A space for the Void - Part 3 - Practice

Learning to Stay in the Void

In Part 1, we met the void as a philosophical concept: Shunya, Akasha, the potent emptiness at the heart of existence. In Part 2, we found it everywhere in nature: in mathematics (zero), physics (atom), neuroscience (synaptic cleft), physiology (sleep), and psychology (creativity). In this final post, we come home to the body and the breath. Because the void is not only something to understand. It is something to practice.

Why Practice?

Understanding that the space of void is valuable is not the same as being comfortable in it.

We can read about the synaptic cleft and the Default Mode Network, appreciate Laozi's wheel and Brahmagupta's zero, and still reach for our phone the moment silence arrives. Knowledge and embodied experience are two very different things. The nervous system learns not through ideas but through repeated, lived experience.

This is where practice comes in. Yogic practice — asanas, breathwork, and meditation — offers precise, time-tested methods for meeting the gap directly, in the body, again and again, until it begins to feel less like a threat and more like a home.

Meditation: Meeting the Space Between Thoughts

The mind, left to itself, is remarkably busy. Research suggests that we have upward of 6,000 thoughts per day [1]. Most of them we do not choose, and not surprisingly most of them repeat over and over. They arise, pull our attention, and dissolve, only to be replaced immediately by the next one. For most of us, this stream feels continuous, as though thinking is all there is.

The meditative practice I offer here (one of many forms of meditation) begins with the simple act of noticing this stream. The practice unfolds in stages, and it is worth naming them, because knowing the map makes the journey less bewildering.

Stage one: noticing the stream. Before you can find the gap, you must first see the river. Sitting quietly, you begin to observe your thoughts as they arise and name them: a plan, a memory, a worry, a fragment of a song. You are not trying to stop them. You are simply watching, perhaps for the first time, just how constant and automatic the flow is. This alone is a significant shift.

Stage two: recognising the gap. With sustained attention, something surprising happens. You begin to notice that thoughts are not truly continuous. Between one thought and the next, there is a brief space, a moment of quiet before the next wave forms. It may last only a fraction of a second at first. But it is there. Teachers across many traditions point to this space as the heart of the practice. Meditation master Sogyal Rinpoche described it this way: when one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap there is a consciousness of the present moment, fresh and unaltered [2].

Stage three: resting in the gap. Over time, with continued practice, something shifts. The gaps begin to lengthen. What felt like a narrow crack between thoughts opens into something more spacious. You begin to sense that the gap is not the exception but the background: that all the thoughts arise within a larger field of stillness that was always there [3]. As Eckhart Tolle observed, even a few seconds of this space is enough, and those seconds gradually accumulate into something transformative [4].

A brief invitation. Find a comfortable seat. Close your eyes. Let your breath settle naturally. Now, instead of following the next thought that arises, see if you can notice the moment it ends. Just that. What is there, in that tiny pause, before the next one begins? You do not need to hold it or extend it. Simply notice that it exists. That noticing is the beginning.

Breath: The Gap Built Into Every Cycle

The breath is perhaps the most accessible gateway to the gap because it is always present, always cycling, and it already contains the void within its own structure.

Every breath has four phases: the inhale, the natural pause at the top, the exhale, and the natural pause at the bottom. Most of us notice only the first and third. The pauses are where the gap lives. In yoga, these pauses have names and dedicated practices.

Antar Kumbhaka is retention of air after the inhale: the breath is held inside, the torso full, the body still. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes this as the foundational retention, the one that stabilises prana within the body and draws the mind inward [5]. Physiologically, the pause creates a brief, controlled rise in carbon dioxide that triggers vasodilation in the brain, improving blood flow and oxygen delivery to tissues [6]. But beyond the physiology, the pause does something simpler and stranger: it interrupts the automatic rhythm of breathing, and in that interruption, the mind finds a foothold of stillness.

Bahya Kumbhaka is retention after the exhale: the breath is held outside, the body emptied. This is a different quality of gap altogether. Where Antar Kumbhaka feels full and gathered, Bahya Kumbhaka is exposed and quiet, a momentary surrender of the most basic of drives. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering heart rate and blood pressure [6], and it asks something of us psychologically: can you be here, with nothing, even for a moment?

A practice for noticing. Begin simply. Breathe naturally, without controlling the breath. Now, place your attention at the top of the inhale, the moment before the exhale begins. Notice that space. It may feel instantaneous at first. Then do the same at the bottom of the exhale. You are not holding the breath. You are simply noticing that the pause already exists. Once you can feel it, you can begin to stay there, just a little longer, one breath at a time. Once you feel comfortable with breath retention you can try box breathing: inhale (3 seconds), hold (3 seconds), exhale (3 seconds), hold (3 seconds). If you feel comfortable, increase the length of each of the edges.

Asana: Four Ways to Find the Gap on the Mat

In asana practice, the gap does not announce itself. It has to be cultivated deliberately. Here are four distinct ways to meet it within a physical practice.

