The art of doing less

If I was to ask you the question ‘can you be doing a little less right now?’ I imagine there might be a few different responses.

Maybe as I offer the question there's a sense of experiencing it in your body somewhere? A softening of the shoulders or in the belly, a deeper breath or a feeling of expansion? Or maybe there's something that feels in opposition to the question? A contraction, a belly flip, ‘like how am I suppposed to do less?!’

There could be a combination of both and all and I would offer its a place to get a little curious around. We're likely to have a complicated relationship with ‘doing less’ because it's in direct opposition to everything we're sold by society.

We've been taught hard work is what makes us worthy:

“If you want to get somewhere in life you've got to try extra hard”
“Quitting is for losers”
“I'll rest when I'm dead”
“Sitting on your ass never got you anywhere”

I'm sure you have your own versions of this narrative, learned from parents, teachers, bosses. (mostly well meaning I'm sure) The way that we live encourages us that more is better, to always be doing is the goal. Even our self care, healing, and rest is interwoven with 'doing' - oh the irony!

So of course, its not surprising that the idea of doing less feels risky. You see, the thing is when you're always ‘on’ your nervous system is being trained towards hypervigilence & overwhelm. Doing more becomes our baseline. And doing less or switching ‘off’ can feel deeply uncomfortable. In fact it can feel downright unsafe. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Just like we can unintentionally train our nervous systems towards overwhelm and hypervigilence we can also encourage our system to respond favourably to doing less.
And in nurturing a sense of safety in less activated states we allow our poor tired nervous systems to climb down off the ladder of overwhelm and back into healthy capacity.

So, how do we do it?

Well, we start small, an overwhelmed system is exactly that, overwhelmed, so adding more things to do and trying to add complicated practices to get our heads around is just going to add to that overwhelm. Our motto is EASY DOES IT

Some gentle ‘non doing’ suggestions to get comfortable with doing less :

Begin by starting to pay disproportionate attention to the ‘off’ rather than the ‘on’ . Can you start to notice the moments in your day when you're not doing - just as simple as that, begin by opening awareness. (awareness = potential for change)
Expand time with your simple pleasures - that cup of tea, walk in the garden, hug with your favourite person or animal - can you savour these precious minutes and notice their effect on your body?
I've said it before and I'll say it again orientation, orienation, orientaion. You can play with an orientation to pleasure practice for something simple to try. (linked below)
Begin to get literate with what happens in your body when you're not doing - what do you notice? And how do you register that as pleasurable or even just neutral? Softer shoulders, belly softens, breath deepens?

Through these simple ‘micro’ practices we can begin to shift the needle from overwhelmed and ‘on’ to comfortable with doing less.

Its not an overnight fix unfortunately - we cant ‘do’ our deisre to ‘do less’ its an incremental thing that involves the repatterning of our well worn neural pathways towards something that offers us more support ❤️ I'd love to know if you try any of the suggestions