Track-14 EXPAND: When Expansion Is Not What It Seems

EXPAND: When Expansion Is Not What It Seems

There was a season when I believed that if I breathed hard enough, I could leave the past behind.

Fast, open-mouth breathing.

In and out.

Relentless.

It was described as cathartic. Liberating. Expansive.

During those sessions, my body would buzz.

My fingers tingled.

I thought it was Qi moving.

Energy clearing.

Something awakening.

One time, nothing dramatic happened immediately after.

But the next morning, I began to feel unwell.

Not emotionally. Physically.

A kind of fatigue I had never known before.

Not ordinary tiredness — but emptied.

Like a battery that had completely drained out.

I could barely function. I felt sick with flu symptoms.

When I eventually saw my GP, I was told I had experienced hyperventilation leading to respiratory alkalosis. Breathing too fast and too deeply for too long changes the balance of carbon dioxide in the blood. When that balance shifts, blood vessels tighten and calcium levels change. The tingling and buzzing that can feel energetic or mystical are often signs the body is under strain.

What I had interpreted as expansion

was my system destabilising.

It took time to recover.

And it changed how I understand growth.

I am not against breath.

Breath is sacred.

Breath anchors my work.

But I no longer equate intensity with transformation.

It is possible to feel expansive and actually overwhelm the nervous system.

It is possible to mistake activation for awakening.

For a while, I believed my butterfly would emerge by breaking violently through the cocoon — that catharsis itself was the breakthrough.

But butterflies do not fly because they rupture the past.

They fly because their wings strengthen slowly from within.

What allows me to step into new possibilities is not how dramatically I exhale old stories.

It is whether my internal architecture has developed enough strength to hold the new one.

That strength comes through pacing.

Through regulation.

Through building capacity gently.

Not through pushing beyond what the body can safely sustain.

This is why EXPAND – Return to Courageous Self (Audio Track 14) matters.

Courage is not dramatic.

It is the steady willingness to open into something new

without destabilising yourself in the process.

In this track, expansion is not about forcing release.

It is about gently widening the field of what you can tolerate — safely.

Breath is used as an anchor.

Imagery supports steady transformation.

Possibility unfolds at the speed of your nervous system.

Because true expansion is not how far you can go in a session.

It is how well you can live today — and the next.

Related work is held within the Homecoming Audio Series.