beautiful circumstances and clarity? Or did big beautiful circumstances and clarity require a rug to match? I don’t know, but I see it all the time. Good Feng Shui, deep feelings, and life circumstances align for transformation and we move forward.
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Let it Shine
By Becky Iott, WSFS Instructor
When I don’t know what to do next for my home, I clean something. It’s fun and it’s free! Clean. Polish. Organize. Tidy up. A little mundane, huh? A little dull.
But then everything shines.
Except there are exceptions.
Sometimes when I am invited into someone’s home as a Feng Shui consultant, I walk into an almost unbelievable spotlessness, a clean so clean, a tidy so widy that I am speechless. And a Feng Shui consultant can’t stay speechless for long.
“What a beautiful home you have,” I say. “I wish my home were as clean.”
She is crestfallen. “It’s a mess. I wish it could be cleaner.”
“Does your family help with the work?”
“Oh, no,” she says. Translation: They would not do a good enough job.
“How much time do you spend cleaning every week?”
“Not much.” Clearly, every possible moment.
Later in the consultation I may ask the client if she knows her life purpose and she always does. The clarity of her cleanliness often reflects a clear mind.
“How much time did you devote to your life purpose this week?”
Now she is speechless. Because she hasn’t spent any time on it. Not that week, not in many weeks.
If your life purpose, your reason to be on this planet at this time, is to create a very high standard of cleanliness in your home—and I know people for whom this is true—do not let me or anyone else interfere with it.
But if you have something else important to do in this lovely lifetime, and you’re not devoting time and energy to it, reduce cleaning time by 25% NOW.
Enlist everyone you live with to do their fair share. Clean first whatever needs to be clean and organized for you to devote one hour a week to your life purpose, then two hours a week, then three, more if you can.
With good Feng Shui, everything shines, everyone shines, and so does your life purpose. Let it shine!
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Happy Valentine’s Time!
One of the everyday ways we can express the love we feel for our homes is to call them by their true names… Here, WSFS teacher Becky Iott shares her experience of naming her home sweet home…
I invite you to share the name of your home with me and those around you. It breathes new life into your abode every time you do. My new home was immediately forthcoming with her name: Earth Haven.
Living In Love,
Terah Kathryn Collins
Ideas for Creative Holiday Gifts
by Kac Young PhD, ND, DCH
We recycle, we buy fresh, we shop locally, but what else might we do to unburden our planet from the excess of holiday gift-giving? This year we have the opportunity to get really creative! If you use the guidelines in my Five E’s to shape your shopping list this year, you’ll help to curtail the buildup of trash. When you think about unnecessary waste remember that more than 8,000 tons of wrapping paper are used each Holiday season – the equivalent of approximately 50,000 trees. Americans throw out 38,000 miles of ribbon each year.[1] But, we can conserve our resources by purchasing wisely and thoughtfully.
The Five E’s
When you think about buying gifts for family and loved ones, keep in mind that less is very often more. Here are five categories to keep in mind:
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