Friday Wisdom is shared from Christine Agro’s Conscious Living Wisdom Cards (Special Moms’ Edition) Each Deck has 42 cards and a booklet that offer insight and guidance for parenting consciously.

Expand Card #39 in The Conscious Living Wisdom Cards (Special Moms’ Edition)

Today I drew the Expand Card.

If you ever take a class with me or join my Sunday meditation group you’ll hear me talk a lot about expanding. It is our unconscious nature to contract. We contract when we are afraid, when we are uncertain, when we are challenged. We contract when to make it easier for other people and we contract when we feel like we don’t deserve something.

When we expand we allow our energy to flow, we allow what we want to create to manifest. When we expand there is no room for fear, uncertainty, lack or limit.

Teaching your child to expand rather than contract is a great gift to give to your child. One way to teach expansion is to model expansion. Try to catch yourself when you pull in or pull back and instead set your intention to really own and fill out your own energetic space.

For kids, you can give them a tool, like stretching their arms out wide so that they can really experience expansion. In Hatha Yoga, the posture Garudasana (Eagle Pose) offers a great physical experience of contraction (when arms and legs are intertwines) vs expansion (when arms and legs are let go and outstretched. You can teach this to your kids and ask them to tell you how contraction feels vs expansion, and ask them which is easier to function within.  You can then draw a parallel and talk about the ways in which we tend to contract energetic and share how expanding instead can make us feel much better.

Here is the text for EXPAND which you will find in The Conscious Living Wisdom Cards (Special Moms’ Edition)

For You

We are taught to contract and to pull ourselves in.  But contracting creates limit, lack and stagnation in our lives and allows fear to take hold.  When you are faced with challenges and obstacles, expand to move past them.  Close your eyes and simply by intending it allow yourself to expand energetically —  to move out and beyond the constraints that keep you living in limitation.  Also, think about how you might expand your life through the thoughts you have and the words you use.  Pay attention to when you choose phrases like “I have to go to work.” How much more expansive it is to say, “I have work to go to.” Use your intention to expand yourself and consciously convert constricting thoughts, words, and experiences into expansion.  Your life will flow with greater grace and ease as you do.

For Your Child

It is interesting to observe a newborn, for to him time and space are limitless. It is only when adults introduce limits that children begin to establish borders and boundaries to contain themselves.  Is this a bad thing?  Not really.  Children need healthy boundaries because they provide a sense of safety and security. Establishing healthy boundaries, however, does not require constricting our children.  The difference comes from the way we communicate information.  If we set boundaries out of fear, constriction occurs.  If we set boundaries from a place of control, constriction occurs.  Consider the rules you have for your child and look for areas where you can allow your child to expand.  It is also helpful to teach your child to expand when he experiences fear, challenge or uncertainty.  And it is even more helpful to expand yourself along with him, as he uses you as an example and benchmark for his own experiences.