Emily: Hello Stephanie, it's great to have you here to share more about your wonderful course. Tell us what inspired you to create this for our community?
Stephanie: Hi Emily! What inspired me to create this course was the success of the previous two year-long courses I created for DailyOM, A Year to Clear What is Holding You Back! and Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter. I was inspired by what participants were saying about their stunning clearing experiences: how the daily, slow-drip approach to releasing stress and stuff was not only working for them in countless ways but also changing their lives for good!
I wanted to create something that would go deeper than the previous two "smaller bites" courses. This course is more like a rich meal that you savor and integrate more slowly and contemplatively, one week at a time.
Emily: Is this course complementary to your other DailyOM courses? Or is it stand-alone?
Stephanie: While this course offers an excellent refresher for anyone having completed any other of my courses, it stands alone. It takes you on a soulful journey that is as practical as it is nourishing. If you are looking to give yourself a guided year-long sabbatical where you do not need to pack a bag or leave your home and job, this is it.
Emily: Your approach to simplifying emphasizes slowing down. Tell us more about this and why it's so beneficial.
Stephanie: What came out of my nearly 30 years as a space clearing practitioner, both working with students and exploring my own complicated relationship with clutter, was a very simple truth: We cannot clear stress or stuff with the same mindset that created it. I saw how people struggle to let go of things and thoughts that hold so much baggage and emotional charge. I saw how binge-clearing approaches can make us feel empty, lost, and even bad about ourselves. I saw how no matter how eager, earnest, or intentional we were to lighten our load, nothing was going to change unless we felt safe at our core. Out of this awareness, a whole new, counter-intuitive, clearing method was born — a whole new paradigm that replaces effort with ease and changes the game for good!
The question became not how, where, and when do we get rid of the stuff, but rather, how do we release the fears, attachments, and old patterning that created it all in the first place? How do we effectively bypass a brain that is hardwired to fight or flee and to push back and avoid? How do we feel safe in letting go? The answer and first step became immediately obvious: We need to consciously slow down. Think about it. For us to simplify, we have to turn down the noise in our heads (which is cycling on autopilot most of the time) and be still. There is no other way. If you want to grow new habits that last, my years of study, practice, and personal experience point to one key thing as our starting point — slow down and be present.
Emily: Feeling overwhelmed is a pervasive issue today, which can lead to burn out, stress, and even health problems. How do you address this in your course?
Stephanie: The course does so beautifully. It does it by tiptoeing around the part of the brain that goes into fight-or-flight, the part that sends out a cascade of stress chemicals that leads to overload. In a very measured and purposeful way, this course mitigates that by guiding you through five essential steps, which are easy to remember because they all begin with the letter S: slowing down, simplifying, sensing, surrendering, and self-care.
There is a reason why these five Ss are presented in this order, in stages. You see, you cannot simplify without slowing down. Without a steady practice in sensing, you will not have the tools to step up your game with surrender. And without the nourishing effects of the first four Ss that precede it, self-care has no ground on which to flourish. They all slowly build on each other to help you grow your "spacious muscle." Over time, without you even noticing it, you begin to discover how just one minute a day of conscious clearing morphs into more minutes, less effort, and less baggage. It promotes a calmer nervous system, a quieter mind, more ease, more space, lightness, and more joy.
Emily: Tell us how you've structured this yearlong course and how you keep participants committed and engaged?
Stephanie: The course is organized into 52 weeks. Each week's lesson pretty much follows the same basic four-part structure: an opening inspirational quotation to introduce the week's theme, a personal story or lesson to clarify the theme, an action step or two to give you a direct experience of the lesson, and a writing prompt to deepen your understanding of the week's theme. Think journey, not destination. This may feel like a lot at first, so I recommend participants get into a routine with this right out of the gate.
First, set aside some time to read the entire message at least twice, preferably on the same day each week. Second, be consistent. While the lessons are delivered once a week, the practice steps that follow are meant to be repeated with as much awareness every day. Lastly, as you near the end of the week, before moving onto the next lesson, reach for your journal and give yourself a few minutes of reflection time by completing the open-ended prompts that close each weekly theme. This final step is super important yet easy to skip or forget. It's a great way to integrate your ongoing experiences, connect some dots, set (or recommit to) your intentions, see patterns, make connections, etc. Be sure to include it as part of your weekly routine.
While there are no guarantees, here is what I can tell you about the rewards of staying with it: If you are willing to give yourself this gift just for you, take it one day (and week) at a time, follow the simple guidelines, and remain open to a whole new way of being. This journey will take you to wondrous places within yourself that you never knew were possible. In the end, it is entirely up to you. What you get from this experience is directly proportional to what you put into it.
Emily: I would love to know what are two of your favorite practices that someone can start implementing right now?
Stephanie: I love this question! I have so many of what I call one-minute practices designed to cultivate spaciousness from the inside out, to transform our wiring from effort to ease. Here are two of my all-time favorites:
The first one I call "put away." Take 60 seconds to put away one thing, sort one pile, or round up one area. Push in chairs, turn off lights, make the bed, cap the toothpaste, put the toilet seat down, move the dirty clothes from the floor to the hamper. Choose one and repeat it every day for a week and notice the openings it creates. Expand your practice of putting away every day only if time allows and you feel moved to do so.
The second one is "tune in." Take one minute to stop, observe, allow, and feel whatever you are feeling in this moment without doing anything to fix, manage, resist, or medicate it. As you sit quietly, simply notice what's going on inside yourself. Notice your breathing. Is it shallow? Is it full? How about your hands, are they hot, cold, tingly, or grippy? Is there any "emotional weather" passing through, a tinge of sadness, perhaps, or worry or anxiety? Give any and all of these sensations space to simply be. This sensing practice is an especially good one to reach for when there is something going on in your life that doesn't add up, make sense, or match your expectations.
These simple practices and many others like them in the course, when applied consistently and consciously with full awareness, can change everything!
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