intention / attention

a messy 7 minute read, if you want to hear me say "contraction" and "expansion" 100 times!

Coming off of a year of learning to surrender to loss, and fatigue and riding waves of stress, illness, and insecurity, I have a lot to reflect on still. I also have a lot to be grateful for, and a lot of ways I’m trying to live my life amidst so much chaos.

I hold a strong belief that there is always a balance of energies, and that’s what keeps life itself going- this inherent pulsation of contraction and expansion is in everything from a heart beat, to a longer time scale of the contraction energy of winter into the expansive energy of spring. Contraction and expansion are both neutral energies, there is not a judgement in my mind about a value of good or bad, the thing that is important, and holds a value of good, is flow. We need to continue to pulse between, the flow between these energies. If one becomes stuck, or overpowers the other, this is when problems arise. I know this from a nervous system and trauma healing perspective, but it feels applicable on a more universal plane. My ideas aren’t particularly novel, but I also hold a strong belief that it is vital for my own thinking to practice filtering universal concepts through my own experience so that I understand it, in a way that isn’t just conceptual, but is felt.

So, what am I talking about here? Contraction, expansion, surrender.

It has been increasingly interesting to think about these energies from a trauma healing lens, probably because I spend a lot of time in that professionally, and partly because in doing the work that I do, I also had to shift how I live my life outside of work. It feels impossible to remove the lens of listening to my nervous system, now that I have spent so much time figuring out how, she is loud, and it feels wounding to ignore her.

If there is something else I know about trauma work, it is the strange pull that we all have towards trauma; it is strong, and we want to put our attention on the things that are scary and stressful, because what will happen if we don’t? We might be unsafe! There is a fine line between accurate responsiveness to threat, and hypervigilance - and often hypervigilance leads to us being stuck in all the things that are scary, hard and stressful, and that doesn’t necessarily prevent them from happening, lessen their impact, or in fact, keep us safe.

A reflection I have in my own life, is I have been pulled into to the trauma vortex this year. Yes, it has been a doozy of a year, and my attention has been pretty much soley concerned with how much of a doozy it has been, which has not allowed for much room to zoom out to other things that are less of a doozy, so to speak. It feels really validating to constantly be talking about my stresses and hardships, and while all of that is real, it also really keeps me locked in there, if I never get to come up for air and notice things that are not stresses and hardships, then there isn’t really things that aren’t stresses and hardships. But there are! So many ! Things! That are NOT stresses and hardships! Even amidst SO MUCH STRESS AND HARDSHIP, there remains beauty, resilience, gratitude, support, love, laughter, joy. I have unfortunately this year, listened to my nervous system so intently, but also zoomed so far into the stress signals, and chose to just listen to those, that finding neutral, finding relative safety has felt really far away, when in reality it is not. I kinda gaslit myself a bit this year, thinking that if I didn’t listen to every stress signal, and give it all my attention, that I was abandoning my suffering. What ended up happening, was I validated my suffering so much, that I identified with it, became it. That’s 1) a pretty big self-pity party, and 2) didn’t actually ease the suffering. I thought it would be wrong to ignore my nervous system signals of unsafety! What I forgot, is that, it’s not ignoring myself, to simply zoom out, and notice the stress (yes), but also notice the not stress (ah!).

I have been both contracting, and getting stuck in trying to grasp and hold and tighten around stress to control it- in an effort to make it less impactful. I have equally found myself so deeply fatigued that I feel myself in a constant state of collapse. A brace collapse. That’s how I would describe the tone of my year. Lovely right? It has been really hard to remember to zoom out, reach for support, find neutral, ease, and allow for even a bit of flow and movement out of this braced collapse.

This is NOT to say, have a positive mindset will make all stress disappear! Literally no- that’s delusional babe! This year has been fucking hard. That is true! AND! It is possible to zoom out sometimes, and allow some breath in to this, and that might support to stress to ease in moments. It is a coherent response that my body becomes stressed out when stressful things happen. The goal is not to prevent that response- we need that response to keep us alive! The goal is to allow for mobility between nervous system states, and welcome things that support us to not feel stuck 24/7 in a stressed state, or any state for that matter. I would argue that being in a 24/7 positive vibes mindset, is not only just annoying as fuck, but is bad for the health of your system. It also doesn’t allow flow, accurate responses, and the ability to be in tune with your surroundings, reality, self and others.

I’ll use an example of a forrest, and the health of that forrest, and then I’ll use an example of my own body to illustrate this. A forrest is healthy when we allow, and support the conditions for pulsation. We need fires to clear brush, and reinvigorate the soil, open pine needles to seed. We need a dynamic equilibrium for life to continue to cycle with health. If we stop allowing fires to happen, as we did primarily from the 1900s-70s, we create a forrest of kindling that goes up in massive wildfires, that end up being destructive and un-healthful.

We must allow for cycles, pulsation, and flow. We must surrender to these cycles, and support them to happen.

In my own body, I have had a pretty shitty year: mono for the whole year (which has meant I haven’t been able to dance, run, workout, do jiu-jitsu… all the things that make me happy pretty much), had to move house (again), had huge ruptures in major friendships and lots of conflict and loss, had bigggg financial stress, and lot’s of stress around my dog’s health, family member’s health, etc… and- ya know what, that’s a pretty normal stressful year for people. Coulda been a lot worse! Also coulda been a lot better.

My attention has been on how bad everything is. Not just in my own life, and my friends’ and family’s lives, but in the news, and the world. It really sucks me into the trauma vortex, the hopelessness, the devastation of the evil prevailing all over. I feel so stuck and immobilized and full of fear and sorrow often.

And that is an accurate response to the things that are happening! AND!

It hasn’t served me to be there and only there.

It has made me bitter, and stuck. I haven’t allowed for movement inside of myself. I haven’t allowed for my attention to shift and zoom out. I haven’t allowed myself to really soak in the support that is around, to really feel it, to really sink into the things that are simultaneously, and despite all odds, good!

I am really taking the intention of allowing for more movement inside of myself into this year. I hold the intention of not just allowing expansion and contraction, but supporting it. Sometimes that looks like, allowing myself to go into collapse and despair and stress, and also trusting that I will move out of it. Trusting that expansion will come, supporting it to come. Inside of this is equal parts surrendering and being an active participant in the cycle. Surrender to the fact that there will always be these cycles, and I end up shooting myself in the foot if I try and hold on too tight, or endlessly collapse. Become a more active participant, and accepting my part in supporting the cycle to happen, not just for myself, but the things that are within my reach. My friends and family’s lives, my community, my clients, etc.

It’s a funny balance. Surrender, and active support. I carry with me the intention to keep a playful curiosity around how these feel in my body this year. What are your intentions? Where do you find yourself surrendering? Where do you find yourself being an active participant? Does it feel balanced?