Don’t Make Your Life Smaller

What We Do When Life Gets Heavy

There's something we do when life gets heavy that we don't talk much about. We start removing things. It happens so gradually that by the time we notice, our world has gotten smaller. We don't even know when it happened. Today I want to talk about the difference between letting go of what no longer serves you, and shrinking your world to avoid feeling. There's another option — one that's harder, but that changes everything.

When Removing Becomes Shrinking

A few years ago, I started noticing something in myself that was uncomfortable to admit. I was beginning perimenopause. My body was different — not the body I'd known for decades. This one got stressed more easily. It needed more recovery. It couldn't tolerate the same things it used to. And I, someone who's been practicing and teaching Kundalini Yoga for over twenty years, found myself doing exactly what I see my students do. I started removing things.

At first it made sense. I let go of commitments that weren't really mine, relationships that were draining me, obligations I'd taken on out of habit. That felt like clarity. But then I kept going. I started removing situations that made me uncomfortable or moved me too much. Slowly, without realizing it, I was building a smaller life, thinking that this way everything would feel less intense. The strange thing? I still didn't feel okay. Because the discomfort hadn't disappeared. I'd just reduced the territory where it lived.

The Moment in Sadhana

The moment I really understood this came during my sadhana. I was in a long kriya — one of those where your body is done and your mind starts looking for the exit. I caught myself, mid-practice, doing the same thing I'd been doing in my life: looking for what I could remove to make it more bearable. And something landed in me. What if instead of removing things, I learned to become stronger?

Not stronger in the sense of forcing. Not pushing through and pretending things don't hurt. Stronger in the sense of expanding. Of training my system — my nervous system, my body, my mind — to hold more, to process more, to move through experience without being destroyed by it.

Becoming Stronger, Not Smaller

This is where Kundalini Yoga gave me something I hadn't found anywhere else. It doesn't ask you to ignore what you feel. It's not a practice of dissociation. It deliberately takes you to the edge of what's comfortable, and teaches you to be there. When you're in a strong pranayama and your mind says “I can't do this anymore,” and you stay for three more breaths, you're not ignoring the discomfort. You're learning a different relationship with it.

When you're in a kriya that moves the nervous system out of its habitual zone, what happens over time, with consistency, is that the habitual zone gets bigger. The mantras anchor you when the ground is moving. The movement keeps the body strong. The pranayama regulates the nervous system from the inside. That combination — body, breath, mind, spirit — is what expands your capacity to live fully.

From the Mat Into Your Life

What you train on the mat, you carry into your life. The frustration that used to overwhelm you, you move through differently. The fear that used to paralyze you, you recognize, and you keep going. The situation that used to require you to remove everything around you just to manage it becomes one more experience you can hold. Not smaller. More whole.

Let me be clear: removing things isn't always wrong. Sometimes it's exactly right. Letting go of what's no longer yours is an act of wisdom. But ask yourself the question I asked myself: am I releasing what no longer serves me, or am I making myself smaller so I don't have to feel? Because if it's the second one, there's no amount of things you can remove that will give you the relief you're looking for.

A Practice for This Week

First, think of one thing you've removed from your life recently — not because you genuinely didn't want it, but because it generated too much stress or discomfort. Just notice it. No judgment. Second, if you have a practice, choose this week to stay a little longer when your mind wants to leave. Three more breaths. Thirty more seconds. Not to force yourself, but to remind your nervous system that it can.

If you don't have a practice yet, start simple: three minutes of Breath of Fire in the morning. Expansion doesn't happen in comfortable moments. It happens in the moments when you decide to stay, even a little longer than you planned. The answer isn't always to take things away. Sometimes the answer is to become more. More whole. More capable of living with everything life brings. Sat Nam.