I kind of want to make this caption blank to really drive home what I’m talking about in this episode. This is what we need more of. W h i t e s p a c e. Time to think, breathe, move, reevaluate.
I also share how seated meditation is NOT for everyone and why some of us just can’t seem to do it (hint: it’s because we’re not all supposed to!) Find your white space. Do it daily.
Intro + Outro Music: Silent Ganges by Maneesh de Moor
Let’s take the discussion further in the Mind-Body Balancers FB
group: www.facebook.com/groups/1213662491998309/
Discover Your Dosha (Mind-Body Type) with my free quiz: iamsahararose.com
Connect with me for daily Ayurvedic and modern spiritual wisdom at Instagram: @iamsahararose Facebook.com/iamsahararose Twitter.com/iamsahararose
Pre-order my new book Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook: eatfeelfresh.com/book/ and receive a signed book plate, inspirational card and 10 bonus recipes
Join my Awaken Your Powers Masterclass to become a leader in the new paradigm with Shaman Durek: www.iamsahararose.com/awaken-your-powers
Episode 122 – Creating White Space with Sahara Rose
By Sahara Rose
Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose, and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. Before we hop into this episode I want to share with you that my new book “Eat Feel Fresh” is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. It is a plant-based contemporary Ayurvedic cookbook, and so much more than a cookbook it teaches you how to eat according for your doshic constitution as well as how to prepare foods for your family when you’re all of different doshas. So I share how to cook tri-doshically, what that means, how to create a six-taste bowl, how to customize each meal according to your dosha to make Ayurvedic cooking so much more approachable and work for today’s world.
I am also offering a signed bookplate, which I will mail to you, a beautiful little oracle card, which I’ll also send in the mail to you, as well as ten bonus recipes that I will email to you as my gratitude for pre-ordering the book. If you don’t know about pre-ordering it really helps for the author because publishers decide how many books they’re going to publish based off of how many pre-orders there are. So if you ever been to a bookstore and you want to order a book, and they’re like, “Oh, it’s not gonna be available for four to six weeks,” that’s because they weren’t aware of how many people would have wanted the book so there weren’t enough in print.
And I don’t want that to happen to anyone, I want the book to be available. So by pre-ordering the book that’s going to allow them to print more copies of the book and have it be available to more people, and I would be so grateful for you. It’s the same cost, you can do it on Amazon, wherever you buy your books, and as my gift, I will send you my signed bookplate, sign it with my very own hands, my card to you, as well as ten bonus recipes. So head over to my website at iamsahararose.com and that’s where you will submit your receipt.
Also I’d like to make my book tour announcement. I will be coming to several different cities, not just to share my book, but to have a Bollywood dance party, and hug each other, and talk all about the doshas, and relationships, and business, and self-care, and everything in between. My book launch events are so much more than just me talking about the book, but it’s really a way to create community and to have a lot of fun. So come join me October 12th in L.A., October 17th in New York, November 30th in Miami, and I’m going to be going to San Diego some time in between then. Head over to my website, eatfeelfresh.com/book. I’m going to be adding some more cities so head over there so you can stay tuned and I’m so excited to meet you in person.
Today I want to talk to you about something that is going to make you happier, more abundant, more creative, more full of joy than ever before. This thing is free, this thing doesn’t take much time at all, you don’t have to go anywhere for it, you don’t have to hire a coach to receive it. It’s actually the most simple, easy thing that we all have access to, and that thing is creating more white space.
Now just let that sink in for a second. What does white space feel like to you? When you think about the word white space, what comes to mind? You know, this summer since I got back from Bali I’ve really made it a point for white space to be my priority. I’ve been working, writing books, book launch, all this stuff, but white space has been my mantra. And so many of us we are on the go, we are doing, we are achieving, we are going from one thing to the next. You know those people who seem to be checking everything off their to-do list, they worked out, and they went to work, and then they picked up food, and then they made the food, and they cleaned their dishes, they cleaned their house, they did everything.
