I think I'm having a Contraction

This week please enjoy the works Nobuyoshi Araki while I have a contraction. Let’s play some elevator music and take a beat.

Expansion is great and all, but it is only one half of our natural rhythm; like breath, we expand and we contract. Often times when we have a big expansion it is followed by a big contraction. We love the expansion and judge and loathe the contraction. I guess I will speak for myself, when I have moments of contraction, I think the world is ending, not to be dramatic or anything; I completely forget that an in breath is imminent. But what if contraction is the beautiful integration of the big experience that got us all expanded. We need contraction to get back into a new upgraded set point. What if we honored contraction as much as we praise expansion?

In Mindful Self Compassion the term Backdraft refers to the response we have when we pour in too much self compassion, like too much oxygen on flames. Too much love can undo us, like a blow dryer on an ice sculpture; we melt too quickly and lose our shape and then run around wild in a panic trying to find our defensive suits again.

In therapeutic work it is essential that we practice titration. Titration is the balanced focus between our challenging emotions, our held traumas, and our resources. If we just focused on one or the other we’d either be hot messes stuck in a storm of big feelings and trauma responses or we’d be pretending everything is great; we’d be doing affirmation in the mirror trying to ignore the house crumbling around us, and still be hot messes. We grow in the titration, we are able to reclaim our vitality and agency in the both of it all.  

We are fluid beings that get stuck, but our nervous systems are designed to move up and down polyvagal states all day long, like the beautiful instrument that it is. A healthy nervous system is a fluid nervous system, not a constantly regulated one. A constantly regulated nervous system is not realistic because it is our guide to potential threat; we wouldn’t only use a compass that pointed NW.

Instead of judging where you are right now, can you just try to identify it? Are you expanded? Contracted? So open without solid shape? Rigidly defended? None of them are bad; which note are you on in the beautiful song of your human experience?

Maybe this is my way of saying that I am going to start sending out newsletters every other week. I may change my mind. I may sneak some in when I said I wouldn’t.

I’m just over here dancing my little human dance the best I know how today.

xx Jenny

Well, my intention this week was to contract, but I made this video to visually demonstrate contraction and I had to upload it to You Tube, so now I also have a You Tube channel I guess. But I will definitely be contracting after this!!!

See you in TWO WEEKS!!