Tag Archives: change

Five Spring Clean Decluttering Tips

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photo (86) (1)1. Start small.

If Decluttering seems overwhelming start small..  Pick one drawer, on basket, one pile, or one room.  Break it down to something that is achievable.  Even a small corner of opened space will create new energy in your home and your life.

2.  Look for paper clutter.

Paper clutter comes in many forms.  Junk mail, catalogs, newspapers, magazines, even books.  Be ruthless with the paper clutter.  Ask yourself if that piece of mail is necessary and if it is file it away in an appropriate place. Go through your filing system quarterly or at least yearly to eliminate things that no longer need to be saved.  Can you archive anything online instead? Books you don’t read?  Donate them to your library.

3.  Give away gifts you don’t want

This is a tough one for people.  Almost everyone has been given gifts that they don’t want or need.  Out of guilt we hold on to them.  That guilt can way us down tremendously.  Give yourself the permission to let go of old gifts.  Give them away to someone else.  Shed the guilt.  You won’t hurt your aunt’s feelings.  And if you do, she will get over it.

4.  Ask yourself, “Is it sacred to me?”

One point of point decluttering is to only have things around you that you find meaningful and sacred.  By eliminating the unnecessary and the never used, you can reveal the things that do hold importance to you.  And most of them won’t be things. Clear out to create a sacred space.

5.  Let go of “just in case”

Keeping things for just in case scenarios is very tempting. We have the fear that the minute we get rid of something will be the minute we need that thing.  In actuality this is rarely ever the case. Let it go and make space for the new.  Don’t reinforce to yourself that there is a lack or scarcity in the world that you need to be prepared for.  Instead, grow your social connections, your family and friend time.  These are the resources that will really matter.

2011 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

How to Keep Calm and Carry on Doing Yoga over the Holidays

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Holidays are wonderful; some time off of work, maybe a trip or vacation, lots of family, and lots of food.  It also means you could quite possibly find yourself out of your regular routine or away from your yoga studio, and all when you need yoga more than ever.

Here are some ways to bring the yoga to you when you can’t get to class

1. Online video classes:

with Yogaglo or YogaVibes Hundreds of great classes at your fingertips!

2.  DVD’s:

Yoga Journal  has many great DVD’s for home practice and therapeutics with teachers like Annie Carpenter, Natasha Rizopoulos, and Jason Crandell.

Gaiam also has an array of great videos including Seane Corn’s Detox Flow and Kathryn Budig’s Aim True (newly released!)

3. Podcasts

There are loads of audio and video podcasts on iTunes these days.  Yoga Journal and Core Power Yoga are just a couple that you will find.  Here is a a YogaJournal podcast featuring Kathryn Budig on building core strength:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEnp8sgi4F0

4.  Roll out your mat and flow your own way! Home practice can also be a good opportunity for unedited creativity.

So these holidays, Keep calm and do yoga even if you can’t get to class.

Let it Go: Why Savasana is So Hard, and Steve Jobs was So Right

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Photo Courtesy Rene Carrillo

Dead body pose. Corpse pose.  Savasana.

For some of us this seems to come so easy.  Lie there and be still.  Relax.  Release.  Give over to the moment. Ahh

But for so many, this pose is hard. I don’t want to close my eyes.  Why Am I laying here?  This is a waste of time.  My face itches.  I am hungry.  Are my shoulders in the right place? I wish the teacher would stop talking.  I’m bored.

We resist change and transformation because something has to die in order to give birth to the new.  We must ‘die’ in the moment of savasana to let the new being take shape. I think the fear is that if I let go of what I think I am, what I think I know, then who am I?

Letting go is one of the lessons that we get from death.  We realize that we actually have so little control after all.  Not one person in the history of the world has escaped it yet, and none of us ever will.  So how does one take this lesson of dead body pose and turn it into something less morbid and depressing?

I recently re-watched Steve jobs’ Stanford speech, posted through TED on “How to live before you die”.  Well, he certainly did. Watch the video below for his full speech, even more prophetic now he has passed. In a nutshell:  Trust your gut.  Follow your heart.  Be led off the well worn path…and trust that the dots will connect in the future. Never settle, and do what you love.  Lastly, ask yourself each day, “if today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And if the answer is no too many days in a row,  you have to change what you are doing.

When you live with the knowledge of your own death,  you have nothing to lose.

So die to the moment.  Give yourself to savasana.  Let go of what does not serve you.  And wake up to the new you, the best you every day.

I was cycling home today and I saw a girl on a bike nearly run over an older couple.  She yelled at them because she had a green light and they were in the road when they shouldn’t be.  The man told her she was going too fast.  And she got angry with them. Here is a perfect example of where needing to be right is just so wrong.  When did our humanity become prostrate to being right? Let it go.

