Stretching into Expansion

Souq Waqif, Doha, Qatar

It’s arguably easy to push past the pain of our own limitations.

But to stretch into the parts of ourselves that we’ve hidden away from the world

That’s the real challenge

There’s a certain glorification of those who tolerate pain. When the whole world is rooting for you to withstand the eternal grind, it becomes ingrained in your psyche and rote in your movements.  Habituation makes it easy because we are practiced at it.

But there is no badge of honor for discomfort.

The body also has an automated process of numbing the senses once we reach a high threshold of pain. We distance ourselves from the experience so we cannot feel its intensity.  But there is no valve to close off discomfort. We feel all of it with excruciating sharpness. When pain is unbearable, a surge of endorphins assuage it. But discomfort never crosses that threshold. There is no army coming to our defense.

We make progress with pushing and enduring pain, that’s undeniable. But, in the continual act of pushing, we contract. We do not allow ourselves to expand. We do not allow ourselves to do the very thing we need to exponentiate our growth. To only push means to neglect, disown, and hide parts of ourselves.

What’s compressed in the body is often a result of what we’ve compressed in our mind. 

These are the pieces of ourselves we’ve learned not to be for fear of being exiled. They do not wither off and die because we neglect them, they are eternally a part of us. Our best efforts can only push them down.

To unlock and unleash these parts, it takes a deep stretching and breathing space into that which has been contracted. It requires us to sit in a discomfort that is so white hot it wakes what’s dormant and burns us alive again.

Yet, just as how we learned to tolerate pain, we expand our capacity to feel discomfort. When we push its barriers, the body doesn’t shut down to numb but it opens up to expand. 

In that expansion is a glory and aliveness akin to no other. This awakening is of the body and mind, and is a reclamation of the soul and spirit.

It is the only way to become whole again.