Have you ever thought to yourself (or even said out aloud), "I just need more space? Give me some more space, please."

You’d be a rare beast if you hadn’t. Most of us are overloaded. We’ve got too much going on in our heads and have trouble staying focused or on track.

Often we might observe it in a conversation with someone else. They might be nodding their head or acknowledging you verbally but you can tell their mind is on something else. Sometimes we’ll test this by making a comment that’s totally irrelevant and seeing it they notice. Often they don’t. We’ve all been there done that!

Hence the need for more space. If you’d prefer to listen to or watch our discussion on this feel free to play the podcast audio or video below. And if reading is your preference, continue as you are…

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Observations from Mindvalley’s A-Fest event in Bali

We've recently come back from Bali, Indonesia and we were facilitating at Mindvalley's A-Fest. There were about 350 people there and we were running the breathing sessions for the program.

We were in observer mode and noticed that most people are just full of clutter. They're doing, doing, doing and have no bandwidth for anything else.

They were there to learn and there was some great information shared at the event but we wondered how many people had the capacity to take any more learning on board. How many events had they been to before and how much learning have they tried to absorb already that still hadn’t been integrated?

This is the crux of the problem.

The need to know more or do more is like a hamster wheel. The idea seems productive but it produces anxiety and doesn’t get you anywhere.

People get stuck in this loop where they go somewhere to learn something new because they think that's going to solve their problem, but when they've learned the new thing, it gets stuck in their head and put somewhere and they don't have room to actually apply it.

It requires a level of awareness to know when you are just gathering information and not actually making full use of it.

Giving yourself some breathing space

This is where breathing comes into it. If you truly need some space, there’s no better space than breathing space.

What we noticed at A-Fest was than when people engaged in some of the longer breathing sessions, it opened a pathway for integration. Useful stuff in the brain got locked in and useless stuff was released.

Things became integrated, they got a knowing that they already know what they need to do, it's just that they just didn't have the bandwidth to press go. These longer breathing sessions that we've done with people, we've seen them go, "Oh, okay. I know what it is I need to do. I already know enough stuff."

This happens a lot when you reach a certain level of mastery in an area. You can't see it but something will happen to you that'll force you to see it or someone might give you a gentle reminder.

Clearing the mental cache

If you liken it to computer software, we call it clearing the cache. We do that with our computers. At our first session in Bali and we had 150 people in the room and when Angie, explained, "This is a Control, Alt, Delete for your mind”, everyone just got it. They understood both the intention and the promise.

Some people clear the cache in their mind through meditation but our natural default is to resist meditation and prefer the breath. We still do meditate regularly but if the need is to create some space, we’ll lean more towards the breath as that can give us a quick result. In as little as three minutes you can shift energy and shift your state and allow yourself to either let go of things or integrate them.

A breathing practice distances you from the mind games that can happen with meditation. The mind and body become too busy to engage in the internal dialogue - “Why am I thinking? I've got to stop my thoughts...”

In fact we had one gentleman at A-Fest come up to us after a session and tell us that his experience after 30 minutes of breathing had as much impact as a 7 day Vipassana meditation retreat.

Try it for yourself and if you can find a more powerful tool to clear your cache, we’d love to hear about it.