Is Your Room Messy or Tidy?

Homeopathic practitioners will often ask you this question:

Do you have a messy room or a tidy room?

Why would someone want to know this while trying to assess your overall health?
Take a quick look around your room. What glimpse does this view give you into how you approach your health and life?

Maybe there are clothes everywhere, littering the floor, couches, and even spilling out from the laundry hamper. You may see clutter on tables and in corners of the room. If someone were to pick everything up and organize it, this may make you feel panicky. You're used to these orchestrated piles, and you definitely don't want the pressure of having to put everything back in its "correct place." That way of functioning feels too rigid for you. Now, there is not necessarily a direct comparison to make here to your health. Just take a look and see if there are any metaphors contained in that picture.

Maybe there is a part of your health that has felt disorganized or rumpled into a corner, and maybe it's felt familiar and even somehow comforting to have it that way. It could be that the thought of attending to this area of your health brings on feelings of panic or getting overwhelmed. Perhaps inside those piles of clutter littering mind-body health, there are nuggets of strength, potential healing, and direction that can take place. It's sometimes hard to tell unless you start peeling the metaphoric clothing off the pile on the floor, one by one.

Let's take a different scenario. Maybe you're just super tidy. You know where everything can be found in your house, even down to a loose paperclip you found on the floor last week and re-assigned to a new place. You form intimate relationships with every detail of your room and how it's organized. If you can't find something inside your room, the whole world feels wrong and out of place. You may start to sweat and run around frantically for a split-second before you remember the exact location in which you stored something away. Organization and tidiness means everything to you.

In terms of health, however, maybe everything's been just a little too micromanaged. It's hard for you to let loose and relax, and even though you exercise regularly, eat great, and sleep a full 8-hours, you feel somewhat strung out and stressed. You meticulously write in your planner daily, but somehow you still feel so behind and disorganized. It feels like it's never enough! It may be time to grab your planner and write the words "I need a break" in the margins somewhere to remind yourself that you're not shackled to it. It's a tool to help you, but it's not meant to control you.

Likewise, with your health, an ounce of paying attention to how you're really feeling physically and mental-emotionally can weigh more than a pound of eating, exercising, and sleeping perfectly. Why? Because you're giving a nod to your body and saying, "Hey--I know you're smart and you know what you're doing. I support you in that." No need to stop your daily regimens with diet and exercise, just remember not to be controlled by them. And sometimes enough is exactly that:  Enough.

The examples above show the extremes of "messy" versus "tidy." There is no good or bad in that, they're just your preferences (unless you're in the mood for a change). For you as an individual, your habits will be unique to you. Maybe you have one room that is tidy while all your other rooms are messy, or vice versa. Each of us has tendencies in how we organize our rooms, and that's just one of our quirks as unique human beings. It can be fun to look at that quirk and think, "Wow--how did you get here?" It's also insightful to see the hidden metaphors that these quirks sometimes present to you. So.....

.....Is Your Room Messy or Tidy?