What If You’re Not Behind Time?

How Somatic Awareness, Science, and Soul Help You Trust Your Own Rhythm

What If You’re Not Behind Time?

How Somatic Awareness, Science, and Soul Help You Trust Your Own Rhythm

If you’ve been feeling behind in life lately — in your healing, your work, your creativity — you’re not alone. So many heart-led people quietly carry that sense of being late for their own lives.

Everyone says you can’t replace time.
You can replace money, opportunities, even houses or jobs, but not time… right?

But what if that’s not completely true?
What if time is, at least partly, a construct of your mind and nervous system?

Think about it:

You can sit in meditation for five minutes and go so deep that it feels like you’ve travelled through lifetimes.
You can spend hours engrossed in something or rushing and it goes by in a flash, as if the clock magically just fast forwarded...

So… how do we measure time when it’s experienced in such different ways?

We live in a culture that whispers (or shouts):

“You should have done this by now. You should have achieved that by now. You’re late.”

And that constant “not enough time” story does something very real to your body.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO FOR THIS BLOG HERE

We Live in a World That Worships Speed

Our Western way of living has turned speed into a virtue.
Move fast. Break things. Scale quickly. Be impatient because “it shows ambition.”

It’s like getting on a Shinkansen, a Japanese high-speed train, straight to Stress Central.

Your mind might be telling you:

“If I rush, I’ll finally arrive.”

But your nervous system hears something very different:

Short, shallow breath
Tight shoulders
Racing thoughts
A sense that you’re never quite “there” yet

From a neuroscience perspective, that’s your sympathetic nervous system in overdrive—fight–flight mode. Your body is reading urgency as danger.

The irony?
The clarity, creativity, and insight you’re trying to race towards live mostly in the parasympathetic state—where your body feels safe, connected, and has enough space to imagine.

You can’t force your way into that state with another productivity hack.
You have to relax your way there.

The Body Lives in Felt Time, Not Clock Time

Time on your phone or calendar is one thing. Time in your body is another.

Psychologists call it interoception—your ability to sense internal cues like heartbeat, breath, and subtle shifts inside you.

When you drop attention into your inner world, something beautiful happens:

Five minutes can feel generous, spacious, enough
Colours seem brighter, sounds richer
You start to notice the “in-between” moments you usually rush past

It’s not “woo,” it’s physiology. Focused attention literally changes how your brain registers duration.

This is why:

A five-minute meditation can feel timeless
A slow, conscious walk can stretch open a whole afternoon
Two minutes of gentle movement can do more for your nervous system than another coffee

When you dance slowly, walk mindfully, or simply breathe with awareness, you’re not just “relaxing”—you’re reshaping your experience of time.

Growth Is Seasonal, Not Linear

There are so many things you simply can’t put on a tight schedule:

You can’t put a time limit on healing
You can’t put a time limit on when you’ll finally feel safe again
You can’t put a time limit on knowing yourself, or on integrating a big life event or grief

Yes, you can sign up for a three-month program (I run one myself). You can absolutely make powerful shifts in that time.

You can even have a single moment—a flash of insight, a conversation, a dance, a trip—that changes the projection of your whole life.

But embodiment isn’t a one-week or even a one-season affair. It’s lived. It matures over time.

I often see people wanting to “become a healer” or “be a facilitator” in a very short space of time. You can learn some nuts and bolts yes, especially if you’ve already done a lot of inner work. But truly knowing yourself, and being able to hold others from that grounded place, is a lifelong journey.

Nature knows this. Seeds germinate in darkness long before any green shoots appear.

Ask yourself instead:

What season am I in right now—germination, emergence, or harvest?

Because you’re not late for your season. Your season is right on time.

Time Needs Space (Or Why You Might Feel Suffocated)

Space and time are lovers. When one disappears, the other suffocates.

If you’re constantly saying “I don’t have time,” there’s a good chance you also don’t have space.

No spaciousness in your day → less breath.
Less breath → more stress.
More stress → your body tightens and your world shrinks.
Your world shrinks → you feel like you have even less time.

It becomes a vicious cycle. And the end isn’t pretty: burnout, illness, or just a quiet sense of being starved of life.

Think about how we were trained at school:

Bells telling us exactly when to stop and start
Lessons chopped into fixed blocks
Hardly any real room to wander, process, dream, integrate

That conditioning doesn’t magically leave our nervous system when we become adults.

This is why so many “fast track to success” or “accelerated healing” promises can feel a bit off. They often replicate the old school schedule: go faster, do more, tick more boxes.

But your body doesn’t work like a school timetable.

Dance, Breath, and the Magic of Moving Time

Here’s where movement becomes quietly radical.

When you drop into dance—not performance, just being moved—time loosens its grip.

You’re not thinking in days or deadlines anymore; you’re living in:

The inhale and exhale
The curve of your spine
The way your foot meets the floor
The way your thoughts start to travel through your body instead of looping in your head

In Chinese philosophy, breath and heart are deeply connected.
When you come into your breath, you’re coming into your heart.

