It’s springtime!
There’s a freshness and a vibrancy of new life emerging from the earth.
Can you feel it?
It’s not only in the earth… We can feel the spring energy activating something inside us.
This fresh renewed energy inspires a natural impulse to clean out the old to make way for the new.
Spring cleaning.
There’s something very special during this time of year. While we could do a summer cleaning, fall cleaning, or a winter cleaning, they just don’t feel the same as doing it with the renewed energy that comes with the spring.
This impulse to cleanse is a principle that’s very alive during spring and relevant to all aspects of our life. From spring cleaning our home, to cleansing and detoxing our body and mind, the energy of spring supports this natural process.
Whatever level of spring cleaning we do, ultimately, it’s about a cleansing of how we feel inside our self. A cleansing of our body and mind to make ways for fresh inspirations, an open heart, greater vitality, new possibilities, and a greater sense of peace.
If you’ve been feeling this fresh spring energy bubbling up inside you, then this blog will help you to understand the energy of spring and offer some simple and effective suggestions of how you can align with it for your personal transformation.
Spring Cleaning the Body and Mind
Just as we cleanse the environment of our home, we also need to cleanse our inner environment.
While most of us spend a considerable amount of time in our home, we spend our entire life in the inner environment of our body and mind… We take this wherever we go. So, cleansing our body and mind is an important foundation!
Of course, when we take time to spring clean our home there’s a resulting cleansing of our mind and emotions. To what degree depends on our level of self awareness, willingness to feel and reflect, and how consciously we do the cleansing.
The impulse we feel to spring clean our home is the same impulse to spring clean our body and mind.
This blog is not about how to spring clean your physical home, it’s about things you can do to ride the spring energy and do some inner spring cleaning to renew your vitality and sense of self, how you feel.
There’s a reason why people are inspired to do a cleanse or detox at this time of year. The fresh vital energy wants to come through, but it needs space and freedom to do so. For example, a fresh solution to a problem can only come when we let go of any rigid thought patterns or tightly held belief systems that might be closing our mind to that fresh solution.
The energy of spring is in the air, and if we pay attention to it, we feel it… and when we allow our self to feel it, we naturally respond.
So, if you’d like to do a little spring cleaning in your life and open your heart to new possibilities, I have a few suggestions that can help you. You might even realize a little inner spring cleaning is not as difficult as you thought.
Commitment
Before I share some suggestions on what you can do, it’s important to keep in mind that the kind of spring cleaning for your body and mind I’m talking about is something you commit to for a time. You might choose to go for 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, two weeks or maybe longer.
Decide what you’ll do, how long you’ll go for, and then commit.
It’s better to commit to something you feel is achievable than to go for something extreme and fail.
After the set time, you may decide that since you feel so good, you might extend it. Or maybe you realize you don’t need that thing you were cleansing from anymore and simply let it go from your life altogether.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be extreme or complicated. Sometimes it can be, but that doesn’t mean that simple can’t be powerful too!
Having said that, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy! We often don’t fully comprehend what were cleansing until we start. ?
We’re all unique. You are where you are… don’t try and compare yourself to someone else. Just be honest with yourself and feel what resonates with you and what you can commit to. Your commitment is what will carry you through any challenging times – cravings for the things you’re cleansing from and emotional attachments to those things.
Emotions and Attachments
One last important point before my inner spring cleaning suggestions. Whatever you choose to do for your cleanse it’s important to be conscious of the emotions that you’ll likely feel along the way, as well as your attachment to the things you’re letting go of.
We often don’t realize how deeply we’re attached to certain things until we start to let them go… and our emotions and feelings show us exactly what these attachments are.
Allow yourself to be present with your emotions. Try not to judge yourself, your reactions or your thoughts. Just notice them. Learn from them. What are they showing you about yourself?
This is one of the ways we develop greater emotional intelligence and resilience.
Here’s a helpful video I made a little while ago where I describe the foundation of why change can be challenging: Understanding Change: Why It Can Feel Uncomfortable And Painful At Times
Inner Spring Cleaning Suggestions
Food
One of the simple ways to cleanse our body is through diet.