But something is still off. Maybe they aren’t truly happy, maybe they’re not really radiant, maybe they haven’t attracted the one. And this is all energetic. And the only way that you are truly able to access your highest self is if you create white space for it to come through. Most of us have spent our entire lives avoiding space. We talk during the pause in conversations, we fill a silent moment in the car with music or a podcast, maybe right now. We fill up every empty space in our house with a lamp, or a pillow, or a book, or a statue. We fill up every inch of our closet with a new dress, and a top, and pants, and ten matching shoes, most of which we haven’t worn in the past month. So we’re given white space, every day we are given 24 hours of white space, an entire day that we can create whatever we want with, a blank canvas with brushes in our hands that we can stroke in any which color and any which way.
Yet we choose to take all of those paints and brush over it, and over it, and over it until every inch of that canvas is covered up and it’s double, triple, quadruple layered. Because in that white space comes our vulnerability, in that silent car is when you sit with your thoughts, and in that empty corner of the house is maybe where your exostuff used to be. And in that pause in the conversation is where you feel like you have to interject something to still be liked or to get in the last word.
So we fill up these pauses because we’re afraid if we don’t consciously fill them up then our subconscious will fill them up. We feel like if we don’t schedule every hour of our day, every moment of our lives, have our six month plan, one year plan, ten year plan, et cetera, then we won’t be guided because we don’t trust our internal guidance. Now I have no problem with scheduling, it’s important to have a schedule. No problem with having intentions, it’s very important to have intentions, I love setting intentions. But the problem is we feel so attached to the schedule, to the rule book, to the curriculum that we lose track of who we truly are.
We need that white space, that free Saturday where you just hike, and go to the beach, and write in your journal. Or even just an hour in your day where you just take a moment to breathe, to reflect, maybe go to a yoga class, maybe go on a walk. We need to create these white spaces because if we don’t actively seek them out, our days will be filled with tasks coming our way. A lot of us wait until we reach this point in our lives that then the white space will appear. Maybe it’s a certain amount of money, maybe it’s a certain position at your job, certain number of books you’ve written, whatever it is. We say once I hit that, then I’ll be able to rest, then I’ll be able to, you know, go to pottery class, then I’ll be able to finally write my poetry, but only once I’ve hit that goal.
And we fill our days and our time and our energy towards achieving that goal and it arrives, and then once we’ve gone there, we don’t hold that promise to ourself. We keep going, we set that bar even further away. “Oh, my goal was to make $50,000, now it’s to make $100,000, now it’s to make $200,000, now $500,000, now a million, now $10 million, now $100 million.” Who knows? And the thing is, there’s always more you can achieve, there’s always a higher ladder you can climb. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that either. The path of achievement and desire is part of being a human.
So I’m not saying separate yourself from all desires, because that’s not why we’re here. The tantric path is to acknowledge our desires as part of us, but to also make that space to know that we are not just our desires, we are not just our achievement, we are the pause in between the inhale and the exhale. And most of us when we hear that pause, even these pauses right now when I’m speaking, our nervous energy picks up. I don’t know if you notice it right now, do you feel kind of like, “Oh my god, I need to listen to this episode in one and a half speed, what is she going to say?”
The way I am speaking it is even more important than the message. Because when we talk so fast and we move so fast we are implying to ourselves that life is moving so fast and so chaotic that we have to speed up everything we do just to keep up, and thus we create this reality. And some people live their whole lives in this reality, and they’re forever, you know, chasing one thing to the next. Do you have any of those friends or maybe you are that friend that is always hitting that next thing and it seems like no ladder is ever going to be high enough for them? Oh well now I hit this position, but I’m going for that one, and that one, that one, and it’s this quest, quest, quest, quest, quest, but never just the gratitude for where they’re at. Never the acknowledgement for how far they’ve come, it’s a fixation on the future without a real reason of why.
