Cleaning Closets

My son is leaving for college next month. These past few weeks I have been slowly getting him ready to pack his things, but every time that I look in his closet I’m overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that has accumulated over the past 18 years. Games, posters, baseball cards, clothes that don’t fit, and more. Cleaning out this closet is a daunting task and one that I was not looking forward to. Mainly because of the waves of nostalgia that I get each time I find things like an old blanket he used as a toddler. Or his middle school yearbook, a halloween costume, or a book I read to him when he was small. I suppose my feelings are cliche for a reason - how did he grow up so fast?

I procrastinate cleaning his closet because it means that our family is changing. He is really leaving. It’s time for him to shed his childhood skin and become a college student. He’s ready for it. He’s excited and I’m excited for him. But as he makes this transition, I am going to miss that little boy.

I think we all have these feelings in different ways. We grasp onto the things that we know, the things that are familiar to us. It doesn’t even matter if they don’t serve us anymore. When we know what to expect, it’s comfortable. It’s hard to change. What’s this new part of our life going to be like? What if it’s a disaster? The truth is that everything does change and we don’t know what’s going to happen. The way we navigate these transitions can make or break us.

I’m choosing to navigate this transition from a perspective of happiness and excitement for the future, both mine and my son’s. So when we clear out the closet we will go through each item and decide what to keep and what to give away. We have the intention of enjoying this process and not treating it as a daunting task. We get to choose how we want to let go of things and how we want to organize and fill our new closet to make room for our new lives.

Our yoga practice is like this. Each time we come to the mat we metaphorically clean out our own “self closet”. We unpack each movement and thought and decide what to keep and what to let go. We have the choice to go through our practice without much thought or even skip the poses we don’t like. Or we can experience each action (or inaction) with curiosity and a desire to learn in this moment.

We have to be honest with ourselves about this process. How much of your practice is just mindless movement? Are you still moving in the same way that you did ten years ago? Our environments and our bodies are in constant flux. When you really look at your practice, does it serve who you are in this moment? Even the parts of you that you struggle to accept? I have to change my practice on a daily basis. Some days I feel energetic and other days I’m tired. Sometimes I have an injury and other times there is so much going on in my personal life that to squeeze in a yoga practice feels overwhelming. Yoga meets us where we are in this specific moment, not the other way around.

Take a few moments to reflect on your own “closets” and how you might clear out and skillfully curate and organize a collection that serves you in this season of your life.