 Meditating is cleaning your internal environment. And when you face it, breathe with it, you can make peace with it. Hello, citizens, my name is Courtney, and I'm a brain education instructor from Boston. Today, let's talk about cleaning. This time of year, most people will naturally be rummaging through closets, tidying out drawers, and does anyone else have a room or a closet in their house where they store things they don't know what to do with? I hope that's not just me. Anyway, spring cleaning is a well-known activity around this time of year, and many of us are focusing on cleaning out our external environment. But what about our internal environment? I'm talking about cleaning your mind. All the invisible parts of ourselves, like our thoughts, emotions, memories, stresses, just like your closet can keep piling up with all the stuff you don't know what to do with. If you don't clean your mind, your body can end up being just like that closet. What would happen if you didn't clean your kitchen after you cooked? How difficult would it be to cook your next meal with all the dishes in the sink and food still on the counter? And I'm not just talking about pushing it to the side or suppressing it. I'm talking about cleaning it, processing it. That is the power of meditation. But a lot of people tell me they have a hard time meditating. And from my personal experience, here's why. When we look inward, before things get quiet, they may feel louder. This is part of the process of becoming more aware of your inner environment. We can actually live for a long time on the surface of our consciousness, unaware or perhaps even avoiding what may be going on underneath. Let's say your body is a house and your mind is the owner of that house. Your mind is kept very busy focusing on things outside of your house, your job, your family, your community, your responsibilities. After a while, more and more of your time is spent outside than in. And we can live like that for a while, just staying busy and focusing on things outside ourselves. However, we may get to a point where we feel something is missing and we decide to try meditation to come back home. When you meditate, you're asking the owner to come back into the house. When you come back to a house after spending a long time away from it, what is the house going to look like? When you open the door, it might be dark. Some of us might even be afraid of the dark. You may bang into things as you walk into the house. You may think you see a ghost or hear scary noises. Then you turn on the lights and you see that it was a drawer that you banged into. The ghost was a shadow, the noise was a mouse. Once you have your eyes open, it isn't as scary as you imagined, but you can see the mess. You can see the dirt, the cobwebs, maybe some bugs, et cetera. Turning on the light represents your awareness. Once you become more aware, you can move the furniture, turn the heat on, roll up your sleeves and clean. When we're cleaning internally, that may mean feeling emotions we haven't been able to process. The stress we may have compartmentalized because we had to function at work. We may feel discomfort from conflicts we might have within our relationships. Bold wounds, trauma may resurface and that can be scary. But do you want to clean them up or do you want to keep them in your body? The key is to get comfortable with your own internal dirt. This is just old emotions, stress that I need to do something about. But if you open the door to your house and go, this is disgusting, run away, we disconnect from ourselves. A big part of meditation is the practice of being okay with whatever you observe within your internal environment. Try not to judge it, try not to react to it. And when you do, you may find it starts to dissipate on its own. Feeling your emotions with neutrality and acceptance is cleaning, you're processing or digesting them so that they're no longer bottled up and stored in your body, your house. Often it's our fear and our reaction that stops us from being able to process our feelings. We can't accept we have dirt, but we do, we're human. Meditation is cleaning, it's purifying. So when you meditate and heaviness or emotion arises, great, it means you're doing well. It's a good opportunity to practice self-compassion, self-empathy, self-love. And then when you aren't walking around with all this stuff under the surface, naturally you'll feel more clear-headed, more able to prioritize, more able to give and love yourself and others. Actually, all of us want to be around people who are internally clean, not holding onto grudges, protecting themselves or judging others. Here are a few ways to do that. One, I've already mentioned several times, meditation. But it doesn't always have to be still or static. BETV has so many videos for moving or dynamic meditations. And in fact, anything can be a meditation when you're being mindful. My personal favorites are the chakra meditations. Two, get outside. Nature has a way of helping us clear our mind. Trees aren't capable of anger. Neither are rocks or mountains. Nature just is. We can be reminded of our inner nature as we connect to nature outside ourselves. As you spend time outdoors, your thoughts may start to quiet. You'll feel your body more, your emotions will settle. Third is journaling, getting all your thoughts and emotions down on paper. It tends to take their charge down a notch and help you organize and clean your inner environment. But whatever you do, try to make a habit of it. Because we may only do spring cleaning once a year, but how often do we clean our house? How often do we shower or brush our teeth? And how often do you think you accumulate stress and worries daily? Try to make a habit of inner cleaning daily. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to experience a full one hour brain education, find a body and brain center near you. See you next time.