Contact = Expansion
During a recent dance class with Victor Quijada, founder of Rubberband, an innovative dance company based in Montreal, we explored movement through contact improvisation. In these exercises, dancers would partner up. One would be the instigator, and the other would be the receiver. The one who was instigating movement would touch the receiver, and that person had to move towards the contact. Victor shared with us the concept that, “Wherever there is contact, there is expansion.” I smiled. It resonated on a deep level for me, not just in dance, but also in business and connections with family and friends.
When I meet a new person, or “make contact” with them, I can actually feel the expansion of energy between us. With a handshake, a smile, eye contact, or touch on the arm, we create warmth and a reciprocal flow of communication. While this feels easier and more natural in person, it can also happen over a Zoom meeting or even over the phone. At a networking meeting recently, I connected with a business owner over the fact that we both love starting our mornings with cold showers to get moving. As soon as we made contact over that one topic, our body language shifted, the tones of our voices became lighter and more friendly, and we expanded our willingness to discuss more topics and learn more about each other. While a cold shower may be constricting, talking about how much we love them is expansive!
The challenge is that contact does not always come easy. It requires vulnerability and courage. One of the exercises Victor had us do in this dance class was to use our imaginations to create an environment of chocolate mousse that surrounded us and through which we had to move our bodies. Then he would change the substance to smoke or mashed potatoes, and we had to adjust our level of resistance through the air around us. This is a fascinating analogy for the various ways contact with another person can feel - as easy as moving through smoke when we are in a state of flow, and as difficult as swimming through mashed potatoes when connection feels hard.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” -Anaïs Nin
Broken down into stages, contact actually happens in three steps: initiation, meeting and energy exchange. First, we initiate contact with another person. This requires us to make a decision to move, muster the courage to do so and begin. Once we are on a path towards contacting someone, the next step is actually meeting them. This can mean physical contact like a handshake, eye contact on Zoom or emotional contact of a more ethereal nature. That meeting is a touchpoint, a moment of acknowledgment that we are both here, together. Then energy is exchanged through words, emotions, body language or other forms of communication. Who knew you were doing so much each time you made contact with someone?!
If you struggle with making contact, or even knowing where to start, it is worth going inward and asking yourself why. Trust your own intuition. Acknowledge your fears, worries or questions, write them down if it helps, and then ask yourself, “what’s the worst that could happen?” Let your imagination run wild. Then ask yourself, “how likely is that to happen, on a scale of 1-10?” Chances are you will find that you can imagine getting through the worst possible scenario AND it is highly unlikely it will happen. This mental rehearsal helps prepare you and bolster your courage. Now you are ready to take the next step towards contacting that potential client, partner, friend, romantic interest, etc.
Though it is possible your worst case scenario could take place, it’s probably unlikely, and even if it does, with time, you will come to see that even that contact caused expansion. We grow, even from rejection or being treated poorly. We learn how to develop new boundaries, pursue contacts that are a better fit and prove to ourselves that we are strong enough to get through a challenge and try again. All of these factors expand us as a person and make it more likely we will succeed in the future at making contacts that are mutually beneficial.
What is it about contact that causes expansion and makes all this effort worthwhile? Can contact also cause contraction? It can, however it is usually a conscious choice by the receiver. Perhaps the receiver wasn’t ready, didn’t want to connect or let themselves be pulled by a different contact, a different energy elsewhere. However, contact almost always causes expansion by default because we are human, and we are curious beings. We want to move towards energy, movement, anything that touches us or moves us in a positive way.
What fascinated me about performing the exercise of touching a partner and them moving towards our touch was how good it felt to move towards touch. To allow ourselves to be pulled towards another person or idea is expansion. Expansion is growth, learning, experiencing more, feeling more, witnessing more, filling up, becoming bigger or more. When we think about the significant areas of our lives, most of us genuinely want them to expand. We want our businesses and bank accounts to grow, our relationships and love to grow, our knowledge to grow, our understanding of spirituality to grow, even our children to grow. Therefore, it’s logical that we want to increase contact with others so we can all grow.
In business, this translates to the simple truth that we must make contact with potential clients, customers or partners in order to expand. This can look like:
Attending in-person networking events
Joining an online community aligned with your business that meets over Zoom
Sharing news or services on social media or via an email newsletter
Start by putting yourself in situations where contact is likely to occur or be invited. The value of networking in person is that you can experience contact with new people more fully than is possible online or over the phone. Reading a person’s body language, listening to their tone of voice and shaking their hand can tell you a lot about an individual. In my experience, making contact with someone new in person creates a much higher probability that I will do business with them or refer work to them / get work referred to me than if we hadn’t met in person. Through in-person contact, a comfort and familiarity is developed that fast-tracks the expansion process.
All-in-all, contact may feel uncomfortable at first, but in the end it is worth it. It will help you grow and discover connections with other people you never would have experienced had you not made the initial contact. Test it out for yourself. Try contacting someone new today, and observe how expansion happens and how it makes you feel. Move through those mashed potatoes with courage to make contact, and I promise, with practice, they’ll transform into smoke, or even air, and the resistance you feel will ease up. You’ll naturally feel your reach expanding.
How has contact led to expansion for you in your life? In your business?
