Moving is one of the biggest transitions we encounter in life.
The process of buying or selling a home involves letting go, loss, grief, navigating uncertainty, living in the mystery, and stepping into the unknown future.
It also involves investing large sums of money. A home is generally a person’s most valuable asset.
The moving process itself is a process of uprooting and resettling.
Taken together, all aspects of moving tend to cause even the most composed and grounded people to lose their footing.
It’s hard to uproot one thing in your life without uprooting everything.
As I often say to my clients, it doesn’t matter if you’re moving down the hall or around the world; you’ll still feel the impact across all areas of your life.
Moving and the Energy Body
This makes sense when you consider that home — shelter — is fundamental to our security and safety.
Without feeling secure in this basic need, every other endeavor is all the more challenging.
This basic premise has been observed across various lineages.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, security and certainty are at the bottom of the pyramid, the foundation for everything else. Without security, an individual doesn’t feel open to take basic risks, has trouble developing connections and nurturing relationships, and struggles to achieve growth and individuation.
In the chakra system, the Indian-defined energetic systems of the body, the root chakra, or Muladhara chakra, governs the legs and feet as well as the bones. It is the foundation of the body, related to survival, security, and stability.
If the root chakra is out of balance, all the chakras above it will suffer: creativity, willpower, love, expression, insight, and divine connection.
Katonah Yoga, a lineage that relies on a Taoist and Chinese medicine model of the body, uses the metaphor of the body as a house. In this metaphor, the first floor is a symbol for our primary needs: food, sex, water, currency, shelter. The second floor — the torso and arms — represents our ability; our capacity to hold and handle things. The teaching is that without stability we can’t harness our ability.
Think about it: if you’re not balanced well on your feet, you have to hold onto something. How much life can you hold if you’re holding onto something to maintain your balance?
This is why all skill development always reverts back to fundamentals. Foundations first.
And this is why when you move your life feels like it’s in a complete upheaval.
Any time you shake the foundation, you shake the building. If you disrupt the roots of a tree, the entire tree is impacted.
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