Over the winter months we tend to eat heavier foods that give us the nurturing we need during this time. But as we move into spring there’s a call to cleanse the excess we’ve accumulated.
This cleansing of the old to make way for the new can also be a cleansing of our habits of eating. Some eating habits nurture us, and some do not. Food can also have a strong emotional component, so for your spring cleaning, emotional eating can be something you can choose to acknowledge, reflect on, and let go of.
From extreme to subtle there are many ways to cleanse the body with diet, and not all methods are right for everyone. We all have different constitutions, and we all have our own reasons and goals for taking on this process of cleansing.
Be honest with yourself about what you want and what you know you can commit to. Remember it doesn’t have to be extreme.
Here are a few simple examples you can use to cleanse your body through diet.
Remove the excess
The simplest approach is to remove the excess food you eat. Do you overeat? Do you eat a lot of sweets? Could you commit to a time frame of reducing meal size, excess snacks, and/or removing sweets and refined sugars.
This might sound simple, but remember, that doesn’t mean easy. Especially if you’re an emotional eater. Those extra snacks you eat because you’re anxious or stressed can be challenging to give up, because instead of distracting yourself from the underlying emotion by eating, you might be faced with actually feeling more of those emotions.
This is a cleansing of the mind and emotions by letting go of attachments to the food we eat and the unconscious habits that can run much of our life. So, if you’re taking this approach be mindful of your emotions and take time to feel them and be present with them.
Again, I highly recommend watching the video I mentioned above to help you understand change and the sense of self… Because what’s changing through this process is your sense of self.
Simplify
A mono diet can be a great way to simplify. This means eating basically the same simple food every meal for the number of days you can commit to.
A common option for this is a kitchari cleanse. Kitchari is typical Ayurvedic meal of split mung beans and basmati rice with various spices such as cardamon, cumin, coriander and cinnamon. Cooked vegetables and ghee can also be included. One of the great advantages to this option is that you don’t have to starve yourself, but eating this easy to digest meal for several days allows your digestion to take a break.
You might be pleasantly surprised how cleansed and detoxed you feel, even though you’ve been eating.
This is something I personally do every spring.
This mono diet could also be done with simple soups.
These are two simple and effective methods, but if you feel you want to do something more extreme with your diet, then I recommend talking to a professional nutritionist.
Digital Detox
Just as we have a food diet, we also have a digital diet.
Do you spend a lot of time on your smart phone, social media, YouTube, TV or Netflix?
How much is necessary?
How much is a distraction?
What’s the absolute minimum technology you could use for a short phase?
Try to remove social media from your mental diet. Forget about what others are doing for a while and just focus on you. Notice how much better you feel about yourself.
Can you stop binge-watching YouTube, Netflix or other similar platforms?
We often don’t understand how attached we are to these things until we give them up. We also may not realize just how toxic they can be, until we have a break from them.
As you detox yourself from digital stimulation (or sedation), remember to pay attention to how you feel. Notice the impulse or cravings to use these things. Notice how much you use them to fill your time. Do they distract you from just being with yourself?
Are you uncomfortable with silence?
Are you uncomfortable with yourself?
Pay attention to your emotions. Use this time to be present with them. They may be uncomfortable at first, but notice how the discomfort is usually more from trying to avoid your emotions and feelings. When we allow ourselves to actually feel the emotions for what they are, we change our relationship to them… we journey deeper into our self.
Drop Habits that Aren’t Serving You
What habits do you have that you know aren’t serving you?
I’m sure there’s at least one that comes to your mind right now. Maybe it’s something mentioned above, like your addiction to social media, YouTube or Netflix. Perhaps your eating habits?
Here are a few other habits to consider dropping for your spring cleaning.
- Complaining.
- Judging or criticizing yourself or others.
- Overpowering others in conversation.
- Speaking to fill a silence. Can you enjoy the silence instead?
These are just a few suggestions to help you get started. If you’ve know you have any of these habits, make a commitment to let them go. Notice how you feel when you have the impulse to act on these habits. Be honest and reflective – why do you do them? What can you learn about yourself?
