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 a problem turning over in my head, everything feels fine, and 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 there’s no problem in my head?

I bring this worry to my weekly coaching practice. Liz, my exchange partner, suggests I ask myself: what am I not seeing? What’s keeping me from sleeping? Right away I feel a tension in my chest, and since tension always wants attention, Liz invites me to breathe while the discomfort stays. That tension moves to my throat. Liz keeps guiding me, offering more questions to look at the discomfort with curiosity: what color is it? What shape? Does it move? While I’m staying with the sensation, I hear an inner voice bring me the answer: “there’s fear behind that long trip you have planned for next month.” I thought I was only excited. Turns out there was fear too, and I wasn’t seeing it.

I realize that when the voice in my head tries to pull me out of uncomfortable situations, it only makes them last longer. And that adds sadness on top. At night, when I want to sleep, I have a goal and a plan to get there. And living with what’s there is very different from wanting to change it.

Liz asks how I am now, and I notice I feel very present. I recognize a sharp contrast with how I felt at night. Now the tangle of my thoughts seems to have dissolved. Being with my emotions helped me make space. Together we understood that when we drop the urge to correct, we stop managing our experience and let ourselves feel what’s really there.

I treasure these exchanges. They help me find my way home, to that inner knowing that shows me I have the capacity to choose, and far more options than I think. The empathy that interests me isn’t putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s accompanying the other person so they can stand in 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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