While I was in Mexico on vacation recently, I read this wonderful book by Kimber Simpkins, a writer and Berkeley-based yoga teacher, entitled Full: How I Learned to Satisfy My Insatiable Hunger and Feed My Soul.
I was pleasantly surprised to come to a part in her book when she recounts a day organizing a closet and specifically addresses the ideas of space, fulfillment, emptiness and forgiveness, all relevant to the work I do as a professional organizer.
“One Monday, morning,” Simpkins begins, “I cleaned, cleared out debris, organized, and straightened, all to make room for a different fullness to come in.”
She continues, comparing the process to her yoga practice, and more specifically, to the idea of breathing.
“Just like us humans…to inhale, we exhale completely first, creating emptiness, a vacuum, and then we fill that space once again with the breath.”
Like yoga, or even conscious breathing, organizing is a practice, one that develops over time, practiced over and over, until it becomes habit. Like breathing.
Creating the physical space in your life invites other things, perhaps previously undiscovered things, realizations and new habits – to emerge.
Once space is emptied, it is only then we have the “space” in our minds to consider what that space should contain again.
We bring conscious intention to those decisions and in doing so to our outer and inner lives as a whole.
This is why I love what I do!
Lis