When I write this blog, I feel happy. It’s not that it’s easy, and it can feel frustrating at times; however, I almost always feel a state of expansion at some point.

In Bending Reality, Victoria Song defines expansion as a relaxing, trusting, and open state. She prompts her clients to imagine feeling powerful, confident, wise, free, unstoppable, and similar states. 

Physically, when you feel expansion, you might feel like your chest opened up, your posture got straighter, or you are well-balanced—as if both of your feet are firmly set on solid ground.

By contrast, contraction is the opposite of expansion. Words like scared, powerless, inadequate, ignored, or helpless come to mind. Victoria writes, “Many clients can feel their chest tightening, shallow breathing, buzzing in their head, a hot face, tightening in the stomach or throat, heat, dry mouth, tunnel vision, and tensing muscles.”

From Victoria’s perspective, every moment in life is a prompt: are you feeling expanded, or contracted?

Another simple takeaway: find the people, activities, and objects that expand you, and make sure you make time and space for them. Find the stories and beliefs that cause contraction and reframe them or try on new perspectives. Expansion is keeping the whole show running, and like a fire or a wolf, it needs to be fed.

P.S., Contraction and expansion draw to mind Friedrich Nieztsche’s story of a spirit evolving from the camel, to the lion, and to the child