space

Can you imagine the space between your eyes?
Can you imagine the space between your toes?
Can you imagine the space between the top of your head and the base of your skull?
Can you imagine the space between your right sitz bone and your left sitz bone?
Can you imagine the space between the bones of your hand?

I’ve been doing some variation of this practice daily since I first heard it about two weeks ago from coach and author Martha Beck. I love it. Try it out! You can do it anywhere, with anything that speaks to you - the space within your body, or the space around you. It can be two seconds long or twenty minutes long. I find it brings me into an instantly calmer state. With a flurry of delightful summer activities, my nervous system craves the calm. With increasing anxiety about less delightful summer happenings, from war to ticks to authoritarianism, my nervous system needs the calm.

This practice has also helped me attune to “the space between” lots of other things. Like the space between trees in a forest. Like the space between blades of grass. Like the space between the earth and the sun. Take a second:

Can you imagine the space between trees in a forest?

It’s a lot of space! Trees are so massive, intelligent, widespread and strong - and still, space is prevalant. The universe, too, is mostly space - yet our planet and our lives and our cells are still important, still existing, still relevant. I guess there’s something appealing to me about the idea of space right now - within me, between me and other objects in the world, space in my day, spaces for words, spaces for love, space for energy to grow and change, space and my awareness of space taking up more space.

How do you understand space - within you, and within the universe? What fills the spaces inside of you and all around you?

Is there enough space? For me, for this emotion, for that change, for that new life, for that growth? For that tree and blade of grass?

Always.