a space-making practice

I didn’t have much clarity as I stepped outside this morning. I hadn’t put my glasses on yet. The soft view of the world allows me a gentle approach. My other senses perk up, not to sharpen but to a welcome sense of presence. I am somehow more of a creature this way. 

As soon as I was through the door, I wanted to run. I raced down the stairs and across the yard towards the water. My pup chased me and passed me, slowing to a playful bounce as we crossed the driveway and neared the river’s edge.

There’s a gorgeous trunk at the edge, there — mulberry, I think — and I’m drawn to the space between that trunk and the sycamore behind it. Between us, a gathering of debris rests, pieces pushed up out of the water against the tree in the terrible storm. For a moment, this spot seemed to be home to a beaver moving down river. I think they’re gone now. And today, I’m here. 

I softened my sturdy shoes into the sand, found the rising sun with my back body, and opened my heart into the west. Sun, sycamore, river, ground. All that was left was breath. 

I breathed, reclaiming the spaces in my body that know how to listen for the steady earth beneath me, for the width allowed my cells as the sun rises in the sky, for the river’s current and the birdsong and the long, quiet, strong way of the tree beside me. 

When my consciousness woke out of this presence, I miraculously remembered to soften more — to find those places where tension was evident and let them rest. I have a long way to go, but as I write now, half an hour later, my hips, my belly, and my spine are tingling with delight at the space and all it can perceive.

This is part of what we’re up to. We must listen to our bodies, and our bodies long to listen to each other. Mine longs to hear what’s real for yours and what’s real for sycamore and river and soft silicate earth and my sweet pup and the sun as it warms the air around me. If there are tasks to complete, if there are decisions to make, if there is courage to stir, this is where I’ll gather my strength and what’s beneath it. 

This practice is one I learned from a tradition of tai chi and then again from Jeffrey Yuen. It is also one I learned as a child, improvising movement from some internal place. It is a gentle, challenging, embodied way of listening.

As spring peeks through into my heart, I am out of the habit of making space. I woke slowly this morning, and with some effort. I stirred again and again last night, lending my mind to the many tasks that would bury my plate today, remorseful that I hadn’t more fiercely protected the note on my calendar: Equinox.

Gratefully, the morning caught me up anyway. We are in a realm of tender balance in the living world. Equinox.

Our harsh human context wrests our thoughts from the rhythms of the planet, but we’re here still. If you have a moment, this week or next, try it: 

A Space-Making Practice

Take yourself to the window, to a tree outside, to the park, to the forest, or in your imagination to a place you know well — sometime in the morning, before the sun is overhead. Open the back of your body to the rising light. Rest your grounding points — feet or hands or seat, however you are — against the earth. Grow tall through your spine. Give your heart to the west. 

Soften your jaw, your shoulders, your belly, your hips, your knees, the soles of your feet. Rest the joints in your fingers, the creases at your elbows, your armpits, where your head sits atop your spine. Let the breath find the easy space in you, however small, and nourish it. Let it travel, finding more space with every breath. Wander the nooks and crannies of your body. 

And then let the solid earth rise up to meet them with ground. Let the light of the sun shine warmth onto every surface of those spaces. Let the edges of your eyes lift in a smile. 

Perfect. Here you are.