So when we have these sacred pauses in our day, and when I say sacred pauses, white space, I don’t mean it has to be a seated meditation where you’re just saying a mantra that was given to you by a guru. I’m not saying that all. There are many ways to take a sacred pause. For some people that may look like a seated meditation, for other people that may look like making art. For others it may be going on a walk. For others it may be hiking through nature. It can be swimming, it can be dancing, it can be spending time with your pet, or your loved one. It can be doing something for the sake of doing it without a real reason of why. Just pure enjoyment, you know.
I was in this bath in Bali and there were rubber duckies in the bath that they had given us. And I sat in that bath and I played with those rubber duckies for a solid hour. My fiancé’s like, “Uh, what are you doing?” And I’m like, “Come on, duckies, we’re flying over there, whoa.” And it was the most spiritual practice I’ve ever done, honestly. Because we’ve made things so serious that even in our spiritual practices are capitalistic. They’re like okay, timer’s on, go, reach enlightenment, three, two, one, rocket! You know, it’s coming with such masculine energy.
I was having a consultation with this incredible human design specialist named Kumud, she’s like in her late 60s. I’m going to have her on the podcast for sure and she was doing my chart, and she actually saw that according to my chart the type of person that I am if I… cause I was thinking about doing Transcendental meditation, and I went to the intro session with my fiancé, and you know, I had heard so many people were doing it, and I felt like that’s what I needed to do, and that’s the most spiritual kind of meditation out there, and I need to do it too. And I went and just something within me was like, “No, this isn’t your path, like your spiritual practice does not have to look like two 20-minute timed meditations with this specific mantra and nothing else.”
And that’s, you know, I tried it several times and it didn’t leave me feel connected, or calm, or anything. But I thought, “Well, this is what people are saying it’s the most spiritual meditation so I must do it, and my fiancé ended up signing up for it, and for the past few months he’s been doing it twice a day religiously, and he loves it, and it’s great for him because he’s a very structured person. But the human design practitioner, she’s… before I told her any of this she’s like, “You need a more fluid spiritual practice. For you that may look like journaling, or creating art, or even your cooking that you do, decorating your house, these are your spiritual practices.” And I said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about doing Transcendental meditation, and do you think that’s the best way?” And she said, “No, in fact for you, that will be your demise.”
So white space does not have to look like one type of meditation, why would it have been my demise? Because that’s not the way that my energy works. My energy, and I think a lot of your energies is more intuitive and more fluid. And for us, maybe we like to pull cards and that’s how we tune in, or maybe we like to write in our journal and let our words flow, or maybe we like to sketch something. And this is the Shakti energy, Shakti is the more feminine energy that arises from our root and moves up our spine through Kundalini energy, and unites with Shiva, masculine consciousness, which is located in our third eye center, and they create this beautiful sacred union and the dance between Shiva and Shakti.
So those who are more Shakti, those who have more of an inherently feminine nature, they need to be doing and moving and creating, that is how the energy is formed. So white space in a Shakti way can look like you twirling around in your house to your favorite music, or you nurturing your plants gardening, or you chopping vegetables. These things can be white space for you as long as you are not coming to them with this Shiva, oh my god, now I need to water the plants, now I need to chop the vegetables. You can be doing the exact same thing with different energy and it can make all the difference whether it is white space or a task. If I’m chopping the vegetables like, “Oh my god, fuck, I have to chop these vegetables, the kids are going to be home in 20 minutes, I need to hurry. Fuck, I hate cooking, I hate cooking, I hate cooking.”
What is that experience going to be like? If I’m like put on some music, some Saraswati chants, and I’m like mm… this beautiful celery smells so good as I chop them, I love the odor coming in dancing in my nostrils as I chop them, you know? And you’re just purely in that moment and you’re using as an opportunity to connect to the earth, this celery that came from earth, and wow, it’s green, and wow, it has nutrients in it that can heal my body, what an incredible gift earth has given me.
