Feeling a lack of space in life is often felt through body sensations. When we feel there isn’t room for anything else or anymore we feel compressed internally, jammed up, jammed in; full. A kind of rigidity or a sense of being braced. Physically we may be tight, tense, holding our breath or not breathing fully. We may feel squashed or restricted across the chest and our throat scratchy or constricted and our jaws might feel tight. All types of holding patterns.
Feeling a lack of space in life may be reflected by a lack of spaciousness internally. Without spaciousness or fluidity within ourselves it’s difficult to be flexible, spontaneous or imaginative, to feel the capacity for movement; to invite possibility.
Without space within our everyday life it’s hard to find a way to decompress:
Make space for yourself. Soften, expand, relax: rest into and savour.
We can lose a sense of who we are, how we feel or what we want without space. How do we notice that there is no space for ‘me’? Some clues are that we get easily caught up in the rush to do, to complete, or to respond immediately to others’ demands and needs). That we are holding our breath.
Where we over extend ourselves we reduce space.
When we take on responsibilities that are not our own, we don’t make space for ourselves.
When we fill up time with busyness we fill available spaces.
Where we go from one thing to the next, we don’t leave intervals in-between to reconnect to ourselves.
When we don’t create space for ourselves we may not be left to be.
The pause is an interruption of the automatic, habituated reactivity where we tend to override what we know and feel by rushing ahead. By doing so we are disconnecting from ourselves, and others, moment by moment. Taking a moment allows us to come back to ourselves.
It’s hard to do anything differently when there isn’t space to pause. What’s here right now?
feel, acknowledge, explore, consider, allow
Space is the sense of the open horizon at the sea or the sky at night, where we can breathe in, and breathe out and soften and settle into our body.
Space is something we experience beyond the congestion of our thinking, where we can connect with possibility, without confining ourselves. Spaciousness is the sense of opening up from within.
Space is the room to recognise and acknowledge how we are relating to our own experience, the quality of our energy.
Space has the qualities of boundlessness; silence, light, air, time and stillness. Spaciousness within ourselves means we feel in connection with these qualities. Space is an infinite resource, we just need to make room for it. Make space for yourself.
If the topic and themes in this article resonate with you and you’d like to explore making space for yourself, please go ahead and book a free exploratory phone call with me and I’d be happy to talk with you.