Tag: space

Victoria Überegger – Our Space is our Canvas

Posted on by Alexandra Kreis

We spend 90% of our lives indoors. Imagine how much time is that—being in the confines of a space that either supports you or restricts you. These spaces cultivate our experience and awareness that draw the lines between these spaces.

And so for Victoria Überegger, holistic interior designer and fellow yoga practitioner, spaces such as our home should be designed according to the story that its owners want to tell. Every home should look completely different from the next person’s home and each space within a home should reflect how the homeowner wants to feel, what habits they want to create.

Motivated by her own experience, Victoria worked to adopt a holistic approach to interior design through yoga because she knew how a person can take out all the fear and angst that he/she accumulates from a house into his/her social life. Growing up with so much fear and anxiety from living in an old, almost horror house-looking building in the middle of a beautiful city was, to her, next to a traumatic childhood.

As Westerners, we always think of a trajectory—that we’re on a target and we always and continuously have to move forward like an arrow. We thought it’s that strain swift move, but if you look closer, it’s swinging. Like in life, all these pulsations—the endless contraction and expansion—always reflect the polarity of life.

In this podcast, Victoria and Alex exchange and share very profound yet practical tips to create that space that truly reflects one’s vision. Some of them are bringing pieces of nature indoors, reconnecting us with the sense of quietness and nature within ourselves, and getting rid of all toxins that are already pre-existing before moving in.

The philosophy is simple: Try not to possess it all. Let it go. At the end of the day, our home is where we take refuge. After all, our home is our comfort.

Links mention in the podcast

Podcast Highlights

  • 02:15 – 6:50 Victoria’s Journey to Holistic Interior Design
  • 11:24 – 12:30 Broadening the Horizon through Yoga
  • 15:49 – 17:02 Holistic Interior Design reflects the homeowner’s identity, experience, and expression
  • 20:25 – 23:44 Making a Space your OWN
  • 25:05 – 28:33 Creating your space from a blank canvas

Pocket Quotes

  • The spaces we live in manifest in our life. – Victoria Überegger
  • To create something with meaning, you have to stop and be with YOU and sit with YOU and deal with yourself. – Victoria Überegger
  • A room is a big blank canvas. Everything comes together to portray one big vision board – the most important is the vision part. – Alexandra Kreis
  • There has never been a better time to reimagine your home than at least the first lockdown. Anything that’s wrong with your home, you know it now. – Victoria Überegger

Guest Bio

SpaceVictoria Überegger is a holistic interior designer and at the same time, a yoga practitioner, from Innsbruck, Austria.

 

Victoria is from South Tyrol, a multi-language province in the north of Italy on the border to Austria; therefore, she is able to speak fluent Italian, German, and English. She is an open–minded, creative person, who allows her to think outside the box and can work in a team or by herself to solve problems at hand.

Surrender to boredom

Posted on by Alexandra Kreis

[vc_row padding_top=”0px” padding_bottom=”0px”][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px”][vc_column_text]I think it’s interesting that people are constantly trying to escape boredom. What is it about feeling bored that we find so terrifying? We are surrounded by a limitless amount of entertainment, often right at our fingertips – so is it that we are forgetting we can be alone, with no one to communicate with and nothing to do?

Boredom is important.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row padding_top=”0px” padding_bottom=”0px”][vc_column fade_animation_offset=”45px”][vc_column_text]When we experience feeling bored, it is the first time in that day, or for a long time, that we are inactive. Boredom can be a sign that we haven’t completely stopped in a while, after a long time of constantly receiving input. And so after this time, when space arrives in the form of—nothing to do, nothing planned or nothing that triggers our desires—we are arriving in a place of stillness.

From both an Ayurvedic and a psychological perspective, boredom can be a positive thing. If it wasn’t for boredom, we probably wouldn’t get anything done. Professor Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, agrees that boredom is useful for the progression of humankind.

“If you ask a simple question, why we have emotions, the answer seems to be that evolution gave us emotions for survival. So, fear is useful. Anxiety is useful. And even boredom is useful, because you don’t want an organism who just does the same thing over and over again without learning anything.”

When we are bored, it’s only a sign that there is suddenly some space in our minds of non-thought, non-desire and non-attachment to anything. And we need to be able to feel this. In Ayurvedic terms, boredom is the opening-up or the quietening-down of the internal wind, as people begin to perceive the space that they live in. And in this space, creation happens! In order for us to perform in excellence, or even at a genius level, we need to find these places of boredom and silence, with no plans for where to go or what to do. And it’s important to make time for these spaces in our lives. 

These days we don’t often find ourselves in spaces to properly perceive stillness, unless we decide to do something like travel out into nature, go for a walk in the woods, and leave our trusty smartphone behind. If we don’t try to take breaks from using our phone, we will continue to be hit with a constant stream of input. Of course, I can’t say this is all bad. It can also be a beautiful thing, as it gives us the freedom to choose information and decide how we want to build our world. But on the other hand, we are becoming all-consumed as we are getting addicted to this type of input. We are becoming less sure about ourselves, and instead more sure about what more we need and what is missing in our lives.

All of this ‘putting in’ will defeat the self. And when we are defeated we are less likely to put out, or we put out under pressure. But this forced form of ‘putting out’ makes us enjoy less of what we’re doing. More and more we are performing at a level of capability, but not at a level of excellence. In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks shows us the many ways we can self-sabotage our dreams and how when we are feeling safe we are underperforming. Allowing yourself to feel bored might come out of your comfort zone, but it’s essential to perform at your highest potential or to ‘put out’. 

Boredom can be a good friend indeed, a friend that teaches us to become more aware of details. This reminds me of a yogic friend of mine who never really never got bored. She would become sucked into observing her cup of tea and the way the water would turn, or the change in colour when the bag dipped in. And she could sit for hours with that cup of tea. I think this is a nice symbol for boredom, and that it is just a perception of a speed, rather than something that means slowness.

So my advice is to arrive at a level of excellence, or you could call it a level of output, instead of only input. In my work and day-to-day life, I come across a lot of people who are creative, but this isn’t necessarily coming from a zone of excellence, it is from a zone of capability. Imagine what these people could create if they allowed themselves more space. If they allowed themselves those moments of silence throughout the day in order to become quiet and come to boredom. We all need more time for that. So think about where you can take the time out of your day to get bored.

If you want to get inspired for a slow life, tune into my new podcast Outer Travel Inner Journey and start to discover your inner peace.

 

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