What is expansion?

Twenty-five years of working in the health field have taught me that there is a strong relationship between connective practice and wellbeing.

The key things that really contribute to poor health are stress, over-thinking, lack of exercise and sleep, poor nutrition and not enough time spent outdoors in nature.

One of the best connective practices I’ve learned over the years is a breathing-based technique called ‘expansion’.

Why not give it a try? Here’s an easy way to do it:

• Find a comfortable position, sitting or lying down. Close your eyes and feel the places where your body touches the ground or the chair.
• Take a few deep breaths and, on each exhalation, concentrate on a sense of your body expanding into those contact points. Feel the support the ground or chair is giving you.
• Spend a few moments scanning your body for tense spots. Focus on each of these as you breathe, imagining that you are breathing directly into each place.
• Once you are feeling quieter, bring your focus to the centre of your heart and imagine that you are gently expanding your heart with each in-breath and softening the rest of your body on each out-breath.
• After doing this a few times, start to imagine that every time you breathe you are expanding from the heart out further into the rest of your body, then out beyond that and into the space around you.
• Then imagine that with each breath you are expanding even further, out into the wider world, the atmosphere and eventually the whole cosmos.
• After a few minutes of this gently bring your awareness back into your body, slowly open your eyes and notice how you are feeling.
• Don’t worry if your mind wanders throughout the exercise, just keep bringing your attention gently back to the breathing. Keep calling yourself back whenever you get distracted.

Doing this practice regularly gives me a real sense of awareness and calm. Combining it with time spent in nature can be even more powerful.

Suzy Greenwood is an integrative physiotherapist and member of the management committee at Sacred Earth.