If you come into it like that, that right there is creating white space. So white space doesn’t mean disappearing into Harry Potter land, you know? It can be, that would be awesome, too, but it just means changing your state, removing the thoughts. And why meditation has become so popular and almost synonymous with a practice that removes thoughts is because for most people they’re so in their heads all the time that they need to just sit down and be like, “Okay, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think,” in order to for like one millisecond stop thinking.
Because as we know, when you tell yourself don’t think about the white elephant, you think about the white elephant. If you just say, “Stop thinking, stop thinking,” who’s telling you to stop thinking? Your mind. So you’re still in the mind, and as long as you’re in the mind you’re going to keep thinking because the mind doesn’t turn off. It’s like a Furby. Does anyone remember what a Furby is from like the ‘90s? I had four of them, by the way, and the Furby baby, that was adorable.
But like look at the Furby, you bought that Furby and it was like you with this Furby for life. There is no off button on the Furby. That Furby will wake you up at 2:00 in the morning, rocking back and forth… (imitating crying) And you have to stick your finger in its mouth and press down its tongue to feed it several times so it could go back into its hibernation state.
Our minds are like Furbies. They keep going off and you can try to turn it off for an instant, but it’s gonna keep going. So for someone who’s very in their Shakti, who’s in their feminine you feel like your highest self when you’re creating. You doing a seated meditation practice is just gonna make you really frustrated with why you can’t meditate. It’s not gonna work.
So you getting in your body is how you will naturally go into meditation without you mentally construing what a meditation practice should look like based off of what you see, based off of what comes from men because it’s all masculine lineage that has been passed on. From the ancient vedic times it’s always the men were the meditators and the women were gathering, and communicating as a tribe, and dancing, and gathering, and that’s how their energy worked.
So white space doesn’t mean detachment from all things, pure non-duality. Yes, in shiva form, which is atma, highest form of consciousness. Yes, in the grander scheme of things there is total non-duality. Non-duality means there is no separation between anything, there’s no difference between good and bad, right and wrong, me or you. We are actually all one. We are all one soul, which is the truth, we really are. But when you come down a layer from that macro, macro, macro level down one layer, you see, “Well, you know, I’m also not the same person as that person, and we have different personalities, and the doshas come in, we see the differences,” and these differences is what creates duality.
And it’s also what creates polarity, polarity is even the attraction between two polar opposites. I can do another podcast episode about polarity, and attraction, and what makes you attracted to someone, and the doshas in love, and all that jazz. But why I share this is because a lot of us, we get frustrated with ourselves that the meditation practice isn’t working, but for us to create that white space just means doing something that we are in the body somatically so we’re not in the mind. Going to a dance class, going to the beach, et cetera, but in the right mental state.
Now let me share this with you why white space is so important. Have you ever been working on something that you’re trying to find the answer to? Maybe you’re writing something you feel stuck, you can’t find the right way to stay it. Maybe you’re, you know, drafting up a proposal or whatever it is that you do, and you just can’t, you can’t wrap your head around whatever it is you really need to be doing.
So eventually you’re like, “Oh my god, I’m just gonna come back to this later,” and you walk to the fridge, you’re opening up the fridge, and boom, the idea comes, and you’ve run back to your laptop. “Oh my god, let me write this down before I forget.” Or you’re sitting in the bathtub and, “There it is, that’s the idea, but oh my god, I don’t want to get out of the bath right now, but oh god, I need to remember this when I get out.” You’re on the walk, “Whoa, that is the best idea for a book ever. Oh my god, I’m not supposed to be on my phone right now, but I need to write this down.” You’re at the beach in the ocean, “Wow, I just had an epiphany, that book I write about all those spiritual things, it’s now making sense.”
Why did those moments happen when you were not trying to find the answer? Because you were in the white space. You weren’t pushing and shoving and asking for the delivery at your door at 8:00 PM. You weren’t coming into spirituality with a Postmates mentality. You’re allowing, you’re surrendering, you’re trusting, and you’re creating white space.
