Why Go Gently?

What I learnt the hard way about striving, hustling & straining

An old photo (no wrinkles!) of me collapsed happily on a hill

In eight weeks time I will be fifty years old.

First of all, how did that happen?!

Secondly, it has led me to reflect on my decades of life so far and in particular my themes of recent years. Why do I spend so much of my time writing about easing up? Of what use might this be to others? Doesn’t the troubled world need courage, feistiness and action right now, more than feeble gentleness?

I will share with you three excellent reasons for easing up, but first a potted history of Satya.

I was born with a to-do list in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. For various reasons (my long line of ancestors, my early life, the time and place I happened to be born into) I grew up priding myself on my self-sufficiency, my driven-ness, and how excellently I completed the many tasks on my never-ending lists.

These traits have served me really well. They got me through my psychotherapy training, writing a dozen books, running a mindful writing company, training as a Buddhist minister and founding a temple and a sangha (alongside Kaspa). Nobody asked me to do any of these things, and many of them didn’t pay me any or much money, but it felt really good to do them. I also received the great satisfaction of Getting Lots of Stuff Done.

Most of this achieving was accompanied by a background hum of strain. My body and mind were like guitar strings strung too tight - they made a big noise but the sound included an unpleasant harmonic and the tension accumulated. There was no big dramatic breakdown - I was lucky - but instead a series of small collapses and the constant chatter of internal voices: ‘Do more! Get more! Be more! You’re not enough. You’re not enough!’

Over the decades, several things began to show me the wisdom of a different way.

The first was 12 step programmes, which opened the possibility that someone-or-something might know better than me. (A lesson I’m still learning 😉)

The second was Pure Land Buddhism, with its constant insistence that I am acceptable just as I am.

The third, the final piece in the puzzle, was Internal Family Systems - a new way of doing therapy and of seeing the world that shattered many of my long-held beliefs and that demonstrated, over and over, the supreme value of gentleness.

These days I still have spurts of action, but I generally run at a lower, gentler hum. I take more scheduled and unscheduled breaks, and I am very picky about who and what I let into my diary. I earn more money for less work. Best of all, I feel better about myself. I am quicker to forgive myself, and there is much more compassion and care swishing around inside.

And so yes, like a reformed smoker, I want to share the Good News of Gentleness - in our dealings with others and the world, and in our relationships with ourselves. This is no quietism or withdrawal from the world. As I’ll share below, I think it’s the opposite. It is counter-cultural, though, and it’s not easy to swim against the stream.

That’s one of the reasons why this space is so valuable to me. We can quietly gather - those of us who want to find ways of saying a gentle but firm NO to the insidious seductions of our capitalist, colonialist society. Those of us who want to say YES to nourishing connections, to awe, to slowness, to waking up. To the fierce and powerful action that is driven by love.

So here are my three reasons for going gently. I hope that you can find some resonance with them.

⭐ Going gently feels good.

What doesn’t feel good? Pushing. Straining. Over-stretching. Running at a frequency that causes my cogs to whirr with an unpleasant high-pitched screech.

What does feel good? Acknowledging how hard my self-protective parts are working for me, even if they’re causing chaos. Ongoing forgiveness for my fallibility. Permission to be human. Enjoyment of the small and simple pleasures of life. Doing less. Tasting more. Trusting that all will be well. Accepting that achievements aren’t everything. Allowing relaxation to filter, everso slowly, into every single cell of my body.

⭐ Going gently helps us.

My main learning from Internal Family Systems is: we can’t cheat our systems. If we make ourselves eat less cake for a week, we’ll eat more at the weekend. If we force ourselves to keep going when we’re tired, we’ll start making mistakes or snapping at our spouses and eventually we’ll wind up in bed, ill or overwhelmed. If we push our rage, terror, grief or shame away, it will fester underground and poison our whole internal ecosystems. If we push too fast when we’re trying to heal ourselves, it’ll lead to a backlash and to even less trust inside ourselves and to slower healing.

In IFS they say, ‘to go fast, we go slow’ - we always move at the pace of the slowest, most reluctant part of us. We work with self-protection rather than fighting it - befriending the internal gate-keeping bouncers, rather than attempting to knock them out. We trust that love and patience is the best and quickest route to healing.

⭐ Going gently helps other living beings and the world.

I have found that when I go gently with myself, I am more able to show up and offer service in a healthy, sustainable way.

Over the past four years I have been involved in non-violent eco-activism, which has (amongst other things) led to several arrests and to two year-long stints of daily meditation in my local town. This action has only been possible because it came from a place of fierce love for our planet. It didn’t involve any ‘oughts’ and I didn’t have to push myself to do it (well, not much!). This, to me, is testament to the transformative power of internal gentleness.

Action doesn’t have to be as dramatic as nights in a police station. There is huge power in the genuine smile offered to the tired mother in the queue behind you, or the centring breath before we respond to that angry email. When we offer exquisite kindness to ourselves, it starts spilling out despite us - we begin to ache to show our love to all living beings.

So - what has been stirred for you as you’ve read this piece? Do you have parts that push too hard (for excellent reasons, but which you would like to revisit?). Do you have procrastinatey parts that do their pushing by blocking you from doing the things you want or need to do? What helps you to be more gentle with yourself? Do let me know in the comments - it always makes me so happy to hear from you.

Keep going gently.
Love Satya <3

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Ralph and Aiko demonstrating going gently