Something snapped. I came out of the posture . “Did you say, Do less than you can?” I asked, incredulous. (As a teacher once said, “you can cramp a whole temporal lobe that way”.)

She explained you can strain the body by pushing too hard. I’ve taken some yoga and I know about going to your edge and backing off a bit. My astonishment and the message that evoked it were on an entirely different level . “I’ve often done less than I can, I said, “ but I’ve never been given permission to.”

Time passed and my fascination remained. It is a permission we desparately need to take to heart. When I first thought of writing about “do less than you can”, another voice in me said (sounding a little programmed), “What do you mean, DO LESS THAN YOU CAN? We all need to do MORE---about the environment, racism, sexism, the neighborhood, political craziness locally, nationally, globally; about hunger, cleaning the closets, etc....” (I can get as crazy as the next person).

But when people came where I lived in nature, and went out on the deck, they took a deep breath and “came to themselves”. You could hear it. They were re-minded that we are a body and spirit as well as a brain. Life is wasted if we don’t do less than we can now and then. Quakers have a saying “Don’t just DO something, SIT there.” Some things need time.

Busyness has become an addiction. If we slow down we risk connecting with much that is uncomfortable. But if we don’t make a habit of doing less than we can, we’ll be hurrying toward a future created without consciousness or mindfulness . If we don’t go inside, we won’t get it right. I know I need to take time to contact the Source of my inspiration, and to discern what serves a higher purpose and what serves only to distract me momentarily. In my personal experience, and with clients, mindfulness or awareness occur when we’ve slowed down. We cannot reach it at high speed.