Hello, Gorgeous Soul.

Part three of our decluttering series. A very quick refresher about this series…in order to live a Calm AF Life, you need to be tending to all parts of the whole, the mind the body and the bubble.

In  Part one we talked about decluttering our physical space, this is a part of tending to the bubble, the energetic space that surrounds you and is either supporting you or making things harder.

In part two we talked about decluttering the mind. The thoughts and stories and old beliefs you’ve been holding onto for so long that aren’t serving you whatsoever. Because it’s realllllyyy hard to feel inner peace when the thoughts just never stop.

Today, we’re moving into the BODY component of the calm AF system.

Now, I think we’re all pretty versed in why taking care of your body is important. We understand the impact  sugar or alcohol or junk food or being sedentary has on your body.  It’s the most socially available, encouraged AND acceptable way we are taught to take care of ourselves.

Obviously we don’t want to get sick, we want our bodies to feel good AND let’s be honest. we cannot dismiss the societal narrative that how your body LOOKS really determines your worthiness. It’s definitely a way we try to control people’s opinions…by how we look.

But here’s the thing. And I hear this a lot. If you are a person that feels pretty  regularly overwhelmed, stressed, stuck, frustrated, resentful and you’re like “I know that taking care of my body makes me feel better so I just need to exercise more or eat healthier” If you say that and you are NOT diligently addressing your EMOTIONS as part of taking care of your body, you are surface cleaning.

It’s the equivalent of wiping down the counters in the kitchen when the cabinets are SHOVED full of clutter.

Is the kitchen actually clean?

Emotions are physical sensations that occur IN the body. If your physical health is a top priority for you, then you CANNOT only focus on the food and exercise piece. Emotions are energy being created and stored inside your body, this energy is physically interacting with your body’s chemicals, your organs, your cells.

I read a study a few years ago and I can’t find it now, but , they divided people into two groups and they were measuring the effects emotion and stress had on their ability to process/digest/absorb the food they were eating. Everyone was given the same meal. It was SUPER nutritious and packed with vitamins and nutrients that could be measured through testing. So one group sat in a super calm room, quiet music playing, they had all the time in the world. The second group was given the same meal but in a super chaotic room. They basically stressed their systems out, alarming sounds, lots of frenetic energy, AND rushed them. Like they felt pressure while eating. And then they took their blood, measured their physiological changes. And what you can expect, the group in the chaotic room – their blood pressure was higher, their heart rate was rapid, they were stressed out than the calm room. BUT the most interesting thing was that when they tested their blood, what they discovered was the stressed out group wasn’t getting ANY of the benefits of the healthy food. NONE. LIke 0%. Remember what I’ve said a million times, when you’re walking around in a state of chronic stress, the systems in your body that aren’t necessary for survival slow or shut down.

SO basically it doesn’t really matter how perfectly health  you are eating  or how strong and fit your body is… if your body is full of stress and emotional clutter, your healthy food might as well be cheetos.

So again. If you are prioritizing your physical health OVER your emotional health, you might be spinning your wheels.

Also…what we know for sure now is that the majority of health conditions and diseases and unwellness have a DIRECT link to stress.

A study published in the National Library or Medicine says this: Emotional stress is a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States estimates that stress account about 75% of all doctors visit (7). This involves an extremely wide span of physical complaints including, but not limited to headache, back pain, heart problems, upset stomach, stomach ulcer, sleep problems, tiredness and accidents. According to Occupational Health and Safety news and the National Council on compensation of insurance, up to 90% of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints.

So listen…yes declutter your diet and take care of your body, but I beg of you…stop ignoring the emotional clutter that has been gathering dust, that is currently affecting your cells and your health.

MOST of us have a body that is chock full of emotions that never have seen the light of day.

SOOOOOO many emotions that you have been shoving in a box, taping shut, and keeping down in the basement since you were a little bitty kiddo.

Because we weren’t taught how to feel our feelings. We were taught how to NOT feel our feelings.

We are taught how to energy manage and People please  so that we never have to learn to manage our own.

You’re sad? Oh NO! how can I make you NOT sad? What can I do to make you NOT feel sad I can’t BEAR to see you sad. Food? A present? Let me tell you all the reasons you shouldn’t feel sad. Other people have it worse. It could’ve been a lot worse. Let’s think of the ways it could be worse so you don’t feel sad.

Sadness is bad, let’s hurry up and get rid of it.

You’re feeling proud? Ummmm…I mean that’s great, but make sure no one else sees you expressing that because it might make them feel bad. I mean, who do you think you are, anyways? Shrink that proudness, make it small. Put it in this box. Tape it up.

Just THINK about all of the situations, all of the traumas, all of the pain, all of the joy you have felt in your life that you weren’t able to feel. All of that emotion, if it hasn’t been released, is being stored in your body.

A whole lotta emotional clutter.

That thought might feel overwhelming so here’s what I want you to remember.

