Relaxed Power

“I sailed my ship of safety ‘til I sank it.” ~ Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine

My husband Frank is 6’2.” His nickname is “Arms,” and we joke that he has an 8-foot wingspan. When he stands on the other side of a pickleball net, he looms. And when he reaches overhead to smash that little plastic ball back, it’s hard for me not to yelp, squeeze my eyes shut and jump out of the way. Let’s be honest, that’s usually what I do.

The body’s paradox is that the best way to defend against a Frank Smash is to relax.

The human body is full of paradox: press down to go up, press left to go right, more freedom comes from more groundedness…and relax for more power.

When faced with a Frank Smash, the more tightly I hold my paddle, the less control I have. The ball just ricochets off — usually into the net or over the fence. But if I hold the paddle loosely, some of the force of Frank’s Smash is absorbed, my wrist is more responsive, and I can more skillfully return it.

After years of moving with other bodies, I know that if someone comes in tense and rigid, they will have fewer movement options than someone who is relaxed and fluid. Their tension impacts both mind and muscle and leaves them with the bare minimum of ways to move.

As an advocate for embodiment, I have followed the work of writer, embodiment facilitator, political organizer, and therapist Prentis Hemphill, for years. They recently published a book: What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World and I’m awaiting a copy (on hold at the library!) with anticipation. In an interview about the book on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, they said

“One of my teachers says, ‘A relaxed body is the most powerful body that we have.’ …Because when we are relaxed, we can do almost anything. I can make any kind of move from a relaxed body. I have a lot of choices from a relaxed body. From a body that is tight, tense, or protective, has taken on a protective shell, there’s only a limited number of moves we can make from that body. We’ve already foreclosed certain options.”

Ah yes, there it is. You can armor up and protect yourself (and there are times when all of us have to do that). Just know that the price of protection is choice. Your options are far fewer when you are armored up.

You can feel this in your body right now. Squeeze your hand into a tight fist, as tight as you can make it. And then with that tightness, move your fist (and even your wrist and arm) around. You can move it, sure, but the range of movement and the variety of movement is incredibly narrow.

Now shake your hand out. Take a couple breaths and relax your hand. Now move your hand (and wrist and arm) around. Notice the huge range of motion you have now that you didn’t have when you were tight and protected. Notice the variety of movements you can do with your fingers, your palm, your whole hand.

The difference is striking, right?

My long-armed husband loves to smack a pickleball across the net and I have a whole collection of little round bruises to prove it. When he goes up with his paddle, my first reflex is to brace and protect against the incoming ball. But the more I breathe and relax, not only the less likely it is that the ball will hit me, but the more likely I can return it. I have more options for movement and more resources to make choices.

This is true in any sport, any physical experience, and any mental, emotional or relational experience: the more I can relax, the more power I have.

For Prentis Hemphill, when they teach embodiment and “...what it means to be awake in ourselves, living inside of ourselves, [it comes back to] that relaxed body.”

The next time you are in a situation when you find yourself gripping and tense, see if you can find a way to relax, even a little. Notice if it gives you more options, physically, mentally or emotionally. Instead of paying the price of choice for protection, see if you can tap into your body’s inherent relaxed power.

No Margins: How Do I Live A Less-Squished Life?

Note: I’m taking a break from the Gentle Rewilding series to go to the ocean (see more on making space for what matters below). If you’d like to catch up on the Gentle Rewilding series – an exploration of ways to reconnect to our human design – you can find them below. I’ll resume with Gentle Rewilding of Hips on Sept 28.

* Find Part 1 – Gentle Rewilding & Feet here.

* Find Part 2 – Gentle Rewilding: Hands here.

* Find Part 3 – Gentle Rewilding: Spine here.

* Find Part 4 – Gentle Rewilding: Shoulders here.

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“I'm actively practicing not doing in August because it's a muscle that no one will encourage me to workout. And it will atrophy without strengthening it periodically. Not doing is some of the hardest doing I (and my clients) ever do, so it requires training. And the reason I do it is because that's where I get bored, creative, lost, wander from what's known, find my answers and inspiration.”

~ Lael Jepson, on taking the month of August off for the past 10 years

My Strength Training notebook: Just like 3rd grade, I have no margins.

When I was a kid, my school notebooks drove my Dad to distraction. I filled every page of every notebook to the very edges. Every line. No margins. Even in third grade, I left myself no space.

Thanks to our pervasive achievement culture, I get sucked into the illusion that the more I do, the more worthy and deserving I’ll be and the better I’ll feel. Living with little to no margins makes me a productive little soldier of patriarchal capitalism, but it’s relentless. There is always ALWAYS something more to do. Living with no margins may meet with the approval of our culture, but it is not thriving.

Intellectually, I know this: trying to suck all the juice out of life sucks all the juice out of life. Trying to schmush everything into a too small space feels cramped and indecipherable. As uncomfortable as it often is, though, I know I get a rush from all that doing: a hit of adrenaline that is oddly addictive. That adrenaline becomes my drug of choice and I resist making space and doing less. I resist relaxing.

A recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast explored this very tendency. Amanda, one of the podcast hosts and high powered, super-smart lawyer, had been challenged by her co-hosts (who are also her sister and sister-in-law) to incorporate relaxation habits into her days. They gave her a list of things to try – taking a walk, meditation, breathing practices, a cold plunge – and then asked her to report back a month later. At the end of the month, she’d done none of it.

Her sisters were gobsmacked, but I completely understood.

If someone I cared about had given me a list of relaxation practices, the only difference would have been that I would have done all of those things like they were my JOB. Relaxation would have not figured in at all – only getting those things done. Amanda just took a different route to the same place by not doing them at all.

