Taking Up Space
Summertime. In Chinese terms it's the most yang time of the year, the time of greatest expansion. As any hot yoga practitioner will tell you, the heat expands us, it allows us to stretch. In the summer that warmth nurtures growth as evidenced by the seasonal abundance at every farmer's market and farm stand. When I think of expansion I think of taking up more space. In my life and in my practice as a coach and holistic health practitioner I notice how many of us are uncomfortable with taking up more space in the world. Instead we edit and shrink ourselves. We tell ourselves we're too much, better not say what we want or how we feel, people can't handle us.
I spent a week recently training to be a journeydance teacher. Journeydance is a sensual, emotional, cathartic, expressive and celebratory dance practice that encourages people to take up more space, to be fully expressed, to reach out to others and connect. What I saw occur when a room full of people came together and were willing to be bigger, to stretch farther, to expand past their comfort zones, was unabashed magnificence, creativity and beauty. Nothing too much, just something gorgeous like the bursting colors, luscious fragrances and plump juiciness of a full yield in summer!
If you were to look at yourself and your life in this moment and ask yourself where you could expand, where you could stretch to be more fully self-expressed, where you would like to take up more space, what do you see? The energy of the season is supporting you to fully ripen and be the fullest expression of yourself. What is that in this moment? Let your practice this summer be the practice of mirroring summer's expansive energy and be proud of those stretchmarks!
