When time starts to collapse (and how to get it back)
Have you ever noticed how this season plays tricks on time?
One minute it’s morning, the next it’s dark.
Your calendar fills faster than you can blink.
Your mind starts sprinting, even when your body is exhausted.
It’s as if time tightens around us –
like there’s never quite enough of it
no matter how hard we try to keep up.
The holidays, the deadlines, the expectations…
the emotional load, the shorter days…
it all piles in.
Even when life is full of good things, many of us still feel that quiet sense of being stretched –
pulled between want-to’s, have-to’s, and the pace of it all.
What struck me recently – in conversations, in sessions, and in my own home – isn’t just how much we have to do but how fast we start doing it.
When time feels scarce, we rush.
Our breath shortens.
Our vision narrows.
We reach for multitasking (which only shrinks time even more).
We speed up our walking, our talking, even the way we move around the house.
And in that state, the mind gets loud and our clarity gets small.
But something remarkable happens when we slow down – even slightly.
A softening.
An opening.
A return to presence.
I’ve watched it happen again and again.
And we experienced it together recently in Calm & Connect, this beautiful community space where we gather each week to reset, breathe, and recalibrate.
Inside that hour, people arrive scattered – and leave spacious.
Not because life got easier,
but because they shifted their state.
What I’ve been sitting with – and what I want to offer you this week –
is this paradox:
When we move slower, time expands.
When we move faster, time contracts.
It makes no logical sense.
And yet, it’s true.
When I intentionally slow my pace – even in small ways, even for a few breaths – I find myself arriving more fully.
Thinking more clearly.
Moving more effectively.
Even driving:
when I stop pressing the gas so hard,
I somehow get where I’m going with more ease… and often, in the same – or crazily enough, less – amount of time.
And how I show up?
That’s radically different.
And that’s worth everything.
The same is true inside of us.
When we soften the rush, the mind unclenches.
Ideas loosen.
Presence returns.
And the moment stretches.
Time may not actually change –
but your state shifts the way you experience it.
We forget that time isn’t our only resource.
Your energy, your presence, your body budget – these shape everything.
When your energy tightens, time contracts with it.
When your system softens, your whole world opens.
A question to sit with as we head into the Thanksgiving and the holidays:
Where is your pace working against you right now?
And what opens if you slow… even 5%?
Not to fall behind.
But to return to yourself.
To widen the world inside you.
To reclaim the part of time that’s still yours.
Because beneath the rush, beneath the noise, beneath the season…
there is a steadier you.
A clearer you.
A wiser you.
A you that already knows what’s needed.
And sometimes, all it takes
is a breath long enough
to hear yourself again.
Wishing you and yours a Thanksgiving filled with warmth, connection, and the kind of presence that makes time feel wide and generous.
And if you want space to reset amid the fullness of this season…
you are always welcome at Calm & Connect every other Sunday morning… including this Sunday.
Come exactly as you are –
especially if you feel like you’re running on empty.
With love and spaciousness,
Rachel ❤