Lately I've made some progress on managing anxiety, with a practice that I call expanding into pain. Every self-help guru will tell you, expansion is good and contraction is bad. What they don't tell you is what exact thing you're expanding, because it's really hard to explain. Another thing they don't tell you is that expansion feels terrible. If it felt good, we wouldn't have to be told to do it.
But for me, the pain is the key to the practice. I usually do it in the morning, when I'm still lying in bed, making the mental transition from the world of dreams to the world of earthly responsibilities. I'll be thinking about something that feels bad, and the practice is, never mind the thing, focus on the feeling, and amp it up, as strong as I can, as long as I can."
From Ran Prieur’s 066.
Noting this down because I'm interested in the idea, though I don't really do this practice at all. But who knows, if I have time I might play with it. My main shift with regards to discomfort has been about acknowledging it immediately, which I would say is another form of expanding into the pain: you allow the attention to get down into it and do something about it.
If I feel some pain in my wrists, thumb, or tension in my belly, shoulders, neck or lower back, then that's worth paying attention. Rarely is it something worth panicking about, but I immediately want to move into a stretch, or assess my posture and see if I can shift into something more pleasant.
It can also be something more subtle, like being in a noisy environment that makes me more and more tense, or noticing that I'm putting off some type of project, and at least verbalize what's going on: I am procrastinating on this thing because 1) maybe I haven't given it a specific instruction, and it's too vague in my mind 2) maybe I don't want to do it, and want more play right now 3) there is some specific discomfort related to putting my stuff online, or some other reasons.
Or maybe something happened that makes me feel worse than I would like to admit: a comment that feels somewhat rude and which I'm taking way too personally, a sense of rejection I get from other people, etc. Acknowledging the pain immediately is very helpful because otherwise it will just bubble up and become worse and worse.
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2024-08-25