The veil dissolves
A thin place, in my experience, is when the veil between the little me and the greater than me dissolves. It’s a sense, a knowing, an encounter beyond my rational mind.
My small concerns and preferences have dropped away, I know something bigger, and true. Perhaps release and uplifting, often simply knowing.
Quite often, it’s not till after that I realised something happened there. Time disappeared, and prefrontal cognition had nothing to do with it.
I imagine (and hope) you know the feeling, though you may not have the words to express it, and indeed for lack of words or people to share it, have stored it away, dusty.
Places
A place might evoke this sense: a church, a landscape, somewhere still and quiet. Celtic spirituality romanticises this, but indeed, places like St Columba’s on Iona - where I was this time last year, frazzled from resignation - can bring a sense of it. You’ll likely know your own Celtic places as there are plenty on these western fringes.
Equally, bobbing like a little nut in the sea is a good way to let go of the little me, and sense God’s mystery in a very embodied way. It’s more ‘wild’ for the letting go of the little me, if only fifty metres from the shore at genteel Sidmouth, than being in actual wilderness.
It’s a retreat and a rest fromt the little me, and a refreshing dip in the bigger than me.
Times
And of course, dawn and dusk. The small hours. Noon, even. Moments when busyness drops away.
The canonical hours in a monastery: even people living in a thin place, whose whole life is geared to the spiritual, even they drop their earthly concerns to return to the higher power at three-hourly intervals.
It’s a retreat and a rest from the little me, and a refreshing dip in the bigger than me.
Threshold
Thin times and places are thresholds: neither the former time nor yet the future, not one space nor the other. The threshold: the narrow strip between inside and outside.
Liminal is from the Greek for theshold. It’s a lighter word than its nonethless lovely, harvest-linked, Anglo-saxon counterpart. With its light i and slippy l sounds we slip into liminality more easily than squeeze ourself onto a threshold.
Portal to limitless time and space…
And in this place, neither one, nor the other, time disappears. Also disappears our ego-self, and what yoga calls the uphadis, classically translated as self-limiting adjuncts. Who we think we are and the conditioning we’ve absorbed DO limit our identity in God (or however you figure the divine).
…and transformation
In that limitless space-time, finally freed of our smallness, I believe that Spirit (The Holy Spirit) moves and works, heals and transforms. The Holy Spirit loves this space. Our heart opens, inspiration flows. Literally, in-spirit-ation.
We can percieve what God has in mind for us. Jesus, drawing on the words of the Hebrew prophet, spoke many times of this kind of this mystical perception, ‘they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them’.
Practice
For me, that I could begin to see and to hear came about through yoga practice and thoughtful teachers.
Perhaps I had this awareness before, but in the time and place I grew up, empirical knowledge was valued and day-dreaming not. I was a dreamy child, and probably you were too, and the in-spirit-ation got stored away dusty as I became brainy.
One of my early teachers talked about veils of ignorance that fall away, and I have continued to frame my journey like this. Mainly thin veils, many unnoticed as such, I am sure, and once or twice, a great big rip in those there veils!
Still thickly veiled overall, but you can only go at the rate you can go.
True retreat
So, this is why I do for myself and facilitate for others via yoga practices: thinnest of veils, one practice session at a time. A bit more heart opening, a bit more letting go of my little self perhaps, a bit more healing.
Please comment or message me with your thin places and times, perhaps your experiences of how prayer, meditation and/or yoga practice has felt. I’d love to start a conversation.
Liminality at Viveka Gardens
You might like to travel to VG, rather out of time and place, neither north nor south Devon, neither touristy nor ruggedy, in some kind of bermuda triangle of lanes with grass in the middle, off an unnamed road. Here is the Summer 2025 Retreat Collection. Retreat, rest and new inspiration.
Or join online for monthly yoga nidra practice in rhythm with the seasons, a liminal place. You can also see this post for a recording too.
A bespoke, co-created nidra, particularly aligned with the one you were always intended to be can be shared as part of coaching.
Or join for practice classes weekly, in the studio or online.
And it may be that you want to explore some experience or knowledge of the divine that you have stored away dusty. Contact me about spiritual accompaniment.
I was a day dreamer as teachers interpret it. I grew up in a similar place to your retreat in Wales. There weren’t a lot of other children living close so I often entertained myself alone fascinated by plants, taking walks in the countryside. When I was in school bored by the lesson I would be processing and reflecting on what I’d learnt playing in the countryside. Now as an adult if I’m dysregulated about anything I take a walk in nature as my curiosity in all things plants (particularly wild plants that have planted themselves) will bring me away from the stress/frustration to the now, the moment. I also find nidras incredibly healing or revealing things that are in our minds and bodies but we can’t see in our busy daily life and the almost asleep state reveals them to us. I also find church a way to step into the here and now. So for me gardens, nature, countryside, the physical act of gardening, yoga and yoga nidra, church.