Constriction vs Contraction

It’s no secret that I personally really hate the trend that a lot of woo people follow of using the term “darkness” when they're talking about the qualities or characteristics that are...undesireable, and using the term “white” for “good” things (like sending “white light”).  After one of my Facebook rants about this a friend responded that she always thinks of it in terms of expansion and contraction; energies/emotions that feel expansive or energies/emotions that make you wanna contract. I really liked that and so I started using it myself.

The other day on one of my coaching calls (I was the coachee, not the coach) we were talking about dying in to freedom and dying into captivity and I decided to interpret that as dying into expansion and dying into contraction, but somehow I wrote “constriction”.  And then someone else on the call was talking about contraction and so then added “/contraction”. And then the guide started talking about the contractions of orgasm (or maybe they talked about the contraction of childbirth & I started thinking about the contractions of orgasm). And as the discussion continued I started thinking that there’s actually a difference between constriction and contraction. 

While I think that contraction can often be a defense mechanism (in terms of contracting for protection), it’s also the pause before expansion. When I teach breathwork I say “inhale & expand, contract & exhale”. There’s a potentiality inherent in contraction, a pause in the direction of movement once again. But constriction is an inability to move or expand, and there’s an inherent feel of a struggle to move.

So what does this have to do with anything? I think that it can be important when we feel ourselves shrinking to discern if it’s a constriction or a contraction. Even if the contraction is in defense, it’s still the pause before expansion, before creation, and it can help to remind ourselves of that--that we’re not stuck, we’re just pausing. A rest before the next outward movement. There may be nothing that needs doing other than waiting.

If on the other hand we feel an inability to move or a struggle, to expand, to push out, then the question is what are you desiring to move towards & what is it that’s preventing that. Struggling can confuse you, can prevent us from seeing the way out. Can you turn the struggle into a pause? Can you still your mind, can you slow your heart, can you calm your nervous system? Take a breath. Tense into the breath & then let it out & relax. In that pause, we then become open to information.

A contraction feels like a natural part of the ebb & flow. There must be contraction before expansion, to go back to the breath for example. But constriction feels like a response to danger, maybe it can be thought of as a warning that something is off, that the natural ebb & flow is not possible.

Using this as a filter to explore some past relationships, now recognizing that often what I had concluded was a contraction was actually a constriction that then became a contraction, a pause before explosive movement & growth. I like to tell myself that perhaps if I can identify the difference than I can avoid situations that lead to constriction, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s true.

What do you think? Is constriction unavoidable?