So try this:

Take a moment to pause.
Feel your feet on the ground.
Place a hand on your chest or heart space.
Breathe in life. Exhale whatever you’ve been holding.

If you have even a little more time, let your body start to move:

Maybe the movement is tiny—a sway, a shoulder roll, a soft spiral
Maybe your thoughts become paintbrushes, travelling through your nervous system and out into the air
Perhaps you’re painting invisible strokes of light around you, or tracing your worries into the floor so they can be composted

This is moving meditation.

It’s not about emptying your mind. It’s about letting your mind move through your body, so nothing gets stuck swimming in circles.

Time softens here. It becomes less of a straight line and more of a living field you move within.

My Own “Missed Timings”

For a long time, I had a story that I was always late.

When I graduated, they called it the “second depression.” Not exactly an inspiring job market.
When I arrived in Japan, people told me I’d missed the boat for making good money teaching English.

According to the external timeline, I was behind. I’d missed my chance.

But living it from the inside? It was exactly my time.

Those chapters gave me:

Perspective I couldn’t have gained any other way
Humility and resilience
A completely different relationship with success and failure
The seeds of the work I do now

Looking back, none of it was “too late.” It was right on time for who I was becoming.

So if you have your own “I’ve missed it” stories—about career, love, creativity, health—maybe they’re not evidence that you failed.

Maybe they’re just chapters in a longer, wiser rhythm.

“Why Can’t I Go As Deep On My Own?”

I was recently asked this question:

“Why can’t I drop as deep into movement on my own as I do when you’re guiding me?”

It’s a beautiful question.

The simple answer is: it takes time.

Time for your nervous system to learn that it’s safe to soften
Time to build trust with your own body
Time to recognise your patterns and start to choose new ones
And yes, support helps shorten the learning curve

This is one of the paradoxes of time:

You can transform in a single moment of clarity
And you also deserve all the time you need for that clarity to anchor into your life

You’re not failing if you’re not “there” yet. You’re just in process. And process is sacred

Practical Ways to Reclaim Your Rhythm

You don’t need to overhaul your entire life to change your relationship with time. Small, embodied shifts can be surprisingly powerful.

1. Pause Before You Plan

Before you open your calendar, emails, or to-do list:

Take three slow breaths
Feel your feet
Notice: does your chest feel tight, open, numb?

Let your body have a say before your schedule takes over.

You might find that what you planned to prioritise isn’t actually what your deeper self needs right now.

2. Two Minutes of Movement

Set a two-minute timer. Yes, two minutes where you completely switch off.

Gently roll your shoulders

Circle your wrists and ankles

Let your spine ripple or your hips sway

Imagine you’re shaking off the school bell that says, “Time to go! Time to do! Time to hurry!”

Two minutes is enough to: Send a new signal of safety through your nervous system

Bring you back into your body

Shift the quality of the next hour

Used well, five minutes can feel like an entire reset.

3. Name Your Season

Instead of “I should have done X by now,” try this:

What season am I in right now?

Growth – Ideas, action, experimentation
Integration – Slower, quieter, putting the pieces together
Rest / Repair – Grief, recovery, reorienting, cocoon time

Honour where you actually are, not where you think you should be.

4. Create Little Pockets of Free Space

Look at your day and your week and ask:

Where can I create a tiny pocket of unscheduled space?

It might be:

Five minutes between calls where you consciously breathe and stretch
A short walk without your phone
One song or track you let yourself dance to in your kitchen

These small moments are not indulgent extras. They’re how you quietly re-write your relationship with time.

You Are Right on Time

If you’ve been feeling “behind”—behind on healing, on your creative projects, on life milestones—maybe this is your body asking for compassion, not another deadline.

You haven’t missed the boat.
You’re learning your tidal rhythm.

You can’t put a clean timeline on:

When you’ll fully heal
When you’ll feel safe again after a shock or loss
When you’ll truly know yourself

These things take as long as they take.

The more you give yourself space to breathe, move, feel, the more life can meet you where you are.

Let time stretch open inside you.
Let your body show you what “right on time” feels like from the inside out.

Stay in the Conversation

If this resonates, I’d love to keep exploring this with you:

🌿 Watch the full video for this Blog HERE
💓 Download your free Heart Meditation to take a nourishing pause and reconnect to your inner rhythm linklinklink
🔥 Join Reclaim You, my 12-week journey in embodied creative power, somatic dance, and self-leadership - live group begins in January

And if you feel called, drop a comment (this blog is switching to a new one soon that will properly allow this…) or send me a message on any of my channels:

Where do you still tell yourself you’re “behind”—and what might change if you believed you’re exactly on time?

You’ve got this.
You’ve got as long as you need.
Everything is in motion and in progress, exactly as it’s meant to be.