School of Integrative Design™

Imagine living in a society which encouraged every person to follow their heart’s longing, where every individual enjoyed the life they felt drawn to experience. The enthusiasm, passion and delight emanating from those doing what they love feels palpable and contagious, it lights up a room. When we follow what we love, what lights our soul afire, we make this world a better place for others. We feel connected, we feel fulfilled and we feel at home in the world. Our desire is our evolutionary driver, keeping us connected to the passion of life, while tethered to the path of our natural unfolding. The whisper of desire is how life communicates with us, pointing our shoulders in the direction of our dreams, constantly beckoning us further. Knowing what we want seeds the adventure of our own heroic journey. If we want to evolve into the person we know we were born to become, listening to the call of our desire becomes our most important evolutionary tool. When we follow our desire our life changes, we outgrow the old version of our self, as our needs and desires similarly expand. Consider the place where you lived at twenty years old, the furnishings, the decor and how you arranged your space. It spoke to your burgeoning independence and reflected the lens through which you experienced the world. Imagine living in that same space today. The decor, furnishings and aesthetic would likely not feel inspiring to the being you’ve become. As we mature our interests shift, our aesthetic deepens and what inspires us develops in unexpected ways. Our home communicates the narrative of our life, reflecting back to us who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going. So how might we create an environment which cultivates and nourishes our ideals? As we evolve our home must evolve with us. Our home is an essential ingredient to our overall well-being and fulfillment, yet offers a portal for accelerating our deeper aspirations to fruition. Living Vision Board Think of home as your three dimensional living vision board. Every vision board begins with an understanding that when our desires and values are reflected back to us on a consistent basis we eventually manifest those ideals into material form. In the same way, we’re subject to whatever our home communicates to us whether we realise it or not, so we want to make certain we curate a space aligned with what we desire. This metaphor of home as our living vision board is rooted in the science of epigenetics. Epigenetics is a field of cellular biology that studies how environment informs outcome. In the late 1960’s, cellular biologist Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief) experimented with identical stem cells in three differing Petri dish environments. The outcomes of the formerly identical cells shifted, each matching the influencing factors of their shared environment, hence proving that environment informs outcome. This concept translates for all living things and their living environments. For example, imagine you lived for several weeks locked in a jail cell, your body would experience a physiological, mental and emotional response based on the confines of that place. On the other hand, if you spent several weeks at a lavish retreat center, your body, mind and spirit would experience a very different outcome. One leaves us deprived, demoralised and oppressed, the other rejuvenates our vitality, radiance and well-being. The long term implications our environment holds over our ability to flourish carries considerable weight. It’s worth noting, every cell in our body is strung along for this environmental ride by default, so whatever is showing up in our living space also presents itself in whatever’s going on in our body. We cannot separate how we feel emotionally from the cellular experience within our body. Our home perpetuates what we think and how we feel, making it one of most significant relationships of our life. It’s similar to manifesting, yet here’s the rub with manifesting: we don’t like to call it manifesting unless we’re creating something we actually want. In a sense, our home is already acting like a living vision board, it’s just not yet consciously aligned with the values and intentions we hold dear. When our home reflects the values, intentions and desires we treasure, our life shifts. There’s an invisible force supporting everything we do that cradles the space between our outer life and inner world. What we display within our home directly impacts how we feel from moment to moment. Over time the cumulative effects of those feelings influence our behavior, attitude and choices, ultimately impacting the trajectory of our life. How do we bring these concepts home? First, we want to get curious about the current state of our home and our relationship with it. Each room in our home correlates with specific areas of our life. If we don’t like what’s showing up in one area of our life, we want to get curious about how it’s also showing up in our home. The Entry: Standing at the threshold of your entry, ask yourself, “How does my entry feel? Does it feel like a reflection of