Or if you haven’t realized you have any of these habits, perhaps commit to paying attention to yourself and see what habits you do have that aren’t serving your best and highest interests.
Cultivate new habits
Creating new habits or emphasizing habits that lift us up or make us more reflective and internalized are also important because they help support the letting go of the old, while also helping to reconnect to our heart and carry us towards a life of greater clarity and peace.
Journaling
Taking time to reflect and journal your thoughts, emotions and experiences is a good way to become more conscious of our habits of behaviour and thinking. This is a great way to help support all that can come up for you through your inner spring cleaning.
Movement
The body likes to move. Use this vibrant spring energy to commit to more movement and exercise. Find a method or practice that resonate with you and feel the vibrancy of life flowing through you.
- Yoga.
- Working out at the gym.
- Riding your bike.
- Getting out in nature – hiking or walking depending on what you need right now.
Commit to doing something everyday for a phase. This can help create a momentum to carry into your life beyond this phase of spring cleaning.
If you already have a regular workout or movement routine, see if you can allow the vital spring energy to bring something new to your movement.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness means to be consciously aware of what we’re doing and feeling. The beauty of mindfulness is that you don’t necessarily need more time to do it – you’re just focusing your mind to be present to what you’re doing anyway.
Try committing to being extra mindful during something like your exercise or movement. Or it could be as simple as being fully present to yourself and your actions when brushing your teeth, taking a shower, or washing your dishes. Or being more present with your family and friends when interacting with them.
Pay attention to how you feel when you’re present and mindful compared to when you aren’t. This helps you to recognize the power of your mind to change how you feel. Mindfulness is more powerful than you think! Notice how the more mindful you are throughout your day, the less drained or tired you are at the end of the day.
Just like with meditation, when you’re practicing mindfulness and being present, at times your mind will wander off to something other than what you’re doing. So the goal is to realize your mind has wandered, and then bring your awareness back. Repeat and repeat.
Start by choosing a few activities or situations you do regularly. Once you’re remembering to be mindful with these, then expand to include more. After a week of doing this you’ll realize how much vitality you save because you’re not draining it by overthinking.
Meditation
Meditation is a practice of both letting go and an allowing of the new to to emerge from within. As we begin to quiet the usual and familiar noise pollution of our mind, a deep nurturing stillness emerges, and our life-force awakens. No longer suppressed by the dramas in our mind and the heavy burden of overthinking, our vitality regains a greater freedom.
We feel more alive!
It’s incredible how refreshed and renewed we can feel just by learning to quiet the noise in our mind.
If you have a regular meditation practice, for your inner spring cleaning impulse, now can be a great time to commit to increasing your practice for a couple of weeks (or more). Sometimes our meditation practice starts to plateau, and from time to time we need to have a phase of more intense practice to take us to a new level. Perhaps for a few weeks you could do longer meditations, or an extra meditation (or two) each day.
If you’ve had a meditation practice previously but haven’t done it for a while, now is a great time for a fresh restart.
If you haven’t meditated before (but I know you’ve been thinking about it), again, this is a great time to follow the freshness of spring and start your journey into meditation… A journey into yourself.
Create Your Path
Feel the inspiration of the spring energy inside you. This fresh energy wants to flow through you. Let it inspire your inner spring cleaning and show you what you need to do.
What I’ve shared above are just some suggestions that can help you. Some of them may call to you more than others, but maybe they’ve sparked other ideas that are specific to you.
Ride the spring energy and create your path!
Support and Guidance
Depending on where you’re at and what you want to achieve, if you’d like some support or guidance, I have several offerings for you.
Meditation Essentials – A Free Introduction to Meditation Online Course. Learn more.
Finding Stillness – A 21 Day Comprehensive Meditation and Mindfulness Online Program. Learn more.
Private Sessions – If you feel like you could use some personal support, I’d love to help you. Private sessions are about helping you create personal strategies for your life to quiet your mind so you can live from your heart. Areas we cover include meditation, mindfulness, emotional alchemy and understanding what sensitivity truly is. Learn more and contact me.
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