contraction + expansion
In the non-dual Tantric yoga tradition, there is a beautiful teaching called spanda. Often translated as the “divine pulsation” — this idea refers to the subtle vibration of consciousness itself. It’s the creative impulse of the universe, the dynamic dance of stillness and movement, of contraction and expansion. It lives in everything. In you. In your breath. In your joy. In your pain. In your becoming.
Tomorrow my daughter turns three. I’ve been thinking about those first months with her more than I usually allow myself to. They were tender and terrifying all at once. I met a friend for lunch this week, someone who walked closely with me in those early days, and something in the way she looked at me cracked open a memory I hadn’t fully acknowledged. There was this wave of tenderness, directed at the mother I was then, and at the mother I am now. A soft seeing of it all that left me quietly shaking.
Those early months were some of the hardest I’ve known. I struggled silently with postpartum anxiety for over six months before I even had the language to ask for help. My support network was thin, my nervous system frayed, and like so many, I was mothering without a mother of my own to lean on. Looking back, I can see just how lonely and disorienting it truly was.
We got to talking about a particular moment I carried silently, a moment when I wasn’t my best self. I hadn’t planned to share it. I wasn’t even sure why I was telling it. But the words poured out, and as soon as they landed, my chest clenched.
Right away, she held me with such sincere compassion and invited me to see that moment through a different lens: no shame in sight, but through the eyes of my higher power (divine mother, indwelling spirit, whatever you name the gentle presence that sees us even in our messiness). She asked me to imagine how Spirit might have seen me… overwhelmed, exhausted, and doing the best I could. And perhaps, I was worthy of tenderness— even then.
That maybe, in that moment, grace ached for me.
Something in me exhaled for the first time in years.
Spanda, I think, lives in that moment. It’s not just the expansion, the moments we feel like we’re flying, or reaching, or achieving. It’s the contraction too—the fear, the grief, the self-doubt that pulses through us. That contraction is not a detour. It is the rhythm itself. The exhale before the inhale. The swell before the wave. The fertile soil in which growth takes root. Life does not move in straight lines, and spanda is a reminder of that.
Right now, I feel that rhythm in my own body and life. I feel the contractions—grief, vulnerability, unmet needs surfacing—and I also feel the swell of expansion. I see myself growing as a mother, as a woman, as someone who shows up for other people in their real, messy lives. I see the parts of me that still need to be mothered. And I see the work I am called to do in the world, deeply personal, quietly unfolding, one conversation at a time. Not everyone is ready to face themselves at this level, and that’s okay. Not everyone is ready for the pulse and the rhythm of spanda in their own life.
If you are reading this and feeling your own contraction, know that you are not alone. You do not need to be polished to be powerful. You just need to be willing to notice the rhythm. To feel the wave, the swell, the pause, and trust that it will carry you toward the next true thing.