So I encourage all of you this week to do one micro thing each day that creates white space. That micro thing could look like taking a bath, going out in nature, writing in your journal for like 20 minutes, a longer period of time. Do something for about 20 minutes a day that just puts you in your body and takes you out of your mind. Dancing is a really great one, singing, painting, ceramics, playing tennis, whatever it is, and once a week do one macro one. That macro one could be like driving to, you know, the national park that’s an hour away, or going to the beach and spending a few hours splashing in the waves, or having a paint day where you get all your canvases and paint.
You just spend a few hours just painting even with your kids. Or making music and, you know, really spending time to write the melodies, and the beats, and everything it is that you want to write, and just honoring yourself, and giving yourself that period of time, putting in your calendar and honoring it is as much as you would honor a doctor’s appointment. This is your own doctor appointment to yourself and you are the doctor.
So one micro thing and one macro thing, and I want you to just keep doing that and watch, just without trying, I’m not asking you to go out there and change your life and da da da, I’m not asking any of that, I’m telling you to just do one thing that takes you off of your go, go, go mode of whatever it is that you’re working on right now. It just throws you a little bit off track. Not in a stressed way, in a way that you’re just not thinking about it anymore. And watch, everything that you are working on become easier, more intuitive, more joyful, and you will become more abundant as a result.
You’ll have better ideas, you’ll have better insight in executing them, you’ll be fully rested, and ready to pursue those dreams, and you will look at life from a higher perspective. You will see that you are so much more than the task that you’re working on now, the next goal you’re trying to achieve. And even if you’re at the very beginning of your journey and you’re like, “Easy for you to say, I got a lot of work to do,” that white space is what allows you to get to the next level no matter where you are in your journey. Whether you are dealing with abuse, or you are dealing with addicting, or you are just really confused right now, or maybe you are at a job that you hate.
Whatever it is, you know, we hear from all of these like Gary Vs and entrepreneurs who I love, I love listening to them, but you hear a lot of like work, work, work, work, work. All you do is slave away at this thing that you’re working on and eventually it will pay off, but that’s the hustle mentality, and that’s some old paradigm shit. Because when we’re just hustling, hustling, hustling, even the things that come to us don’t feel very gratifying. When you allow yourself to step away, that is when you’re able to shift that perspective from, “Oh my god, I need to just get to that next thing,” to, “I’m enjoying this process. How cool, I get to learn about this whole new topic that I’ve never known about before. How awesome, I’m going through, you know, the times right now that are really going to make who I am for the rest of my life. Wow, this break-up is bringing up parts of myself that I never would have looked at if it wasn’t for this break-up. Wow, I just quit my job, I can do anything I want.”
Look at it like that and everything will shift. Look at it like that and you will notice that everything in your life will fall into a state of kriya, effortless flow. And you will be guided on your journey. Namaste.
If you loved this episode and want to dive deeper in Ayurveda, be sure to check out my new book, “Eat Feel Fresh,” which is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. As a free gift for pre-ordering my book, I will be sending you in the mail a signed book plate, as well as a beautiful tarot card I created for you, and I will be e-mailing you an additional ten bonus recipes. So this book is for you if you are interested in eating ayurvedically, but want to make it more modern, more approachable, make it work for today’s busy day and time. I’ve taken the best of Ayurveda, as well as ingredients from blue zones around the world. I’m taking Costa Rica, Vietnam, Japan, everywhere in between because I believe that Ayurveda is a guideline that can be practiced with any sort of eating.
So we look at food from an Ayurvedic perspective as well as from today’s modern lens. So be sure to check it out, “Eat Feel Fresh,” a contemporary, plant-based cookbook. Send your receipt over to me on my website, iamsahararose.com, or eatfeelfresh.com, and you will be able to receive all my pre-order bonuses, signed bookplate, bonus recipes, and so much more as my gratitude and thank you for pre-ordering the book. Also, be sure to check out my sacred self-care and Ayurvedic nutrition e-course over on dailyOM,com, the links to both of those are over on the podcast show notes. Namaste.
Episode 122 – Creating White Space with Sahara Rose