Make Space to Integrate
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
You don’t need me to tell you, we’re living in unprecedented times. I try not to spend much time on social media, but when I’m on it feels like my feed is exploding. Every well meaning person is posting every educational article and critique, directions for how to behave, and suggestions for who to follow now. I feel a strong sense of duty to go deep so that I can learn and grow. I am becoming aware of the impact of my whiteness in a different way and I know I have plenty of work before me. I also feel like I’m getting pinched from the inside and the outside when I try to read every single thing, watch every video, and follow and engage with every suggested teacher.
I also notice that when my brain is overfull, I get caught in unhelpful thought patterns like of: “what ifs” ‘“I should haves” and “what will people think of me?”. Those circles keep my mind so busy that focusing even on simple tasks started to feel hard.
At first I felt stressed and guilty for not reading every article that came into my feed. But eventually I realized that would not only be impossible, it wouldn’t serve me or anyone else. That’s because, trying to read it all would mean moving at a breakneck pace and simply over-consuming the information. In the over consumption there wouldn’t be any room for me to actually digest or integrate any of it.
When you’re overfilled with information and caught in unhelpful thought patterns, it can feel really stressful. Like me, you may think that you need to concentrate harder or gather more information so that you can understand things better. But studies show that you can’t learn, grow, or integrate when you’re stressed.
When your mind feels overfull, you don't need more information. What you actually need is more space.
If you have mental space you can get curious and make sense of things. With space, you can catch on to your unhelpful thought patterns and get free from them. Without space in your mind, your thoughts come so quickly that you really can’t process them. It also opens the door to your negative thought patterns. Then you’re stuck running your life from your habits not from a conscious place inside.
Practices that give you space like meditation, yoga, creativity, and journaling are more important now than ever. Without your practices, your mental space diminishes and it’s hard to integrate, grow, and make sense of what’s happening.
Spending time in the zone of creativity and deep focus that comes up in meditation, yoga and art making (oftentimes called the flow state), gives your mind a break from ruminating. Your mind settles down and becomes quieter. And your nervous system gets a reset. Time spent in practice and creativity brings in mental spaces much like the breaks between the notes in music, or the breath between words in speech. Those breaks make the music easier to hear, and the words easier to understand.
The space that comes from practice and creativity makes room for making sense of it all. So this is not about avoidance or bypassing (check and see if that’s what you’re doing). This is about intentionally clearing the mental clutter so that something new can arise. When you have mores space it’s possible to DIGEST and INTEGRATE what’s been filling you up so that you can actually learn from it, grow from it, and take conscious sustainable action as a result of it.
A moment of space can mean the difference between mindless consumption of information and mindful integration and action. So I encourage you to return to your practices and your creativity if they've dropped away. Let them clear space so that you can be present for and integrate your learning and your life. 5 minutes of quiet sitting can get you started.
A simple practice to help bring in space. Right where you are right here, notice the space between the words you are reading. Notice how these words are surrounded by space. They would not make sense without it. Now notice the space between you and the screen you are reading this on. You need that space to be able to see the words. Finally, look around the room and see the space between you and the objects in the space. You are surrounded by space. Let me know how this goes for you.