Small Softenings: A Gentle, Embodied Practice for Everyday Life
For more than a decade, I studied with a Tibetan Buddhist Lama who, in one way or another, always returned to the same instruction:
Relax and open.
Relax and open some more.
Relax and open some more.
He told me more than once that I should share what I was learning. I nodded, but inside I resisted.
Part of me wanted to keep this practice close, almost secret—it was too simple to be taken seriously, too intimate to be turned into content. Another part of me doubted I had any right to speak about it at all.
But the practice itself has a way of working on you.
Relax and open.
Relax and open some more.
Eventually, that started to include relaxing and opening around my own reluctance. So I’m sharing this not as an authority, but as someone who has been changed by a very simple instruction, repeated over many years.
At first, I heard it mentally. My mind tried to treat “relax and open” like a slogan or a philosophy. I wanted to understand it, categorize it, fit it into the other teachings I’d absorbed.
But this instruction is not a belief system. It’s not something you “get” in the mind and then move on from.
It’s a visceral practice. Something that happens in muscle, fascia, breath, heartbeat, and the tiny micro-movements of your nervous system.
“Relax and open” is what you do with your jaw when you realize you’ve been clenching for hours. It’s what you do with your breath when you notice you haven’t exhaled all the way in days. It’s what you do with your chest when it feels like a fist is wrapped around your heart.
And there’s another layer: you can physically feel your attention relax out of your thinking mind and drop into your body.
Instead of hovering behind your forehead, spinning stories, attention begins to sink:
head → throat → chest → belly → pelvis → legs → feet.
The first time you really notice this, it can feel like a small miracle, almost as if some inner grip has loosened and suddenly there is more space inside your own life.
This isn’t about thinking, “Ah, yes, I should be more relaxed and open.” It’s about feeling, in real time, where you’re braced, in your tissues and in your attention, and then experimenting with softening by a few degrees.
What “relax” means in the body
In this context, “relax” does not mean:
erase all tension
never feel stressed
float in some permanent spa-state above the mess of your life
“Relax” in the body sounds more like:
My shoulders are up by my ears. Let me drop them half an inch.
My belly is pulled in like I’m bracing for impact. Let me give it one honest exhale.
My tongue is pressed against the roof of my mouth. Let me let it fall.
Relaxation shows up as tiny, physical shifts:
a longer out-breath
a subtle melting in the chest
a letting-go of effort in places that don’t actually need to be working that hard
You might still feel anxiety, grief, or uncertainty. The body doesn’t have to be completely calm for relaxation to be happening. Sometimes relaxation simply means: I stop fighting the fact that this is how my body feels right now.
There is also a relaxation of where you’re living your life from. You can notice attention clenched in the head, tight behind the eyes, buzzing at the temples, racing just above the body, and then feel what it’s like to let it drop:
down into the throat,
down into the chest,
down into the belly.
That dropping is not poetic language. It’s a real, physical sensation when you start to pay attention.
What “open” means in the body
“Open” is also not a mental stance. It’s not pretending to be okay with everything or having no boundaries.
“Open” in the body sounds like:
I can feel this sensation for one more breath before I check out.
I can let my ribs move when I breathe instead of locking them in place.
I can let my chest be 1% less armored, even if that feels risky.
It’s the difference between:
Thinking: “I’m sad, this is so hard, I always feel like this…”
and Feeling: a heaviness behind the eyes, a warmth in the chest, a weight in the limbs, a specific ache in the throat.
Opening isn’t about liking your experience. It’s about including more of it in awareness. Letting more of what’s already here register in your senses.
That might look like:
letting tears actually come instead of swallowing them down
noticing the flutter in your stomach instead of numbing it with your phone
feeling the aliveness in your hands when you’re touched, instead of racing past it
As attention relaxes down out of the thinking mind and into the body, there’s simply more reality available. More data. More truth. Sometimes more pain, but also more contact with what is actually happening, instead of just the story about it.
Why this can feel so threatening
When we start to relax physically, we lose some of our armor.
The unclenched jaw makes space for sadness or anger to surface.
The softened belly makes space for fear or shame to be felt.
The open chest makes space for love—and therefore, the risk of loss.
When attention drops out of the mind and into the body, we lose the distance that thinking can provide. The buffer gets thinner. We feel more.
Tension is often a defense. It’s the body’s way of saying, “If I stay tight, maybe I won’t have to feel this.” Constant thinking can be a defense too: “If I stay in my head, maybe I won’t have to be in my life.”
So when we practice “relax and open,” even in small doses, we are not doing something gentle and fluffy. We are doing something brave and intimate with our own life.
This is why it’s important to go in small increments:
relax by 5%, not 100%
open by 1%, not all at once
Too much, too fast, and the body will shut down or flip into overwhelm. A real “relax and open” practice respects the nervous system’s pacing and the fact that attention can only be in so much direct contact at once.
A living, embodied experiment
This week, I’m inviting us into a very simple experiment that lives in the body, not the head.
At some point today:
1. Catch the tightening.
Notice where you’re bracing: jaw, throat, shoulders, chest, belly, pelvic floor, hands.
Also notice where your attention is sitting: Is it jammed behind your forehead, racing in thoughts?
2. Relax by 5%.
One breath in.
One exhale that lets that place soften—slightly.
Invite your shoulders, belly, or jaw to do 5% less work.
At the same time, see if you can feel your attention drop:
from your head into your throat,
from your throat into your chest,
from your chest into your belly.
Even a small shift counts.
3. Open by 1%.
Let yourself feel whatever is there for one extra breath.
Not analyzing it. Just registering sensation: weight, temperature, pressure, flutter, ache, hum.
That cycle—notice → relax → drop attention into the body → open—is the practice.
Over and over, throughout your life, in a thousand small ways.
On Wednesday, we’ll go more directly into the body with a short somatic and creative practice so you can experience “relax and open” as movement, sensation, and texture—not just as language.
On Friday, I’ll share a 10-minute guided meditation to help you rehearse this in real time, so “relax and open” becomes something your nervous system—and your attention—recognizes and can return to, even in difficult moments.
For today, you might simply ask:
What part of my body is working way too hard to hold everything together?
Where is my attention sitting—stuck in my head, or actually in contact with my body?
What would 5% more relaxation feel like there?
Can I open to that feeling for just one more breath?
Not as an idea. As contact with your actual, living body.