Gently Rewilding Our Whole Selves

This is Part 7* of the 7-Part Gentle Rewilding series!

We’ve been tamed, y’all. Modern life molds and changes our bodies, minds and spirits. Much of our modern domestication is just fine: I’m glad we use forks and don’t spit inside and don’t drink milk straight out of the carton (oh wait, I do that). But some of our taming is worth questioning and unwinding. This series is an exploration of ways of reconnecting to our human design with gentle rewilding.

* 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.

* Find Part 5 – Gentle Rewilding: Hips here.

* Find Part 6 – Gentle Rewilding: Eyes here.

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“We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

True story: a full-grown man paces the sidelines of a co-ed, recreational soccer game, yelling at full volume at the opposing team, the (volunteer) ref and his own team. A couple of his teammates give him the side eye, “Hey, dude. Chill out. You don’t have to yell at everybody. We’re here to have fun.”

The man turns on them and says, “I can’t help it. It’s who I am. It’s in my DNA.”

His teammates call bulls**t. “No way,” they say, “you have control of your words, your actions and how you treat people. Take responsibility.”

Yelling at friends and young referees at a co-rec soccer game might seem extreme but how often are we so attached to our emotions, our habitual responses, and our expectations of ourselves that it feels like we don’t have a choice.

Just as shoes constrain the function of our feet, our assumptions, expectations and beliefs constrain the function of our hearts and minds. Whether it is a woman who loses herself in selflessness or a man who alienates himself with toxic anger, either way we are not free. Our spirits are tamed by the aspects of ourselves and the world that we do not question. Gently rewilding our whole selves requires curiosity, openness and a beginner’s mind.

This kind of untaming may feel more elusive than opening our hips or mobilizing our spine. This kind of untaming might feel slippery, confusing or disorienting. But like waking up from a drugged sleep might feel wobbly at first, rewilding our whole selves is the path to uncovering ourselves from accumulated culturalization.

Gentle rewilding begins with questioning, with entertaining a beginner’s mind about the binaries and beliefs that we are taught (and in fact rewarded) not to wonder about and not to question.

This is a deep and tangled topic that we can by no means unpack completely here. I recommend Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed and these few toe holds to begin the process of gently rewilding our spirits:

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Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” ~ Zen Master, Shunryo Suzuki

Beginner’s mind opens us to possibilities, to expansive ways of thinking and new ways of approaching things. In our human brains, this can be an uncomfortable place to be. Certainty is the human brain’s drug of choice and expert mind is how to get that drug. We either make ourselves experts or we turn to experts. The certainty of expert mind feels stable and sure in its narrowness while beginner’s mind feels loose and all over the place in its expansion. Beginner’s mind, no matter how old you are or how much you know, is the path to rewilding.

If you find yourself saying (or thinking) about yourself, others or the world: that’s just the way things are, some things never change or it’s in my DNA, pause. Ask yourself, why is that? What’s underneath that? Who benefits from that? What’s another way to think about it?

Which brings us to...

Binaries

Like certainty, our brains love binaries: black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, Ford or Chevy. As much as our brains want it to be, that is simply not the way the world or people work. Everything is nuanced, people are multi-faceted, situations have multiple perspectives.

When one of my beloveds came out as gender fluid, my eyes started to see the world differently. I started to see how strictly binary our culture looks at gender. You are a man, or you are a woman. Period. According to this culturalized bianary, what you wear, how you act, who and how you love, the roles you have, even where you pee have a narrow range of options.

But if we venture to see things beyond the binaries (and gender is, of course, only one of a zillion binaries), we might ask, Are you sure? Why is that? What’s underneath that? And who benefits? What’s another way to think about it?

Which brings us to...

Beliefs

As UN Planning Analyst, Mohamed Helmi Tourzri, wrote earlier this year,

Beliefs [unlike thoughts] are mental attitudes or convictions that we hold to be true, without necessarily relying on conscious cognitive processes.

That is, our beliefs may have grown over time, like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up layers and bits as it goes along without really thinking a whole lot about how they grow or what they are made of. Beliefs can fly in under the radar.

If we want to rewild our hearts and minds, one rich place to begin is to ask what do I believe...and why? Am I sure about that belief? Where did it come from? Does it support me or someone/something else?

The tricky part, for me anyway, is that beliefs can feel like who we are to such an extent that we don’t even realize we hold them. Beliefs can feel like they are in our DNA. In that way, beliefs can be a reflexive habit that propel us sometimes without us realizing it.

If I believe that people are basically out for themselves, for example, I’m going to think, speak and act differently than if I believe that people are basically kind. I may think, speak and act based on this belief without recognizing that the belief fuels my behavior.

