Cate Stillman, is an author, Ayurveda and innovative yoga teacher and host of the Yogahealer podcast. In her new book, MASTER OF YOU: Synchronize Your Body, Your Home, and Your Time with Your Ambition, she presents a fresh program for embracing and accelerating one’s capabilities.

The best part, it’s about finding one’s superheroine self—all through the five fundamental elements of Ayurveda. Rather than quick fixes and life hacks, she offers element-by-element instruction on how to organize one’s home (space), optimize one’s Body Rhythms (earth), clarify one’s ambitions (fire), realign one’s relationship with time (air), and embody integrity and flow in one’s daily life (water.)

“We have a unique opportunity to align our spaces, our homes, to the future we want to experience next.” – Cate Stillman

We’ve entered interesting times. We’re more at home, in our nests, in our core relationships that we have been in a while. Or have ever been. We each are remembering our own ethos. We have more time. And we’re wanting to shape-shift our spaces. The world is changing fast. And yet the rhythm of our daily lives is slower. More grounded. Connected to the earth’s rhythms and to each other. We have a unique opportunity to align our spaces, our homes, to the future we want to experience next. Consider re-creating your home, office, wardrobe, bathroom, kitchen, refrigerator, and storage with the Five Words Exercise.

How To Find Rhythm In
Your Home On The Daily

How do you feel in your space? Do you spend time looking for things? Do you wear most of the things in your closet or drawers — or are they full of who knows what? Does your bathroom inspire your daily pampering? Does your fridge make it easy to select fresh vegetables? Does your office help you think clearly? Does your garage contain your favorite toys and tools, not a bunch of other stuff?

Here is a simple exercise to recalibrate your space:

Think Goals | Recall the particulars of your deeper dreams and the person that you want to become to achieve that. What does the home, the office, the fridge, and the bathroom of that person look like?

Ask The Questions | Ask yourself, your superheroine: What is the frequency or feeling that you want to create? How do you want your space to feel? How do you want your space to look? What do you want your space to do for you?

Choose Words | Choose five adjectives — the five words — that are the most vibrant and true. Words that course members have used include: vibrant, fun, playful, sweet, luscious, holistic, bright, purposeful, rooted, inspirational, empowering, joyful, gorgeous, modern and nurturing.

Embrace Your Space | Your five words should describe the qualities of the space in which you want to bathe your cells. Write all of the five words on multiple sticky notes. Put these notes where you’ll notice them — your bathroom mirror, your laptop cover, your fridge.

That’s it. Now your superheroine knows the calibration you want. These five words will come in handy again, so be sure to find the right words before proceeding.

For example, as Cate, the Legendary Leader (which sounds oh-so-egoic, and yours should too!), my five specific qualities are: modern, useful, stylish, spacious, communal.

I, along with my family, have received, recorded and revisited these words when making all decisions about what stays or leaves our home as well as how our possessions are organized to guide our lived experience. If you, too, cohabitate, choose your five words both independently, for your private spaces, and with the other members of your home or office for your shared spaces. When you’re re-forming the unreal into the real, chaos into the known, your words shape what happens next.

Excerpted from the book Master of You: A Five-Point System to Synchronize Your Body, Your Home, and Your Time with Your Ambition © 2020 Cate Stillman, used with permission from the author and the publisher, Sounds True, Inc.