me? Do I feel welcomed home? Does the space feel symbolic of my idea of sanctuary?” The Living Room: Standing at the opening of your living room, ask yourself, “Do I love my living room? Does it feel like an accurate reflection of me? Is it inviting and comfortable?” The Kitchen: Looking into your kitchen, ask yourself, “Do I like my kitchen? Does it represent my intentions around health, vitality and abundance? Does it feel like a reflection of me and my values?” The Bedroom: Standing at the doorway into your bedroom, ask yourself, “Do I like my bedroom? Does it feel like my sanctuary for rest and rejuvenation? Does it feel like a reflection of me and my aesthetic?” The Bathroom: Standing at the doorway into your bedroom, ask yourself, “Do I like my bathroom? Does it have a clean, calming and spa-like atmosphere? Is it a space I enjoy being?” When we live in a home we love, a space aligned with our deeper desires, we are well on our way to being more fully supported in the intentional unfolding of our ideal life. However, if we’re feeling overwhelmed by the clutter and the visual objects we observe and manage on an ongoing basis, or if we dislike the overall feel of our space, it’s likely our home is negatively impacting some area of our life. In these circumstances, it’s important not to become dismayed. Our home presents us with an inspiring and empowering opportunity which doesn’t have to cost a dime. Once we experience this language of home and begin making conscious strides toward creating our sanctuary, our home literally becomes our living vision board, reflecting the ever unfolding adventure of our life. Imagine again that your home is your living vision board. We would never adhere words or images we don’t like or make us feel badly onto our vision board. In the same way, we want to make certain all items within our home support, encourage and even accelerate those feelings, values and desires we want to call forth. Here are four helpful tips for transforming your home into your living vision board: Remove the toxic clutter. Toxic clutter is anything in our home which brings up an uncomfortable feeling, thought or memory. Toxic clutter is like visual poison in our home and must be removed. But what if something feels like toxic clutter to us, yet someone else in our household really likes it? Or what if it was a gift? Kindly ask if you may safely pack it away for a few months to see if the negative feeling shifts. Address the physical clutter. Here’s a helpful litmus test for identifying clutter: anything you do not use, do not love or does not support your values, desires or intentions. Clutter in our home acts as visual noise distracting our focus and peace of mind. A cluttered home equals a cluttered mind, which drains our motivation and enthusiasm leading to procrastination and overwhelm. Align the space with our intentions. We want to infuse our home, room by room, with our ideals and aspirations. Like a vision board, we want to seed our space with those things which bring our dreams to mind. What we display around and about our home expresses to our subconscious on a continual basis who we are and what we’re attracting into our life. Imagine I am your fairy godmother and can grant you three wishes by the end of this article, what do you wish? (no wishing for extra wishes, please ; ) Place a symbolic representation of these wishes within each room in your home. A plant may represent wealth or vitality. A picture of the Greek Isles on the bathroom mirror reminds you of the adventure you’re calling in. A dish of chocolates by the front door might remind you of the sweetness of life as you come and go. Have fun with this practice. Invoke your intentions as you move through your day. Our home holds an enormous collection of routines and habitual patterns which do not require our conscious awareness. We want to optimise those seemingly mundane moments by calling in our intentions. By seeding our daily routines with our intentions, we’re weaving the thread of our desires into the moment by moment fabric of our daily life. An intention plus a routine equals a ritual. Rituals invite our higher consciousness to play with us and offer incredible windows for summoning forth that which we want. Remember, Intention + Routine = Ritual Think about all of the little things you do between coming and going, all of the habitual acts you do without having to think about what you’re doing. These are the moments we want to plant our seeds of intention. Our home speaks a silent language and it’s been communicating with us since always. When our home moves into greater alignment with who we are and how we want to enjoy our life, we move more effortlessly along the path of life. Our home holds enormous potential. If change is what we seek, within any area of our life, our home offers a great place to start. Kimberly Garner founded the School of Holistic Design® and pioneers the field of NeuroSpatial Linguistics. Her work as design curator, teacher, writer and philosopher has led her to the simple fact that home is an essential ingredient for well-being, human flourishing and personal evolving.