Hey! It's Feng Shui Friday and it's supposed to snow in Denver.  The cooler weather here in Colorado sends us indoors looking for a good book, slippers and sox, comfort food, and the slower pace that autumn brings. 

For years I've been offering tips and ideas on ways to manage our typical clutter:  bags, and boxes, closets, drawers, basements and more.  This fall I began to think about the holistic perspective of clutter: mind, heart, body, and spirit.  October's focus is on BODY de-cluttering, cleansing, and simplifying.  What do you think about decluttering our whole selves, the feng shui way?

Body clutter.  Weight is only one aspect of body clutter.  We hold on to weight for a variety of reasons, but those of us who continue to lament our extra pounds know it's clutter: something we do not love, use or need!  Body clutter can also be arthritis, diabetes, cancer, aches and pains (tooth, knees, back), infections, and illness.  Just like the physical clutter in our environment, we get attached to it and the letting go requires a process of introspection, questioning, understanding, and self-love. 

My journey.  I don't think it's any accident that I am in the de-clutter business.  We teach best what we need to learn.  After years of helping others de-clutter and simplify, teaching classes, and clearing clutter the feng shui way, I have a better understanding of my clutter issues. Born ten weeks premature in 1950 at 3#14oz, it's a miracle I'm alive.  Sadly, my identical twin, 2#14oz wasn't as fortunate and left me after 3 months.  Wondering how different my life would have been had she stayed rarely leaves my mind.  I miss her.  So I've learned I filled the space, because I wasn't enough without her, with stuff: clothes, shoes, books, décor, and more.  Because I'm organized, it never looked or felt cluttered.  But I knew it was all there.  In 1990 my mother died at age 61 of ovarian and breast cancer.  My grandmother, her mother, also died at the same age with the same cancer.  After a diagnosis of cervical carcinoma in situ, I opted to have ovaries and uterus removed 3 months after her passing. Immediately I began to gain weight.  I realized this week that I have gained 100 pounds since she left 23 years ago; gradually at first, followed by diets, gaining back, loosing a lot, gaining it back and more.  Today I am 20 pounds heavier than I was in October 2013.  Somewhere have I decided to hang on to my mother's life-long concerns about her weight and perhaps carry those pounds and worries for her?  Some of my weight issues are physical, but most of them, I am convinced, are an inside job.  I'm not enough. 

We are enough.  Whether its physical stuff we hang on to after our parents or loved ones pass, high school prom dresses and textbooks, or magazines and newspapers, we keep it because without it, our under-developed spiritual self is not convinced we are enough. My teacher Denise Linn said, "Clutter is often linked to our identity. We identify ourselves with our stuff. It makes a statement about who we are. When we throw away clutter [body clutter, too] it can feel like we're throwing away part of ourselves. You were someone very special and unique when you came into this world without possessions and your stuff. And you will be that same person when you go out of this world without them."  Once we understand how perfect we are without all our "stuff" and truly love ourselves, no matter what, we can let go.  According to ACIM (A Course in Miracles) the body is a vehicle for time: time to heal, time to remember who we truly are, time to know how perfect we are, time to forgive, time to love.

This week take a body check from head to toes.  Are there any areas that are cluttered?  What is the attachment?  Where are you in the process of letting go?  What's the worst that could happen if you let it go?  What's the best that could happen if you let it go?  If you're on a journey, like me, where are you in the process?  Do your best to move forward a couple steps this week.