Overwhelmed? Use Breathwork to Give Yourself Some Space
How often does your mind feel like a tangled ball of string? For me, it’s a daily occurrence. A flood of thoughts, questions, decisions, worries—each one looping around the other until I’m holding a mental knot that feels impossible to unravel. And in those moments, my instinct is always the same: think harder, push through, problem-solve my way out.
But here’s what I’ve learned: the harder I try to untie the knot, the tighter it becomes.
When my yoga teacher offered Sokuzan’s words, “The knot of the mind untangles itself in space,” I couldn’t stop playing with the idea in my mind. It’s not the knot itself that traps me—it’s my desperate need to fix it. The more I lean into force, overthinking and self-relience, the less room I leave for clarity, for breath, for space.
When I’m able to pause and simply notice the knot—not as a problem to solve, but as something that just is—something remarkable happens. My perspective shifts. Instead of zooming in on the tangle, I step back into what feels like infinite space within myself. It’s in this space where I feel my body soften, my breath deepen, and the knot loosen, almost on its own.
The knot isn’t the problem. The problem is my resistance to it, my belief that it must be solved, fixed, or untied by force. When I allow the knot to simply exist, I make room for the part of me that exists beyond it—a part that is vast, open, and infinite.
So how do we create that space when our minds feel cramped and tangled? Here’s what’s helped me:
Breathe first, think later. When my mind starts spinning, I remind myself to come back to my breath. Deep inhales and even longer exhales. Not because the breath will solve the knot, but because it creates a pause—a crack in the pressure to fix.
Practice noticing. Instead of diving into the problem headfirst, I try to sit with the knot like an old friend. “Oh, there you are again. What’s going on in there?” This curiosity creates distance and helps me step out of problem-solving mode.
Get physical. Sometimes, the best way to loosen mental tension is through physical space. A walk, stretching, or even lying on the floor helps me reconnect to my body and shift my perspective.
Accept the knot as it is. This one is the hardest. My instinct is always to fight the knot, to see it as something “wrong” that needs fixing. But when I let it exist—when I stop resisting—I feel myself expand. I realize I am more than the knot, and the knot no longer has power over me.
Every time I return to this practice, I’m reminded of the spaciousness within me—the part of me that isn’t tied up in the knot at all. That space is always there, waiting for me to notice it. But my breath isn’t a loud teacher. It simply offers itself, steady and patient, whispering again and again: There’s space here. Come home.
