Cultivating Spaciousness Inside & Out

If spaciousness were a muscle, could you flex yours easily? And what might you expect if you could?

Cultivating the capacity for spaciousness in our lives is essential for a healthy and vibrant wellbeing. When I speak of spaciousness, I’m referring to both an internal, psychological spaciousness of mind and spirit, as well as a sense of physical spaciousness as you move through your day and your environment. Greater spaciousness, inside and out, can create an exquisite sense of personal sanctuary — a place of refuge and safety. A haven of sorts.

Under a canopy of spaciousness, our lives can open and transform in very powerful and unique ways. Contrast this with the energy of being hectically busy, for example. Extreme business, either internally with chronically buzzing thoughts and rumination, or frenetic external moving — for instance, as you race from task to task, or from one commitment to the next — can eventually leave one feeling exhausted, constricted, and emotionally numb. In other words, and I can’t say this strongly enough, a lack of spaciousness in our lives makes us all the more susceptible to feelings of disconnection from ourselves.

Environmental Spaciousness

If we explore first the notion of creating spaciousness in our physical world — our home, office, closets, and outside landscapes — we note that open space is  truly an every-present option. Yet, it’s not one we sometimes consider. Spaciousness matters. You do not have to have multiple objects cluttering your rooms, closets, or yards. You have a choice, always. And your choice automatically effects your emotional state. What surrounds us effects us. I make the case that the less you have in your physical space, the better you’ll feel.

Open space offers us a sense of calm because there is less to attend to, care for, clean, dust, move around, or trip over. There are fewer decisions to be made about possessions when your space isn’t filled with them. Fewer decisions, when not bound by objects, means less overwhelm and stress. With less overwhelm and stress, you are more able to relax. Panoramic views, of either kitchen counters or outdoor landscapes, increase our capacity to feel peace!

So, have I inspired you yet to begin a good ol’ spring-clean-purge? If your physical environment is one where spaciousness abounds, the energy in the space will feel different — much more expansive and of a higher vibration. Open vistas foster that sweet sense of being able to stretch and breathe, to feel freedom. To feel back into ourselves, and into our desires.

Inner Spaciousness

Feelings of grace and wonder surface pretty quickly for me when I’ve given myself the mental or emotional space to truly experience a moment. I bet the same might be true for you. Truly taking in the experience of a situation, without an overstimulated psyche, and being able to really digest it through a slower pace can’t help but deepen and ripen the circumstance. This can hold true regardless of whether the event is a positive or a challenging one.

When we aren’t rushed or full to the brim with mental fatigue, we breathe and move more easily (literally and figuratively), and can therefore think and reflect more powerfully. Spaciousness allows you to discover what is meaningful and rich in any given moment. You get to bask in it, and maybe even chance to ponder how you could use the moment for further personal growth. In other words, cultivating spaciousness of mind can help you develop greater intimacy with yourself.

So, put your phone down and your to-do list away. Stop checking your calendar and reviewing your schedule. Push pause on your incessant mental chatter box. Postpone or say “no” to those obligatory commitments. Instead, put your feet up and drop deliciously into a moment of nothingness. Stay there. Be present. Digest it fully. Savor the moment.

A life intentionally designed for creating psychological spaciousness gifts one a calm, emotionally-regulated state. In this state, we have room for more. More self-awareness, openness, gentleness, heart-space, and simply being. Giving yourself plenty of mental and emotional spaciousness helps you develop a greater capacity to cherish and nourish yourself on all fronts.

The pause matters. Reveling there helps us better bear whatever life throws our way, be it times of hardship, sadness, joy, or pleasure. This is because one’s emotional foundation, after rest, grows stronger. You’re then able to face reality head-on and from a place of resilience and resourcefulness. When your vantage point is one of openness, the qualities of rich, juicy, dynamic living flourish.

Pleasure Multiplied

Deliberately creating a sanctuary of spaciousness in our lives enhances our personal relationship with pleasure — the perfect perk. A quality of openness and of being able to receive is directly correlated with the capacity to experience pleasure. I often remind my coaching clients that the vessel must be empty before it can be filled. To receive pleasure, one must make space for pleasure.

A first step in this direction is to create a span of time to simply reflect on what you want or desire. With this awareness, you offer fertile ground for many feelings of euphoric delight — contentment, amusement, happiness, joyfulness, or ecstasy — to grow. This is because knowing what you desire helps you begin to manifest it or call it in. To know pleasure, you have to attune yourself to wellbeing. Speciousness, inside and out, clearly helps us stay in this yummy energy.

And so, my friends, I invite you to consider cultivating an even more spacious quality of your environment, as well as of mind, body, spirit, and heart, than what might already exist for you. The breadth of possibility you’ll experience will bring wonderful contentedness into your life. From that expansive point, you can then just bask in the magnificence of the experience!

This article was also published in The Brick Magazine