Transcend the walls
See the inside out
In my day-to-day life, I work with homes and people. Better saying, with the inside of both. Through an individualized therapeutic approach, I interpret houses and their inhabitants, possibly suggesting changes to improve people’s lives in their multiple dimensions and contexts.
From the hundreds of consultations and accompaniments I have been doing throughout these seventeen years of practice, I observe that, in general, we are closed within the home walls and the mind. We feel disconnected, isolated, alone, heavy, and trapped in a meaningless life.
Relationships become empty, jobs become misaligned, and a constant need to escape grows addictions and cravings.
So does the constant need to achieve an idealized state of unchanging perfection, whether in housekeeping or controlling emotions.
This is what I have found.
As for influencing factors, we tend to look immediately at what “is already there.” In a therapeutic approach involving the home, one tends to simplify by thinking that tidying up and controlling space equals controlling life. Simplistic, to say the least. We work hard to keep our environment predictable and controlled. However, life is a continuous flow, and the only constant the eternal change.
Through this daily observation, in myself, my clients, and students, a personal need began to emerge, that of transcending walls and remembering the connection with what surrounds us, nature, for only it holds the answers we seek.
To return to the primordial landscapes surrounding us and participate in our lives, enchanting and challenging us. To come out of the walls to reconnect with the ancient wonder, fascination, and amazement of the natural world, regulating psychology with geography and bringing new and powerful meanings to this primitive relationship that needs so much to be remembered and healed.
We tend to act on and protect what we identify with and know. The Earth also needs us to remember. So let us rescue this primordial bond of dialogue and caring.
This article is part of the book “Lugar Feliz” I wrote in 2019.
[Disclaimer: all these words and weaved concepts are birthed through my lived, biased, and always limited perception of things, not supposing to bring any absolute truth.]
By Sofia Batalha
Mammal, author, woman-mother, question weaver and dismantling global-colonial-technological-capitalism one day at a time. Awkward prose-poet with no grammatical knowledge. Pilgrim through inner and outer landscapes, remembering ancient earth practices, in radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art, ecstasy, and writing. Author of seven books, editor of the free online magazine, Wind and Water, Re-member the Bones Podcast, and Beyond the Sea Conversations — all in Portuguese.
More information: sofiabatalha.com
