On grace and compression

While struggling to get an image to perform for me yesterday, I had one of those happy accidents that led me down another road, and this image is the end result (I'll put the happy accident, which I still don't like all that much, on my poetry blog today).

I actually really like this image -- and when I showed it to my husband he immediately noticed it would look great printed on metal.  But it feels a little compressed to me; not as spacious as I would like.  And I can't see a way to fix that without destroying the grace of those curves.

Which, I realize, is a perfect mirror of how I'm feeling this morning.  Jack Kornfield, in The Wise Heart, encouraged me to do a walking meditation this morning, to get more in touch with my body.  Not an outside brisk walk, but a slow, carefully paced, inside walk, up and down the hall, 10 to 20 paces, back and forth, paying attention to my body.

So I did that for 20 minutes instead of sitting as I usually do -- and I did it partly because I'd been reading in another book about inner spaciousness, and was realizing I haven't felt that much lately.  Maybe, I thought, if I can't get back to that meditating in a chair, walking could help?

I'm not sure it did, but I did notice that it stilled a lot of the chatter that's been going on in my head during meditation lately.  And it feels like it will be good for me to walk for 20 minutes a day: it's not aerobic exercise, of course, but the muscles that hold me upright have been getting a little soggy with age, so I'm thinking this is a good thing.

But what do I do about this feeling of compression?  As I walked, it felt like my body -- maybe, like 80% of it, was filled up and sort of sloshing with not-me, with thoughts and feelings and judgments that aren't really mine; they're shoulds and rules and opinions and expectations I've been carrying around with me since childhood that need to be released so real-me can breathe and get some perspective. 

Easy enough to say, but how do you open up some space in a life without disturbing the grace of it?  Is this a purely internal activity, or do external steps need to be taken as well?

And now I see that walking meditation is a way of simulating external steps.  Hmm. I guess I'll just keep doing that for a bit; see where it takes me!