STRE-E-E-E-TCH

We open our heavy sleep-filled eyes to the morning sun. In that first glance we bring awareness to the new day that signifies we are still alive. We move our bodies from the still position it had settled in for the past hours and very, very, slowly move into a stretch. Bones creaking, muscles expanding, blood rushing through the veins. The very act of stretching brings forth a sense of well-being, as the physical body expands, loosening all that has been coiled in, that is tight, or stagnant. So simple an act is the perfect analogy for what we all have to repeatedly do during various passages of our lives.

Take for example a friend of mine, an A-1 achiever and control-obsessed personality. For months, she has been depressed as she has not been able to get what she wants: that higher level, better-paying and more challenging job that would allow her skills to be expanded. Having done everything by the book, clearly focused, she continues to try to get it, and having doors closed on her face (due, not to her credentials but to the state of the job market today) is now depressed and feeling rejected. And still she continues this same route, trying many times more, disappointed twice as much. What she fails to see here is that she has repeatedly tried exactly the same kind of tactics, in the same kind of companies all the time. She never once bothered to look the other way, and check out alternative potentials.

In the scheme of this comical drama called life, we will always sense patterns that tell a story about ourselves. We just have to be sensitive to them. Since majority of us are not, this reflection will often be brought about by pain and depression. Pain has that funny unique quality of calling attention to itself and thus, we are forced to clearly see our wounds, disappointment and seeming failure. We are in pain because we are attached to something or someone. And we can’t have what we want. When the door continually shuts in front of our face – why are we so obstinate to keep breaking it down to the point that it breaks us up?

To get away from any rut characterized by frustrated stagnation or pain... Stretch! Yes, that’s right. Stretch. We do it all the time physically – so let’s look at the physical act closer as an analogy for our transformations.

•Stretch for flexibility. We have to learn to look at options in our lives. When we find ourselves crying, we can choose to continue being miserable or look towards things that help heal us, towards people that may teach us something new. Always there are options – in any situation and event.

•Stretching is a slow and gradual process. No jerking, no rushed decision making and jumping into the fire when you want to make changes in your life. Know that everything is a process and each moment in that process is precious. So take time to go deeper into learning about your emotional reactions to situations you want to change. Each day the universe unfolds the learning that you need. All you have to do is to really be sensitively aware and watch your internal reflections on the things happening in your life.

•When stretching, inhale and exhale to go deeper. Reflection and action, passive and active, yin and yang are all analogies for the breathing in and breathing out that helps a stretch get deeper. As we seek to expand our lives, know that we must seek our inner counsel (our inner Guide, our conscience, the Divine within us) as well as watch our outside world as it reflects our inner truth. The quality of our life around us is but a manifestation of our own level of consciousness. We cannot divorce the inner from the outer.

•Stretch to a point of mild discomfort and not pain. This is the perfect time to go beyond the edges of this little box we have put ourselves in. Each of us creates little borderlines which define our comfort zone. Beyond this borderline is the unknown – fear! So try to push your boundary and stay and understand that which you fear – rejection? Attention? The loss of something or someone in that comfort zone? Then take a little baby step outside your borderlines.

•If a stretch hurts, don’t push yourself further. If, after you attempt to break the boundaries of your comfort zone, you fall on your face and end up hurt, stop awhile and reflect on the direction you want to take. Reflect too on that which made you stumble and fall.

•Never stretch without proper warm-up. Physically, you can stretch more when the body is warm and yielding. In our growth in consciousness, the maximum openness and awareness happens when we have worked on being aware during the many moments of our journey in the past. Growth, expansion and openness happen if we see the happenings in our life from an elevated perspective. This level of awareness is not something we reached overnight, but is worked on moment to moment.

As we continue to live our life, let us be conscious that growth and changes run parallel to what gives life meaning. And life only begins to have meaning when we see the never-ending processes of stretching ourselves both internally and externally.

(E-mail me at jej1@easycall.com.ph)