“I hope your rambles have been sweet, and your reveries spacious”
Emily Dickinson
I make it a goal to protect and nurture a sense of spaciousness in my life.
I am a recovering ‘human doing’ – I fell into the trap of filling my moments and days with busyness and activity.
As I embarked on a deeper journey of personal exploration I quickly discovered that the pace of my lifestyle as keeping me from experiencing not only the gifts of the present moment but it was also keeping me at arm’s length from the richness of my inner world. With this newfound awareness I decided to cultivate more spaciousness in my life.
The challenges of creating more space in my life were small compared to my newly budding sense of peace and connectedness. It is in the spacious moments that I was able to connect with a deeper understanding of my emotional nature, my reactivity, my conditioned thought patterns, and my judgments of myself and the world around me.
In my newly developed sense of spaciousness I was able to let go of what was not serving by best interest. I started making choices in alignment with myself. I started to recognize places in my life that no longer served my best interests. Most importantly I began to sense a deeper level of connection with all of life. This sense of connection has brought me great comfort.
Here are a few suggestions for cultivating more spaciousness in your daily life:
- Schedule a quiet time. I take 30 minutes each morning to just be. Sometimes I read something or journal but most mornings I enjoy the stillness and quiet.
- Practice deep breathing. Remind yourself throughout the day to enjoy a few minutes of wonderful deep breathing.
- Check in with your body. How are you feeling? What does your body need? Stretching and yoga are great for increasing a sense of connectedness with your body.
- Practice Intuitive Eating.
- Learn to meditate.
- Unplug from the phone, TV, radio. Try to incorporate more times of just being in your day. Find places and spaces to pause and just be in the present moment.
- Practice active listening.
- Spend time in nature.
- Actively engage your senses in what you are doing. Find ways to enjoy and reward your senses throughout your day. Some of my favorites are enjoying fragrant flowers, listening to classical music, petting my dog or running my fingers through my daughters’ hair, savoring a piece of dark chocolate, or watching a sunset.
- Challenge the cultural ideal that our sense of value comes from what we do in life. Embrace the belief that your sense of value or worth is not determined by what you do but rather a birthright of all living beings.
I hope I have given you some inspiration and ideas on how to cultivate more spaciousness in your life.
Please pass along any suggestions that you have for my practice as well.