Space, Time, and the Capacity to Heal

Why We’re Always Bracing—And How to Finally Exhale

My clients inspire a lot of my writing, and the importance of space has been a big theme this week. Space for the body, space within joints, space to think, space to breathe, space to see ourselves more clearly. Space seems to be a luxury to many, but it’s actually available to all of us in every moment. Breathe, and you receive space. Stretch, and you create space. Rest, and you abide in space. As you’ll read below, in the Shangpa Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist lineage I am trained in, space is considered the mother of all elements. In the five chakra system of that lineage of Tantra, the space element is centered in the heart.

So I invite you to bring awareness to your body, especially to your heart as you dive into this piece, which came out as less of an essay and more of a meditation in words. I hope it brings you benefit.

The Red Light Reflex: The Body’s Unconscious Brace for Survival

Your shoulders round.

Your breath is shallow.

Your belly tightens.

The weight of the world presses in.

You might not notice it, but your body does.

This is the Red Light Reflex—a silent contraction, a nervous system bracing against life itself.

It’s an ancient response, meant to be temporary. When the body senses danger, the front-line muscles engage—chest collapses, shoulders cave in, head tucks forward—protecting the soft, vulnerable parts. The breath shallows, the diaphragm locks, the gut tightens, the fascia grips.

It is a full-body flinch against the unknown.

And it happens in an instant. No matter where you are in the world, if a firecracker explodes nearby, your body knows before your mind does. The reflex is instinctive, primal, protective.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just happening in moments of acute threat.
It’s happening all the time.

Most of us are walking through life in a subtle, perpetual flinch. Our nervous systems, shaped by personal trauma, ambient crisis, cultural conditioning, and collective history, hold tension that never fully releases.

We don’t realize it, but our bodies are bracing—against childhood wounds, against the fear of failure, against being too much or not enough. Open your phone or turn on the TV and there are constant reminders of dangers we can’t adequately defend ourselves from, so our body clenches trying to compensate. We hold the weight of expectations, social pressures, and inherited survival strategies from generations before us. The world itself, in its relentless pace, keeps us stuck in a state of low-grade contraction.

The truth is, this is beautiful.

This is your body protecting you.

This is your nervous system doing its job.

This is intelligence at work.

We need to thank our bodies. Tell them: You are safe. You can yield. You can relax.

I’ve seen it happen in real-time—people who swear they aren’t flexible, aren’t mobile, who have tried stretching for years with no lasting success. And then they hear this. They understand why they’ve been bracing, why their body hasn’t let go. And suddenly, something shifts. Their breath deepens. Their range expands. They melt into movement in ways they never thought possible.

But what happens when the danger never stops?

When stress, trauma, and the sheer velocity of modern life keep us locked in this state?

We live in a world that does not exhale.

A world perpetually bracing.

It’s not just personal. It’s structural.

• The constant buzz of notifications keeping us on edge.

• The unrelenting pressure to be productive, to hustle, to prove our worth.

• The subtle hypervigilance of navigating a world that never truly slows down.

• The ancestral wounds of displacement, oppression, and war still living in our bodies, whether we consciously acknowledge them or not.

• The chronic uncertainty—about money, about the state of the planet, about decisions being made in halls of power, about whether we’re doing enough, being enough, having enough to give.

Even when we think we’re fine, our fascia tells the truth.

Our breath tells the truth.

Our nervous system is always listening, always calculating, always preparing.

And so we brace.

Tension becomes identity.

Contraction becomes home.

And the result?

• Chronic neck and shoulder pain from holding everything in.

• Low back pain and tight hips from gripping against the unknown.

• A locked jaw, shallow breath, and gut tension that never quite resolves.

• A feeling of being stuck in your body, in your mind, in your life.

• Fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix.

• Anxiety that mindfulness doesn’t quiet.

• The quiet, creeping sensation that this is just how life is now.

But it’s not.

If contraction is the wound, then what is the cure?

Space.

---

Healing is Space, Space is Healing

Healing requires room—in the body, in the breath, in time itself.

A muscle cannot release if it has no space to move.

A nervous system cannot settle if it has no time to recalibrate.

A psyche cannot integrate if it has no opening to process.

The wound is stuckness.

The medicine is space.

This principle is as old as wisdom itself.

We see it in the body:

• Creating space in a joint allows movement to return.

• Creating space in the breath shifts the entire nervous system.

• Creating space in the fascia rehydrates and restores elasticity.

We see it in somatic healing:

Breath, movement, intention—the formula that unlocks stored tension and allows the body to unwind.

The body needs space—not just to function, but to heal.

Space doesn’t just change your body—it changes your nervous system. When we create space, we shift out of the chronic contraction of the red light reflex and into a state where healing can actually occur.

Your body moves from protection to possibility.

Your window of tolerance learns to expand, allowing previously stuck trauma to move.

Nervous system healing isn’t just about what you do—it’s about having enough space for rest, recalibration, and integration.

---

The Wisdom of Space

This understanding is ancient.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, space is the mother of all elements—the vast openness that holds all things.

Space is not empty.

It is the womb of all existence.

It is the container, the pause, the formless expanse that allows for life itself to unfold—transformation, healing, creation.