Rewilding our beliefs takes gentle prodding, digging, brushing away the layers of accumulated experiences and thinking to find the source of how you got there. This is often work that is more easily done with the help of a therapist or trained professional who can shed light on the beliefs that have slid under the radar. It’s work worth doing, though, to confirm that the beliefs that you’ve accumulated over a lifetime support who you want to be.

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The process of gentle rewilding, of our bodies, minds and hearts is a big and worthwhile endeavor. And like we can retrain our joints and connective tissue to move in new ways a little at a time, we can do the same in our hearts and minds. Notice when you don’t question an assumption. Notice if there are aspects of yourself or a relationship that you take for granted. Pay attention when you are confronted with a new perspective that pisses you off. These are all places where the curious beginner’s mind can chip away at the rigid binaries, unhelpful beliefs and the places you’ve been tamed.

“Here's to The Untamed:
May we know them.
May we raise them.
May we love them.
May we read them.
May we elect them.
May we be them.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Gentle Rewilding: Eyes

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This is Part 6* of the 7-Part Gentle Rewilding series!

We’ve been tamed, y’all. Modern life molds and changes our bodies, minds and spirits. Much of our modern domestication is just fine: I’m glad we use forks and don’t spit inside and don’t drink milk straight out of the carton (oh wait, I do that). But some of our taming is worth questioning and unwinding. This series is an exploration of ways of reconnecting to our human design with gentle rewilding.

* 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.

* Find Part 5 – Gentle Rewilding: Hips here.

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Close your eyes for a moment and then open them. Without moving your head, look up down and to the sides. Then look at your hand close to your face and look out the window to the furthest thing you can see.

Pretty cool, that your little eyeball can move around in the socket AND adjust to seeing things near you and far away. No matter how not so good (or excellent) your vision is, it really is a wonder.

When we think of muscles, we tend to think of big visible ones like biceps and quads and glutes but the eyes have muscles, too. There is a collection of small muscles that move your eyeball, your eye lid and its lens to allow you to do everything from watch clouds moving in an autumn sky, look askance at your partner and read this post.

All parts of us thrive with a variety of movement – including our eyes. There are seven muscles that move your eyeball in different directions and move your eyelid up and down. The extrinsic or extraocular muscles control the movement of the eyes themselves. The intrinsic eye muscles focus the eye, and control the iris to allow light to enter it. The extrinsic muscles are around the eye and are voluntary (yes, you can control your eye rolling!). The intrinsic muscles are inside the eye and are involuntary.

One of the intrinsic eye muscles is the ciliary muscle and it’s one that you cannot choose to relax. As biomechanist Katy Bowman says, “[The ciliary muscles] tighten or relax based on what you’re looking at. The only way to relax the muscles [is to change] the shape of your lens [and the only way to do that is to change] what you’re looking at.”

The ciliary muscle focuses the lens inside your eye – a process called “accommodation” – and the muscle is most relaxed when looking at something in the distance. To see something closer, means that the ciliary muscles must work harder to focus. As physicist Paul Davidovits explains, “there is, however, a limit to the focusing power of the crystalline lens. With the maximum contraction of the ciliary muscle, a normal eye of a young adult can focus on objects about 15 cm from the eye. Closer objects [than that] appear blurred.”

You can try this out for yourself by holding your hand close to your face and slowly moving it away until it comes into focus. The closest place you can see clearly will depend on your particular eyes, of course, but wherever it is for you, your ciliary muscles are working hard to let you see it.

In recent years, there has been a startling rise in myopia or nearsightedness, especially in children. Jane Brody wrote in the New York Times in 2021:

Susceptibility to myopia is determined by genetics and environment. Children with one or both nearsighted parents are more likely to become myopic. However, while genes take many centuries to change, the prevalence of myopia in the United States increased from 25 percent in the early 1970s to nearly 42 percent just three decades later. And the rise in myopia is not limited to highly developed countries. The World Health Organization estimates that half the world’s population may be myopic by 2050.

The incidence of myopia in Chinese children is even more dramatic. The National Institute of Health reported in 2018 that “20% to 50% of the students in primary school, 35% to 60% of the students in middle school, and 50% to 75% of the students in college are myopic in China.” And that was before the pandemic when so many were inside and on screens almost all day.

Millions and millions of overworked ciliary muscles!

This surprising rise in myopia is due at least in part to children spending more time on screens and indoors than previous generations. Being outside allows your eyes to focus on a wide range of distances giving them both work and rest. More specifically, research is showing that around 13-14 hours of outdoor time a week is correlated to a decrease in myopia. (Source: Katy Bowman and The American Academy of Opthalmology.)

