How Ease Can Cause Constriction

Expanding ease is an interesting practice. The mere act of including it in my daily work is a way for me to take deeper care of myself. Plus, it’s exciting to be able to do things I was once too constricted to try or succeed at.

I don’t simply focus on only the act of expanding ease itself, but rather include my practice to allow for expansion when I notice I’m in a place of more tightness. The daily practice also has another advantage, that I notice tightening more than I might if I were not so actively working with it.

My practice includes noticing where constriction and doubt live in my body and being present to it. Being present means feeling the tightness and resting a hand where I feel that tightness. Then I remember a time when I felt more ease or self assuredness and notice where those sensations live in me, too. Rocking my attention back and forth between these 2 places helps my body integrate the tightness in with the expansion and eventually the tightness starts to ease. The magic isn’t just in the expansion itself, but the movement between greater capacity and less capacity.

When my body is feeling softer, I also discern whether to push myself to do things that are a little outside my comfort zone. I say a “little” because if it’s too big, this will cause discomfort that may be more than my body and spirit (and mind) can handle.

Sometimes the only way to learn is to push and find out if “little” was bigger than anticipated. I know this is true when I feel tightness soon after the thing I tried - which can feel like irritation, annoyance, or a bad mood.

In some bodies like mine, expansion that is slightly too big can turn on alarm bells to the nervous system causing more constriction. Which can feel like a dirty trick.

This happened to me recently when I presented at a conference and sleep was elusive for a few nights. To be fair, I’ve struggled with insomnia off and on for much of my life. This is another practice I’m working with. But in this particular case I knew that my body was still integrating the expansion of presenting and even showing up in some different ways during the conference itself.

How do I know? I guess I don’t really, but in this case it doesn’t really matter. I just know I wasn’t sleeping very well, and even the not sleeping was causing some stress.

Part of my practice is bringing into my awareness that constriction isn’t always a bad thing. Yes it’s uncomfortable, but sometimes I’m not sleeping for good reasons! Part of the practice is noticing “can I tolerate this?” Sometimes it’s true I don’t want to, but that I still can. That’s an important distinction.

By the way, struggling with not sleeping can in turn increase constriction, so that’s another opportunity to show up and be present with the discomfort rather than push it away. The other important task is to notice whatever else is here - like it’s probably temporary. I can go gently this next day and not take as much in, and maybe even take a nap.

Does this make sense? DM me if you have thoughts or questions about this. I love a good dialogue.