The Tibetan Five Element teachings describe space as infinite, peaceful, and unified—the essence that allows the other elements to exist. Without space, fire has no room to burn, air has no room to move, water has no flow, and earth has no stability.

Space is the meeting point of vastness and intimacy—the expanse where the infinite moves through the heart, and the personal dissolves into openness.

Space is the ground of everything.

Without it, nothing can be created.

Without it, nothing can change.

Shabbat teaches the same lesson.

In Jewish tradition, Shabbat is space in time.

It is not just a break from work—it is an act of opening.

It is a container of stillness. A sacred pause. A breath.

An invitation to step out of urgency and into presence.

All week, we do. We build, produce, act, strive.

On Shabbat, we rest. We welcome the feminine. We shift from active to open.

Because without space, even time collapses in on itself.

Healing is not just about creating space in the body—it’s about creating space in time.

---

Space & Time: The Two Dimensions of Healing

If space is the medium of healing, time is what allows it to unfold.

Our culture treats healing like a task—something to be done efficiently, optimized, hacked. But real integration does not happen on command. It happens in unrushed time—in moments where the body is given permission to re-pattern itself without force.

When we create space, we allow ourselves to move through three dimensions of healing:

• The Past: What trauma, contractions, or narratives need to be metabolized?

• The Present: Where are we bracing? Where can we soften?

• The Future: What life are we actively shaping? What structures allow for regenerative expansion?

This is where Psycho~Somatic~Cybernetics, our foundational Framework for embodied change, comes in. Just as a cybernetic system (like a thermostat or a guided missile) adjusts based on feedback, our nervous system recalibrates when given space and time to integrate new information.

When we move out of the Red Light Reflex, our body is no longer running on outdated survival loops. The nervous system learns that we are no longer in danger.

We reclaim agency over our physiology.
We widen our range of tolerance.
We shift from bracing to being.

When we stop seeing healing as self-improvement and start recognizing it as part of collective evolution, everything shifts.

And when enough of us do that, the world changes.

---

From Individual Expansion to Systemic Change

Healing is not just personal.

The Red Light Reflex is not just an individual neuromuscular pattern; it is a collective posture.

A world locked in chronic contraction plays out in:

• Scarcity economies that operate from control and extraction.

• Dysregulated politics fueled by reaction, division, and survival-driven thinking.

• Cultural systems that brace against the unknown rather than move toward possibility.

A world that does not exhale cannot think clearly, repair itself, or create something new.

But spaciousness is contagious.

A single nervous system in true openness affects every system around it.

When one person shifts from bracing to spaciousness, it creates a field where others can do the same.

We shape the world by the states we embody.

The more coherence, intelligence, and spaciousness we cultivate within, the more resilient and generative our shared reality becomes.

---

The Earth, too, is bracing.

Centuries of extraction, depletion, and disregard have left her systems dysregulated, overburdened, and in survival mode.

But healing ripples outward.

As we create space in ourselves, we create space in the world.

As we move from survival to presence, we remember that we are part of a living system, not separate from it.

A world built on softness, wisdom, and reciprocity is not utopian—it is what happens when enough of us step out of survival mode and into true presence.

The Earth heals as we do.

This isn’t about learning something new—it’s about remembering.

When we create space, we reconnect with what has always been there: the intelligence of our bodies, the rhythms of the Earth, the knowing that we are not separate from life itself.

Healing is not just about the self.

It is about reclaiming the future for all of us.

---

The Invitation: Unbracing, Unfolding, Expanding

If trauma contracts, then healing expands.

If the Red Light Reflex is bracing, then space is freedom.

And freedom begins in the body.

So ask yourself:

• Where am I bracing, and for what?

• Where do I need more space, and how can I create it?

• Where in my life can I create unrushed time?

Because healing is not something we do.

It is something we allow.

And it starts with making space.

But space alone is not enough—it must be claimed, inhabited

Creating space is an active choice.

We can’t wait for life to slow down. We can’t wait for the world to exhale.

We must learn to create space within ourselves.

Not just for rest, but for expansion.

Not just to decompress, but to become.

This is where ritual and rhythm matter.

When we create small but intentional moments of space—

• A breath before responding.

• A pause before rushing ahead.

• A moment to soften before contracting.

—we rewire our relationship to time, to our nervous system, to life itself.

We POP!! back into the present— grounding in the now, opening our senses, and creating space for pleasure, sensation, and deep embodiment.

This is not self-care as an afterthought.

This is making space a way of being.

Because nourishing ourselves is not indulgence—it is our birthright.

Spaciousness is power. Gardening is rebellion. Rest is resistance.

To tend to our bodies, to expand beyond survival, to reclaim joy—this is the antidote to a world built on depletion and contraction.

And in doing so, we reclaim ourselves.

🖖✨🐌,

Seth!

If you’d like to create space and time for yourself, I warmly welcome you to join me this Sunday evening (9pm Eastern) for Body Temple: A Guided Somatic Experience. Free for all clients and community members, and $18 drop-in, this 75 minute practice will create space for your body, mind, and heart to open and move. All participants cameras will be off, as this is entirely for you to have a deep internal experience with yourself. I invite you to make your space beautiful, set an altar, bring a journal, light a candle or some incense, and treat yourself to this personal ceremony of presence and connection.