Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting

a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Miscarra, and in today's episode we're going to talk about cultivating

an internal, spacious container for your experience.

More to come on what that means in a moment, but first let's settle in together with the

sound of the bells.

So, last year I ran an online retreat on the theme of Deep Rest, and the way I defined

Deep Rest was letting go of the inner struggle, letting go of the inner struggle.

Notice how this doesn't really have to do with a breathing technique, taking a break,

going on vacation, instead it's pointing more to the internal environment you're creating

for the experience that's arising, your thoughts, your emotions, your sensations, and

your sensory experience.

The thing that conditions tension in the system and stress is some form of contraction

around something that you're experiencing, and I like to view contraction as happening

at three different levels.

There's the level of the thoughts.

So we might think we don't like something, what's wrong with me for feeling this, could

be the level of the thought contraction, emotional contraction, getting angry about something

that's here, so we feel a certain fire around what we're experiencing, and then there's

a sensational physical contraction, which might literally be the body tensing or bracing

around something.

So all of these are forms of internal resistance toward our experience.

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