Let it go. Let something die in order for something else to take shape. Give yourself the five minutes you get in savasana. And live before you die.

See You Later Twenties

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Snail

Today is the last day of my twenties.  I am assured that the thirties, aside from hangovers, are much improved.  When I started blogging a couple of years ago it was actually under the title of “Quarterlife Crunch”.  As it payed homage to the journeys of a post-college 20 something in the otties (egads!).  I changed it pretty quickly to my Down Dog Blog, once I realized that my life did in fact have more focus than I thought.

Entering a new decade of life I am taking stock of the last one.  As a constant declutterer I am often all too eager to chuck it out and move on.  I think an important part of decluttering is actually taking a look at what we are letting go of . What we leave behind is as important as what we take with us.  And in one sense I suppose that what we leave behind is the legacy, the impact, the imprint.  But I really mean what we shed and let go of. The world is to be embraced. We can’t hide from the world. But as we let go of what does not serve us the world become s a truer reflection of its best self, because ultimately it is a reflection of us.

I accidentally stepped on a snail the other day and heard the devastating crunch of its shell body.  Peter assured me it would live on as a slug.  I feel slightly bad for changing the course of the life of a snail into that of a slug.  It was unintentional, but it had an impact non the less.  Isn’t that just the way it goes?  All these years I have been impacting people and things in ways I probably don’t even perceive or think about.

As I leave my twenties, I am leaving behind some self-editing, self-judgement, and self-restraint.  But somehow seeking to balance that out with a refined perception of the world, so I can have more consistently thoughtful behavior.  I have an impact, for better or worse, as each one of us does, whether we choose to accept it or not. So I am left thinking today, as I sign off to my twenties…

“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

                                                                                                                                                             - Mary Oliver

Yoga in a Can

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Yoga is infiltrating the UK.  My latest trip into London I found this at Pret a Manger.

And of course I bought one.  Pret is a fantastic chain of fresh quick sandwiches and coffees. And apparently they got the memo…yoga is about to pop in the UK.  Though the Yoga Bunny Detox can of goodness hasn’t made it’s way into Cambridge yet, I know it is only a matter of time.  What will be next?  Tadasana toasties and Om burgers?  Why not.

Making Room For Change

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Rut? Or water finding its way via the path of least resistance?

I noticed recently my own resistance to change.  I always thought of myself as a person who embraced change.  I like new scenery, new adventures, and non-traditional employment.  I also noticed, that all new things, if they remain in our lives long enough become habitual, systematized, and squashed into place. What was once new and free to expand can become something that needs to be understood, labeled, and filed away. There are new things flowing into our lives all the time, we need only open our eyes to them.  These new things can be an expansion of our truest nature and they can also be a diversion from that path.  How do we open ourselves to expansion and still protect ourselves from the scary trek down the wrong path, or almost worse, getting ourselves stuck in a rut?

1. We don’t get to keep what we have by squeezing it more tightly.  We only risk squashing the very spirit of what made it beautiful in the first place. If you love it let it go?  Perhaps this is true for many things:  Sports, hobbies, jobs, people, animals, projects, businesses, clothes…Is any of it really ours to have anyways?  We constantly can feel the pains of loss when we have squeezed something very tightly and seen it slip away.  When we love something we can let it grow, and we can only do this by knowing that it is not ours to keep anyways.  It is a gift, or a moment, or something that is temporarily in our care. And in this way, life is beautiful, and not one moment to be taken for granted.

2.  Life is filled with signposts.  At one point I read Deepak Chopra’s book on Synchrodestiny.  It has to do with the connectedness of things and beings.  The idea is that the universe communicates to us via coincidences and synchronicity.  When we start to look for the coincidences we see even more of them and they are the illuminations along life’s path.  Seek and ye shall find.  Then your own creative process in life happens to be a joint project between you and universal energy.  Can’t say I dislike the idea. Here is a really nice post on synchronicity and creativity from KCThreads.

3.  Don’t worry.  Your ‘path’ always has a way of finding you.  Things seek the path of least resistence. Occam’s razor:  The simplest answer is usually the correct answer (my over simplified definition of course).  A rut is only a rut if you sit there and get stuck in it.  Otherwise it is just some water molecules’ path of least resistance.

We have to grow, and let go, and look for signs to make room for change in our lives.

Yoga doesn’t hurt either.

Waiting for Amaryllis

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I have been staring at a pot of dirt for weeks, trusting that something would start to grow.  A few days ago the amaryllis plant really took off.  Each day now it noticeably gets taller.  So often,  things change at such a pace that you don’t really notice it happening, much like staring at the dirt.  One day you wake up and notice a dramatic change, when actually the change has been happening slowly for a long time.

I am looking forward to each day of of new growth, now that I can watch it happening.  And I recognize that even when I can’t see growth, I have to trust it is happening.