To open in a loving way is to let awareness notice that tightening.

When you are in touch with your body and heart, it allows you to then be in the world and act with intention and clarity and kindness.

I speak a lot about what I call "the trance of unworthiness" which is really epidemic in our culture, this sense of "I'm not enough," or "something's wrong with me." Most of us have some level of it because our culture has all these standards (handed down through our families) of what it means to be okay.

We are continually experiencing the conditioning to hold on, tighten, or resist.

If there's a demand of being together in a certain way, those expectations and judgements take away from that space and create an edginess and a cramped-ness to the relationship.

Because we have such a deeply grooved conditioning to reject and condemn ourselves, particularly in this culture, I find that emphasis on the word "acceptance" is central in healing. It brings our attention to the possibility of saying yes to what we are experiencing in the moment, and counteracts the conditioning to push away what feels unpleasant or intense or unfamiliar.

Underneath the stress is fear, and the biggest is our own personal fear of failure.