Not long ago I had a conversation with a student who expressed difficulty in focusing on anything that was good in his life. He said, “I am constantly drawn to the negativity in my life and the different challenges that I’ve been handed”. I could see the deeply etched suffering and chronic stress that he held. This was a moment for me to hold the space of compassion and to offer the possibility of something new—holding suffering and the broader picture of who we are, both at the same time. To make room not just for the challenges but to broaden the field of awareness to all that we are and what we experience. This is called expansion.
When we have something happening in our lives that is deeply emotional, we tend to contract around it. It becomes the primary focus of our thoughts and feelings. Just think about the first time you “fell in love”. For me, I would float through the day, thinking of what he said, when we would meet and what might the future might hold. On the other end of the spectrum is when we broke up. Both times, same relationship, the experience of clinging to the major emotion was present. When we pull our energy and attention into one thing, we often forgot all else, which isn’t a bad thing if you’re serving for the championship match at Wimbledon, but not so useful when we become overly fixated on an emotional event or happening.
Grief is a prime example of contraction. When we have a loss it tends to hold so much power over us, often leading to moments of deep despair and being overwhelmed with all of life. When I spoke this week in class about expanding around the feeling of grief, someone reflected back to me later that they didn’t think it was possible. My reply was, “Initially, it might not be possible. But over time, we are able to broaden the space around the deeply held grief and begin to realize all of the other emotions existing in our experience. Grief might be the most obvious one, but it’s not the only one.”
One way to work with expansion is through our physical body. Emotions and events tend to lodge themselves in our physical realm. When we get better at noticing a particular sensation held in the body, such as tightness in the chest, butterflies in the stomach or a knot in the shoulder, we begin to connect to our body-mind matrix. You may have heard in a yoga class the cue, “breathe into your hips”. Now as far as I know, we don’t have nostrils in our hips so “breathing into them” seems impossible. However, if we think of it in terms of tension, we can use our breath to begin to relax the muscles around the hips, which seems to create more space from the inside out.
Our bodies are our emotional barometers and the better we get at reading them, the more freedom we begin to invite into ourselves on both a physical and mental level. To practice creating more space and ease within, close the eyes, slow down the breath and bring your awareness to your body. Where do you feel the most tightness? In your throat? Heart? Belly? Can you sense what’s driving this constriction? Can you relate it to how you’ve been expressing your energy in your day to day happenings? Next, find your breath and visualize it moving into the tight area and opening the spaces around the constriction. Give it lots of room and no judgment. Allow yourself to be with what has arisen within your field of perception and realize you can hold all that is present.
Now take a deep breath, relax, let go and expand beyond the borders of your physical being. See where it takes you!
