Decluttering one’s home can be quite an experience. When my father passed away in 2012, I inherited a lot of furniture, my mother’s needlepoint and childhood stuff my mother thoughtfully left for me. It took years to sell, donate and reorganize, and at some point, while taking intense care of my aging dog, I just stopped — tired of dealing with ‘stuff’! I let it take up space in my home, with occasional trips to donation places. I accepted the shrinking floor space. Not just inherited stuff, but tech accumulation from documenting my dance career and many stacks of my painted canvases.
Nearly a decade later, I’m reopening my studio to receive students again. I asked a professional organizer, Lisa Deutsch @simplifiedwithstyle to help me clear and organize the studio, and it’s led to some hard choices: Do I really need that Native American doll my father brought back from his drive across the country with my brother in the 1964 Cadillac? What do I do with my mother’s wedding dress? Because of the pandemic, theaters are not open to accept donations! And all these linens, little pillowcases, formal dinner napkins, doilies of my grandmother’s, and especially her chaise lounge, I’ve held onto, hoping to one day have a larger space, and now still waiting for a buyer? I am letting them go, either through selling or donating.
It’s the same pattern with the Alexander Technique — unlearning is not a one-off. It’s a process. Come in for lessons, but then work on them by yourself. It’s not a chore: It’s the best way to move forward, to live better, be curious about why you do it the way you do it. Back in my apartment, I’m thoroughly enjoying the reclaimed space!
As she patiently teaches me about categories and putting things together in the right place, it’s making me aware of some bad habits. As a child, I used to try on outfit after outfit before leaving for school, knowing my mother would put them away. Now, I’m learning how to keep the cabinet tidy after it’s been organized. If I’m putting sheets away, I take the time to fold it properly — and that’s a change from past behaviors. I wouldn’t return the yoga props to the wrong category at my yoga teachers studio, so why don’t I have the same respect in my own space, I asked myself?
We do this to our own body. Disrespect it. Like so many things we learned while growing up, we absorbed our parents and family’s unaware habits. We’re a kid, we don’t know! We imitated what they did, and either rebelled against what they did, said, or obeyed, sometimes to our own detriment. We all go through this.
It usually takes pain to signal that something needs our attention, or in the case of material possessions, loss of space, and both are calling for reclamation. Inheritance of stuff or habits, calls for us to look at it, and make choices, some harder than others, but ultimately freeing, to reveal what it is we want, and how we want to live, and in what functionality we live in our body.
It really should be considered a rite of passage, unlearning bad habits acquired while growing up, like graduating from college, getting married, and/or having a baby. Once we pay more attention to how we do, what we do, and don’t lose ourselves while engaged in an activity, the closer we come to ourselves, to being and accepting our Self.
Make your body The Container Store® of your spirit!
A pain-free body is a rich reward. I see. . .countertops now, and it’s equivalent to the effect of freeing my neck, and letting my head go forward and up. More floor space is like my joints opening and widening my back. Giving away things I don’t need to people who do, is equivalent to lengthening my spine and opening my heart. Maybe I should tag The Listening Body® with: ‘Simplified with Freedom’?
It’s really a case of reorganizing the body — we forget to sit on the sits bones, and slump back on the back of them and the sacrum, over stretching the lumbar vertebra, until the pain offers a harsh reminder. It’s a matter of paying attention to what we’re doing, and being present — not losing our awareness during daily activities.
The new placement of the torso upon the femur heads, and sending the knees away first as you walk, remembering to allow the head to go forward and up, and give the directions to your nervous system — it happens gradually and organically, but it does happen. We adjust and accept the new arrangement. The pain dissipates because you’re not moving the way you used to that aggravated the nerves.
In the past year, our daily habits changed dramatically: face masks, isolation and distancing, loss of employment, lack of intimacy in any sense. Moving forward, we can’t take things or people for granted. We’ve been given the opportunity to reimagine and rethink our world; the habits that brought us pain can be let go, and the peace of mind underneath the accumulated mental dependency can be uncovered.
My organizer’s questions can be tiring: Keep this? Toss this? What is this?! Each answer requires a process that reveals emotional attachment or non-attachment. And then I have to breathe, consider, let my neck be free, and respond with the goal in mind. And then, I see the cleared surfaces, and beautifully organized cabinet — it’s so refreshing! The messy artist in me is still there, like any habit that has been decommissioned, where I put my focus, determines where my energy goes, determines what happens and what comes back to me. Observation, non-doing, and allowing gives the new, time to present itself.
Unlike, once that stuff is out the door, it’s gone, bodily habits can return if you return to the same misuse, which is why we practice awareness, inhibition and direction. So, email me: cate@thelisteningbody.com , come see my studio and try a lesson or come back for some re-tuning. We humans love our objects, but our spirits love space more — let’s reorganize, together.
