A lot of us have had those moments in our lives where we just want to go shut ourselves into a closet and sit in the dark and hide from the world. When we do this, we are unconsciously gravitating towards what we know that a closet can provide. Well, what if I told you that sitting in a closet in a conscious way can actually be a great tool for awakening. 

Conscious closet work is when you consciously go into a closet (or some other dark, enclosed space) as a tool for your own body, emotions, mind and/or overall consciousness. There are a lot of benefits that closets can provide with regards to our wellbeing and our consciousness work. Allow me to list them for you. 

1. Closets are usually small and enclosed. This makes them essentially containers. A closet can provide a sense of containment. To understand the benefits of this, you can think of what a womb provides a baby or what a clam shell provides a clam or what a bunker provides someone in a time of war. It is a buffer of protection. It makes the nervous system register that it is safe. And it can serve as a somatic antidote when we feel inundated or attacked or not defended or intruded on.   
2. Closets are still. Never underestimate the power of stillness. Hardly anyone talks about the importance of periods of complete stillness. And stillness is something that is very hard to find in the modern world. In a state of stillness, the chaos settles, both external and internal. Stillness often triggers the slowing and deepening of breathing; which in and of itself activates the Vagus nerve and calms you down. In stillness, you can perceive the movements within your own being. With no stimulation from the outside world, you can attune to what is happening within you. Also, stillness can put you back in touch with the stillness of objective consciousness. It can put you into witness perspective rather than the temporal ego perspective. What is sometimes called the “big mind” in Buddhist circles. Stillness causes the nervous system to regulate itself. And all of this is an incredible antidote to reactivity. Stillness also helps you detach from doing mode and shift into being mode. 
3. Closets are silent. In a world of so much noise, closets cancel that noise out. You can hear your thoughts in the absence of that noise. Aside from this, it gives your being a break. It does not have to process language or sounds and their meaning. It allows you to come out of over-stimulation mode. And you will notice that in silence, thoughts are consolidated, slowed and even stopped. Silence actually helps your consciousness to filter relevant information.        
4. It is dark. This means no visual stimulus is coming into your being. Darkness triggers melatonin which causes us to calm down and even to sleep. Darkness is an antidote to stress chemicals. It induces deep relaxation and calms brain activity. In the dark, the brain produces a different frequency (what scientists might call alpha waves) and this makes you calm as well as increases creative thinking and problem solving.    
5. Closets can pull you out of triggers so that you can move forward and think clearly again. A lot of this is down to the fact that all the elements inherent in a closet will de-activate the part of your nervous system that keeps you in that triggered state. To the opposite, they will activate the part of your nervous system that calms you and that helps you to think rationally. Also, in a closet, you do not have to be hypervigilant. And this is super healing if you are feeling anxious or triggered or if you are dealing with PTSD.    
6. Closets are incredible for processing any and all emotions. Closets help you to feel the emotion, extract the information contained within the emotion and figure out what to do in response to the information that emotion contains. They are especially amazing for grief.       
7. Closets are an antidote to shock. All of the elements inherent in a closet, cause a re-set of the nervous system. Trauma throws everything into chaos. When you limit all stimuli, while in a contained area that the brain ‘gets’ is safe and predictable, it can re-boot the system. It allows you to re-calibrate. Feeling the walls around you can orient your body in space, which grounds you in a way that opposes emotional flooding and dissociation. 
   As an interesting side note, this is why when a bird flies into a window (provided that they have not sustained too much physical injury) the best thing to do is to put the bird in a dark, enclosed box with air holes and lined with paper towels or soft cloth and then keep it in a quiet, warm, dark place for up to two hours. As a side note, in case you decide to do this, remember to observe the bird for signs of recovery and after two hours, take the box with the bird in it to a safe, quiet area away from any windows, take the lid off the box and step back away from the box, giving the bird space to feel safe to fly.             
8. Closets cause all other things to be tuned out, except what is happening in your internal world. Because of this, it feels like closets simultaneously calm everything down, and intensity things in the internal world. Things like emotions, images, memories, thoughts and sensations. This makes closets excellent places to really tune-into ourselves to figure out what is going on with us or what our personal truth is. They are an excellent place for reflection. An absolutely exemplary place to do shadow work. They can increase your awareness immensely. All this leads to emotional organization, a sense of physiological, psychological and emotional calm, creativity and much better decision making. 
9. A closet can be an ideal spot for meditation. Meditation is at its core, a mental exercise. And some people really do better with mental exercises when they are in an enclosed space, free from stimuli and distractions. They can focus. They can perceive the inner world. They find it much easier to engage with their own mind. Closets are also customizable and minimal. You can easily turn one into a kind of mini- meditation cave with minimal investment. And due to the small area, if you use essential oils or incense of any kind, the effect is very quick. 

If you are going to engage in conscious closet work, make sure that your closet is well ventilated. That it is free of all hazards. And that you set it up/customize it so as to use it as a place that feels safe, grounded and intentional for you. Seeing as how most of us also keep our clothes and other items in the closet, just make sure that you de-clutter your closet. Clutter introduces a kind of chaos and over-stimulation to a space energetically. Clutter is bad for you. That being said, people often benefit immensely by being enclosed in a space that smells familiar and that smells like them and/or their partner. Where better than in their closet? Because of this, some people choose to do conscious closet work by sitting inside and amongst the fabrics of their hanging clothes.

To do conscious closet work, be intentional about it. Decide what the purpose for going into the closet is before you go in. And in alignment with this intention, decide what you are going to do in the closet. And also, decide how long being in there would suit your intention. To give you some idea of what I mean, some people decide to go in for twenty minutes to just be in total stillness and not do anything at all, no trying to work with or control their thoughts or emotions or anything. Just total surrender to stillness. Other people decide to go in for ten minutes to do a specific meditation. Other people decide to go in for an hour to process their thoughts and emotions about a situation they were in at work. Other people decide to go in to do a shadow work process, like the completion process and decide that they will come out whenever it feels totally complete. You get the idea. The closet will start to become a positive trigger for the very states that the closet, and your specific intention induces and so, your closet can actually become more effective over time.               

Closets are an incredible tool for the human nervous system and for human consciousness in general. To generalize, less input means more nervous system recovery. Closets have the power to shift your nervous system from sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic dominance ie: to pull you out of fight or flight mode. A closet can signal to your body that you are safe and so, it is time to shift to rest, digest and repair mode. In that absence of stimulation, your brain and nervous system can slow down and decompress. A closet can act like a nervous system re-set, kind of like un-plugging and re-booting a technological device and it can help you to make far better decisions in your life. If you can get over the idea that a closet is only a space for children to be in, it may just become one of the most helpful places in your home. So, give it a try.