For example, consider the difference between a patch of wild strawberries and a
bottle of vinegar. No matter who or what
you are, you are naturally drawn to the
wild berries; you wish to inhale the fragrance and take in its flavor and energy.
Even just looking at them makes you expand and want to flood yourself with their
essence, which you instinctively know to be
life-generating.
erating pulsations. When I refer to contraction here, I am referring to dysfunctional
one-way, unconscious contraction—the
reaction a living being has to something
harmful.
Since we live in an interconnected universe,
any relationship we have with others can
make us contract or expand, and we likewise cause them to contract or expand.
This means that at any given point, on the
Open a bottle vinegar, on the other hand, interpersonal level, we are affecting and
and what happens? You immediately rebeing affected by the expansion and concoil from the acidic assault on your senses, traction of others; and on the microcosmic
much as an innocent child would draw back level, the relationship between our cells,
from the smell of alcohol. Acidic substances tissues, and organs are triggering expanare acquired tastes, and nothing acidic
sions and contractions that trigger the
facilitates expansion. Contraction is the ex- same throughout the whole body.
pression of distaste, the premonitory signal
that something is threatening to life.
As long as any part of us is stuck in a state
of contraction, we will never know our full
Before I go further, I would like to make a
potential. That contraction reaction is no
distinction between the kind of contraction small cage. Ever wonder why the great
that occurs with the healthy pulse of life.
yogis dedicate themselves to fluidity of
Pulsing life is the most desirable thing we
movement, breath, and consciousness? Becould want; it tells of a system of subacause fluidity is the bridge that can take us
tomic power and molecular integrity. The
from contraction to expansion. By identifyin breath and the out breath, the diastolic
ing unconscious contraction as the ultimate
and systolic beats of the heart, the taut vi- harbinger of our deterioration and bringing
tality of healthy cells expressing in stream- it to consciousness, I believe we can relined beauty, the conscious contractions
verse the symptoms of contraction (which
that birth new life—these are all life-genof course go hand-in-glove with degenera-