Aug 22, 2023

Kathryn Nicolai, creator of the Nothing Much Happens podcast, learns at an early age to diminish her own needs. She never wants to become a problem for other people, so she pretends like she’s always okay. When she gets an opportunity to study abroad in Italy, a difficult experience with her host family causes her to retreat further into herself. It’s only when she feels the compassionate concern of someone who tells her it’s okay to have needs that she learns that it’s okay to take up space.

From the closing meditation

Let’s start with the idea of space. I love what Kathryn says about it being okay that we take up space. Let’s enjoy it. We are a spatial being. Like the moon, like alpha Centauri, like Everest, our weird, beautiful, wild body is a body in space. Let it take that space. Let us feel that space.

— ROHAN GUNATILLAKE