Learning to Own & Create the Energy of Your Space

At this time of year, you might expect an herbalist to discuss herbs associated to the season, or to the ailments commonly occurring during the cold winter months. Perhaps you would find recipes for herbalicious gift giving, or taste bud tantalizing foodie delights to show off your holiday cooking skills. Those things are gorgeous, valid, important and I bow to the prowess of my fellow herbalists who are all sharing this information. I’m going to veer off the beaten path for a spell today, and talk about something a little bit different. I would invite you to spiral inward with me. Join me as I look at creating a sense of balance within my own life where I have struggled for so very long. Owning and creating the energy of my space as an act of self care. Let me just share with you, as an herbalist and as a pagan, my biggest crime has been self neglect. The reasons aren’t as important as the journey and work that will go into moving away from things that no longer serve my highest good into practices, and thought patterns that do.

Where does this process begin? For me, it begins with looking at the things in my life that trigger anxiety and stress. What within that list can I take more control over? To begin with, my space as in my home, which with 3 homeschooling kids, and half a zoo’s worth of pets tends to be frustrating to keep up with more often than not for me. It is however one of my biggest triggers for stress and anxiety.

As I began my spiral inward, I discovered a word that captured my attention. I’m sure it’s likely trending and becoming the newest buzz word so I will try not to focus too deeply on it. The word is hygge (pronounced hoo-gah). It’s a concept that originates in Danish and Scandinavian cultures where winters are long, cold, and dark. The concept is what some might consider to be a “no-brainer”. This concept invites us to look at our love for the outside world, our nature spaces and consider how we can bring some of that into our indoor spaces. It asks us how can we create coziness within our homes that will sustain and nurture us through the long winter months. The concept brings to my mind a few words, simplifying, sanctuary and creating a hearth culture of warmth and nourishment that is both simple and complex in nature, creating a space where we can breathe and shed away the bone weariness of the day’s events no matter what they may have been. It hums distinctly of self care.

Some of you are likely thinking, “Well, duh!” For those of you like me who may be struggling in one way or another exploring the concept of creating this sort of space, however that space looks for you, and whatever concept or tradition serves as the manner in which you describe this process. I invite you to explore the concept of creating a space that is wholistically (yes, I intended that w to be there), nourishing as an act of self care, and as ritual.

My process is just that right now, it’s a process. Self neglect has carried on long enough for me to feel somewhat overwhelmed by the prospect of creating such a space. I am doing my best to push through it. Moving from room to room, cleaning, rearranging, with incense to smudge and gratitude for the blessings I have. I breathe out frustration sometimes with a growl. I breathe in the potential of what my space could be. I work in chunks when needed. Clearing away sections of a room, incense burning, broom sweeping away stagnation…even in and almost especially in carpeted rooms where stagnant negative energy likes to dig in and hold on. Rearranging, and resetting the space become integral parts of this process for me. Changing the areas if light and shadow are important to my space. I love warm ambient lighting, but at the same time there are some spaces where I simply need light so I can see what the heck I’m looking for. Changing the seating in my spaces to be more inviting and intimate has been important to me. I’m also finding that candles are very much a comfort to me. I’m putting up window dressings that grant me some privacy when needed, without sacrificing all of the spaciousness that bare windows create. Doing so helps me to create the sense of bringing the outside in in a way that drawing up the mini-blinds will never accomplish.

These small yet huge steps in my life really not have a whole lot to do with the concepts that are encompassed in what is known as hygge, which is one reason that I am not writing this post as a claim to my plunge into the philosophy and practices of hygge. While the hygge tradition is likely closely tied to my own Northern European heritage, the idea of not knowing full breadth of the hygge tradition feels much like I need to know more before I can attribute these processes them to one tradition or concept or another. Reading about hygge did cause me to consider my own hearth and home a bit more closely and begin to work on changing it for myself as an act of self care.

In what ways do you create the space that nourishes your body, mind, and soul through the winter months and beyond? How might you create ceremony in this process? Are there traditions that you have in your life or that you’ve discovered that have inspired you to examine and recreate your space into something more inline with your energy and intentions?