You don’t have to OPEN ever single box of emotional clutter to make an impact.. I remember when I was decluttering the basement, after opening and going thorugh eveyr single box item by item I started getting pretty good at knowing there were some boxes that I could just get rid of without even going through it thoroughly. So many of the boxes are interconnected, and you release one, you probably release a whole bunch.

Also, like all of our decluttering projects, this is NOT a weekend project. This isn’t a one and done thing. Emotional decluttering is best done slowly and consistently. You don’t need to have a perfectly decluttered body before you start feeling the effects.

Think about your kitchen. You don’t need to clean out every single cabinet to create space. One cabinet creates space.

One taped up box of emotional clutter released is creating space in your body. LIGHTENING the load you are carrying around with you every day.

So let’s talk about how to emotionally declutter your body:

First, I want to encourage you if this episode or any of the episodes resonates with you and you are feeling PULLED to implement this in your actual life, make sure you check out Calm AF Life. In there you will not only learn these concepts at a deeper level, you will have a SHIT TON of support to actually make the changes. Don’t just let these episodes be mental clutter. Boo. We are practicing ALL of these calm AF tools every single day. It’s where the desire for a clam AF life manifests. I can help you directly but only if you let me. The link is in the bio.

In order to be able to declutter these shoved down feelings, you need to do some prep work. First you want to go into this process understanding WHY you’ve shoved down your feelings instead of feeling them your whole life.

You need to get familiar with your emotional origins story. There’s a whole module and workbook in the course that’s included inside Calm AF Life that goes WAY deep into questions to ask yourself to learn this, but in a nutshell, you’re discovering your story about each emotion, you’re getting clarity on WHERE you learned this? WHY you learned it. WHEN you learned it.

You will also learn in this exercise why other people’s emotions feel so overwhelming for you. It’s super common for people to be like “OH I get it. The reason why I get so triggered when my husband gets flustered is because in MY family any expression of anger was viewed as weakness or an inability to control yourself. It was SHAMED.”

You will learn a LOT about where your energy managing, people pleasing, perfectionism stems from when you take the time to learn your origin story.

That’s the prep work and it will make the actual emotional decluttering SO much easier. It will eliminate a lot of confusion.

Onto the actual work of emotional decluttering. I call this Going into the Feelings Room.

Let’s say you notice you are feeling  sad. Usually when you feel sad, you distract yourself by being really busy or you eat or you think or you scroll.

But you are relentlessly committed to NOT being stuck anymore so you make the decision to take the sadness to the feelings room.

Before you walk in: NSF – Nervous System First. If you are freaked the fuck out before you even walk in the room, this exercise will feel like torture. You’re going to remind yourself the truth about feelings, which is, they aren’t dangerous. Uncomfortable? Sure. But not any reason for your sympathetic nervous system to sound the alarms.

You’re not here to FIX the feelings because feelings aren’t for fixing, they’re for feeling. You’re not here to shove it down, you’re here to EXPERIENCE it.

So you sit in the room with it and NOTICE. How does this feeling FEEL in your body? Where do you feel sadness? Is it in your heart space? In your throat? In your stomach? What does the physical sensation feel like? Describe it in as much detail as you can. Does it feel heavy? Does it feel fast? Does it feel sharp? Does it feel dull?

Once you’re just allowing this feeling to exist within you, you can start asing questions. Why is it here? What’s the information the feeling is here to share with me? WHY is sadness making an appearance here? Is it just because something sad happened and I just need to feel the feelings?

And then you trust your body because it will tell you HOW it wants to be released. Sometimes your body is going to need to move the feelings out physically through jumping or shaking or some sort of physical movement. Sometimes it’s through screaming or singing. Sometimes it’s through crying.

But it’s really not more complicated than that. The actual FEELING OF FEELINGS is simply allowing the energy of the feeling to move out and through you. The stories and thoughts might need to be addressed or rewired, but the feelings? They just need to be felt.

THIS is how you release emotional clutter. And here’s the best part of all.

When you start engaging with your feelings on PURPOSE instead of reactively shoving them in a box to be stored indefinitely in your body, the fear around them dissipates.

You might not LOVE it when sadness shows up the next time, but you aren’t AFRAID of it, because you’re familiar with it. You know how it feels in your body. You know how to release it from your body. You know that you don’t have to THINK about it, you just need to feel it.

And what happens when you aren’t AFRAID of your feelings, like sadness or anger or guilt or stuckness? You will stop accumulating more clutter. Because you won’t need to put it in a box and shove it down….you won’t need to keep yourself busy from the minute you wake up until the minute you fall asleep so you literally don’t have time to feel the sadness. You won’t need to numb out with FOOD, or alcohol or drugs or screens. You won’t need to shut down the whole system.

You will just be like OH. I’m feeling sad. It’s not scary, I am NOT going to shove it down, I’m just gonna take a few minutes to feel it because I am not going to bring any more clutter into this body.

And that’s how you declutter your body.

It’s actually super simple.

Just feel the feelings on purpose. This will help you simultaneously declutter AND not accumulate more.