Yutori

Learning to Breathe Inside Myself

Believe it or not, I’m 50 (wow, even saying that out loud, it still sounds like I’m talking about someone else). Last year, I learned about Ma, Yutori, and how important it is to “clear out” the space around you. But this year, I had to learn how to clear out the space within myself.

I assume I’m not the only one carrying “baggage” these days, and I know everyone carries it in their own way.
As for me, I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder – I couldn’t just let go of a single piece of that baggage all these years, with all this experience. In fact, it’s funny to realize how much experience you’ve accumulated — the question is whether that experience has actually made you happier, more capable, or more peaceful.

That’s food for thought, but let’s get back to the need to clear out inside and leave yourself some space to breathe freely.

You might say, “But we do breathe. You know – you breathe, you’re alive; you don’t breathe… well, that’s the opposite.”
I thought so too, until I stopped breathing. No, I didn’t die, but that’s exactly what it felt like. Panic attacks, combined with all the anxiety in the world—and since I’m only “moderately” dramatic, let’s call it “moderate anxiety.”

That was the first time I faced the Western healthcare system seriously. It turns out that mental health is just as important as physical health, if not more. They prescribed therapy, and as I later learned, I was learning Yutori. Naturally, no one calls it that here, but it’s the same thing:

to free up space for yourself, inside yourself.

I didn’t realize how much I was holding onto until my therapist asked if I wanted to share something, and I told her I couldn’t. I was so terrified that if I started, if I “opened the tap” I wouldn’t have the strength to stop.
So much for realizing the need to clear the space.

I think if I start writing about the process itself, I’ll get lost. And to be honest, today I’d rather look at it from a slight distance and just glide over it without remembering everything. It hasn’t been enough time yet, but I promise myself that slowly and steadily, I’ll sort it all out here. Who knows—as incredible as it sounds, it might be useful to someone else.

Learning that you don’t have to be Sisyphus pushing that rock your whole life, in my case, instead of one big rock, it’s a whole pile of various stones of different sizes and weights, is a funny process. It includes moments of, “Wait, how can I let this go? It’s mine, it’s been with me my whole life—no, no way can I part with this…” Those moments probably look heartbreaking or exasperating to an outside observer.

And when someone tells you, ‘Do nothing,’ ‘Do what makes you feel good,’ ‘Lie down, laze about, paint… whatever you want’ you realize you don’t even know how to do ‘nothing’.
You don’t know how to just let the day drift by while you sip a cup of tea or stare blankly out the window.

You’re just so unaccustomed to making space for yourself in your own life. It’s paradoxical.

You spend your whole life accumulating because that’s what you were taught, because ‘it’s the right thing to do,’ because you’re strong and can handle it all, until, eventually, every single corner is so packed that you can no longer catch your breath.

Let me give you an example: we have two cats at home, they are beautiful, fat, long-haired cats. Which means I have to use that hellish machine, the vacuum cleaner, at least three times a week just to collect enough fur to make another cat.
What would happen if you didn’t vacuum for two weeks, a month, or a year? Or 40? 50 years?

The result is that you wouldn’t be able to breathe because it would be full of fur, right? Well, it’s the same with life and the space taken up by events, traumas, and the so-called “experience”. Maybe at some point, you’ll try to clear some space, see a piece of the sky, take a real breath, and realise your lungs have the capacity of a medium-sized blue whale.

Let me share, after so many words, what Yutori actually means to me.

If the concept of Ma is about having air in your house, being surrounded by beautiful things, but always having space to enjoy them and actually see them, rather than just seeing through them, then Yutori is the same thing for the mind.
Imagine your wardrobe: if your clothes are packed tight, they get wrinkled, and you no longer see or even know what you have in there. But just give them space, let them breathe then they look better, and so do you in them.

Yutori is the same thing, but on an emotional level.

It’s about having air so you don’t run to reach a meeting in the very last second and don’t hyperventilate at the first sign of anxiety. It’s having space in your head for more. Having air to breathe, not running to catch up, meeting anxiety with enough room in your mind to keep from hyperventilating.

Having a little more time so you aren’t constantly checking your watch, calendar, or phone. Because if you have that free space—the one you have at home with Ma, but you have it in your mind too, you won’t face every worry when your battery is already in the red. You won’t be so exhausted by thoughts that any idea of something creative and beautiful has escaped and hidden in that old, ugly chest of drawers you keep even though you hate it, because, well… “it’s an heirloom, what will everyone say if I throw it out?”

Well, I don’t know what they’ll say, but whatever it is, believe me, it can’t compare to the relief that this cleared space gives you.

I’ve rambled a bit, but that’s how it is with witches who’ve survived an existential crisis. At least now I can string together a whole sentence, and do it while breathing. As for that chest of drawers, the sack of stones, and all the rest of the baggage, I can only say one thing:

I’m travelling light

And even if we probably can’t achieve that Eastern perfection of emotions – especially not me, it is awfully nice to say

Yutori wo motsu: “I have enough space inside to deal with life without losing myself.”