Hi all,
I’m exploring posts and trust that Jack will let me know if what I’m writing is best placed in a journal rather than on the forum.
I’m playing with Exercise A: Expanding Condensing. This exercise tends to stump me, puts me into a mental fibrillation. Expand what? Condense what? My mind skitters around in search of a tangible task. Forcing myself to slow down, I started with my big toe, expanding & condensing sensation. Intending to travel in this way through my body, in a type of body scan, my mind jumped elsewhere for the day, but at least I got started. Yesterday, with Nia, the movement-dance form I do, I noticed that several of the routines call for expanding and contracting or moving bigger moving smaller. Intrigued, I kept my awareness softly with those sensations as we moved. What plopped into my experience was the pulsing interactive nature of expanding & condensing. Instead of being static activities, as I had held them to be, expanding condensing came to life (literally I sensed an enlivenmnet) through their relationship. Huh–that’s a new one for me, and in the spirit of community learning, I thought I’d give it a try on the forum.
Wishing everyone well. Lesley
I think it’s great to put this in a post rather than a journal, especially if you don’t like journals (I personally have no problem with journals, but I do hate turning “journal” into a verb, so I’ll avoid that when I can.)
Expanding/condensing is such a great exercise because it doesn’t need a tangible task. The mind is skittering? Fine: expand that feeling.
But big toes are a good place to start.
I do’t get a clear sense of the “enlivenment” you describe, but it sounds intriguing. In a very general sense, when you challenge the usual identities, what you discover is an active energy.