Another post-Bali retreat reflection about the natural phases of growth and contraction and how to recognize and lean into them as powerful transformational opportunities.
Are you in an expansion or contraction phase of life? I share how both expansion (creating space) and contraction (pulling inward) are necessary experiences of growth.
I also share about my experience returning from a 7-day transformational retreat while navigating my resistance reengaging with social media.
Listen in to understand how the signs of expansion and contraction set us up for transformation, and hear about one tool I’m working with from my retreat. Remember, the point is to stay present for all of the moments.
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Dana Frost 00:07
Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect conversations about vitality from the inside out with guest experts in the field of health, culture and spirituality, and solo episodes along the way from me where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy, medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger, while growing older, this is the place for you.
Dana Frost 00:52
Hi, everyone, this is Dana Frost, your host of the Vitally You podcast. I'm back this week for a post barley reflection. In this week's episode, I am going to share about the natural phases of growth and contraction. Now every one of us experiences the seasons in life. Stay tuned to the end to learn about one of the tools I'm working with from my retreat. As I mentioned, last week, I'm taking the time as I returned to my new normal, I felt a little bit allergic to diving back into social media. And each time I attempted to re enter I feel like I just pulled myself back. At first I describe this as wanting to stay on my bubble. But a friend on the retreat helped me reframe this as this old container that I was living in before I returned no longer fit. And I need to figure out my new container. So I'm in the middle of trying to figure that out.
Dana Frost 01:50
Now I want you to remember the last time you needed to change your daily routine, or your daily framework for your personal or professional life. A time when the way that you were doing things just no longer fit, it no longer felt relevant. So many of us can go back to COVID as a powerful precipice that altered our priorities and habits. For me, it wasn't so much that way because I had come out of a life crisis prior to COVID. And as it impacted my life. This just honestly, the COVID impact for me, it really was no match for what I had already gone through. However, it did confirm my ideals and beliefs around health care, the health care system in the United States, and what I call a disease care system. But you can I learn more about that in another episode and I will in a previous episode, I'll put that in the show notes.
Dana Frost 02:49
So if we are growing — while feeling younger, while growing older — periods of change come around about every decade or so. You can think of these as recurring seasons of expansion and contraction. So expansion and contraction are natural evolutions of nature. And during expansion, we outgrow our current container. Expansion is to remove what no longer fits to make room for new practices — like play, experimentation, people, roles and responsibility. We create space by letting go of what no longer fits — things like roles, responsibilities, relationships, habits. Sometimes that can be food, alcohol, or different addictions.
Dana Frost 03:45
So recently, I was talking to my daughter who's pregnant with baby number two, and she's working. And she is literally and figuratively expanding. And I encouraged her to remove house cleaning duties from her responsibility. She and her husband have specific roles and responsibilities at home. And I explained that when you get a promotion at work, you don't keep your old roles right? You let them go to make room for new ones for the new role responsibilities you have at work. So how could she expect herself to grow a baby? Take care of the first baby and continue working without removing any other responsibilities? Think about that. This is what we women do and we need to wake up because what we do we tend to keep expanding all the while holding on to the previous seasons container. It is a formula for disaster or disease. Why are women more prone to autoimmune diseases? We know this is true. I believe that on an energetic and emotional level our propensity to take on more than what is sustained. novel is a factor that we need to seriously consider.
Dana Frost 05:04
Okay, so contraction is a season of pulling inward unlike expansion, contraction, we're pulling inward. We withdraw. And why are we withdrawing? Why do we have those seasons of contraction? Well, we may be healing a heartache, we may be going through a crisis, maybe a health crisis, a divorce, we may be, maybe we're having a baby, or maybe we're in the middle of a big move, we go inward to tend to our emotional welfare, or we go inward to care for someone we love. Now, after a season of contraction, we re-emerge like a caterpillar from a chrysalis — if we have taken care of ourselves. (It is possible to live in a perpetual state of contraction.)
