A Space for the Void - Part 1 - What is the Void?

The Space Between

Every day, we move quickly from one moment to the next, rarely pausing to notice the spaces in between. These gaps exist everywhere: between the inhale and the exhale, between one thought and the next, between two neurons firing in our brain. We often rush through these spaces, treating them as empty or unimportant. But what if these gaps are not empty at all? What if they hold the key to our freedom and creativity?

This post explores the power of these gaps, drawing from ancient philosophy and contemporary understanding of important voids in our life. It invites you to slow down, become aware of the spaces between moments, and discover how embracing these pauses can transform your experience of life.

The Space Between Stimulus and Response

A quote often attributed to Dr. Viktor Frankl says: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Although this quote's precise origin is uncertain, it does not appear in any of Frankl's published works, and its message resonates deeply nonetheless.

In everyday life, we react automatically to events, often without realizing the choice we have. The space between stimulus and response is where we can pause, reflect, and decide how to act. This pause is a moment of freedom, a chance to break habitual patterns and respond with intention.

For example, imagine receiving criticism at work. The immediate reaction might be defensiveness or anger. But if you notice the gap between the comment and your response, you can choose to listen calmly, consider the feedback, and respond thoughtfully. This space allows you to grow emotionally and maintain control over your actions.

One of the most valuable things Yoga taught me is to stay, notice, and be in the gaps: to deepen my awareness. Through this post I hope you will be inspired to explore the space of in-between, on the mat and in your life.

Shunya: The Fullness of Nothing

In Sanskrit, the word Shunya (शून्य) means zero. But its meaning runs much deeper; it also means void, emptiness, completion, and origin. It describes a space that is not simply absent, but potent: a hollowness that holds infinite possibility. An early Sanskrit lexicon, the Amarakosha, defines shunya as vashikam (void or empty), tuccha (negligibly small), and riktaka (emptied or devoid of) [1].

The ancient Indian philosophical concept of Shunyata, often translated as "emptiness" or "voidness", appears across both Hindu and Buddhist thought. In Mahayana Buddhism, it points to the absence of fixed, inherent essence in all things: everything is in flux, interconnected, becoming [2]. In the Shaiva tradition, a text called the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra teaches that if you can concentrate on your body as void for even a single moment, the mind is liberated and takes on the form of that void itself. Not as a loss, but as an opening [3].

What is remarkable is that from this philosophical soil grew one of the most revolutionary ideas in the history of human thought: the mathematical zero (we will explore this in our next post).

The Uncomfortable Quiet

Yet despite this ancient wisdom, most of us are deeply uncomfortable with emptiness.

We fill every gap with noise. We scroll through feeds between conversations, put on podcasts during walks, check our phones the moment we wake. Silence has become something we manage and escape rather than inhabit. Doing nothing, truly nothing, triggers anxiety in many people within minutes.

This is not entirely our fault. Our brains are wired to scan for threats, to plan, to anticipate. Uncertainty, to our nervous systems, can feel like danger. Research shows that the need for too much certainty tends to make us brittle and anxious [4]. We seek constant stimulation as a form of control: if I am always receiving input, I am never lost in the unknown.

But nature, it turns out, has a very different relationship with the gap.

What Exactly is Akasha?

In Ayurveda and traditional Hindu philosophy, the universe and everything in it, including us, is made up of five great elements, known as the Panchamahabhutas: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space [5].

Space, or Akasha (pronounced ah-KAH-sha), is the very first of these elements. It is the most subtle, the most expansive, and the container for all the others. Without Akasha, there is no room for wind to blow, fire to burn, water to flow, or earth to exist [6].

Akasha translates to "ether," "sky," or simply "space." It represents the void, emptiness, and the boundless freedom from which everything emerges [6]. In the body, Akasha is associated with the spaces we can sense directly: the hollow of the mouth, the ears and their capacity to hear, the passages of the throat, the cavities of the chest. Wherever there is openness, receptivity, or the ability to receive: that is Akasha at work. In yoga, cultivating awareness of these inner spaces is itself a practice: not filling them, but noticing them. Can you sense the inhale drawing the outer Akasha into the inner space of your body? Can you sense the exhale merging the inner Akasha with the space outside? Try feeling your body as an integral part of space, yet creating a space that is you.

In the coming posts we will explore how empty space is the womb from which possibilities emerge: in mathematics, neuroscience, physiology, and psychology.

References

[1] Amarasimha. (no later than 375 CE). Amarakosha [Sanskrit lexicon].

[2] New World Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Sunyata. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sunyata

[3] Wisdomlib. (n.d.). Shunyata: Definitions and references. https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/shunyata

[4] Mindful. (2026). Why uncertainty is good for us. https://www.mindful.org/why-uncertainty-is-good-for-us/

[5] Lad, V. (1984). Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing. Lotus Press.

[6] Frawley, D. (1999). Yoga and Ayurveda: Self-Healing and Self-Realization. Lotus Press.