The other day, I came across a definition of grace that was so insightful, I stopped and reread it several times.

Grace is what “happens when you stop trying so hard,” writes Willa Blythe Baker in The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom.

It’s worth lingering over those lines and noticing whether your shoulders drop after you read them.

Baker is referring to the grace in which animals, dancers, and athletes move when they forget themselves and allow their natural inclinations or training to take over.

Reframing Grace

But framing grace in this way has implications beyond how we move.

It was revelatory to me – not only because “trying hard” has been something I’ve done since I started crawling – but also because I’ve long thought grace was something I had no part in. It was something bestowed upon me.

Guided by Baker’s perspective, I now think grace is something I can invite by becoming more mindful of my relationship to effort and by noticing the quality of energy I bring to any endeavor.

Changing Our Relationship to Effort

The other day, while driving in traffic, for example, I noticed I was clenching my jaw, as if doing so would move the cars ahead of me out of my way. Then Baker’s line floated into my mind.

In response, I parted my teeth and let my jaw go slack. I was amazed how the rest of my body followed suit, creating a small miracle of relaxation, if not grace.

I then wondered: What if I let my day informally unfold from one activity to the next instead of planning blocks of time and piling them on top of each other like a Jenga tower? What if I just opened the refrigerator and improvised something for dinner, or made paying attention to the visceral sense of letting go on each exhalation a moment-to-moment mindfulness practice?

Learning to Let Go

Either way, entering a state of grace seems to point toward the same threshold. It’s the moment when we relinquish our attempts to force or control things. It’s the moment we stop trying to manage, to improve or defend ourselves, and give way to something greater.

The Christian contemplatives call it letting go and letting God. The Buddhists call it non-clinging or do nothing. The Taoists refer to it as wu wei. And psychologists call it flow or even self-compassion.

Grace isn’t passive. It’s a means of discernment, a way of finding a wise relationship to effort. It’s also about letting go and trusting that in doing so, something ineffable and benevolent will enter when it’s needed most.

When I was going through breast cancer treatment, grace was something I experienced regularly, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to manage or control a single thing. But it emerged from more than a lack of energy. It came from a bodily state of ease accompanied by a peaceful mind and a faithful heart. Unlike the stability of equanimity, grace is what arrived in the wake of my letting go.

Inviting Grace into Daily Life

How might we invite grace into our daily lives?

With students and clients, whenever I notice they’re being too hard on themselves, I intentionally let them off the hook. I help them see things through a broader lens, and in doing so, I’ve witnessed grace enter the fray.

I might say: “Of course, you haven’t meditated consistently because you’re caring for your ill mother while working full-time and taking care of four children under the age of 10!” or “Of course, you’re anxious. You’re about to start a new job.”

Sometimes, giving ourselves grace means taking into account the context in which we’re living. It means giving ourselves – or having someone else give us – permission not to always live up to our ideal standards. In this way, grace is a form of self-compassion.

I’m a practical person by nature, and, if possible, I like to turn insights into something tangible. So here are a few of the mindfulness practices I developed to invite a state of grace into my daily life.

• A Mindful Mantra: There’s energetic power in the word grace itself. Simply taking a few moments to close your eyes, relax your body, and silently and gently say the word grace to yourself can coax the body, heart, and mind into a state of ease and release.
• What am I adding to this experience? Over the years, I’ve found that letting go requires me to first acknowledge what I might be unnecessarily clinging to or adding to an experience. Sometimes, while sending a text, I notice I’m bracing my abdomen, or when having guests over, I realize I’m rigidly holding the belief that only cloth napkins will do.  Asking myself what I might be unnecessarily adding to a situation helps me relax back into the flow of my life.
• The Memory Door: Meditation teacher Loch Kelly teaches a practice called the Memory Door, which he uses to help people connect to a form of effortless mindfulness. We can also use memory to recall a time when we felt we were in a state of grace. To do so, find a comfortable posture, close your eyes, and recall a time when everything felt just right or when, despite a challenge, you knew things would work out. Once you land on a memory, let it play out in full technicolor in your mind’s eye and notice how doing so feels in your body.
• What’s the effort or quality of energy I’m bringing to this task? Have you ever found yourself responding to an email as if you were driving a racecar? If so, you’re bringing way too much energy to the task. Sometimes I find it helpful to simply stop and notice the level of effort or the quality of energy I’m bringing to whatever I’m doing. Am I gripping too much? Is my mind racing? Checking in this way can be humbling. One time, I realized I was pulling weeds in the garden with the urgency of an air traffic controller. Whenever I recognize that the effort or quality of energy I’m bringing to a task is a mismatch (i.e., I’m stressing out too much), I stop, take a breath, and give myself some space and grace.

On My Mind

The other day, when leading a mindful eating practice, a participant shared how the flavor of a small square of dark chocolate lingered on her tongue long after she’d swallowed it.

Doing so not only allowed her to savor the sweetness of it but also the joy of eating it far more than she usually would.

Her insight points to something we forget in our daily hustle: there’s so much beauty and pleasure in lingering.

Staying with it

Staying with the flavor of chocolate on your tongue, tracing the arc of a sparrow in the sky until it’s out of sight, or listening to the last note of a song until it fades into silence, enhances our appreciation and enjoyment of those experiences – as long as we’re not clinging to them. 

Lingering also gives us a sense of completion.

When I finish a piece of writing, staring at the page for a few moments longer gives me a sense of well-done fulfillment I’d otherwise miss if I leaped up from my desk and moved on to the next task.

I feel the same if I stay with an emotion – even a challenging one, such as sadness. Being with sadness until it runs its course lets me gather any information it may offer me about my life. Instead of compounding the pain of it through avoidance or distraction, I’m left with a sense of resolution, even poignancy for having felt it at all.

We don’t linger much – on anything – these days.

The Increased Pace of Life

We hurry and rush, truncating experiences so we can move on to whatever comes next. We cut conversations short or stand up from the dinner table before the last dish gets cleared.

The pace of our lives has undeniably sped up, leaving us with seemingly little time to spare.

Arianna Salazar-Miranda, an assistant professor of urban planning and data science at the Yale School of the Environment, recently analyzed recorded pedestrian behavior in New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. Her team compared data from the late 1970s to 2010. What they discovered is that we’re literally moving faster.

Walking speed had increased by 15 percent. Lingering? Cut in half. As a result, fewer people nowadays interact in groups or spontaneously with each other.

Miranda’s research suggests that moving through our days as if we’re on a conveyor belt comes at a social cost. We miss out on the connections that are so vital to our well-being.

The other day, while taking a walk before hunkering down at my desk to work, I ran into two neighbors.

One complained about a drain that was leaking rainwater into his garage; another told me she was off to see the doctor. These weren’t momentous interactions, but as I listened and connected with my neighbors, I realized that making time for them is what my sense of community and belonging is built upon.

The Art of Lingering

To linger requires us to stay longer in a place or a moment, and resist the tug and pull to launch ahead into the next event.

Of course, there are times I don’t need to linger. I never want to stay in an airport bathroom longer than I need to.

But practicing lingering is a worthy and mindful experiment.

The next time you find yourself abruptly moving on to the next experience before the current one is truly over, take a few moments to savor the experience.

Hug your friend a little longer, enjoy that last sip of coffee, and go ahead and let out a sigh of grateful relief as you ease yourself into your favorite chair before opening a book or turning on the television.

Pause and notice what you discover when you linger.

On My Mind