Dana Frost 05:54
This is something to consider and feel into if you're stuck in trauma mode. And if life just hasn't blossomed after a trauma or a crisis, I really recommend that you seek professional help. And I want you to feel free to call me because this is something that we can look at through the coaching lens using different modalities. But really, after contraction, you'll want to be moving through that and then you want to really feel the blossoming. Okay, so life, death, wins and losses, letting go hanging on going forwards and backwards are all a part of life's experiences.
Dana Frost 06:36
And the point that I want you to remember the point is to be in flow where ever we are, wherever we are, we'd want to be in flow, we want to be present in the moments of whether it's contraction or expansion. So I asked you today, where are you think about that? Where what are you navigating? Do you feel like you're in a season of growth and expansion? Or do you feel like you're in a season of contraction, remember, both are a part of life's journey, you know that you are in a period of contraction or expansion, because you're going to feel uncomfortable. So something is going to feel like it doesn't fit. Maybe you've got these big dreams, and you feel like your daily life doesn't have room for your dreams, you might be experiencing depleting emotions, or you've just had like a big revelation and, or you're like in the middle of a life transition. Or you're like me, and you've just come off of this big transformational retreat.
Dana Frost 07:38
So just be thinking, you know, where be considering where are you? So my big curiosity, I think I'm in a period of expansion. And my big curiosity since my return is how do I navigate social media? To be honest, I feel completely lost right now. While I was on retreat, I went dead on social media. I just turned off my phone. And now I'm a month later, almost two weeks. Well, by the time this episode goes live, I will be more than two weeks since I returned and I haven't reentered hopefully by the time that you're listening this episode, I will have re engaged because, well, I'm going to share more about it as the episode goes on. But what I want to share with you is that I think why I'm at this in this, you know, point in my journey is that while I was in Bali, it just felt so good to be in each moment without any consideration of how this could be shared how my moment could be shared on social media, even if it was like a day later.
Dana Frost 08:52
You know, just to be in the moment without any consideration that I would have this echo from clicks on my phone. And first let me back up this is relevant I want to back up to I want to share rather something that we did on the retreat. One morning we worked through a deck of cards so we pulled cards from the wild, unknown archetype guidebook by Kim Kranz, the wild unknown archetype guidebook, I'll put that in the show notes. This provides different insights based on ancient archetypes and symbols. It's very, very powerful. So I want to share one card that we that I pulled on one of the cards that everyone pulled had to do with the tools that were going to be useful in this season in life. So the tool I pulled was the mirror. One of the suggestions on the mirror card was to put down the phone and look at yourself as a reflection. You see our phones our mirrors are reflections of 1000s of different people and propaganda. This perpetuates the comparison trap. Instead of dialing into our own reflection, we are guided to see our value through the reflection of others. We add up are we don't, I'm better than her or she's better than me. Oh, she's so good at that. I'm horrible at that.
Dana Frost 10:21
Well, I've never traveled there or look at me look where I am, worth and desire based on comparison. Without the mirror or reflection of others, we see our own reflection. This was what the card was asking me to do is to use myself as the mirror, we see what's underneath our thoughts and our feelings we see desire from within, instead of being motivated by what we see others doing on social media, our merit lies within its intangible value is solely based on our humanity, if we will take the time to allow it. In my curiosity about my resistance to social media since my return, I want to answer two questions. What do I want to reflect on social media? And what reflection do I want to see? So what do I want my reflection to be? And what reflection do I want to see? So inside of that, how can I use this media for meaningful connection? This is what I want the name social media applies this purpose of social media social meaning relating to society, companionship, gatherings, and media meaning means of mass communication.
