A Home Altar: Creating a Sacred Personal Space

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s narrator encouraged women to have their own money and a space dedicated to writing and creating. The advice has crossed generations. Man cave and she-shed designs flourish. While not everyone may have the luxury of a prefab backyard house kit, the principle remains the same: people ache for a sacred personal space.

Consider the home altar for all things yogic. A true-blue slice of inspiration for your space may come from various aspects of your current life or the one you want to lead. Here are helpful ideas on how to create your home altar.

How to create your home altar

Claim a space. Can you locate a space in your home that is out of the way? Maybe even a corner that goes ignored? Your area may have a random sock and a dust ball collection. This might be the right place to start a home altar. Start small; you don’t need an entire wall with ornate wood carvings and gold-plated statues. The goal is to find an area minus lots of foot traffic.

Find furniture. Look around and decide if you could repurpose a table, shelf, dresser, footstool, or ottoman to transform it into an altar. Show some flexibility and imagination. Find a workable outlier and tailor it to your space.