Secret #3 – Openness

Find and Embrace your Inner Spaciousness

From The Way of the Fertile Soul by Randine Lewis

Inner spaciousness is essential to our well-being. Just as the emptiness of a bowl allows it to be filled, in our inner nothingness we find everything.

Too often, when inner quiet is uncomfortable we fill it with work, worries, illusions, responsibilities and shame, until as Gabor Mate says ‘the body says NO’.

The burden of unfulfilled desires also generates constant friction. ‘Trying’ absolutely everything can lead to more frustration, and also to more holding on to what we think should happen, if only we can ‘do everything right’. 

It might happen, it might not. The pain seems unbearable.

The energy of Wood, and the Liver channel system (known as the free and easy wanderer) help us to clear internal tension and maintain the free and easy flow of qi. Anything that impedes our natural flow generates pain, stress, emotional distress, clots, spasms and more. By overriding our innate wisdom and true identity, we are stuck with unexpressed anger, resentment, excessive workload, unreasonable expectations, and filled up with physical and emotional tension and depression, maybe using alcohol or excessive exercise to move the stuckness.

It's not easy to clear all this habitual clutter. It might be very stuck. Nothing feels good. The emotional aspect of the Liver system is anger. Anger in Chinese philosophy is traditionally depicted as a wild horse, and it is this  beautiful, free, wild energy that is our friend. Rage, talk, dance, write, sing and cry it all out.

Change is essential, and transformation is life. Notice where you feel tight or blocked. Notice where there are discrepancies between your thoughts and reality. Allow your diaphragm to expand, drawing breath deep into the belly. Loosen jaws, necks, ideas, constrictions, limitations. What can you change? What must you accept?

Be imaginative.

Give yourself the compassion you’d freely give to another.

Unclench.

Jen xx