is your container too big, too small, or just right?

a Goldilocks guide to right-sizing your life

Some of my best writing happens in yoga. Not literally on the mat, which is very much a device-free zone. But I am generally someone who writes passages in my head first and exports them onto the page later, and for whatever reason, shavasana always gets the wheels turning.

It’s not great yoga practice - you’re supposed to clear your mind, let thoughts drift by without any judgment. Something about the combination of movement, quiet, and intentional breathing for an hour seems to lubricate my creative muscles. My body slows down, my brain perks up. Funny, that.

I’ve only really “done yoga” consistently for the past 20 months or so. (What am I, speaking about it like my baby or something?) Call it one and a half years. I got a MoreYoga membership around the time I turned 30 and life started getting a bit... weird. It was one of the best tricks I could find to feel grounded again.

Before that, I’d only dipped in and out of the odd class. At one point, I worked for a company with a wellness arm. The spa-meets-studio was just around the corner from the office; it had a skylit yoga studio and was cleansed with palo santo between classes, but didn’t have showers. So, it was more of a boutique studio for people who don’t sweat. That’s Big Wellness™ for you.

Anyway, one of the perks of my job was getting to trial classes and spending time with the practitioners, capturing content to power the brand’s marketing machine. I may not have absorbed much best practice where the yoga is concerned, but I did pick up some accidental life wisdom on the way.

I have fond memories of one teacher who would always sign off, “See you on the mat!” It was a cute way to brand herself, but it was also a philosophy. When you’re doing yoga, your mat is the whole world. For those 60 minutes, the mat is your container. Even in a room full of people, you’re only paying attention to what happens on that one rectangle of space.

Sometimes I imagine my mat floating in the ocean like a little raft. And if I nudged my toe over the edge, I’d touch cool saltwater instead of cold wooden floorboards. That image calms me. It reminds me that no matter what’s swirling around in my head or outside the studio, this little space is mine. A private vessel.

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Last week, I went to a creative writing workshop in a sauna. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of how I’d like to spend a Thursday evening, that would be the perfect intersection. I’ve been negotiating with the uncharacteristically hot climes of a proper London summer, so it was refreshing to sweat in a space where sweating is encouraged. (Plus, they do have showers.)

It turns out in 30+ degree heat, the sauna doesn’t quite have the same pull to others as it does to me, so we were a cosy crowd. Just the four of us. We read a bit. Wrote a bit. Shared a bit. Sweated a lot.

Sometimes you show up to a workshop hoping to be stretched and challenged. If you’re in a creative drought, you want to be filled with inspiration. Sometimes you just want to show up and be a witness to other people’s inspiration, letting it wash over you. Sometimes you just want to spend a few hours among kindred spirits. This felt like the latter.

As I left, I remember thinking: this evening was right-sized for my soul.

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I have a note in my phone with the word ‘vessel’ and nothing else.

That’s how quite a lot of my posts begin - I jot down a word in my notes app, a fragment of a phrase, a half-idea, and then let it ferment for a while, adding to it over time as more related thoughts come to mind. Eventually, there’s enough in there to warrant some more structured editing, and poof, a post.

This one eludes me, though. I still can’t remember what I had been reading/listening to/thinking about that had prompted me to write the word ‘vessel’ down.

I can see it’s not entirely random. I’ve written a few times before about the size of things, how life feels too big or too small, or what I’m putting into my jar as a metaphor for how I’m prioritising my time and energy. What I missed out, and what I’ve been chewing on more recently, is that, as well as choosing what we put in the container, we can also choose the container itself.

Some days, mine is no bigger than a yoga mat. And that (approx.) one square metre of space is enough. Other days, it’s an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The same logic applies: if you set your container, you will find ways to fill it.

Take this post you’re reading - it’s a self-imposed container I created, and now I have an impulse to fill it. A year ago, I wanted to make more space for writing in my life, so I created a container for it. If spag mol didn't exist, I wouldn't write (and therefore think) as much as I do.

There's a running joke in marketing circles that when something isn't working, the first instinct is to “redesign the landing page” rather than examine the actual product or service you’re selling with it.

credit to SWY for sourcing this

It’s funny because it's true - sometimes we tinker with the container when we should be looking at the contents, but sometimes it really is the vessel that needs changing. It needs to be bigger or smaller, or maybe an entirely different shape altogether. I’d posit that we've all done some version of this in our own lives. Possibly to varied results, but sometimes, maybe even most times, I bet it worked.

Containers can be spatial (a yoga mat), digital (a website), temporal (a blocked-out calendar), or symbolic (putting in your headphones). They can also be relational. Relationships are, perhaps, the most complex containers of all to size right, but that’s a thought that could power a whole series of essays.

When I created a new note and absentmindedly wrote a single word without any clue or reference, I was probably thinking about how we’re all vessels. We fill and we empty, ad infinitum. We pour ourselves into people, places, projects - and they, in turn, pour themselves back into us. We’re porous, after all. The containers we create for ourselves serve a dual purpose: filtering what we allow into our lives and what we allow out.

If I were to turn these thoughts into an actionable question, it would be:

Am I living in a way that fits the size of my container(s)?

Or am I sizing my container(s) to fit the shape of my life?

So maybe the real work, the only work, is creating the containers that are right-sized for ourselves, and filling them with people and things that are the right size for us, too.

p.s. Speaking of containers… An invitation 💌

If this piece has you thinking about your own creative containers - how you fill them, where you pour them out - I have something that might interest you. I'm co-hosting a workshop in London next week with the brilliant

Lucy Alexandra Harper

(author of

Breadcrumbs

), exploring creativity as a cycle rather than a production line:

If you’re curious, check it out and get your ticket on Eventbrite!

p.p.s. A recommendation

Thank you

Caroline Druitt

for hosting a writing workshop that was right-sized for my soul. Her writing is tender and generous, and so I wasn’t surprised to discover her workshops are, too. I highly encourage sampling it for yourselves:

In the slow lane

.