Stephanie Bennett Vogt - A Year to Clear: A Daily Guide to Creating Spaciousness in Your Home and Heart

Copyright 2015 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review.

Cover design by Emma Smith

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Interior design by Jane Hagaman

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ISBN: 978-1-938289-48-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America

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To our spacious selves

lighting the way and showing us home.

Stop. Now.

Whether you know it or not, you are at the end of your search for relief, peace, and meaning in your life. No more seeking. No more wandering. No more waiting. The peace you seek is hiding in plain sight. An open secret....

Everything you need is already here, unfolding in every instant. Right here, right now.

Josh Baran, The Tao of Now

A Year to Clear was an audacious idea that began as a series of questions: Is a yearlong approach to clearing (our stress and our stuff) too long? Will readers be open to the concept of clearing as a journey, like a hero's journey or a pilgrimage that guides them through the peaks and valleys of their homes and hearts? Is it possible to make a difference in the interior space of a human being in just sixty seconds?

In a culture of short attention spans and quick fixes, I had no idea if a book like that would, or could, succeed. Would my slow drip method be too light to create significant and discernible traction? Would readers lose focus, peter out, and wonder, in the words of Gertrude Stein, is there a there there?

So I tried it online as an experiment: I created a 365-day course called A Year to Clear What's Holding You Back! that launched on DailyOM on December 31, 2013. Participants would receive an inspirational message in their inbox every day for 365 days. Now, nearly 3,000 people signed up to go on this journey with me.

As the year progressed, I was encouraged by what people were sharing in the comments section. Unsolicited postings like these made me think that my idea wasn't so crazy:

I have stuck with this for 40 days and, for once, have not burned myself out with go-go-go. Just drip-drip-drip. Nice!

Not a whole lot... YET... has changed in the house, but OMG!!! I so know stuff has changed INSIDE ME! I can feel it, sense it, realize all that I am doing that I've not done before... Not frantically, but steadily moving in a FLOW.

Someplace along in the 80s lessons, I started to clear and things are just flying out of my house.

I am loving your daily writings; it gentles me in an enlightening way.

Am I still resisting? God, yes! But the attitude about clearing has noticeably changed from I HAVE to clear this ALL up or I'll feel lousy to I DESERVE to live in a peaceful place to Hey, I think I'll create a delicious feeling of calm and order for myself.... The Joy is in the Journey!

I have been charting my blood pressure for some time and was concerned because it was often higher than 130. The last two weeks it has been around 120. Am I clearing the Stuff? I know that I am going more slowly...

[This] has blown to smithereens the clich You can't teach an old dog new tricks! I feel the walls of my OLD self crumbling down in a new way.

Stephanie, I have gained so much from this over the past 11 months that I am going to be lost without you in the New Year. I've loved your Slow Drip method that has actually worn its way into my consciousness day by day.

At the beginning of the experience, I didn't know how this could work. [Now,] I am about 10 lbs lighter. The lessons made it easier for me to try small changes that let me slide into new ways of being... [and] I'd never have remembered all those feelings and thoughts without the journal.

I am starting this over not because I didn't get it. I totally did... I can't imagine a life without checking in. This can't be the end!!!

Testimonials like these put to rest any question that nourishing ourselves on a daily basis is powerful stuffand the unexpected benefits continue to reveal themselves in wondrous ways long after the changes have been made!

Many participants were thrilled to learn that I was creating this book, which, in case you were wondering, is not a carbon copy of the course. Thanks to that experience, and your comments and feedback, the program has morphed and expanded. What you're holding in your hands now has many more features than the daily emails, including personal stories, practical tools, and inspirational wisdomdouble the content from last year's course.

While there's more content, the spirit that infuses these 365 messages remains the same, summarized by my five S's: slow down, simplify, sense, surrender, and self-care.

I love this book, and I hope you'll love it too. Together, we'll learn what it means to clear at a deep level, where spacious detachment rules and awareness changes everything. Enjoy the ride!

Stephanie Bennett Vogt
July 2015

The journey is the treasure.

Lloyd Alexander

With all our best intentions and rich resources, why is it so hard to slow down, simplify, and care for ourselves? Why do most clearing efforts fall short or peter out? Why are we so afraid to let go?

Our drive to attain and succeed comes at a great cost to the soul. We are malnourished, if not starved, when it comes to compassionate self-acceptance, awareness, and care. We yearn for simplicity but struggle to find it. We ache for balance but can't sustain it. There is no time to juggle it all, let alone clear the things and thoughts that have caused us to feel so overwhelmed in the first place.

Most traditional approaches do not make room for us to feel the feelings that come up when we clear, and they make us feel bad when we fall short. These linear modalities do not account for our fight-or-flight response, nor do they recognize the energetic impact that our thoughts and emotions can have on our living spaces.

When people ask me what I do exactly when I am space clearing, they are mystified by my reply.

Nothing is not an answer that sits well.

The truth is that nothing is what people see, and everything is what they haven't been able to see. Yet.

The way I work to restore balance in people's homes and lives is a bit like acupuncturethe ancient Chinese practice of inserting tiny needles into the energy centers of the physical body to release stuckness and improve the flow of chi. You could say that I'm doing the same thing when I'm clearing people and their living spaces. Only in my case the needle is me. What I insert to bring about lasting change is pure compassionate awareness.

Yes, clearing is like needling deep into the heart of all of our human fears and attachments in order to pierce and jiggle loose every last bit of squirmy, spasmy, unspacious stuff that's in there.

It is our ability to be detached and available that invites disturbed energies in a space to magically reorganize and harmonize. Watch a mother comfort her disconsolate child without attachment and you'll know what I mean. After five minutes the child feels all better simply because his mother held a space for him.