Permission to Pause

Hello and welcome to my very first blog post. I thought I would start with what I believe are some of the most basic building blocks of mental well-being.

I wanted to talk about the pause. So what is the pause, I hear you say? The pause is the spaces of time and distance between you and what is happening in and around you. Often we are too busy, too distracted and walk around on autopilot. We don’t even realise that these little pockets exist and are available to us.

The pause is something that the religious leaders, the healers, and the wise people in our societies have always understood as important, and, as such, I would say it’s an inherent part of being human. But as our lives have become more hectic and stressful, we may have lost touch with this essential skill. More recently, psychologists have emphasised how tapping into the pause may be one of the most effective ways of tolerating distressing feelings and making meaningful decisions.

So, how do you find it? The breath is a useful process to play with. You can’t lose it, it’s always with you (trust me, if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this blog!). But the pause doesn’t have to be about the breath or to even about being quiet and still. You can create an internal pause by shifting the way you pay attention, even at the busiest of times, by utilising your senses in the moment to feel more present and grounded. It can be about shifting your body position, or actually, just moving and shaking it out. Anything that takes you out of autopilot and engages you in a helpful way with what is happening both inside and outside of you. 

A plug for therapy here: I believe therapy itself can be a pause. It’s a space outside of your daily life in which you have time to think and reflect. But if that is true, it could also be taking time out for a cup of tea, reaching out for a chat with a trusted friend, a meditative walk, journalling, or channelling your feelings through creativity such as art, poetry, or music.

And it might not be a one-off practice. Sometimes you might need multiple pauses. A pause might just be a space in which you realise that you need another pause! And you can then allow and plan for this.

Finally, this little pause skill – on its own -isn’t going to change the world: it isn’t going to end poverty or stop racism or sexism. But it might just make a difference to you. It’s the pause that can often mean the difference between reacting in an automatic way, and responding in a way that allows you to consider what would be the most effective way forward. It allows you to be more intentional.

And perhaps, because of that, those little pauses could change the way we live, the way we interact with each other, and the choices we make for the better.