On cultivating space as a way of life

Why is space important?

A fundamental piece of work I do with any client is learning to develop a greater capacity to turn on intensity and the highest performance state by learning how to turn off more intensely and being in that relaxed, open, diffuse state.

It's an exploration of the oscillation between tension and slack, stress and release, movement and stillness, that becomes a core habit.

Why is this important? Well…. acess to greater energy, increased idea and insight generation, skill and information integration are a few of the benefits.

We tend to get caught in this middle zone where the tension is always somewhat on.

We wrestle with an idea or challenge and it is in our conscious thinking on repeat, yet not in a focused way or a way that helps us solve a problem any more efficiently in time or energy.

A simple example that comes to mind is misplacing something. Ever have the experience where you’ve misplaced something, are looking around all over the place and it singularly occupies your attention? You cannot find it, you retrace your steps, you think about all the places you could have left them, then at a certain point you simply give up and let it go. Maybe you take a breath to reset. Then in that exact moment you either find the item or remember where it is placed.

As a musician I would notice this process in rehearsal. The orchestra would be struggling with a passage, repeating it over and over. We’d be taking direction and feedback from the conductor and none of it seemed to help the passage. Either a break or the end of the rehearsal would arrive, then when we came back, we would pick up where we left off and suddenly the passage would come together beautifully with no problem; somehow in the NOT rehearsing everything was solved.

On a physical level, we understand the principal of space, and turning off, a bit more clearly. When we work out intensely, we understand that the recovery time is just as important for us to get full benefit from the work. In yoga the savasana IS part of the asana, they work together to create benefit. If you study any world class athlete, their attention to down-regulation, rest and recovery (doing nothing) is equally important as the intensity they bring to their physical training.

There’s a body of research on the learning process that shows clearly how periods of space, of distraction and a diffuse attention away from the material that has sharply been learned and focused on, is fundamental to increased learning.

Space is where miracles and magic happen.

Learn how to turn off….learn how create slack, release and stillness. Give your body a chance to recover and realize greater energy peaks, release your conscious mind and let your subconscious and intuition do its work.

Why is it that on some level we know this and yet we are still challenged by stepping away and turning off efforts completely?

One of the behavioral patterns that arises goes something like this:

We do something, then a result happens….

If the result was a success, we jump in again wanting to create another success as quickly as possible. (Strike while the iron is hot! Keep the mojo going!)

If the result was unintended, we move on as quickly as we can to avoid the feeling associated with a failure and to make up for lost time in getting to our goal. (Try, try again! Grin and bear it! Just do it! Buck up!)

The deeper cut of this is that so often it boils down to an internal piece we all deal with on occasion: the belief that we are not enough.

This loop puts us into a subtle reactive state where there is no space for greater insight or energy renewal.

There’s are a couple of ideas you’ve probably heard:

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

&

SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP

In these ideas, I believe that not working at all or the ability to shut the system down as much as possible is the key component to creating the performances, the insight and the results we are aiming for.

Learn more about how slack, release, and stillness are keys to greater performance, energy, insight and ideas for you.

Find the smallest ways to cultivate space and shut the systems down; mentally in your intellectual pursuits as well as physically. It’s all the same system, one will benefit the other, one will help you learn about the other. Start with the micro, then cultivate on the meso, then you’ll understand how to create this on the macro level.

In that space is your next brilliant idea, the solution to your problem, the energy that are trying to cultivate for excellence in your performance.

Let magic and miracles occur.

Cultivate space as a way of life.