My dance teacher said this to me this week.

I almost fell over.  

I looked at him and trotted over to my notebook writing it down.

He was talking about a particular alignment and feeling the stretch a little bit which gives the stance stability.

I heard something broader.

That when we are stretched we are actually creating more stability for ourselves.

We tend to get caught in the stretch itself.

We feel stretched.

Ow.

What is happening is we are broadening.  

Our culture is really anxious.

We believe we should be comfortable all the time.

A moment of discomfort and a thousand people line up to solve it for us at a price.  We are offered vacations, clothes, entertainment, coaching, healing… an endless list.

What if you are stretching?

What if you are building capacity?

We can’t possibly grow if we don’t go a little further than we did before.

If we go a little further we will feel a stretch.

And here’s the other beautiful part of this metaphor.  If we never stretch. If we keep our movement in a very tight range.  Then when we stumble a bit or do a physical activity for the first time in a long time - it hurts like hell.  

The stretch my dance teacher was talking about is not really a stretch.  It’s a slight micro-adjustment to the alignment so the dancer feels a very small pull in the hamstrings.  Very small.

The stretch is a sign the alignment is right.  That the legs are far enough apart that the body is stable.

And the dance metaphors continue.  Because it is this stability that allows the dancer to have a partner.  To listen and respond and move together the dancer needs her own stability.

Which she gains with a consistent subtle stretch.  

The practice of self-development is partly a practice of coming to be aware of the stretch and live in it.

 Allow it.

Over time we come to know what it feels like and we know it is okay.  We even seek it out. We come to associate stretch with good results.  Ease, fluidity, openness…. like the feeling some people get after a good cry in therapy.  

I am thinking now about what my stretch feels like.  There are different types of course. Different aspects being stretched.  The dizzying type, the tender type, the raw type…. the type where I can feel my unconscious acting but can’t identify what’s happening - do you know that one?  

I think it is an interesting project to think about what our psychic and energetic stretches feel like.