What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Free Article
The Joy of Doing Nothing
Before my wife Ellen and I went on vacation a few weeks ago, I joked about counting how many ways we’d find to do nothing.
On our last vacation, we got to 500 before we stopped counting.
Of course, just counting ways to do nothing becomes a tad like doing something. So I’m happy to say that we didn’t even try to count this time. And I’m even happier to say that within a couple of days of arriving, there was simply and only what is. All concepts and ideas of anything beyond the purity and simplicity of the moment we were in, what was right there before us, just did not exist.
Coming back into so-called “real life,” I find myself remaining open to the spaciousness of doing nothing. Even as clients (especially those just beginning to work with me) react with dismay and even fear to the idea of doing nothing, I relax deeper into it.
And yet, as always, I’m active.
The house has its needs (not the least of which was a wet eight-inch spring snowstorm this weekend that required shoveling). My cats Bear and Sasha are companions who — now they’ve forgiven me for being away — delight me with their attentions and requests, and my responses to them. And I’m a glad participant in my family’s lives, from my parents to my sons.
And my friends, clients, and my business — it’s all engaging in the moment-to-moment unfolding, much of which creates action on my part.
Yet underneath it all, there’s the ongoing stillness and Silence of doing nothing.
I’d like to invite you into that same stillness and Silence.
What would it be like to just stop and do nothing, right now, in this moment?
We’re taught in today’s “do-produce-achieve” environment that doing nothing is the worst possible crime. Is that really true?
I find that my clients who are most committed to being productive, whose identity is most bound up with what they create rather than who they really, deeply, truly are, are the ones who most crave that deep relaxation that comes from doing nothing.
How, then, can you explore doing nothing safely and without invoking the sense of free-fall panic that my clients sometimes report? Let’s take a look at some options.
Sit in silence
As the world turns into spring, there is so much aliveness, beauty, and wonder to be seen in all directions. Even if, like some of my clients, you live where seasons are relatively subtle — or if, like others of my clients, you’re watching ice break up on the river — spring makes itself known.
Sit, then, and look. Perhaps it’s warm enough where you are to sit outside. Or perhaps you’ll sit in a window and watch what’s happening from the warmth of your home.
What do you see? What do you hear?
Silence doesn’t mean not hearing anything. Some of the deepest experiences of Silence include an explosion of sound, such as a purring cat, the laughter of someone you love, wind in the trees, waves on the beach, or the wild celebration of birdsong.
Simply sit, and experience, and appreciate what’s unfolding before you.
Stop
No matter how busy your day, there are moments when you can stop. Moments when you can take a breath, pause, hear your heart beating, feel a rush of appreciation for simply being alive.
How can you remind yourself to stop and take that moment to just be with what is?
Simplify
There’s something about life today that pushes us all into making things complicated.
Become a champion of the absurdly simple.
Love
Real love is stopping, Silence, appreciation. Loving what is, loving without wanting anything to change — it’s stillness, complete Silence, doing nothing.
Even if you think you have no one and nothing to love, stop and love anyway. Open your heart to loving what’s in front of you, no matter what it is.
Rest in that, and do nothing.
“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” From Pooh’s Little Instruction Book, inspired by the Winnie-the-Pooh stories of A.A. Milne.
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