The Spaces Between - where are they in your day?

The other day, as I was setting up for a sound healing, something unexpected caught my attention. I was placing my crystal singing bowls in their usual gentle arc, each one resting delicately on its cushion. As I sat back to look, my eyes didn’t go to the bowls themselves, but to the spaces between them.

These spaces are so essential. Without them, I wouldn't be able to run the mallet smoothly around each rim and make a gentle soothing sound. If the bowls were too close, they’d stop my mallet from moving around. That simple observation landed deeply within me: the space in between is just as important as the bowl itself.

That got me thinking… isn't this the same with life?

We’ve become so focused on filling every moment, doing, scrolling, talking, achieving, that we’ve forgotten the importance of the spaces in between. The pauses. The silence. The time to just be.

When Silence Was Sacred

Remember being a child and daydreaming? Staring out the window with no agenda, just letting your imagination float? I used to get into trouble at school for this. Back then, no one saw the value in stillness. I wish my teachers had known that those were some of the most creative and connected moments of my life. That’s when the magic happens, in the unstructured, undefined stillness.

Silence has been misunderstood in our culture. In conversation especially, it’s often seen as a weakness, awkward or uncomfortable. However silence is essential for listening. It's where presence lives. Sadly, modern conversations have turned into something of a competitive sport. Instead of engaging in a mutual exchange, people often approach conversations with predetermined answers and opinions. This mindset reduces dialogue to a series of monologues, with each participant more focused on making their point than understanding the other person. I wrote more on this in my blog last year: Is the Art of Conversation Dying?

The Science of Silence

It’s not just a poetic idea. Science confirms that silence has profound effects on the brain and nervous system. It can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for your body's “rest and digest” parasympathetic nervous response. In contrast to the cortisol-fuelled “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system response that most of us live in every day, silence supports healing, digestion, restoration, and emotional balance.

So where can you build more silence into your day?

Start With the Morning

Your morning is the perfect place to reclaim the spaces in between.

You could try this:

• Don’t grab your phone right away. Give yourself an hour before diving into screens. If you phone is the first thing you reach for in the morning, you will instantly switch from Alpha or Theta brainwaves to Beta brainwaves and flood your body with cortisol. Put your phone to bed in a different room, move your charger our of your bedroom.

• Go outside. Let the light hit your eyes. Stand barefoot on the earth. 10 minutes of being barefoot will balance your internal battery through receiving negative energy from the earth, which will balance out all the positive energy you receive from the sun, air conditioning and electronic equipment.

Breathe in silence. Let nature speak to you. Listen without trying to label or analyse, just feel. The reason your breath is audible is that it's the connection from your heart to your soul. Listening to the sound of your own breath is a very sacred act. Give thanks for your day.

In these small but powerful rituals, you give your nervous system time to soften. You create space for intuition, calm, and presence to arise naturally.

Let Your Soul Shine

The bowls cannot sing without the spaces between. Neither can we.

So today, I invite you to honour the pauses. To seek out the stillness. To treasure the quiet moments where there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, and nothing to say or fix.

In the spaces between, your soul finally has room to shine.