Getting Fit, Losing Weight Brings Up Other Issues...Cleansing

Gathering Up Christmas

Like most Americans, I put on weight over the holidays...being more aware of my body as a result of my own Isagenix journey, my eyes focused on my goals, did not PACK IT ON like I used to, but did put on a few pounds that I am working on losing.  To that end, have invited many of my Facebook friends, and people I do not even know to participate in what I am calling the "Isa Guru's 9 Day Cleanse Challenge"...a way for all of us to giving our New Year's resolution of losing weight, being healthier a great jump start while having some fun and perhaps making some new friends, deepening our relationships with other friends. As I prepare for the cleanse, pack up Christmas here in my apartment have been giving some thought to the concept of cleansing.

The dictionary defines cleanse-To free from dirt, defilement, or guilt; purge or clean.

In the case of our upcoming group cleanse, we are freeing our bodies from the environmental toxins that defile our bodies on a cellular level, cleaning our bodies from the inside out.  Yet, picking up and packing up Christmas here in my apartment, looking at my Isagenix journey so far, realize in some ways that I need to implement other "Cleanses" in my life, some of which are hard to contemplate as doing them requires soul searching,  making tough choices.

Two years ago I moved out of a very large old Victorian home into my small two bedroom apartment here in Mountaindale, New York leaving a lot of things I had cherished behind because there just was not enough space in my new abode.  Some call that downsizing, but in some ways looking back on it and looking forward it was a form of cleansing even if not a cleansing of a voluntary nature.  What I have realized today, is that as much as I let go in that move, my apartment contains WAY TO MUCH STUFF, some of which I really need to part with.  In short, my apartment needs a CLEANSE, and that I am afraid is going to be a painful process.

Was putting away clothes when I suddenly realized that I have a LOT of shirts.  I did not count them all, giving up on the task at the number 75 though there is at least twice that number.  Believe that 75 constitutes a LOT, and know that I have no real use for that many shirts...problem is, as I thumbed through the closet examining them, thinking I should bag up some to donate to Goodwill, I realized each of them in some way holds a special memory of times and places long ago past.  They in some way represent a historical view, a timeline of my life, each bringing back the when and where of how the shirt came into my life.

Such inventory taking saw me sitting in the living room counting objects tucked away in cabinets, handing on walls, and openly displayed on various tables and shelves.   Looking at these things, I began recalling again the moments when they came into my life, seeing faces of the people that had gifted them to me, some of them no longer in my life...thinking about cleansing my space, once again downsizing my possessions I felt suddenly old, my apartment feeling more like a museum than a warm cozy home. Sometimes, letting go is no easy task.

Perhaps for me, the hardest part of this line of thought is realizing there is not a lot of reason to hold on to much of what I have, there is no one to pass it down to, no one with which to leave my cherished family heirlooms.  Children were not something I was blessed with in this life, and have no real family to speak of, brothers and sisters like the seven winds blown in various directions around the globe, none of us close with the other.  

Perhaps therein is the true difficulty for me in the large stock of possessions I own...they, the memories they represent in some way are my children, cared for, cherished...sounds silly, but have spent my entire life collecting for the most part life's abandoned odds and ends, given them a home as my collection has grown.  Old books, mismatched (some even with chips) old bone china cups with saucers, a child's sled, even an old chello its strings still pulled tight as it waits for someone to take bow in hand.  I think of downsizing, cleansing away the things that I really do not need and wonder what is to happen to them, to afraid at times to think of them ending up in some rubbish heap, no one willing to give them a home.

As I get ready for our Group Cleanse, think I will start with the shirts in my closets...it's a beginning, and looking back at the start of my Isagenix journey, seeing how far I have come in just three months, who knows where my apartment cleanse will end up taking me.