The Sacred Pause — Creating Space for Transformation

Transformation does not happen in the constant momentum of doing. It happens in the quiet spaces we rarely give ourselves permission to enter.  The Sacred Pause—a deliberate moment of stopping, softening, and coming home to yourself so your soul’s wisdom can rise above your conditioned reactions.

Why the Pause Is Essential

Most people live in a cycle of stimulus and reaction. Something happens, and before we can even think, our bodies respond from old patterns:

• shutting down
• people-pleasing
• anxiety spirals
• defensiveness
• overexplaining
• withdrawing

This cycle is not a conscious choice—it is survival programming.

The Sacred Pause interrupts this automatic loop. It gives your nervous system space to breathe, your mind space to clear, and your soul space to speak.

It is in the pause that you shift from reactive habit to conscious creation.

The Physiology of the Pause

From a grounded psychological and spiritual lens, pausing creates powerful internal shifts:

• It lowers sympathetic activation (fight-flight).
• It allows the prefrontal cortex to come back online.
• It signals safety internally.
• It reconnects you with body awareness.
• It creates a gap where intuition can be perceived.

This is why pausing often brings a sudden feeling of clarity, relief, or perspective. Your body is no longer defending—you are now perceiving.

The Pause as a Spiritual Portal

Beyond its biological benefits, the spiritual significance of the pause is profound:

• It reconnects you with your witnessing self—the part of you that is aware but not entangled.
• It breaks the momentum of ego-based fear and opens the doorway to guidance.
• It aligns you with presence, where truth becomes clear and suffering begins to dissolve.

When the mind stops clinging to the past or projecting into the future, your awareness naturally shifts into the dimension of the soul.

The Sacred Pause is the gateway.

Practicing the Sacred Pause

Here is the four-step model you can begin using immediately:

1. Stop

Pause whatever you are doing or thinking. Even one breath is enough.

2. Soften

Release tension in your shoulders, jaw, belly. Let your breath slow.

3. Sense

Notice what is happening inside:

• sensations
• emotions
• impulses
• needs

This is not analysis—just awareness.

4. Soul-Ask

Gently ask:

“What is truly needed at this moment?”
“What would bring me into alignment?”

Let the answer arise naturally.

When You Pause, You Change Everything

Through the Sacred Pause, you begin to:

• respond instead of react
• choose instead of comply
• create instead of repeat
• relate from compassion instead of fear
• listen to inner truth instead of old conditioning

This is how you reclaim your life.

Integrating the Pause Into Daily Life

You don’t need long meditation sessions. You just need micro-pauses, such as:

• before responding to a text
• before walking into a room
• when you feel emotional activation
• when you sense anxiety rising
• when someone makes a request
• when you catch yourself spiraling

These tiny pauses accumulate, creating profound shifts in self-awareness and emotional resilience.

Journal Prompts

• When do I most often react instead of respond?
• What does my body feel like when I am operating from habit rather than presence?
• How might my relationships change if I paused before speaking?
• What deeper truths become visible when I stop and listen?

Practice: The 60-Second Reset

Use this throughout your day:

1. Stop what you’re doing.
2. Inhale for four.
3. Hold for two.
4. Exhale for six.
5. Place a hand on your heart or belly.
6. Ask: “What is happening in me right now?.

Have you ever been really upset or angry and reacted and than later regretted your action? Of course you have, we all have. But what if you had just waited for the feeling to pass, to let the wave of emotion come and go, I bet you would have responded very differently.

That is what I would like to talk about here in this article. When we can use mindfulness, which is nonjudgmentally observing what is happening in this moment, we expand our view, our perspective becomes larger and we can witness that thought or that feeling without unconsciously or habitually reacting from it.

Mindfulness is like our super power as it allow us to observe what is occurring without getting swept up in it. This noticing of thoughts and feelings is one way to get outside of it. This does not mean that we won’t feel the unpleasant feelings, we will still feel it, but we will be more aware of it as well as the choice we have. We are now  able to act from our values and in a way that is aligned with the kind of person we want to be.

Mindfulness gives us back to ourselves, it allows us to be the person we really are even in the midst of a challenging situation.

So the next time you are experiencing a strong unpleasant emotion take a pause to notice and name it, accept it and allow it. This helps us to create some separation as we are being the witness of it rather than being ravaged by it. Once we have noticed and named the feeling, allowing it the space to be there only makes sense, because it it there. When we resist feeling, the opposite of allowing and accepting, we create another problem on top of the original one, and this is where suffering comes in. Resistance to what is creates suffering.

Allow the temporary experience of unpleasant emotion to come and go like a wave, and hold some compassion for yourself as you are experiencing the feeling.  Think of what you would do when you see a loved one or a small child crying, you acknowledge they are suffering and  with this acknowledging you are accepting and allowing it to be there. You would probably then offer  compassion to that child with kind words and a hug. The child most likely would then feel validated and go back to what they were doing.

So we want to have this same practice with ourselves when we are in pain; notice and name it, allow and accept it, and then hold some compassion for yourself. Then continue on your way, re-engage in your environment feeling lighter and more open and without the heavy weight of this feeling  since you just processed it.

https://www.mysticmag.com/psychic-reading/interview-marniekahn/