1. Holding a Pose

Holding a pose for a substantial amount of time (at least 7 breaths) is not strictly a gap, but it creates the conditions for one. When you stop moving, when the shape is established and the body becomes still, something becomes visible that was hidden in the flow: where you are gripping unnecessarily, where you are compensating, where the weight is distributed unevenly, where energy is moving and where it is blocked.

The stillness of a held pose is like a long photographic exposure. What was blurred by motion comes into focus. You begin to gain a deeper understanding of the pose.

2. Transitions Between Poses

The transition between poses is almost always rushed. Most practitioners invest their attention in the destination: the next pose. In this respect it is quite similar to the rush we experience in everyday life, moving from one thing to the next without minding the movement itself. The transition is itself a moment of in-between, a crossing from one state to another, and it can be inhabited fully.

Think of the transition as a bridge. A bridge is not less real than the land on either side of it. It has its own structure. When you cross it with awareness, you are practicing the art of being fully present in the in-between: not already in the next pose, not still in the last one, but exactly here, now.

3. Halting: The Deliberate Pause

A less commonly discussed practice is the full stop within a sequence: coming to Tadasana (standing quietly), Balasana (child's pose), or a brief one-minute Savasana mid-practice, not as transition, but as a deliberate interruption.

This is a technique I learned in Kaivalyadham, where pauses are an integral part of the practice. Only 20 years later I heard in the Huberman Lab podcast how valuable brief pauses during the learning process actually are. Research shows that during short rest intervals, neurons in the hippocampus and cortex replay the preceding activity at up to 10 times the speed, making learning significantly more effective [7]. These moments of halting teach something that movement cannot: that it is safe to stop. That nothing is lost when we pause. That the pause actually allows us a safe space to integrate before we move on.

4. Savasana: The Queen of All Postures

Savasana, the corpse pose, is traditionally held as the most important posture in yoga. It is also, famously, the most difficult, not because of physical complexity, but because it asks for complete surrender.

Sava means corpse in Sanskrit. The name is intentional. In Savasana, we rehearse a kind of letting go that goes beyond the muscles. The arms fall away from the body. The legs release outward. The eyes close. The breath is no longer controlled. The teacher B.K.S. Iyengar described it as a state in which the practitioner "learns to relax consciously" — the key word being consciously. This is not sleep. It is deep, mindful rest [8].

Research confirms what practitioners have long known: Savasana activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers heart rate and blood pressure, and reduces the stress response in ways that extend beyond the practice session itself [9]. The body uses this time to integrate the work of the preceding poses, consolidating the physical and energetic effects of the practice, much as the sleeping brain consolidates the learning of the day.

But beyond the measurable, Savasana is a training in the void. Ten to fifteen minutes of choosing to be nowhere, to be no one in particular, to drop the project of managing and directing experience, and to simply be. This is the gap at its most complete. And practitioners who give it its full time almost always emerge from it feeling not emptied, but refreshed, as though something essential has been restored [10].

5. Yoga Nidra and NSDR: The Practice of the In-Between

Yoga Nidra is the practice of dwelling in the void consciously.

Yoga Nidra, translated as "yogic sleep," is not sleep at all. It is a guided practice, usually lasting 20 to 45 minutes, that leads the practitioner into the liminal zone between waking and sleeping. In ordinary sleep, awareness dissolves as brain activity shifts from beta waves through alpha and into theta and delta. In Yoga Nidra, the guiding voice keeps a thread of conscious awareness alive even as the brain descends into this deep territory. You remain aware while your body enters profound rest. This is not a lesser version of sleep. It is a different and rare state altogether.

EEG studies show that during Yoga Nidra, practitioners display a marked increase in theta wave activity, associated with creativity, memory consolidation, and the frontier between conscious and unconscious experience, while alpha waves, the signature of calm wakefulness, remain simultaneously active [11]. This combination does not occur during ordinary sleep or most forms of seated meditation. It is, neurologically speaking, the gap between states: neither fully awake nor fully asleep, but genuinely inhabiting the space between.

The practice was given a modern rebrand when Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman popularised the term NSDR, Non-Sleep Deep Rest, to describe precisely this kind of guided deep rest. Huberman was transparent that NSDR is largely Yoga Nidra with the Sanskrit removed, reframed in physiological language to make it accessible to a wider audience [12]. Research on Yoga Nidra protocols confirms significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression, improvements in sleep quality, and positive changes in physiological markers including blood pressure and immune function [13]. A 2025 systematic review of EEG studies confirmed that the brain enters a genuinely altered state during practice, not simply relaxation in the ordinary sense [14].

What makes Yoga Nidra particularly suited to the theme of this series is its traditional structure. The practice often begins with the setting of a sankalpa, a short, clear intention planted in the mind at the moment of deepest receptivity, just before full wakefulness returns. The ancient understanding was that seeds planted in the gap, in the fertile soil between states, take root more deeply than those planted in ordinary waking consciousness. The theta state's known association with memory consolidation and access to subconscious material offers a plausible neurological basis for this [14].

To practice Yoga Nidra is to practice being in the gap at its most complete: not fighting sleep, not pushing through wakefulness, but resting with full awareness in the space between.

