Making space

Reading time: 3 min

night wakefulness

For several weeks now I haven’t been able to sleep at night. I wake up at 3 a.m. with enough energy to go for a run. In that moment there doesn’t seem to be any problem spinning in my head — everything is fine — yet I’m awake when I should be sleeping.

So I try different strategies: I listen to music, meditate, read, drink something warm. Nothing works. Sometimes I fall asleep without even knowing how; other times I end up getting up at 4 a.m. to start the day. And then I ask myself: is it really true that there’s no problem in my head?

I bring this worry to my weekly coaching practice. Liz, my exchange partner, suggests I ask myself these questions: what am I not seeing? What is it that won’t let me sleep? Immediately I perceive a tension in my chest and, since tension always seeks attention, Liz invites me to breathe while the discomfort remains. That tension now moves to my throat. Liz keeps guiding me and offers more questions for looking at the discomfort with curiosity: what colour is it? What shape? Does it move? While I’m staying with the sensation I hear an inner voice bringing me the answer: “there is fear behind that long trip you have planned a month from now.” I had believed I was purely excited — but it seems there was fear too, and I wasn’t detecting it.

I realise that when the voice in my head tries to pull me out of uncomfortable situations, it only perpetuates them. And that, on top of everything, adds sadness. At night, when I want to sleep, I have a goal and a plan to achieve it. And living with what is there is very different from wishing to change it.

Liz asks how I am now, and I notice I feel very present; I recognise a great contrast with my sensations at night. Now the web of my thoughts seems to have dissolved. Being with my emotions helped me make space. Together we understood that when we drop the intention to correct, we stop managing our experience and allow ourselves to feel what is truly there.

I treasure these exchanges that help me find the way home — to that inner knowing which shows me I have the capacity to choose, and far more options than I think. The empathy I’m interested in is not that of putting yourself in someone else’s place, but that of accompanying the other so they can occupy their own.

Soon I’ll be launching group experiences to work on connecting with ourselves and with others through Nonviolent Communication, the Alexander Technique and tools for emotional fluidity.

If you’d like to join, write to me and I’ll tell you more.

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