By age 60, I had led a life that most people would say was ambitious and successful. In many ways, I used my natural talents to conform to a vision of life that my parents, society, and an entire generation of Depression-era and World War II-era adults had envisioned for me. That goal was to live a life free from material want, the American dream, and climb as high as possible on the ladder of success.

For a while, I claimed this dream as my own and lived it as well as I could. There were many doubts along the way. There were flashes of “Is that all there is?” and hints about more creative avenues to pursue and glimpses of an alternative way of life that might make me happier. My conscience sometimes told me I was on the wrong path. But in the end, it was my two small children, the approach of later life, my reconnection to my true needs, and my hunger for change that helped me uncover and reawaken the original spirit with which I was born.

And then WHAM!

A “mortality moment” I had on a commuter train ride (which I talk about in my book, A Life Yet to Live brought a genuine awakening of that spirit. My first hunger was for health and longevity. I did not want to repeat with my children the fate that had befallen me as a child—the early loss of a father through cancer. I yearned for my daughters to have an active, healthy father for as long as possible. Holding this intention, and caring for my health, still remains my highest priority as my daughters approach adulthood.

I had already been searching for a genuine inner barometer of preventive health, not the “follow my advice” culture I saw around me. As I threw myself into learning and practicing my own version of good physical health, appreciating the dynamics and the way my body works, my world began to move toward the inner realms of mind and spirit. I started to appreciate the mysterious, wondrous universe that created the unique species we are, along with the mysterious, wondrous universe inside me that keeps me alive.

Once I had invoked the spirit of healing inside me, it grew on its own accord. Its voice became clearer. From inside, it has led me to begin healing not only my physical body but my childhood hurts and misdirection. In turn, this has led me to appreciate the vast inner world I hold, the world of biology as well as belief. This subtle reality holds much more influence on my life than I was aware of before. It has now become the foundation of my later life.

What Health Feels Like to Me

My experience of health has many aspects to it. I move, eat, meditate, and live in a way that encourages the great forces of healing and life to continue serving me as strongly as possible for as long as possible. But at the very core of all my practices is a feeling of space. I can’t describe it any other way. It is an almost overwhelming feeling of things inside me being in balance, at peace, and comfortably empty. It is how I know I am on the right track, a visceral reminder of good health (physical and mental). It doesn’t take the place of medical tests and other metrics that I do regularly but it complements them.

I get this feeling of space during and after a training session or other physical activity. I especially get it in yoga when my body is aligned, and the pose seems to hold itself without effort while my body and joints elongate and become more flexible. I get it in the morning, after a 12-hour fast, as I drink my tea and move gently to wake my body up. It is a physical and visceral sensation in my gut and my mind, when both feel comfortably empty, not filled with urgency, information, or hunger. And when I’m having a rough ride with anxiety or facing challenges in life, it is the feeling I get when that anxiety resolves itself into a new insight or inspiration to move past the challenge.

Physical Space as a Source of Healing

One day I came across an article in The Guardian about scientists who were working to regrow cartilage between joints. This had not previously been deemed possible. They found that providing space inside joints where cartilage had receded—not having the bones in direct contact with each other and separating them slightly—prompted the body to regenerate lost cartilage on its own. This touched a chord inside me. It echoed my own physical sensations.

And then an insight came to me: space itself, pure empty space, whether it is outer space or inner space, is a powerful source of healing and creation.

New feelings and insights emerge from this empty space. It is what meditation is about. The universe itself probably came from empty space. Albert Einstein once said that space has a vast store of energy we don’t yet know about. This is something current theories of dark energy are just now beginning to address. My own cultivation of the space inside me is a direct link to this energy, the dynamic healing and creative force that exists everywhere.

Finding My Inner Space—Both Physical and Psychic

I started to link these two realms together within me—physical and psychic space. And as I’ve continued my health journey my inner space has begun to play an outsized role in my experience of life. It gives me a unique sensation of safety and harmony, room to be myself, without having to conform to what others expect of me. And as much as it was initially overwhelming, otherworldly, and foreign, my inner space now feels utterly wonderful. I know that I am reaching a place I was meant to go or at least I’m heading in the right direction.

This space I experience is a unique feature of inner health, a vast interior realm of which I had previously been unaware. Its peacefulness and energy is denied to us by many diversions in modern life. These can be external diversions like various types of entertainment and social media, or they can be internal diversions like feeding an endless appetite and finding ways to avoid emotions. For most of my life, I had only experienced the direct power of my inner space in fleeting episodes. Now it is a regular feature of life.

I Discovered the Space to Be Myself

Most importantly, I experience the space to be myself as approval and permission to be myself and love myself. This sensation of space, for me, is the same as love. It is room to be myself. It was love for those aspects of me that I hungered for early in life. But I received no encouragement or nurturing to move in that direction. In my case, I am unearthing these new worlds of curiosity and self-discovery in my writing. It is a general sense of well-being and satisfaction, which I now call my healthy soul.

These hidden parts of myself have come to life, and I’m reintegrating them. I experience new joy, calmness, and satisfaction with the whole person I am becoming. The process of reintegration is not always smooth, but the ongoing self-discovery of my inner space pulls me along. It helps me authentically connect to the physical world—the outer space—around me.

This insight would have been a blessing at any age. As I head into later life, it is especially sweet to have the time and good health to explore life with this newly recovered magnificent power.