Home As Sacred Space

While I am often referring to home as the essential home within, how I create and perceive my physical environment is also an important part of my home spa experience.

Simple is always good for me. I prefer fewer things and a sense of spaciousness, and of course it has to be beautiful. It doesn’t take much to create beauty—fresh flowers, plants, a delicate and colorful scarf that is well placed, like the bright yellow sarong draped over a curtain rod on one window and a sheer piece of maroon fabric covering another window. At different times of the day when the sun hits each of them it alternately casts the room in gold and then rich rosy hues. When I see the room at these moments it calls me in to sit for a moment, bathed in warmth and richness befitting a queen. I love color and when it fills a room in this way it feels like angels hovering and gently flapping their luminous wings. It’s sort of like the pure light of heaven that beams through the clouds in what a former boyfriend used to refer to as “God Rays.” If I don’t have a moment to stop and take this in then what am I here for anyway?

I tend to perceive things with a childlike mind—a stone slab with the memory of leaves etched in and other brushstrokes of nature becomes a beautiful table; a bathroom with palm tree shower rings and a lush, leaf-pattern curtain next to photos of waterfalls, placid pools and leaping dolphins on the surrounding walls becomes a tropical paradise. Sort of like the spool of thread that became the throne in the palace when I was a child and not yet inured to wring imagination and joy out of the fabric of life.

During one of my leaner times my décor was a Flintstones motif—the Zen style dining table surrounded by cushions, the bed-side table next to the sleeping pad on the floor, and the tiered altar were all from the local quarry. Pretty much the only other things in the place were plants, a water fountain, a Buddha—you know the standard New Age accoutrements. Ha! Ha! Actually there have been lots of times when I lived in shared environments where I had little to say about the common space, and even if I was sleeping on a camping pad among piles of other people’s clutter (I’m sure it wasn’t clutter to them), I always found a way to place something that felt sacred close to me.

Now I have stillness, which is ultimately precious after many years of having to tolerate the incessant mindless chatter coming from a television or radio. I don’t own a TV, not because I am above watching one but because I am a recovering addict. Having spent much of my youth in front of a television I am programmed to go into trance when I get in front of one. I used to joke that I should make a bumper sticker, “I did my time with television.” Now I have a life of my own and it feels great to be in the game rather than a spectator, especially when so much of what is aired fuels what Eckhart Tolle refers to as the pain body. Even in an environment with a lot of static I can create a home spa experience. I get a CD player with headphones and play some of my favorite chants. When I put it on repeat, and low volume, as I go to sleep at night I wake up feeling elevated rather than a sense of heaviness that accompanies the disturbed dream state many people experience after watching a violent program or the news before bed.

When I create a space I think of the kind of energy I want to feel in it. I use a lot of the elements of Feng Shui and I also ask myself, what elements would I find at a spa that I can easily incorporate here? Maybe a foot bath with some wonderfully scented herbs by candle light. I like incense but some of them can be too strong for me because I am very sensitive to smells. If I burn incense I generally do it in a room in the house that I don’t spend as much time in so that it is more subtle in the other parts of the house, or I might open a window, or light some before I leave the house for a while. Then when I return there is just a bit of the scent lingering.

What stands out for you as something that brings you peace when you are in a spa or rejuvenating environment? Now see how you can bring that element into your home, even in a small way.

Aaaaahhhhhhh! Sweet dreams.