Clearly, our eyes could use some rewilding! In addition to spending more time outside, here are 4 exercises to expand the range of motion for your eyes and to give them some much-needed rest.

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Gently Rewilding Your Eyes: 4 Exercises and Rests

Palming and Cupping

Palming is calming to the eyes. Cupping is similar but make space under your hands so your eyes can open and soak in the warmth and dark.

Many of us move through the day with perpetually tired eyes. Every hour or so, gently place your palms over your closed eyelids and let them rest. Breathe deeply and feel the warmth and darkness as your eyes stop working. Without pressing too hard, just breath and palm your eyes until they feel relaxed (perhaps a minute or so, more if you like). Remove your hands slowly and let your eyes adjust to light again.

A variation on this is cupping your eyes: cup your hands over your eyes with your fingers close together to make two dark “eye caves” that keep out all the light (this is easiest to do in a dimly lit space). Open your eyes and let them take in the warmth and darkness for a minute or so. When they feel relaxed, close your eyes and remove your hands, then slowly open your eyes again.

Look Far Away Every Day

As mentioned, outdoor time is ideal for eye health, in part because it allows your eyes to look at all different distances. Even if you’re inside, a couple times a day, find a window and look out as far as you can see. Look for the farthest thing in your field of vision and see what details you can see: the texture of the clouds, the movement in the leaves of a distant tree, the traffic moving on a far away highway.

Move Eyes (Not Head)

For many of us, when we want to look at something, we turn our head, but that neglects the extrinsic muscles that move your eyeballs. Gently move your eyes without moving your head. (See Kit Cat Klock above!) Without straining, let your eyes move around an imaginary clock from 12 to 3 to 6 to 9 to 12 and then counterclockwise. Again, gently and without forcing, look up and down, side to side, and along diagonals.

Transition Light Gradually & Look in the Dark

Artificial light is ubiquitous, and it can be easy – especially in winter – to go from full darkness to full light in the morning and vice versa at night. Instead, play with transitioning gradually from full light to less light as you move toward sleep. In the morning, start with gentle or indirect light and move toward full light. As part of the transition, experiment with looking in the dark: go outside and look up at stars (now that’s looking far away!) or when you wake up, open your eyes before turning on any light and let them bask in the low light.

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When I was little, my Grampa used to joke that he wasn’t napping, he was “resting his eyes.” Even though he was goofing with us, he was onto something. We use our eyes so much that we can often take them for granted. With gratitude for how hard they work, give them some gentle rewilding and plenty of rest.

Gentle Rewilding: Hips

This is Part 5* of the 7-Part Gentle Rewilding series!

We’ve been tamed, y’all. Modern life molds and changes our bodies, minds and spirits. Much of our modern domestication is just fine: I’m glad we use forks and don’t spit inside and don’t drink milk straight out of the carton (oh wait, I do that). But some of our taming is worth questioning and unwinding. This series is an exploration of ways of reconnecting to our human design with gentle rewilding.

* 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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“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

A participant – often a new one – approaches me after class and says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but as I was moving, I felt like crying (or laughing or screaming). I have no idea why.”

I feel such tenderness when this happens. Although it’s totally normal and common, it can feel disorienting or even scary to feel a rush of emotion seemingly come out of nowhere. When I ask them what movement they were doing when the emotion came up, almost always they were moving or stretching their hips.

Yoga teachers sometimes call the hips “the emotional junk drawer” and there is plenty of science to back up this perhaps surprising idea. Whether or not you agree with the hip/emotion connection, there is no question that in our modern culture, our hips have been tamed. Sitting in chairs and cars, rarely getting on the floor and moving the hips in limited ranges and directions, tighten and weaken the complex collection of muscles, joints and connective tissues in the pelvic girdle.

Chronically tight, weak hips can have a variety of repercussions including low back pain, knee pain or instability, and difficulty walking, running or climbing stairs. Perhaps most importantly, lack of hip mobility can prevent you from getting up off the floor (or even a low car or chair) and can therefore be a precursor to lost independence.

Opening your hips doesn’t mean you have to do side splits or put your leg behind your head – those things aren’t likely to improve your everyday movement. Opening your hips is about exploring the possibilities in your body with the understanding of their design.

It’s a ball and socket! Not a hinge!

The hip joint is a ball and socket joint which means it is designed to move in all directions. Modern culture mostly has us moving our hips like a hinge: just front and back. The key to creating open, strong, flexible hips is to move them all around, to “stir” the femur bone in the hip socket.

