The space

Over the past few weeks Donovan, my yoga teacher, has been having us focus on our breath in a four-stage breathing exercise:

Inhale
Hold
Exhale
Suspend

The first three steps are fine – it’s the fourth step that I have found difficult. I find that whenever I reach this step I experience a moment of confusion, even panic – what do I do now? When I am inhaling, exhaling or holding, I am doing something. In suspending, I am neither inhaling, exhaling nor holding – I am simply being.

Sometimes Donovan instructs us to exhale completely, totalling emtying the breath. When I do this, just before the moment of catching my breath for the next inhalation, I feel a tiny moment, a peephole into the infinitesimal space of nothingness. It is a beautiful nano moment of bliss. However, the moment I start to think and focus on the next inhalation, the space closes.

I had another experience of this space of nothingness. I recently released the audio CD of my book “Free and Laughing: Spiritual Insights in Everyday Moments”. I excitedly inserted the CD in the player in my car and happily tuned in to my own voice reading my own very familiar words. Then I noticed that after Track 25, Track 26 did not immediately kick in. I panicked – what is this? I tried another CD, I tried another CD player, I asked others to listen to their CDs, all to no avail. The space was still there. Then I discovered that Track 26 does kick in, but a lot later than planned or expected. For almost two minutes, there is …….. nothing.

My initial response was that something was wrong, and there is something for me to fix. But then, in a tiny moment of the space where nothingness exists, and where everything just is, I perceived a message for me, for Track 25 consists of one word “PRACTICE”.

The message to me is to practice being in the space. This practice is not the hard work that we usually associate with doing – it is the practice of suspension, of letting go, of no judgement, of relaxation, of release – of being present. It is the practice of the space.

When you listen to my CD and Track 26 “fails” to trip in, look at it another way – this is your moment to be in the present and practice.

And when you are in a situation and “nothing” is happening, look at it another way as well – time to simply be present and observe.

Indeed, the practice is to create more and more spaces of nothingness, moments of just being, rather than inhaling, exhaling or holding.