Dana Frost 11:51
So social media, I looked up the definition and I found this: “Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing information, ideas, interest and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.” There's nothing inherently wrong with this. When I first started in social media, I loved it because it kept me connected to all the friends that I met, while being an expat. And to my family back home, it enabled this non-local communication in a way that fostered connection with love runs around the globe. And it still does that. It's one of the reasons I love it so much. However, there is this downside that disables our own inner knowing, because we're always looking out there. We're looking out there instead of looking in here.
Dana Frost 12:43
After more than think about this two decades, more than two decades of social media, are we the more wiser? Are we more connected? As social media is now mainstream? The inverted reality is to believe that we are more connected because of it. I don't believe that that's true. I don't believe we are more connected because of our connections on social media — it's a virtual reality. Is that more connected? I don't think that it is. I can tell you that my sabbatical from So social media, I felt so connected with myself with the people on the retreat, I felt so connected to nature. I felt more connected not being on my device.
Dana Frost 13:36
And there's a lot of research that points to a device use as a variable for the increase in mental and health diseases. Why have mental health disorders orders like anxiety and depression skyrocketed. Under this guise of being connected to social media? I don't need to share the research. I did a little bit of research for this podcast episode. But honestly, you have Google and you also if you're interested, I invite you to do your own research. So as I said, my own experience which I think it's the Why have resisted picking up my device, again, is that I felt so connected to myself. And to you know, now that it's I've been home for almost two weeks, just connected to each moment that I'm living and the people I'm around. Honestly, it felt like on the retreat, I felt like every moment I was living in high definition or high resolution, all my senses were heightened.
Dana Frost 14:33
You don't need a drug to elevate your neurotransmitters. You can literally unplug, turn up your senses and go out into nature. And you can just feel things that you've never felt before. What I want to encourage you to do is do your own experimentation. Go off the grid for a period of time. Maybe you just start with adevice-free evening. It can be very, very simple.
Dana Frost 15:03
And as we near the end of this short episode, and I have a favor to ask of you, and I want you to help me navigate my new normal, I would love to hear from you. If you have engaged with me on social media, I would love to know why do you engage with me? What are you interested in? What would you like to? What would you like me to put forward on social media? What's the content you're interested in? I can tell you the content that gets the most traction is my sharing about my family. But there's only so much of that, that I can do because I respect the privacy of my kids. But I would just love to know, why do you like to see me on social media that would be really helpful for me? Or if it really doesn't matter? And you think, Well, I don't I really don't care if I see you on social media. So what I really connected with was my why, why I had to ask myself that question, why am I on social media? Why are you on social media. And for me, it's to make meaningful connections. That's why That's why I show up on social media and I could connect to in this inquiry, I connected to 2020, during the pandemic, I wrote a book proposal. And that got shopped around. And the response I got was, well, you know, I was looking for a publisher. Well, you know, she doesn't have that many followers, she needs a bigger following to get a publisher.
Dana Frost 16:27
And, you know, I took that to heart and I hired an agency to help me with that for one year. And I think that energetically I've held on to, even though I'm not thinking about that on a regular basis that I need to get my following up. But energetically I've held on to that, that, Oh, I'm not going to get a publisher, if I don't have a following. Instead of you know, having that intention. I show up on social media to make meaningful connections. So that's really where I want to put my focus. And I'm not going to show up on social media until I really just feel that I'm coming from that from that place, from an energetic and emotional level. So anyway, as we close this episode, I want to share that feeling younger while growing older. What this means to me today, where I sit is this awareness of making meaningful connections, wherever I am, if it's in the present moment, making meaningful, meaningful connections with myself or the people I'm around, if it's on social media, making meaningful connections with the people on social media.
Dana Frost 17:41
Thank you so much for joining me this week on the Vitally You podcast. If you want to take the next step in connecting with me, really the best way is to sign up for my newsletter. And if you haven't done that, you will find the link and the instructions in the show notes. If you haven't yet, hit subscribe, or left your review, please do so it really makes my heart sing and I just feel so grateful when I see those reviews come in. And until next week, I am streaming love from my heart to yours.