It’s important to acknowledge that bones come in as many shapes and orientations as fingerprints. Some bodies have more range of motion in the hips (and everywhere) than others based on nothing more than the angles and shapes of their bones. This isn’t about getting these movements “right” and this isn’t about doing them like me. Listen to Your Today Body as you do them and know that some things we can change (soft tissue, for example) and some things we can’t (like the shapes of our bones).

So let’s get to gently rewilding your precious hips with 4 of my favorite hip mobilizers.

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4 Moves for gently rewilding your hips

Crocodile

Lie on the floor or a bed on your belly and draw your right knee up to the side until you feel a comfortable stretch in your inner thigh. You can do this as a restorative pose: resting your left ear on your extended left arm or the floor; gently squeezing and releasing your right buttock, switching sides when it feels right. You can also do this as a dynamic movement: preferably on an uncarpeted floor, sliding alternate knees up to the side while resting on your forearms with your head up and the option of dragging your body along the floor to build strength in both upper and lower bodies.

Happy Baby Variations

In all Happy Baby variations, the key is to keep your low back connected to the floor which encourages length in your hamstrings at the back of your thighs. If you feel your low back rounding and your tailbone lifting, scale back your variation until your low back returns to the floor.

Half Happy Baby

On your back, keep one leg either long on the floor, or knee bent and foot flat on the floor. Bend the other leg so the sole of your foot is facing the ceiling and your knee is near your armpit. Grasp the back of your thigh, your shin or the outside of your foot with your hand and gently pull your knee closer to the floor 5 times and then breathe and hold the pull. Keep your low back and tailbone on the floor. Switch sides.

What IS a half-happy baby? An uncertain baby? A sentimental baby?

Happy Baby with Rocking Option

On your back, keeping your low back on the floor, bend both legs so both soles of your feet are toward the ceiling and both knees are near your armpits. Use your hands to pull your thighs, your shins or your feet down so your knees get closer to the floor (check out your tailbone and see if it’s rounding up!). Pulse this 5 times then breathe and hold. Option to gently rock side to side.

Happy Baby: imagine one’s delight to discover I HAVE TOES!

Long Leg Happy Baby

This variation is the same as the two-legged version above but play with extending one leg at a time or both legs while still holding thighs, shins or feet. Feel free to rock this one, too, keeping awareness at your low back to be sure it’s not rounding.

Around the world

Sitting on the floor, bring the sole of one foot toward the opposite inner thigh (this is your anchor leg). First, fold your other leg (your traveling leg) in front of your anchor leg (like criss-cross applesauce), lengthen your spine and fold forward, supporting yourself with your hands. Breathe and sit up.

Then extend the traveling leg out in front of you, lengthen your spine and hinge forward until you feel a warm stretch. Breathe.

Sit up and take your traveling leg out to the corner at about a 45-degree angle. Again, lengthen up and as if you wanted your belly button to touch the top of your thigh, hinge over your leg until you feel a gentle stretch. Breathe and sit up.

Take your traveling leg straight out to the side, turn and face it, lengthen and hinge over. (You could also do a side stretch here, keeping your chest to the front). Breathe and sit up.

Swing your traveling leg behind you, either bent with the inside of your leg and foot on the floor, or straight back with your toenails down. Using the strength of your hands and arms, gently push into the floor and lengthen the front of your body.

Of course, you can spend more or less time in any of the places around the world! When you feel complete on that side, gently swing both legs forward and shake them out, notice any differences in sensation. Switch sides.

You can also do Around the World in an armless chair, either with your anchor leg bent on the seat of the chair or foot flat on the floor.

Around the World, on a chair! Gotta be armless, y’all!

Squat Variations

The squat, in my experience, is the Big Mama of hip openers. It’s not a position that most western adults spend much time in so it’s challenging for many of us. No worries: there are lots of variations! Wherever you are in your squat, the key is keeping your back as long as you can (like the long spine in Happy Baby and Around the World) as you come in and out of the movements.

Foot on Chair

Sit with your spine long in a chair and alternate putting one foot up on the seat (or, if that’s not available, lift your foot and knee as high as you can, holding your leg with your hands). Once you’ve gone back and forth, play with both feet on the seat of the chair keeping your back long – the chair back is a help here.

Squat at a Rail

Using a railing or bar, lower your hips down and back. The rail can help you focus on your hips and not worrying about falling backward or getting back up!

Heels Up Squat

Starting in all 4s, tuck your toes under and use your arms to push you into a squat with both heels up, supported by your hands. Keep your spine long and gently play with letting one heel come down at a time, alternating sides. Which naturally leads to...