I am not ignorant of my margin-less tendencies. I do see myself doing it and yet somehow feel powerless to stop it.

Last week, I’d been exhausted every day yet kept powering through. Friday was my day “off” but I’d scheduled it to the gills. I was planning to do strength work, then to work on shopping and cooking to fill the freezer for our upcoming trip, then to play pickleball to work on my serve and my backhand, then back home to work on classes for next week. I felt numb and spent but I was going through with my plan anyway.

As I hurriedly got ready, my beloved asked if I wanted to go for a walk in the woods. Sigh. I told him I wanted to but no, I couldn't because of all the things I wanted to get done.

He knows me and didn’t question it. He kissed me and walked out.

As he walked out the door, my heart nearly caved in. What was I doing? Saying no to a walk with him? I’d felt flat and tired all week but my default when feeling that flatness is to rev up and do more. Part of me felt safe in all the doing but another part knew clearly this was not a great choice.

I sat with my feelings, felt the ache in my heart and asked myself, what do you want? I want to go for that walk.

A text canceled pickleball. I jumped in the car and drove to the park. I knew he was doing the loop hike that we love but didn’t know which direction he went, so I parked, jumped out of the car and started running.

I was either ahead of him and therefore running away from him or he was coming the other way and I was running toward him. I had no idea. I stopped breathless a couple of times realizing how ridiculous it was to think I could find him in the woods. He could be anywhere. But there was something about shaking myself out of the stupor of doing things efficiently and for a reason. I just kept running.

Up and down the hills. Over rocks and roots. Through a thousand spider webs. And then, there he was. Looking at me with shock. "What the hell?" he said as I threw my sweaty arms around him and told him how stupid it was to say no to a walk in the woods with him.

He took it in his unflappable stride as I sweated and cried all over his shirt. I wiped my eyes, kissed him a dozen times and we had a lovely walk in the late summer woods.

I would love to tell you that I am now cured of living with no margins. I would love to give you a rom-com ending about how I’ve strung up a hammock, thrown out my To Do lists and sip iced tea all day. That hasn’t happened.

But I am asking myself different questions about what I’m doing and why. I’m looking carefully at how I spend my time and wondering about different ways of doing things. And ways of not doing things.

If you, too, are a recovering No Margins person, I’d love to hear about your experience. If you aren’t, how is it to be with the No Marginers in your life, incomprehensible as we are. Do leave a comment and help us all navigate achievement culture without missing what matters. In the spirit of margin making, I will be traveling next week, contemplating how a less-squished life might look. I’ll keep you posted.

When The Roosters Come Home To Roost

Spaciousness. When asked what I want more of in my life, this is it. I keep saying I want more spaciousness in my schedule, but this vague “more spaciousness” idea is like nailing Jello to a wall. It doesn’t get me what I’m after. To make more space, I need more clarity. In what feels like a brave move, I’m playing with not working on Sundays.

As a solopreneur, I work a lot. I’m committed to responsiveness and connection. And I can teeter into obsessiveness about staying on top of everything. When my desk starts to sprawl with papers, books and files and my email box is overflowing with unread messages, my control muscles turn on and I get itchy and tight.

It is painfully clear, though, that hustle culture is not my friend. The culture that treats our bodies like machines whose sole purpose is to productivity is rooted in patriarchy, capitalism, slavery and white supremacy. I don’t want to contribute to any of that mess – directly or indirectly. Using my one wild precious life only to work on my business and check off my To Do list isn’t in alignment with what I know matters most.

These days, on Sundays, I’ve been walking away from my computer and instead focusing on the relationships and activities that deeply nourish me.

Mondays, however, roll around no matter what I choose to do on Sunday. After spending time hiking and watching basketball and reading Tana French, I find myself dismayed on Monday morning.

My email is bursting and class preparation is looming and all the other details have piled up into a tangle at my desk. Turns out when you choose to step away from grind culture, grind culture keeps grinding. When I don’t work, not much gets done.

And here is the pivotal moment: what do we do when the consequences of an aligned, liberating choice inevitably land in our laps? What do we do when “the roosters come home to roost”?

In a recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, Glennon Doyle shared an update on her healing from anorexia. Part of her process is that she gets on a scale every day but can see nothing. No numbers. Nothing. All the information goes to her therapist. At the outset, the two of them decided that the therapist would not share any of the data until Glennon gained a certain amount of weight. This arrangement gives Glennon a sense of control and safety so she can focus on her day-to-day process.

The day her therapist said, “We agreed that I would tell you when you gained this much weight and now you have” was the day that Glennon said, “The roosters have come home to roost.”

Like they do.

Whenever we choose to make different choices than our habit, than the social norm, any time we move beyond the constricting rules of a controlling patriarchal culture, there will be roosters. And they will come home to roost.

You don’t get an A. You don’t get the promotion. You gain the weight. Your relationship is uncomfortable. The house isn’t pristine. And your work doesn’t get done.

The question is, what do we do then?

Retreating and going back to old choices makes sense. It feels safer to do what we’ve been told and get back in line. No matter how you feel about it, moving into the world with the consequences all out there to see can feel deeply uncomfortable. I’ve done it many times: make a brave choice and then back away from it — mostly without realizing what I’m doing.

So, what do we do when the roosters come home to roost?

Do we go back to the comfortable familiarity of grind culture? Do we go back to working weekends? Do we go back to restricting and controlling food and exercise? Do we go back to letting the racist comments and the misogynist jokes pass? Do we go back to saying, “Boys will be boys” and letting sexual assault be just what happens?

It takes courage to live beyond the cultural constraints that are designed to keep us small and silent.

It takes another level of courage to stay with those choices when the roosters come home to roost.

Let the roosters do what they’re gonna do. Keep making the choices that make you – and everyone around you – free.