Nov 19 2007
Feng Shui Principles Become Mainstream
I love reading books on style and fashion found one with all sorts of interesting ‘feng shui’ tidbits at the library this weekend. For example:
Closets are where we hide things: skeletons, forbidden loves, terrible birthday gifts we couldn’t return. It is for this reason that deciding what to wear while staring into those murky depths can be not just daunting, but emotionally exhausting as well.
- Tim Gunn, A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style
I find it both interesting and validating to find the feng shui princicples I have learned in Interior Alignment™ show up in ‘mainstream’ books. It is interesting to see these views widely accepted and adopted.
© copyright 2007 Deborah Redfern. All rights reserved.
Tags: , closets, Clutter, fashion, feng shui principles, Interior Alignment™
This is a GREAT quote! It so perfectly captures why we get stuck, irritated and overwhelmed when dealing with our closets! All those incompletions, all the buying mistakes, all the gifts we hate but don’t feel we can get rid of. Clothes that don’t fit. Things that are out of style. Not to mention the other whole emotional side of the “skeletons in the closet”. Ah, but we do have the joy and clarity of CLUTTER CLEARING! Lucky us!
Our yoga group was talking about winter arriving and changing over to winter boots and coats and everything that goes with it. One student lives in a small older home and commented how originally there was no front closet, previous owners had taken living room space to create one. Mud rooms did not exist then either so the entrance from the garage does not have a functional storage space. In fact, many older homes have very little closet space. Homes built post world war were small and many did not have money for all the “things” we have today that supposedly make our lives easier. Not throwing things out “just in case” is an emotional response to barely having enough in the first half of the century and also today for far too many.
So, when did clutter clearing become part of Feng Shui? When did reusing and recycling become trendy? And worse yet, when did reusing and recycling become something that has to be taught in mass advertising campaigns?
Interesting isn’t it? I believe ’skeletons in the closet’ is not new at all, but clutter is not part of traditional Feng Shui. It is a new phenomena due, I believe, to ‘abundance issues’ and the sudden availability of goods at much lower costs than ever before in history. It is amazing to me that it can cost less or equal to replace an item than it would to repair it. And, with the incredible pace of technology, things are often obsolete well before they’ve lost their value — which means parts and service support is no longer available.
So what do you do with that items that do not work quite right and cost more to fix than it is worth, etc. That is my current dilemna as the flash on my digital camera no longer works.
I bet it wouldn’t take much research to find out when the shift began and this is probably a very superficial analysis, but I believe it is about more money in circulation, more choices available, goods being available at a lower cost, being busier socially with the need for meals on the run, working longer hours with much less time for cooking and cleaning and the resulting need for convenience foods and convenience cleaning products and gadgets.
Many of the material goods around us are no longer meant to last a lifetime - or even a very long time — and at the same time, many of us still have the pre-fifties work ethic with the collective memory of scarcity and the need to conserve. So it is an imbalance. Clutter clearing and recycling efforts are a counterbalance, and the simplicity movement is an answer. The simplicity movement (wanting, needing and doing less)is what got me interested in feng shui in the first place.
I am sure there is someone out there who can remember when Martha Stewart or women’s magazines started to speak of organizing closets as a major concern for the modern housewife and some advertising company took up the idea to create need around products for this issue.
The simplicity movement came along with the hippies rejecting the establishment and all the rigid structure and consumerism that flourished when the economy turned upwards post war.
As with all eastern practices that have come westward such as acupuncture, meditation, and yoga, feng shui had to somehow include western ideals and issues.
Donna Fahri states “One of our greatest challenges a Westerners practicing yoga is to learn to perceive progress through “invisible” signs, signs that are quite often unacknowledged by the culture at large….When we remain committed to our most deeply held values we can begin to discern the difference between the appearance of achievement and the true experience of transformation, and thereby free ourselves to pursue those things of real value.”
So, the part of the original quote which seems mainstream to me is “emotionally exhausting” . Today we are so emotionally exhausted that we cannot see that the depths of our closets are a part of us and getting in the way of feeling good and whole.