Heels Down Squat

Play with keeping your spine long and having both heels down, supported by your hands. Lift your heels whenever you need. When you feel good there, lift your arms up and out which requires more core engagement.

Squat and Move

In many cultures, the squat is (believe it or not) a resting posture: lots of people around the world squat to eat and chat (not to mention poop and have babies)! In addition to resting, squatting can be a dynamic position. Once you feel good in a full squat, play with shifting weight and moving from there! Get creative and curious.

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Your hips can be powerhouses of strength and mobility. And if they’ve been tamed and constrained, they may be weak and tight AND they may be holding both physical and emotional tension. If emotions come up, you’re not crazy. You’re a beautiful human who is designed to move in all the ways. Gently rewild those amazing hips!

Drawing Again...

Note: I’m taking a break from the Gentle Rewilding series first to go to the ocean and then, as it turns out to draw. 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 Oct 5...unless I don’t.

* 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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Last week, we went to the ocean. We packed our little camper, drove to South Carolina and for a week hung out on the edge of the Eastern Seaboard.

I’ve been thinking a lot about space and time – specifically MY space and MY time. What do I want to be doing? How do I want to be spending my days? Am I being carried by habit or passion or both? What does it mean to use my time well? What does it mean to live my life well?

In such a swirl of questions, having a week to watch the waves and the shore birds and *eek* the alligators, was deeply welcome.

Liza Donnelly (thanks for the reminder, Kate Bennis) is a beloved and long-time New Yorker cartoonist and I’ve been following her for the past couple of months. Watching her draw and talk about the art and craft of cartooning reawakened my love of doodling and drawing. Since I was a kid reading Peanuts and then a ‘tween scouring the New Yorker for the cartoons (even when I only got about 40% of them), I’ve wanted to make art that delights.

A few years ago, I dove into this dream by making two books – Buddha Cat and Octobusy – and other art that blends images, color and words. But since the pandemic and becoming a solopreneur, my art-making has taken a back seat. The way back seat. I get ideas and start something but then the busyness of days pushes it back into the drawer.

On our first day on our trip to the ocean, driving through North Carolina, we passed a flea market and Frank offhandedly mused, “Why do they call it a flea market?” (Note: There is a general agreement that the term 'Flea Market' is a literal translation of the French marché aux puces, an outdoor bazaar in Paris, France, named after those pesky little parasites of the order Siphonaptera (or "wingless bloodsucker") that infested the upholstery of old furniture brought out for sale. Source: Wikipedia)

When we got to the campground, I found a scrap of paper and a kinda shitty pen and drew this:

It was silly. And yet it had me looking at everything differently. I was looking for funny and delightful things to draw.

Plovers. Plovers are funny. Plovers are little shore birds that oddly seem averse to getting their feet wet. They run to the edge of the waves, niggle some sort of food item out of the sand and then scurry their little feet away from the waves again. It’s hilarious and I could watch them all day.

Also hilarious: little dogs at the beach. They too seem disinclined to get their feet wet and also whir their little legs to outmaneuver the water. So I drew this:

Pelicans delight me no end. What with their gangly bodies, unruly beak-sacks and spectacular dives for their dinner, I’m constantly pointing and ridiculously saying, “Oooh! Pelicans!” As a kid someone told me that after a lifetime of plunging into the sea head first, Brown Pelicans will eventually go blind. Turns out that’s a myth. Which, yay for that, but even so, this is what I drew:

Until this week, I’d never seen an alligator in its natural environment. At Huntington Beach State Park, it’s a regular occurrence. I’m a total scaredy pants when it comes to most reptiles (not turtles, I love turtles) and big, fast-moving ones with 80 teeth are no exception. I squealed and squeaked every time one came into view. So when I saw the big sign at the entrance to the park that read “FEEDING ALLIGATORS PROHIBITED BY LAW,” it completely cracked me up. So I drew this:

Now that we’re home, I’m playing with giving myself time to draw what delights and amuses me. We went for a hike and Frank (who was walking ahead of me) got tangled in about eleventy billion spider webs. I discovered that there are spiders every-freaking-where in the fall because it’s dating time:

Now that we’re home, we’re back to doing chores like scooping the cat box and vacuuming. Frank loves the Roomba to supplement his excellent housekeeping skills but Phoenix (the aforementioned Buddha Cat) thinks we have adopted the dumbest pet ever.

Phoenix is absolutely not afraid of the Roomba but I got delighted by the idea of having a cat on my head, so…

All this to say (or to draw): turn toward delight. If the one thing I keep not doing is something that lends effervescence to my days, it’s worth rethinking the whole thing. Turn toward delight, friends. It’s what connects us to ourselves, each other and being human.

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.