I Love Space

I’ve never been much into the new year’s resolutions per se, but the new year does tend to lend itself toward reflection and thinking about what direction I’m going in.  I’ve been making big changes on the work frontier—my own practice in my own office.  My own space.  I love space.  In my mind, part of what this new situations affords me is the ability to have more space in my day.  My plan is to take five minutes to lie down (a practice I got from Cheri Huber, for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it), to go on a walk, to meditate in the middle of the day or do a little yogasana (those are the poses).  I have actually been doing it, though there is room for growth (thank goodness, because there are eleven and a half more months this year).

Another thing that came to me spontaneously the other day was the idea of keeping my email inboxes  cleaned out.  The first crazy part of that is that I have multiple boxes, right?  Samarya, business, personal, phone.  It can be hard to keep up with it all (but not really).  At the end of the year, with my work transition, I deleted A LOT of old emails and even though the part of me that likes to have things “just in case” felt a little concerned, mostly it just felt great.  The other day, I suddenly thought how great it would be to keep all the emails down to just what needs response or has needed current info.  If there’s something I want to save for later, then do something with it, at least archive it, but don’t leave it in the inbox.  I realized pretty quick that the only way to keep up with this is to deal with things relatively immediately (if there is such a thing).

I was wondering which yoga concept fits best with this.  Aparigraha?  Certainly, there is some non-grasping.  Tapah?  Yes, there is some effort and discipline here.  But I think for me, it’s really shaucha (cleanliness, purity).  And that’s when I got that it is related to making space in my day.  More space.  Getting rid of the cluttered, crowded feeling.  And then I got the word “clarity.”  I think that might be my word for 2012.  I was just reading Brene Brown’s blog and she picks a word for the year and she was talking about how this year her word picked her.  I think that just happened to me.  I’m looking forward to it—the year of clarity.