First published July 28, 2016 in The Natural Path
Part 1
Whether your holistic business is brand new or established, your first thought for maintaining and growing it should be space clearing.
I know, you’re thinking financing, client attraction and retention, staffing … yes, all those are essential steps. But without a clear space, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Here’s why.
We, and our spaces, are a complex bundle of energy. Everything we think, feel, do, say, all of our existence, really, is energy. Unfortunately, we don’t generally think of energy as a force in our lives, so we don’t always pay attention to it (and we can’t see it, only its effects). Then things suddenly don’t work, and we wonder why.
The “why” is energy, the unseen essence of a space, which needs to flow freely. If it doesn’t, it’s “stuck,” and that causes problems.
Let’s look at this strictly as it relates to your business space. You can tell if your space is thriving by how you, your staff, and your patients/clients feel in it. If people feel uncomfortable, tired, grumpy, uninspired, or simply lackluster, your space is probably stuck. Business can and will slow down as a result, because it’s harder to be successful, let alone thrive, in a stuck space. The answer is space clearing.
Think you’re fine, your business and employees are thriving, and clients are pouring in? Great. Help good things continue by, you guessed it, space clearing.
Space clearing is the vibrational equivalent to vacuuming and dusting. It keeps the energy of a space clear and moving—in other words, clean.
We tend to forget that nothing stays clear without assistance. That’s why we’re always cleaning—so things are spotless and inviting. Vibrational clearing is more intense than physical clearing because both people and their spaces (and the objects in them) are alive and have feelings (believe it or not). As people move through their day, bits of these emotions and thoughts spin off and are left behind in the places we visit—your office. As these bits mingle in a space, they can either meld into some awesome whole or, more typically, clash a bit (or a lot). It’s no one’s fault—it’s life.
Are you balking at thinking your spaces are alive? Fine, that’s an argument for another time. Instead, deal with the results. Notice how your space feels after a tense staff meeting or after a day of difficult client appointments. Depending on how your intuition works, it can feel heavy or dense, or look dull or cloudy. That’s stuck energy messing up your space—until you clear it.
Getting ‘stuck’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing: it’s part of life. What matters is how we deal with it. Paying attention is key.
You can spend a lot of time thinking about how people feel and working on that with whatever techniques work for you (psychotherapy, energy healing, staff meetings, play, CAKE), but if you don’t pay attention to the space you work in, you’re trying to get better in murky water. And you’d rather have the cleanest water possible, right? So here’s how you figure that out.
FINDING A BASELINE
To create healthy business spaces, and keep them healthy, you first need a baseline. You get that by checking your space out, literally and figuratively. With all your senses.
Repeat each of the exercises below in each room of your business. Start by closing your eyes and concentrating on the task before you. Then proceed to the exercise, repeating it for every area or room, including outdoor spaces.
Sight: How does it look to you? Is it bright, dark, colorful, bland, messy, dingy?
Smell: How does the place smell—moldy, fresh, stale, empty?
Touch: What happens when you touch the space: a wall, desk, any physical part of it? Is it sticky, wet, rough?
Taste: Sure, you’re not actually going to taste a space. But imagine that you could. Would it be bland, bitter, sweet, fresh, sour, chemical-laden?
Hear: What do you hear in the space? Street traffic? Wind? Creaking floors? Silence?
Intuition: Of course you knew it was coming. How does the space intuitively strike you? To begin, you might want to close your eyes so you can be as “other-sensory” deprived as you can. Just be present with the space. Note how your body reacts. Note where the reaction is coming from (direction, room).
Is the feeling dense, heavy, light, too airy to breathe in, colorful, bland, dark?
The practicalities: Spaces are colored by what happens in them, just like our bodies are affected by our experiences. Knowing a place’s history can help, as long as it’s one element in your understanding of it and not the entire story.
What do you know about the spaces—have they experienced high turnover, unhappy or stressed humans, cold or heat?
WHAT YOUR BASELINE MEANS
Combine everything you know to determine areas that feel perfect and others that might need some focused attention. This is your baseline. The parts that need attention need space clearing. Be grateful for the others, and spend some time figuring out why they are that way (and keep them clear with regular space clearing as well). You’ll be clearing the entire space anyway.
In Part 2 (August), we’ll cover what you want from the space itself, from outlining what you need and want in a space, which is essential to fixing imbalances, to the step most professional space clearing experts (and business owners) don’t consider: learning what the space has to say about itself and the people it encounters.
In Part 3 (September) we’ll cover the space clearing itself, from a big initial clearing to daily maintenance.
In the meantime, here’s a first step to help your spaces get clear and stay that way: sea salt. Put a few tablespoons of sea salt in a small bowl in each room of your practice (or use Himalayan salt lamps). Sea salt is an ancient (and effective) clearing device, and will immediately make a difference in how your business feels.
Try it, and see you in August.
© 2016 Robyn M Fritz