Music.

Music is the Space Between the Notes.

- Achille Claude Debussy

Space.                 Where the goodness lives.

If we pause long enough to be here for life, we can arrive. But we are usually always on our way. To the next...the next...the next.  Because our culture glorifies busy. We celebrate busy. We are taught that high performance comes from busy. Turns out, space between the things is our greatest opportunity. A pause to listen and be. Be here for life. Pausing is the gateway to being intimate with anything going on. Busy is just skimming along the surface.

Space.                  When we pause, we say Yes. 

When we honor that space, we can access the whole of what is deep and connected. We can actually hear the music. 

This is not just a concept. It is a practice. Maybe it comes naturally to some people, but pausing to BE is not an intuitive practice for me. Probably because that little window of space asks us to tolerate what is unsettled; to not push away, numb, obsess, resist.... instead, to accept and allow, all of what is.

So, I started with breathing. I just noticed that between my inhale and my exhale, there is a pause; and between my exhale and my next inhale, there is a pause.

It is predictable, because the next breath will come, and I could play in that pause; I could feel it and even control the length and depth of it. This is not woo-woo, it is just actually just sensation and awareness and intentional attention.

So, here is what we can do, right now, to play in the pause....
Take a breath in.
Pause.
Just notice it.
Now breath out.
Pause.
Notice it.
Practicing is just noticing the space.
Deliberately focusing on the space.
BEING in the space.
That's all.

This does not have to be the whole of your life space; it does not even have to be a focus on the obvious, such as this global pandemic time-out we were all handed. We can just be in the momentary space between our breaths. Start there. It is conscious awareness and discipline, and it works on so many levels. This tangible shift in pausing goes beyond our focused attention. It works at the systemic level, regulating our nervous system from sympathetic (that fight, flight, freeze mode, where we are releasing cortisol and in a state of stress) to parasympathetic (called rest and repair, where our system can use itself to heal and recover). 

So, here we are, back to the music. The space between the notes. 
Allowing ourselves to hear the music is allowing ourselves to be in a place of pause.
Hear it?
Inhale.         Exhale.      And maybe it's not about the breaths. but the space between the breaths. 

In Space,
Jessica