The Value of Practicing the Gap

Why does any of this matter beyond the mat? Because the gap, practiced over time, changes our relationship with uncertainty.

When we learn to pause in the breath, to rest between thoughts, to inhabit the transition between poses, we are training something deeper than flexibility or focus. We are training the nervous system to recognise stillness as safe. We are building, gradually, what might be called a tolerance for the unknown: the ability to remain present and functional when we do not yet know what comes next [15].

Life is full of gaps. The waiting for medical test results, the anticipation of a call. The space between a question and its answer. The period between one chapter of life closing and the next beginning. These in-between states, transitions, waiting, not-yet-knowing, are among the most uncomfortable human experiences. But if we have practiced the gap, on the mat and on the cushion and in the breath, we carry something into those moments. Not certainty. Not answers. But a quality of presence that can sit with the not-knowing without needing to immediately resolve it. A capacity to be in the void without being consumed by it.

This is resilience in its deepest form.

A Personal Reflection

I came to the void reluctantly. I do not like the void, it made me anxious. Like most people, I was better at doing than pausing. Let me move, feel my energy, feel my strength. That is where I feel good.

But then I was diagnosed with cancer, and chemotherapy threw me into a void I had never known. I could no longer move fast. I had to slow down. I had to face a fatigue so deep and wide I could not see the edges of it. I had never experienced such emptiness, not as philosophy, not as practice, but as the raw texture of my days.

That was where my practice kicked in. First, acceptance. Then, slowly, learning how to befriend the void: Savasana, Yoga Nidra, the breath. These were the tools that carried me through what I can only call the swamp of void, a darkness that showed up in every domain of my life at once.

What shifted, gradually, was this: I began to experience the void not only as a force of dissolving, but as a force of emergence. The same emptiness that had felt like erasure began to feel, at moments, like the ground from which something new could grow. That shift made all the difference.

What I have found, in the gap, is not nothing. It is something harder to name: a quality of presence that does not depend on anything happening. A sense that underneath the noise of thoughts and sensations and plans, something remains that is steady and quiet and, strangely, at peace.

I cannot promise you will find the same thing. The void is personal, and what lives there is yours to discover. But I can say, with certainty, that it is worth looking. That the pause between the inhale and the exhale, however brief, is a valuable gift available to us. And that what we practice in that tiny space, we slowly, over time, begin to carry everywhere.

The void is not empty. It never was. We just need to stop there long enough to notice.

-------------------------

This concludes the A Space for Void series. Thank you for pausing with me.

References

[1] Tseng, J., & Poppenk, J. (2020). Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nature Communications, 11, 3480. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17255-9

[2] Sogyal Rinpoche. (1992). The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. HarperCollins. As cited in: The Way of Meditation. (2023). Noticing the gaps: The fourth state of consciousness. https://www.thewayofmeditation.com.au/noticing-the-gaps-the-fourth-state-of-consciousness

[3] Mindworks. (2023). Minding the gap in meditation. https://mindworks.org/blog/minding-gap-meditation/

[4] Tolle, E. (2005). A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Penguin. As cited in: Lim, E. (2017). Experiencing the gap. https://www.evelynlim.com/experiencing-the-gap/

[5] Hatha Yoga Pradipika, 2.71. As cited in: AUM School of Yoga. (2025). The concept of Kumbhaka in Hatha Yoga. https://www.aumschoolofyog.in/2025/06/the-concept-of-kumbhaka-in-hatha-yoga.html

[6] The Minded Institute. (2025). Breath holds and the science of Kumbhak in yoga therapy. https://themindedinstitute.com/breath-holds-where-yogic-wisdom-meets-neurophysiological-insight/

[7] Huberman, A. (2021). Teach and learn better with a neuroplasticity super-protocol. Huberman Lab Newsletter. https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/teach-and-learn-better-with-a-neuroplasticity-super-protocol

[8] Iyengar, B.K.S. (1966). Light on Yoga. Schocken Books.

[9] Insight Timer. (2024). Meaning of Savasana and why you should do corpse pose. https://insighttimer.com/blog/savasana-meaning

[10] Yoga Journal. (2026). Benefits of Savasana: Teachers explain why you should practice corpse pose. https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/benefits-of-savasana/

[11] Parker, S., Bharati, S. V., & Fernandez, M. (2013). Defining yoga nidra: Traditional accounts, its phenomena, and measurement. International Journal of Yoga Therapy, 23(1). As cited in: medRxiv. (2025). The effects of yoga nidra practice on EEG: A systematic review. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.16.25329676v1.full

[12] Huberman, A. (2021). NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. Huberman Lab. https://www.hubermanlab.com/nsdr

[13] Earth.fm. (2024). Non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and yoga nidra relaxation techniques. https://earth.fm/earth-stories/what-is-non-sleep-deep-rest-nsdr/

[14] medRxiv. (2025). The effects of yoga nidra practice on EEG: A systematic review. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.16.25329676v1.full

[15] Hicks, B., Georgiou, K., & Gibbs, P. (2022). Cultivating ambiguity tolerance through mindfulness: An induction randomized controlled trial. Current Psychology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02597-4