The Expanding Container: A Meditative Exercise for Building Capacity

The Expanding Container is a simple exercise I created that combines somatic awareness and breathwork with a visualization component. It's an invitation to strengthen the mind-body connection and learn how to get "comfortable with discomfort."

The purpose of this technique is to help you contain troubling thoughts or emotions with the confidence in knowing you can “hold them” in an embodied state, present and aware, without feeling overwhelmed, and resisting the urge to “do something” about them (i.e., problem-solving, numbing, distracting, crashing out). With this technique, we are learning to accept and tolerate uncomfortable emotions, recognizing and allowing oneself to experience negative emotions without trying to suppress or avoid them. It's about consciously noticing and feeling what's happening within, rather than just being aware of external stimuli or thoughts. This heightened sensitivity to bodily sensations is crucial for understanding and managing emotions, as well as for healing from trauma and other conditions. It is a way of tuning into your body's wisdom and using that knowledge to navigate your emotional and physical landscape.

Using a container as a visual guide, this exercise asks you to imagine that the bigger the container, the more room we have to hold distress.

Example: If stress and big emotions are represented by liquid, an 8-oz. cup can only hold a small amount, and anxiety and worry might spill out and over, creating a mess. A larger container, like a pitcher or a tub, even a swimming pool, would hold so much more liquid to the extent that we might not even be disturbed by the distress relative to the size of the container.

The concept is to expand our inner capacity to experience worrying thoughts and feelings in a way that makes the distress feel less overwhelming, trusting in our own capacity to effectively experience and work through them. This is not an activity of avoidance or denial but an activity of awareness, regulation, and empowerment, aimed at helping us reduce the sense of urgency to do something “right now.” This is about distress tolerance and expanding our ability to handle distress in the here and now.

1. Close your eyes and connect with your body. Do a light scan from top to bottom, feeling and acknowledging each section, noticing without judgment.

2. Connect with your breath deeply in your diaphragm, breathing in and out, slowly and with intention.

3. In your mind's eye, visualize a space within your chest where a small orb of light is floating within you. With each breath, imagine the light growing larger as you inhale and exhale, expanding to create a ring or a halo within your body. Visualize the internal space created within your chest. This space is holding your breath and all your energy, life force, and internal wisdom. Connect with this visual and really imagine this orb of light growing and vibrating within you.

4. Now imagine that it starts to expand even further, and that you, your Self, are expanding with it, like a universe slowly growing larger and larger, containing many stars and galaxies, even dark matter. Take your time imagining this expansion within. Feel the vast expanse within your body.

5. Inside this internal space, there is room for many feelings of discomfort, many thoughts. All your experiences, all your beliefs. They float within us, moving gently, weightless, without gravity. Notice how you feel when you think about expanding. Notice what you see in your mind’s eye when you think about it. Notice your thoughts. Hold this curiosity for a moment. Within this universe of expansive space, feelings and thoughts can float effortlessly, and there is no urgency since you can hold all things within you. Continue to breathe and expand.

6. Now, slowly come back to the present moment and check in with yourself again. What do you notice in your body… in your mind? Has the distress reduced? How would you rate it on a scale of zero to 10?

If you notice that your distress is reduced, this may be a valuable and powerful tool for growth, healing, and managing stress and anxiety.