Rest in the margins.

how to not fill up all your space & time! 🙌

Me resting in the margins / eating a kale salad with my hands on a bench in Hudson last week 🙌

Approximately one lifetime ago, I was a corporate lawyer in DC. I worked at an “eat what you kill” Big Law firm where the pressure was immense: everything was a four-alarm fire, everything was urgent AND important, and you were expected to be immediately available and responsive at any moment.

Yikes!

I looked like I was “fine!” on the outside. And I was NOT WELL on the inside.

I was basically a pot of water about to boil over at any moment.

I can show my mid-20s something a lot of grace (trying to show my 39-year-old self this daily too), so the story I’m about to tell would almost be funny to me now.

Except I can still tell you exactly how this felt in my body.

So on this particular Friday in, let’s call it late 2012, my case load was relatively chill. No fire drills seemed to be coming my way that day. Maybe the main partners I worked for were even on a plane on their way back from a deposition or something.

I have one thing I have to get out the door before EOD and it’s an email to opposing counsel. Completely low stakes, literally sending some attachment that has already been signed off on by the partner.

But if you have ever been a young associate (or insert your corporate version of this), you know the particular pressure of sending anything — even a benign email — outside of the firm.

Especially to opposing counsel.

There is ZERO room for error.

So while it’s actually low stakes, it’s still high pressure (like only Big Law can do!).

I’m up against the COB clock AND I really want to go to a yoga class with my favorite teacher at 5:30pm on this Friday.

The thing about our gorgeous & exquisitely designed nervous systems is that they have kept us alive as a species forever and keep us safe and alive even today, everyday.

But our nervous system also cannot tell the difference between an actual threat (swerving to avoid a crash on the highway, racing out of a burning building, running from a bear, etc.) and … an email.

Once we’re off to the races in flight or fight, we’re either GONE or we need to do something to reset our system back to baseline.

So I press send on this email at the buzzer and I’m GONE - nervous system wise - & I’m now also racing through the streets of DC (which if you’ve ever lived & worked downtown, you’d agree it’s a safer bet to try to jog a mile than chance it on a cab during Friday rush hour).

I arrive right on the nose for this 5:30pm class, change quickly, and walk in 2 minutes late.

The room is completely dark, except for a few candles.

I hobble around flames and supine people in this very crowded, very quiet room and unroll mat.

The irony of this yoga class is that it’s a completely passive, restorative class, where we make little beds & take little naps. And it has all the ingredients to help me reset my nervous system back to baseline.

But I JUST can’t get there.

I go from 1,000,000 to 0.

And I spend the next hour wanting to crawl out of my skin, heart beating fast, breath shallow & high, mind racing nonstop.

Luckily, the irony was not lost on me. That I was so acutely & chronically stressed, literally hustling to restorative yoga, that it just couldn’t actually do the trick 😆

The irony continues because I’ve now spent the last dozen years teaching restorative yoga, among other nervous system resetting practices!

Teach what you need, etc.

So I would never tell you that I have this, now, all figured out.

Because even though I teach calm for a living, this programming to hustle runs DEEP.

Which is why if you’ve ever tried some tech bro’s time management hack for better email efficiency & didn’t find instant inner peace, you’re more than ok, I promise. 😘

And this also why my pitch for meditation & rest practices always includes this unsexy disclaimer: if you do these things consistently, for a long period of time, you will eventually find thismuch extra space between yourself and your habitual tendencies & reactions.

But!

In that space is the whole damn universe.

It’s kind of like how I knew that I might not only die early if I stayed in Big Law, but also — and perhaps more frightening — that I’d actually miss my whole damn life by hustling through it, onto the next and the next and the next, always in a rush, never done, and always behind.

Ok, so cut to last week.

I got my date on a meeting totally wrong with my friends Helen & Alison and found myself now with two WIDE OPEN hours before my next meeting with my friend Clara. (Pinch me, how awesome these women in my real life are!)

Again, this sh*t runs deep so my mind immediately leaps to “what should I fill this space with?”

Like what emails can I catch up on real quick? What errands could I run? What calls could I return?

You know the list.

Instead — and BLESS, because I don’t always choose myself in these moments — I decided to rest in this margin instead.

I bought a sparkly n/a bev in a can (which I’m pretty sure is just like hip soda, but definitely still soda right?) & a cookie.

I forget to pick up a plastic fork (note to self: keep impromptu picnic gear in the car from here on out!).

But I still found a shady bench, kicked off my shoes, and ate a whole kale salad for three with my (clean!) hands and stared into the middle distance.

I got out my notebook but wrote nothing down. Brain went on do not disturb mode and finally, I could be still & restored without needing to crawl out of my skin!

Quiet Victory! 12 years later! 🧘‍♀️

Ok, so I would never lead you on with a “top 3 tips” or a “guaranteed playbook” or other silly promises the internet loves to make.

But you can keep reading for 5 actionable practices I use regularly and teach my clients for resting in the margins. To not fill all your space & time.

Bonus Video meditation included behind the paywall too!

With a deep exhale, Cath xo

5 actionable practices to help you be still without crawling out of your skin 👇