By Shawn McAndrew
In case you’re wondering about the recent blogs that focus on a feeling, we’re doing Feeling Fridays on our social media channels (Instagram and Facebook). May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we are certainly in the business of mental health awareness and support.
Feeling Spacious
Last Friday’s “feeling” word was spacious. I like this word because it has lots of angles to it. Feeling spacious intellectually means I can make room for thoughts. The intellect is a command center of thoughts coming and going. It can choose to stop a thought and ponder it, activate it, or keep it moving right on out the door. When we are operating from spirit, thoughts can be motivating and inspiring. If they are coming from patterns, we have the opportunity to air them out, give them space, and let them go.
Our emotional self can feel spacious if given the chance not to trip on patterns. I find that if I am reacting to something (like the neighbor kids screaming at the top of their lungs), I have the option to step back and appreciate that they are letting off steam after being cooped up indoors all day. How I would love to scream with excitement and joy at the end of the day and feel my negative emotions lifting from my shoulders! Releasing and feeling are ways to create space in those constrictive rooms in which we live.
Deep Breaths for Spaciousness
Body spaciousness is more physical. Am I wearing tight clothes? Do I sit with my shoulders hunched up, my fists clenched, my muscles tightened? Am I grinding my teeth, clenching my jaw? All these physical reactions are indications that we have taken on the woes around us. One of the things we can do, as we do in the Process and Hoffman Essentials, is stand up, shake our arms, legs, torso; stretch our neck and back. Dance around the room. Skip up and down the hallway or sidewalk. Take some deep breaths!
Then there is our Spirit. Our bright, beautiful spirit is always spacious, always open to holding our fears, anxieties, pain, tightness, and brokenness. If we just allow ourselves to breathe deep, step into spirit and let it hold us, the spaciousness is infinite. Spirit is a walk in the woods, a swim in the ocean, a sweet song on the wind. Let out anxiety. Bring in spirit. Feel the spacious place we can make for ourselves in our being, our Quadrinity. Feel its inclusiveness and connectedness.