From The Outside In To The Inside Out

Our yoga poses, our yoga breath helps us to heal ourselves.  Physically, mentally, this is what we are doing when we walk into that hot room.  Whether it be a bad knee, a sore back or a broken heart.  We work from the outside with the asanas to heal our insides which then help fix and realize more that is going on on the outside.  When we stretch and breathe and grimace and sweat.  We are working our bodies 100% from the outside to the inside and back again.  Our organs are getting shifted around.  They are getting compressed, stretched and re organized inside our bodies.  Our muscles are getting the attention they deserve.  They are being pushed to their maximum.  They are changing, building, stretching.  Our mind is learning to be still.  To stay quiet, to find a peace it rarely gets to experience.

Last night I took this thought of fixing our insides to my closet and my dresser.

From the outside, most things in my house look relatively organized, tidy and clean.  This is not the case when you actually open my drawers and my closet.  Clothes, literally, spring out at you in a tangle of unfolded fabric. My winter sweaters topple from the top shelf of the closet and I have to shove them back in before they hit the floor.  The hangers in my closet are burdened, not by one shirt or blouse, but sometimes by two or three.  Yoga clothes spill out of a drawer.  There are t-shirts deeply buried and long forgotten.

I took a deep breath, gathered my strength and proceeded to sort, fold, discard and organize my clothes.  I found dresses I bought two years ago that have never been worn, a yoga top I thought I had lost, shirts that made me shake my head and wonder why I bought them to begin with.  I folded those lovely warm sweaters neatly, getting them ready to quickly pull out as the days get cooler.  I hung my summer dresses to the back of the closet and the fall dresses closer to the front.  I folded my pants neatly and made a pile that need to be mended.  And I got rid of a bag of clothes - clothes I had not worn in a year.

When I was finished I was not sweaty, I was not exhausted, I was not dying for a huge glass of cold water but I felt refreshed, I felt clean, I felt like I had just walked out of a yoga class with a great sense of accomplishment.

My goal is to keep those drawers tidy, to keep my closet organized, to keep the hidden nooks and crannies of my little sanctuary, clean and well looked after, just as I do with my body when I enter my yoga class.