Light Your Inner Fire Part II
I’m curious to hear, what are your gaps like right now? Have you been tuning into them, fighting with yourself to put down your phone, spend less time on social media…or something else?
Let’s talk about gaps…..I always love a good unpacking of a word, idea or concept.
Gaps are literally openings. If you’ve ever ridden the Tube in London you hear the announcer say, each time the door opens and closes, “Mind the gap” which is a reminder not to step in the hole, or gap, between the train itself and the platform.
Ok got it, don’t fall in the gap. Bad idea. But here we are exploring the goodness of the gap. The reason we may want to fall into it.
So a gap can be a few minutes between meetings, it can be a year between high school and college, it can even be a breath or two between tasks, events or happenings. Some gaps are obvious, and some aren’t.
In essence, a gap is the space between the end of one activity and the beginning of another. For those of us who are so loyal, (or some may say stuck) in the day to day “doing” schedule, they would say there are NO GAPS—I have no space between anything, I just go, go go, all day long. (This is exactly what the habit of toxic stress leads us to believe, btw.) So perhaps the first step to sparking your inner fire—to finding your own voice and truth and personal power again— is to begin the practice of noticing when and where the gaps are in your life. Here’s an example from my own life.
Today between writing and appointments I have windows to take breaks, and yes being self-employed is a different beast, so I have the privilege of scheduling my gaps, anytime I please (generally.) However, being totally in charge of my own schedule also leaves me, the boss and the worker, being the ONLY ONE who is in charge of my gaps and that also poses a challenge: when to gap and when to work.
So when I take a gap, on purpose, I am often breaking for making tea or food, but today I actually took a longer gap and walked outside for 30-minutes. Often when I am walking I am also percolating my next blog or teaching event, but today I said, let’s listen to the body, so I focused on feeling each step, from my feet up my legs. During my usual gaps, I always have the choice while my tea is steeping or my food is warming, to check email again, text someone, listen to a podcast, make a list, or do a quickie scroll through my social feeds, (all information coming in from outside sources). or I can choose to sit down and breath, walk and digest the morning events, or take my tea and sit quietly.
I remember early in my working career there was a 15-min break allowed, even scheduled and encouraged, for every 3 or 4 hours of time worked. Which meant everyday we took an am break and an afternoon break, in addition to our lunch hour. Maybe this still exists in some work culture but I haven’t heard anyone talk about it in decades. Most people don’t even know what a TRUE non stimulus ingesting break would look like, if they allowed themselves to actually take one. For a large part of the population a break means just being on their phone. What we have to ask ourselves is, is this really a break?
When I’m on my phone, even for personal reasons, I can say with 100% certainty my nervous system does not feel that this is a break. It is a doing. The only exceptions are when I’m plugged into a nourishing podcast or my yoga app. So you could say, intention is EVERYTHING!
You could call a break an intentional gap.
Okay so now were getting down to it. The it being intentionality is a key factor in finding your gaps. Intending to not only notice the moments or pauses between activities, but ALSO intending to make the gap happen. Honestly it feels sad and strange to even be needing to have this conversation with myself and one another, but this truly is OUR NEW NORMAL—a sign of our deep seated and culturally accepted relationship with technology and our drive to produce & be noticed. The good, the bad and the ugly, we are humans after all.
What might happen when we take more time each day to put down consumptive devices and habits- turn off ALL INPUT SOURCES and plug in to your own information. We don’t need a usb port for that!!
What’s the emotional update today? What about my body? Any updates from the thinking mind? Maybe there has been a desire or need here that has been ignored, denied or sabotaged. Maybe we can’t remember the last time we felt our creative energy swell. Much like any habit, when we are used to doing “x” over a certain period of time, we only know how to do things the “x way,” and any hint of change makes our “inner x” feel like any gap, pause, or change of course, is a very bad or at the very least, a deeply uncomfortable, proposition.
So if even suggesting finding your own gaps, makes you uneasy, that’s okay feel it, and know that discomfort is part of all change—good or bad. Set your intention this week to find your gaps, and DO SOMETHING FOR YOU, FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOU, MAYBE EACH MORNING ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT AM I HUNGRY FOR TODAY” and find a gap, an intentional space, for that question to be answered.
The power of our gaps, of the space between, this is the place where our fire gets sparked—one gap and one spark at a time, we can relight & re-engage with our bright and beautiful inner fire.