Do less, not more

When I was a little girl it drove my mom crazy to see us laying down or taking a nap during the day. I grew up feeling like it was a bad thing to do nothing. A constant refrain for my mother was, ‘Que perezosos!!!!’ In English this translates to ‘how lazy!’ Later on when I learned that the word for sloth in Spanish was also perezoso I laughed out loud. Ha, what sloths we were! I imagined sloths laying around the house.

When I grew up, married and moved to the East Coast near my in-laws I was amazed that every day in the early afternoon there was an official nap time. It wasn’t like ‘Oops! I was sitting here and fell asleep.’ It was, ‘See you in an hour or so, I am going to take a nap.’ There was no shame, no guilt, no apology. It was adult naptime. I loved it. I finally had permission to do nothing. It has been one of my mantras over the last 30 years. Do less, not more.

Last month I was asked to answer this question, 

What’s a goal you have for yourself that you want to accomplish in the next year?

I thought about this for a moment and then wrote this:

I want to spend more time doing nothing. I feel like I could spend my whole life chasing after the next accomplishment, and the more, more, more mentality of our culture. I want to do less and be happy with what is.

Then a few weeks ago my sweet friend Elika Aird told me about this amazing teacher, Octavia Raheem, who had posted this quote:

Do something really slow today. Even if it is nothing.

It’s like this gentle nudge telling me to remember my mantra. 

My mother is my heart, she lives inside of me, outside of me, in everything I say and do. I believe wherever she is right now she is saying the same thing to me. Do less. Stop running around. It’s ok to stand still, to be still. I am here with you. In the quiet moments. She didn’t say this when she was alive, she was too wound up in go, go, go, do, do, do. Maybe it’s what her mother taught her, I don’t know because she never talked about her childhood, her upbringing. Or maybe it’s because she came to this country as a young woman, leaving her own country behind and got caught up in trying to provide for her children, in giving them(us) a good life. Sometimes it feels like she got lost in the doing.

When I had my first child and heard the experts say, ‘When your baby takes a nap, take a nap with them,’ it was not hard to convince me. I was for the first time in my life sleep deprived and could barely keep my eyes open most of the day and my child did not want to sleep at night. My eyes were dry and I wondered why I hadn’t appreciated sleep more before. The simple act of sleeping became a luxury. The few hours of sleep I got before the first cry from my son were treasured. If I slept until 4am I almost cried from gratitude for having slept 4-6 hours without interruption. 

It is no surprise that my husband is very similar to my mother. He is a go, go, go kind of guy. Often it is ten at night and my husband is vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen or looking at one last report. I have gotten very good at just watching him go about what he needs to do. I have come to understand my mother and my husband a little better over the years. For some of us it is easier to find that stillness, to get out of the way and watch the commotion around us without taking part in it. It is a type of surrender, a letting go of control, the steel grip loosened and soft. My husband and my mother both need to be in motion, doing, to find their peace, their surrender. It looks to me like an inability to relax but in fact it is HOW they relax. 

I think this is what got me to come back to the yoga practice and stick with it. As a young mother I was still stuck in the hamster wheel, running myself to nowhere. I came to the practice with the attitude that I needed to accomplish something, conquer it, get ‘good’ at it, check the box off for workout and relaxation. I came in through the back door and found myself in the middle of something powerful, yoga. The movement practice transformed me from someone who still felt guilty for not doing enough, for not being enough to a better version of myself. One who was comfortable in stillness. One who had found a home in stillness. You might be able to relate to how this movement practice, this go, go, go, do, do, do, practice might have started out as a very goal based practice, with a mental checklist: 

Chaturanga

Up dog

Down dog

Handstand

Crow

Jump back

Hopefully as you have continued to practice you may have noticed it has helped you to begin this process of moving into stillness. As we begin to do this we become better observers, better listeners. We expend our energy more wisely, we stop trying to do everything and hopefully have moments where we are doing absolutely nothing. We can sit in the middle of the storm of life, roots deep, grounded, no guilt, a deep peace. Can you envision that sloth, can you be that cute little sloth, sitting in the tree, on the couch, in the bed? This practice may seem like a practice of doing but really it is the opposite. It is a practice of undoing, unlearning. Turn the practice inside out, within all the movement is stillness. That’s the real goal. Do less, not more.