Contraction as Invitation

In many therapeutic frameworks, shadow or contraction is often approached through the wound—its impact, its imprint, its cycles in the body. This can help us understand how we have been shaped by pain.

Yet there is another invitation, one that somatic healing makes clear: to listen not only to the wound as wound, but to the holding pattern itself as an energetic invitation.

Contraction, tension, pain, even the relational patterns that make us feel unworthy or stuck—these are not only remnants of trauma. They are holding patterns, gestures of energy that literally wrap themselves around tenderness.

They are guardians, encasing the river beneath the river—the infinite softness at the heart of existence.

Inspired Companions

Some of these reflections are inspired by John J. Prendergast’s The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence, especially Chapter Six, where he speaks about stepping into and through experience. His words have been a companion, helping me to more fully articulate what I have long felt—that contraction and shadow are not barriers, but invitations into the vastness of presence.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes in Women Who Run with the Wolves:

“Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river.”

It is the deeper current that moves beneath the surface of our daily lives, pulling us toward what is most essential and most true. In the deep center of contraction we do not only meet pain; we encounter this vastness of being.

Presence and Pre-sense

Every holding pattern is a devotion of energy enfolding what cannot yet be touched. And when we bring gentle presence to these places—not forcing, not fixing, but soft attention—they begin to reveal themselves not as blocks, but as gateways.

Beneath the bracing, beneath the tightness, flows the living river of life itself.

Later, I’ve come to notice that presence itself carries layers—it can soften into pre-sense, a kind of knowing before thought, or even pre-since, the awareness that has always been with us since the beginning.

But it starts simply: presence. Breath. Listening.

Somatic and Energy Healing

Through somatic meditation and body awareness practices, we learn to be in relationship with contraction not as a mistake, but as a pathway.

Energy healing deepens this view, showing us that contraction is energy enfolding energy, a gesture of love encasing what is most tender.

This path of spiritual healing is not about erasing patterns, but entering them with embodied presence, discovering the river beneath the river.

Devastatingly Beautiful

Light and shadow, expansion and contraction, are not opposites. They are simply energy in different shapes.

What we call tension is often love in disguise.
What we call darkness is often another form of light.

And when we soften into this paradox—allowing life to be tender, raw, protective, luminous—we discover that all of it is devastatingly beautiful.

The Invitation

I know this in my own body. The moments of greatest contraction—grief, heartbreak, overwhelm—were also the places where I found the deepest openings.

Contraction was not against me. It was for me, holding me until I was ready to feel the innocence it protected.

So the invitation is simple:

The next time you notice contraction in your body, pause.
Offer presence.
Meet it not as a barrier, but as a companion.
Ask: What are you protecting? What tenderness lives here?

You may find that contraction itself is a teacher. A guardian.

And that at the center of its holding is the most sacred part of you—waiting to be met with love.

Somatic Healing as Spiritual Healing: The Gateway Hidden in Contraction