Overexpressed

It’s early Wednesday morning. I wait for my teenagers to be dressed and ready, so I can drive them to school. I sit on my couch and look around the room. Surrounded by books, magazines, old comics, raincoats, clay figurines from third-grade art class, pictures, shoes, a pile of unread New York Times Magazines, even old French homework pages, I breathe. By the time my kids arrive, I am fuming. Not only are they late for school again, but also half of this stuff is not even theirs, it’s mine! 

What does all of my stuff say about me? What does it say about the United States, which is home to 90% of worldwide self-storage inventory? 

On my drive to my yoga studio, which I do three or four times a week, I pass a Life Storage facility, which offers everything from a 4×3 climate-controlled storage unit to a 20’ space for your RV or boat. Post COVID, self-storage is one of the fastest-growing industries in commercial real estate and in 2020 made $39 billion in revenue. If the parking lot–filled with boats, RVs, and cars–is an indicator of the storage units inside, my conclusion is correct: I am not the only one with a lot of stuff.  

If you think of stuff in terms of the body, which is always working towards homeostasis, (from the Greek words for “same” and “steady,” refers to any process that living things use to actively maintain fairly stable conditions necessary for survival) you see that I/we are out of balance. And that I/we have more stuff than what we need and/or can handle within our physical structures. And that this excess–whether that be old magazines or overexpressed genes–may be the cause of disease.  

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), disease (from Old French meaning lack or want of ease/comfort) or dysfunctions of the organs are seen as excessive or deficient energy that gets stuck. So for example in TCM, my rage at my children being late and my kitchen being filled may be because of an excess of energy stuck in my liver (which would not be too far off given that my liver is responsible for digesting and metabolizing Enhertu!). The goal, therefore, is to keep the energy pathways clear, keep the chi flowing.

Knowing how important it is to maintain an internal homeostasis, I spend a lot of time “cleaning out” my internal storage spaces–acupuncture, yoga, yin yoga, manual lymph massage, water–so I can stay alive to fill my physical spaces. I recognize the irony, so this summer, I plan to apply the same logic to my physical spaces.

It’s time to stop fuming and start cleaning!