Home renovations can really wear you down. It’s not just the noise and dust and intrusion of having builders in the space of your home. What many people don’t realize is that we rest part of our consciousness on the physical structure of the home we live in, and the process of having it dismantled and changed can be very disorientating and destabilizing. Even if you do the work yourself, it can be remarkably unsettling.
The reason for this is that you are energetically connected to your home, and the longer you have lived there, the more connected you are likely to be. So you may think you are simply renovating or remodeling your kitchen, but the disruption it causes in your life goes far deeper than the inconvenience of not having access to a stove. When a part of your home is being deconstructed and rebuilt, a corresponding part of you is being altered too. This can be a good thing in the long run, but if the work drags on, it can feel like your life is in limbo until it is finished, waiting for the parts of yourself and your life to come back together. It can also make you feel very scattered, vulnerable, and exposed while the work is in progress.
During the 20 years I lived in Bali I was delighted to discover that Balinese builders are very aware of this, and take steps to alleviate it. The Balinese have devised highly effective consecration rituals to consciously presence the buildings they occupy and bring the materials they are made of “back to life”, as they put it. So before doing major repairs or renovations, a specific ritual is done to remove the presencing in that area of the building to a temporary shrine, and another type of ritual is done when the building work is complete to restore it. They liken this to the way that a human is given anaesthesia before surgery to numb them to the pain, and I have personally experienced that the practice has the effect of isolating that part of the building and minimizing the disturbance.
This level of spiritual technology is not readily available in the West, so what can you do to minimize the turmoil if you decide to renovate your home?
The best approach is to have it all done before you move in. You will have no energetic connection to the property at this stage, and can continue to live a normal life well away from the building work. The next best option is to hire a caravan, park it in the garden, and live in that rather than the house. If that is not possible, then find a room in the property where you can create a personal sanctuary. Keep the doors closed as much as possible to keep dust levels down, and create as much of a home environment in that space as you can.
Another good tip is that if you have a number of projects to do, fully complete one and have a short break before beginning the next. This will give you welcome periods of sanity that will allow you to rest and re-gather before the next onslaught. However when you first move into a home, a speedier approach is best, while the motivation and momentum is still fresh. Aim to have any renovations done during the first year, so that you can fully land there. I’ve met people who still have half-finished rooms a decade or two after moving in, and not surprisingly, their life feels similarly disjointed.
There is one more piece of advice I can offer that is an adaptation of the Balinese way of handling this situation. Before the building work begins, do my 21-step space clearing ceremony in the areas of a home that are not going to be renovated, and deliberated exclude those that are. This will have the effect of energetically separating your living space from the building areas. Then after the building work has been finished, do another space clearing ceremony to integrate those areas and reset the space at a higher level. When doing the ceremony for this purpose, the key aspects to focus on are the offerings and harmony ball frequencing, as described in my book.
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Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2014