Creating Serene Space in your Home for Meditation
You’ve always wanted a Home Oasis, create one now!
During this career alignment journey, it is helpful to put in place regular mindfulness practices which can help ease the stress of the job search process. Creating space in the home for support activities such as meditation, journaling, reading and visioning can make a big difference in emotional well-being. Think “clutter clearing on steroids.”
Creating Positive Energy at Home
All places have an energy within them. Some energy is positive and supports us, other energy is negative and blocks us in moving forward. Our homes are reflections of our lives, thoughts, emotions, interests, frustrations, how we feel about ourselves and our situation in the world. Think of your home as a place that can either attract what you want, or repel it away. The energy of a home is essential in creating a serene environment as you craft a vision for your future. You may not always think of your abode as a sanctuary or a place where vital energy surrounds you. However, one could consider that a home is more than a place to sleep at night and find comfort from the outside.
In her book Sacred Space, Denise Linn discusses the energy of a home as “one’s home can be a pace of renewal or hope. It can be a sanctuary where you can retreat and recharge during a time of change. It is an oasis of peace amidst the turmoil. Homes can be places of healing and regeneration.”
It’s important to take a look at your living space and really see what you love about it and what could be changed to better serve you. Creating a retreat space within your dwelling, whether it be a corner of a room, or a completely separate room will deliver to you a sense of harmony and tranquility that pave the way to smoother waters as you navigate the waves of transition.
A Buddhist Perspective on Calm Space
For a deeper perspective, this theory of energy in the home also aligns with the Buddhist philosophy as discussed by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who wrote the book Making Space – Creating a Home Meditation Practice. Hanh introduces in his book the correlation between our minds, bodies and spaces that we live in. “Our minds, our bodies and the spaces we live in are all related. It’s hard for the mind to be peaceful when the body is not in a physical space that’s peaceful. When we have a peaceful space, then we can come back t ourselves. That is the intention of a sacred space.”
It is important to make space in our home for contemplation and meditation, then peace and joy are always available. It is the intention of sacred space to make room so that we can return to ourselves and touch something deep within ourselves. It becomes a wonderful way of communicating. Making space in a home for a mindfulness practice can be easily accomplished. It does not have to mean a full room clearing that disrupts your family life and displaces your belongings. By simply opening up a corner in your home for the sole intention of serenity, you create a sense of stillness that will bring you a quiet peace of mind. Hanh writes, “The key to creating a peaceful home sanctuary, is to create a space where the busyness stops.”
5 Steps to Clear and Bless Your Space
Below are some steps that you can easily take to create space in your home for reflection and incubating new ideas and next steps in your process.
- Decide on your space: Will it be a separate room or part of an existing room? Walk around your home. Is there a space that could be repurposed? Have you always wanted to set up a quiet reading space by your favorite window? Is an extra bedroom empty because the children moved out? These are ideas to consider. Once you have chosen your space, you can move forward with preparing it.
- Prepare your space: Remove all items currently in the space and start from a clear, blank canvas. Clean the area, floor, ceiling, walls, windows (if any). Does it need an inspiring coat of paint? Be creative, remember, you get to decide how the space looks. It should “call you” to want to be in it daily.
- Cleanse the energy of the space with a Sage Smudging ceremony: Once you have cleaned the space, now you are ready to set an intention for the room and clear it with Sage. Sage has been used for centuries by healers and shamans to clear the energy of a space. Sage has a wonderful cleansing aroma. Sage bundles can be purchased at most health food stores including Whole Foods. There is a nice bundle that comes shrink wrapped with a shell bowl that captures the ashes. If you just buy Sage by itself, then be sure to use a small dish to capture the ashes as they fall.
- To bless the room: Light the Sage bundle and walk clockwise around the edges of the room asking for a blessing on the space. If the space is clear, the smoke from the Sage bundle will billow straight up. If there is any unpleasant energy in the room, the smoke will go sideways to the bad energy. Let it go in the direction it wants to. As the energy begins to clear, the smoke will return to its upright position. Continue to walk slowly clockwise around the space until you have completed the entire space. Once completed, your room is now cleared of unpleasant energies. Take a few minutes to be in the space and breathe in the fresh clear energy you have just created. For more information, you can Google “Sage clearing ceremonies” and you will find a wealth of information, including additional mantras and blessings you can say as you are walking around the room.
- Move back in only cherished items and create a Meditation Altar: You will want to bring back into the space only the items that will bring you joy and help support you in your journey forward. A comfortable chair or small couch for reading, a footstool, a lamp, table, bookshelves, plants, sentimental artwork to hang on the walls. You may even want to create a small “altar” on a table, window sill or bookshelf. While having an altar in the home may seem like an exotic and unattainable idea, it is quite simple to coordinate. It does not have to be complicated or difficult, nor does it need to be based on a religion or beliefs that one does not relate to. Rather, an altar can be a personal expression of what one’s current “mind focus” is at the time. The power of an altar lies in its appearance to the visual eye. The most simplistic altars typically are a raised structure of some sort that serves as a resting place for meaningful objects that bring peace to the beholder. Objects placed on the altar can include pictures of ancestors, angels, crystals, pictures of favorite places, candles, vase with flowers, incense holders, a bell or chime, anything that feels important to a person to have on the altar.
The Meditative Benefits of a Home Altar
Denise Linn writes, “an altar becomes a place where you can experience prayer, devotion, listening and giving thanks. It also becomes a “spiritual oasis where the important aspects of your live come into focus.”
You can sit in meditative stillness and concentrate on your values and desires, to get to the heart of what it is you want in life. It is a great place to engage in spiritual reading. As you gain greater clarity about your hopes and dreams, it becomes much easier to manifest them into reality. You can choose objects or pictures that represent those hopes and dreams and will enable you to visualize your next job, career or profession. The altar then becomes a “sacred template that can enable you to achieve your goals in accordance with your highest good,” according to Denise Linn.
As you spend more time at your home altar, you may notice unexpected and happy coincidences that begin to occur in your life. It doesn’t matter if you have not been actually looking for these coincidences. Denise Linn clarifies for us, “These coincidences occur because when you create your altar and meditate there on a regular basis, you create a gathering point for positive energy. This energy is often subconsciously directed toward areas of your life where you need to make changes, or where you want to achieve results”
An altar offers a private place where you can meditate on your hopes and dreams for the future. Once you have this meditative place created, you can begin to explore mindfulness meditation, spiritual reading and journaling as an additional support for the stress of the job search process.
Check out our other blogs on career transitions and coping with the emotional side of job transitions. Be sure to sign up for our email list to receive a free copy of our Supportive Reading Resources for Transitions. As always, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions or thoughts at support@mindfuljobalignment.com. Also, you can leave your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
By: Diana C. Stephens, PhD