Contraction and Flow

This audio is part of my 108 Conversations With Women In The Pause Years. Each conversation offers new insights and expands my capacity to think about, move with, and embody what it means to live with a regenerative purpose.

I take time after each conversation to reflect and share my thoughts and discoveries. I’ll share those recordings here so that each one may spark a new line of inner inquiry within you.

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Transcript-ish

Hello, Buffy Owens here.

Today, I want to muse on a profound inquiry that surfaced during a conversation with one of the incredible women I speak with about the concept of the pause years and regenerative purpose. This reflection delves deep into the experience of flow within our bodies and how it guides us through life's highs and lows.

The Inquiry: Guided by Flow

This thread of inquiry revolves around the sense of flow we experience in our bodies. It's fascinating to consider the nudges we receive along the way that direct us toward our passions, curiosities, purpose, and calling. Some of these nudges help us understand what we don't want in life.

Identifying the Nudges

Various factors can serve as these nudges: health challenges we've faced, experiences with other people, or even events in the world that break our hearts. These elements often create a physiological response characterized by contraction and tension. There are those things in life that, when we speak about them, learn about them, and think about them, we light up, open up, and expand.

The Dance of Contraction and Flow

Life's journey involves a continuous dance between contraction and flow. When we encounter what we don't want, it naturally contracts us. However, when we focus on what excites us, we experience a sense of ease and flow. The two states can become intertwined, but there's power in recognizing contractions as signals to return to a flow state.

Navigating life through this lens of returning to flow can be fun, interesting, and beautiful. It requires us to look at moments of contraction not as setbacks but as opportunities to refocus on our desires and re-enter a state of flow. When we keep returning to and orienting to flow, we get a life full of flow.

When we keep returning to and orienting to flow, we get a life full of flow.

Balancing Contraction and Flow

This balance is crucial. Contraction itself isn't inherently negative. It's necessary for movement. For instance, our bodily fluids—lymph and blood—move through a combination of contraction and release. However, maintaining a prolonged contraction can inhibit this movement, leading to various physiological drawbacks, such as restricted lymph movement and high energy consumption within the cells. We need the activation and inhibition of action equally; we need contraction and flow. They are all a natural part of the rhythm of life.

The Guiding Force of Flow

Understanding the interconnected roles of contraction and flow helps us cultivate a greater sense of ease and creativity in our lives. By viewing contractions as a means to return to flow, we align ourselves with a state of creativity and purpose, even amidst life's challenges. We can always choose to be guided by the feeling of flow.

We can always choose to be guided by the feeling of flow.

Conclusion

In conclusion, exploring the threads of contraction and flow can illuminate our paths in life. It's a powerful process that doesn't undermine our passions or the world's injustices but rather transforms them into fuel for creativity and positive change.

Your turn.

• How does this inquiry into contraction and flow land with you?

• How do you navigate these dynamics in your own life?